City Joining Panel on Library System

The city that once threatened to leave Ventura County’s then-troubled library system has joined an oversight panel charged with controlling the system’s budget and personnel decisions.

By a unanimous vote, the Simi Valley City Council on Monday night agreed to join the eight-member Ventura County Library Federation, made up of one representative from each city served by the county’s library system and a member of the Board of Supervisors.

The council appointed Mayor Greg Stratton as Simi Valley’s representative, with Councilman Paul Miller to serve as an alternate.

The panel would essentially control the budget for the 15-branch library system. The Board of Supervisors--which now oversees the library system’s budget--could overrule the panel only by a four-fifths vote.

The creation of the oversight panel is part of a series of reforms to the county’s library system, which serves every city in Ventura County except Thousand Oaks, Santa Paula and Oxnard.

Until recently, the Library Services Agency was underfunded and considered poorly managed. That situation made officials in larger cities such as Simi Valley consider defecting--taking their tax dollars to operate their own branches.

In recent months, however, library hours have been expanded, and the larger cities are seeing more of their tax dollars return home and fewer going to the bureaucracy.

Even though Simi Valley has joined the oversight panel, city leaders have not given up their right to defect from the library system if it does not continue to improve, Stratton said at Monday’s meeting.

Were the city to set out on its own, “We’d take the money, the building and the books,” he said.