Making Libraries More Useful to Residents

Our children, our seniors, all of us in Ventura County deserve better. We deserve free public libraries that are open when we need them and have the books and electronic resources that we need.

We don’t have that today.

Every Ventura County branch library should be open a minimum of 40 hours per week distributed among daytime, after-school, early evening and weekend hours. Only six of our 15 branch libraries meet or beat that standard.

A memorandum of understanding signed by Ventura County and seven cities in 1997 established the present system of hours and funding. Now it’s time to revisit that agreement with a goal to seek equity across all the branches.

This is a straightforward and understandable goal but it will be difficult and complex to make it happen. It will take courage, compassion and leadership to modify the memorandum of understanding. It will require sharing of resources countywide, a concept that sometimes meets resistance at the local level.

It also requires more funding for free public libraries. Local property tax funds originally earmarked for our libraries have been transferred to education by the governor and the state Legislature since the early 1990s. Free public library systems are an integral part of our education system and deserve a significant chunk of this education funding.

You can help by telling your City Council members and county supervisors that you support sharing resources to provide equity for all Ventura County branch library users because it’s the right thing to do.

Also tell your state Assembly members, state senator and the governor that you support transferring a significant amount of education funds from schools back to free public libraries.

All this can be done with no new taxes. The money is there. The goal is to allocate it with equity.

MURRAY ROSENBLUTH

Chair, Ventura County

Library Commission

Port Hueneme