The Goleta City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to avoid cuts to the Goleta Valley Library, fund the vacant children’s librarian position, and negotiate transferring control of the library from the city of Santa Barbara to the city of Goleta.
Facing a standing-room-only council chamber, the body voted to add $42,000 to its fiscal year 2016–17 library contribution of $60,000 to fund the position, as well as use the library’s reserves to cover the institution’s budget deficits and begin talks with Santa Barbara and the county to take over the library.
Currently, the county’s library system is run by the city of Santa Barbara, which made the call not to fill the children’s librarian position after a March retirement; Goleta does not have the authority, Councilman Michael Bennett said, to make cuts or change the library’s operations.
The council also voiced support for potentially using money from the city’s General Fund, should it need to, to ensure the library’s continued operations.
For a while now, the Goleta Library, like many of its counterparts throughout the county, has been operating at a deficit; the library’s service area includes roughly 90,000 people, about a third of whom reside in Goleta.
The council has increasingly been confronted with the need to either boost library revenue, reduce its expenditures, or both.
The council declined last month to pursue a November ballot measure for a new library tax in County Service Area 3, which primarily encompasses eastern Goleta, that would be levied alongside a similar, proposed county one.
That approach was rejected, in part, because of the confusion that could be caused by concurrent tax measures with the same purpose but different tax structures.
The Goleta Library, at 500 N. Fairview Ave., operates under a $1.5 million budget, and, without revenue and expenditure changes, would face a $155,000 deficit this fiscal year.
Its current revenues come from local development impact fees, Measure L funds, overdue book fees, contributions from Friends of the Goleta Valley Library, private donations and per capita funding from the county based on the number of people in the library’s service area.
Before the council Tuesday was a city staff recommendation to fund the $102,000 Children’s Librarian position while cutting the deficit by closing the library an hour early on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and closing it entirely on Mondays.
That plan would not deplete the library’s reserves for roughly four years, city staff said.
The library, one patron told the council, “is a really robustly and heavily used institution that provides open access to an enormous amount of information for everybody in our community, and I would hope — and as a citizen, I’m asking you as a city council — to support it as robustly as your community does in its use with your finances — with our finances.”
Bennett and Councilwoman Paula Perotte, who constitute the council’s ad hoc library committee, said that they had only found out about the city of Santa Barbara’s decision not to fill the children’s librarian vacancy when they saw a sign announcing it on the library door.
“My goal right now today, going forward, is to take over the library and forget Santa Barbara city — be done with the city of Santa Barbara,” said Bennett, who advocated for Goleta hiring for the position itself.
Though the council emphatically opposed any of the proposed closures, which would have taken effect Aug. 1, deputy city manager Kathleen Trepa said that staffing shortages in addition to financial concerns, were what drove Santa Barbara to advocate for the closures.
Goletacould immediately begin negotiating with Santa Barbara to bring over part-time employees to ensure the library is adequately staffed for daily operation.
— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.