Revamping of County’s Library System OKd

After months of haggling, number-crunching and hard bargaining, representatives from seven Ventura County cities--both large and small--approved a plan Thursday night to revamp the way the county’s cash-strapped library system operates.

Some of the smaller cities continued to grumble about details, but overall there was a feeling of relief, even euphoria, among librarians and city and county officials as the seven committee members proceeded to ratify the plan.

“I’m just elated to get to this point because there were a lot of people who worked very hard, and it was like pulling teeth at the beginning,” Supervisor Frank Schillo said.

“It will work out. The library is in an excellent position for the future,” Schillo said. “Even though it won’t be fat with money, it will be thin with reorganization of library personnel.”

The plan, crafted by a panel of city managers from the seven cities participating in the 15-branch county library system, would scale back overhead costs for the Library Services Agency and use the savings to expand hours and give cities more financial and operational control over their own branch libraries.

Fillmore, Camarillo, Moorpark, Port Hueneme, Simi Valley, Ojai and Ventura are part of the county system.

Under the plan, libraries in Simi Valley and Camarillo, and Foster Library in Ventura--the three largest in the county’s 15-branch system--would stay open 55 hours a week, and hours at the smaller branches would remain at least at the status quo of 24 hours a week.

George Berg of Save Our Libraries praised the plan and called it the best the county could have hoped for as a first step to upgrading the beleaguered branches.

“Overall, we are very pleased,” Berg said. “I think it provides an excellent foundation to begin the revitalization of the county library system.”

One of the more controversial aspects of the plan is that property tax dollars would stay in the cities where they are generated, rather than being lumped into a county fund, then redistributed.

Ventura and Simi Valley--two of the largest participating cities--had threatened to pull out of the system if they did not get their fair share of the financial pie. Thousand Oaks and Oxnard have their own independent libraries.

“What Simi and Ventura said was, ‘We are competition,’ ” Simi Mayor Greg Stratton said. “ ‘We can run it better than you can,’ and that became a competitive challenge. And the end result was, by gosh, they figured they could do it.”

Councilman Jim Friedman of Ventura, too, was pleased.

“I think the whole agreement we have now is fair to both the large cities and the small cities,” Friedman said. “Why should the large cities not get full value for the property tax that they contribute to the county? Why should the small cities get more value than they put into the system? When that happens, one group is subsidizing another.”

The small cities expressed relief that the county system is still all in one piece.

“I’m happy we still have a county system and the large cities haven’t bolted and left the small cities to flounder,” said Port Hueneme Councilman Jon Sharkey.

To ensure that the system stays intact, Camarillo Councilman Bill Liebman even went so far as to propose an amendment to the plan that would prevent any city from seceding from the system too easily.

“There is no provision that deals with withdrawal,” Liebman explained, before proposing that other cities be able to recommend the terms for withdrawal. Furthermore, he suggested, the Board of Supervisors would not be able to override the cities’ recommended terms without a four-fifths majority vote.

But other city representatives said there would be time for fine-tuning later. And they held off.

Some smaller city representatives said the group has yet to work out a permanent solution.

“It’s a good compromise,” said Fillmore Councilman Scott Lee. “But we have a long way to go before the city of Fillmore has the quality of library residents want. But a lot of that will be done by individual cities, in terms of technology and materials.”

Port Hueneme’s Sharkey, too, expressed some reservations.

After listening to the city officials pat each other on the back for coming up with a plan, he injected a note of caution into the discussion.

“We’ve all done a very good job, but let’s not get too excited,” Sharkey said. “This is a reaction to a crisis situation. I get no joy out of this document. I see this as the beginning of a long, slow decline. And we’ve clearly got some winners, and some losers.”

All present repeated that this is only a first step, and much work remains to be done.

From here, the representatives will take the plan back to their seven respective city councils for approval. The Ventura City Council and the Moorpark City Council have already approved the plan.

“I just hope that now that the elected officials are getting involved, they don’t muck it up,” Ventura Councilman Friedman said.