Grants to Fund Camarillo, Oxnard Libraries

Camarillo and Oxnard have won a combined $21 million in state grants to underwrite construction of new libraries in those fast-growing cities, officials said Tuesday.

The largest award, $15.6 million, will allow Camarillo to more than quadruple the size of its existing library and create what officials described as an architectural and cultural showcase.

A $5.7-million grant for Oxnard means the city’s south end, where more than 60,000 people reside, will have its first free-standing library. The library is now housed in a cramped community center.

“I started jumping up and down when I heard,” said Camarillo Library manager Sandi Banks. “This library will be -- next to City Hall -- the most important public building here, a major place people can be proud of.”

Barbara Murray, the Oxnard library director, said a new library was imperative, because the existing one has just 4,000 square feet of space, few computers and inadequate lighting. “I’m on top of the world right now,” Murray said. “I’ve got to calm down a little bit and start containing this excitement.”

The two projects, both of which are slated to begin construction in 2004, were selected from among 61 applications statewide for a share of $350 million made available by Proposition 14, a voter-approved library construction measure passed in March 2000.

About $130 million was awarded this week by the state’s Office of Library Construction. The rest will be doled out in the next 18 months.

“It was a highly competitive process,” said Richard Hall, the state’s Library Bond Act manager. “There’s just a tremendous amount of need out there.”

The proposals were judged partly based on population growth and the age and condition of current facilities, he said.

In Ventura County, only Camarillo and Oxnard requested grants.

The largest grant -- $20 million -- went to the San Mateo Main Library. The Santa Maria Public Library in Santa Barbara County received $16.3 million.

Camarillo’s population has doubled to more than 60,000 since the library was built on Ponderosa Drive in 1974. The facility is about 15,000 square feet and contains a collection of more than 112,000 books, videos, audiotapes and periodicals in a space designed to hold 75,000, Banks said.

The Camarillo Library leads the county’s 15 libraries in circulation, with about 311,000 items borrowed annually. But the children’s reading room contains only one small table with eight little stools, and parents often must sit on the floor, Banks said.

“Our library is pitifully undersized, out of date and in poor physical condition,” said Gail Doi, Camarillo deputy city manager and author of the grant application.

The city’s new $24-million library will be a 65,000-square-foot, Spanish colonial-style building on 10 acres at Las Posas Road and Fieldgate Drive. The two-story library will include homework and family literacy centers, a story-telling room, 80 public computers and a community room.

The remaining funds needed to build the library -- more than $8 million -- will come primarily from the city, along with a donation of about $400,000 from the Friends of the Library.

The South Oxnard Branch Library will move out of a community center at 200 E. Bard Road into a $9.7-million, 23,000-square-foot facility next door.

The library will include literacy and homework assistance centers and a computer lab with 30 terminals.