Youth Grant Could Aid Local Libraries

Almost daily, the state and federal governments give funds/grants to the county. This is money you paid in state and federal taxes (referred to by some at the Ventura County Government Center as “free money”).

Some of these funds/grants serve useful purposes, others questionable. One annual federal grant to the county is $1.7 million for the Summer Youth Employment and Training Program.

A minimum of 55% of the grant must be spent for youth wages, benefits and supportive services. The rest ($765,000) can be spent for administration, consultants, contractors and more bureaucrats.

During public comment at the Board of Supervisors meeting, I suggested this program be used to support the county libraries as some of these youths could work as part-time and even future full-time employees. There are many jobs in the library system other than putting books on the shelves, and present employees could provide on-the-job training without creating yet another bureaucracy.

The grant requires that the money be used in all of the county’s 10 cities. There is a library in each city and $1.7 million is more than 27% of this year’s entire library budget.

Have any of the five supervisors or their staffs explored how the youth program could help the libraries? Of course not! Their thinking is only asking for more tax dollars to spend on yet another level of bureaucracy and consultants.

DON HOLLINGSWORTH, Camarillo