Skeptical Audience Grills Library Consultants

It was a bad night to be a library consultant.

About 100 city leaders, library employees and community activists--all intimately familiar with the subject--crowded into a meeting room at the Oxnard Hilton on Thursday night to grill a team of consultants on their 140-page report on the future of Ventura County’s library system.

Although they came to the Ventura Council of Governments’ public meeting with varying perspectives, the crowd seemed to share in a sense of skepticism about the findings in the $48,000 report, which was commissioned by the Board of Supervisors. The audience had many questions and, clearly, had read the fine print.

“You’ve reduced the staff of the large libraries and yet you are proposing more hours,” said an indignant Alan Langville, a manager with the county’s Library Services Agency. “How do you propose to do that?”

“It’s my understanding that we didn’t reduce staffing at the large libraries,” replied Gloria Stockton, project manager for Providence Associates, the Texas-based consultants who wrote the report.

Langville fired numbers back at her from the study, listing page numbers and facts: reductions from eight full-time staff members at Camarillo’s library to five, from eight in Simi Valley to six.

Papers were shuffled while the consultants consulted with each other.

“We’ll take another look at that and come back to you,” consultant David Price said.

The main thrust of the study rests on two recommendations. The first calls for a reorganization of the library system, with the county’s 10 cities forming special districts, but retaining an umbrella organization--a joint powers agency--to centralize some administrative functions.

By putting some responsibilities on the shoulders of the individual cities and changing the duties of the current staff, Providence Associates maintains that the libraries can be open 20% more hours than they are presently without any new source of funding.

But without finding more money, the consultants say, the libraries will remain mediocre at best. So they suggest that politicians push for an eighth-of-a-cent sales tax increase countywide that would be used to fund the ailing libraries, bolster their minimal collections and get the system into the technology age.

At Thursday’s meeting, doubts abounded about both recommendations.

A community activist pointed out that state law only allows for sales tax increases in quarter-of-a-cent increments and asked the consultants whether Ventura County could push for an eighth-of-a-cent increase without special legislation.

“No,” said Price, admitting that Sacramento legislators would have to get involved.

The report, despite its bulk, never mentioned that pitfall.

Supervisor John K. Flynn raised his hand and asked whether the whole county would be involved in the sales tax vote, which the consultant proposed could be placed on the November 1997 ballot.

Answering yes, consultant Richard Waters cut Flynn’s next question off and said, “You’re going to ask what about Oxnard, Santa Paula and Thousand Oaks, aren’t you?”

Flynn allowed that he was going to do just that. Those three cities operate their own library systems, paying for them out of general fund money.

Many people have questioned how a countywide sales tax increase, which would require approval by two-thirds of the voters, would pass in those cities that are already paying for their libraries.

Waters admitted that there would have to be something in it for those cities to get their residents to vote for the hike. He suggested one incentive might be the proposition that E. P. Foster Library in Ventura would become a full reference library that all cities could utilize.

That suggestion didn’t fly with Robert Addison, a member of the Ventura Friends of the Library.

“It’ll never pass,” he grumbled.

Camarillo Mayor Stan Daily told the consultants that he was a “little fuzzy” on what the financial responsibilities of the cities would be within the special district system. When he was told that that would be up to the individual cities according to their desires, some audience members grew restless.

“You’re passing the buck,” one woman muttered.

Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said he wanted to know more about how the special districts would be formed and how funds would be allocated to them. The consultants told him that an implementation committee, formed by two members of the Board of Supervisors and a member from each city council, would decided that amount.

Fillmore’s Mayor Roger Campbell and Councilman Scott Lee both took issue with the report. Getting to his feet, Lee tore into a financial projection from the consultants that showed library staff salaries would triple in the next three years.

“It looks to me as if that sales tax increase is going to salaries,” he complained.

And Lee said he wants a guarantee that the formation of special districts, coupled with a possible sales tax hike, won’t mean a decline in library funding from the county.

“Is there any guarantee that the existing level won’t be eroded?” he demanded.

Some audience members said the consultant’s report didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. They didn’t need to spend $48,000 to find out that Ventura County’s libraries desperately need more money.

“Definitely a waste of money,” Addison said. “This is all gobbledygook.”