Will library get checked out?
Budget cuts threaten services at branches across Mono County.
The Mono County library system is facing cuts to hours at branches across the system, as well as the reclassification of two senior positions in Mammoth and Bridgeport, to balance a five-year deficit that threatens to deplete its reserve.
The County library system is operated by the Mono County Office of Education (MCOE) under the direction of the Mono County Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Stacey Adler. The library system has been tapping into its reserve since 2010, according to MCOE Chief Business Officer Caty Ecklund.
That’s not because of the cost of building the new library in Mammoth, said County Librarian Ana Danielson.
“The fundraising for the Mammoth building was done by the Mammoth Lakes Friends of the Library,” she explained. She noted that Cerro Coso also contributed “a significant amount of money” out of a special bond measure.
“The loan for this facility is paid by Mammoth Lakes Friends of the Library; Development Impact Funds that come from the Town of Mammoth Lakes; and then MCOE supplements the rest,” she said. “The Mono County library system is not paying for the loan for this facility. What has increased are the utilities for this building; that would be the only place where this facility affects the Mono County budget.”
The deficit and depleted library system reserve are instead the result of a stagnation in property tax revenue since about 2008, coupled with the rising cost of living and benefits for staff.
The library system receives roughly 95 percent of its funding from a 1.68 percent property tax allocation, said Mono County Auditor-Controller Roberta Reed. Typically the budget comes in at about $1 million. But the property tax contribution, which was estimated at about $990,000 in 2009-2010, has come in closer to $900,000 for the past two fiscal years, and is estimated at $924,000 this year.
The library system may also be struggling because previous County Librarian Bill Michael failed to address the deficit sooner. Michael was hired in 2005 and resigned in 2014 to become Director of Monterey City Library and Museums.
According to a 2013-14 multiyear budget projection provided to Mammoth Branch Manager Doug Oldham by current County Librarian Ana Danielson, during Michael’s tenure the budget deficit was $108,025 in 2011-2012, $35,220 in 2012-2013 (because of a one-time increase in fines, law library, and raising a reader revenues), and grew to $141,886 in 2013-2014. Actual deficit numbers for 2014-15 could not be verified by deadline.
Meanwhile the library system’s reserve dropped dramatically from $843,000 in 2010 to $195,000 this year, according to Caty Ecklund.
MCOE currently projects the 2015-2016 deficit will be about $67,000, although Ecklund said that “it could go much higher depending on where the current labor negotiations end.” Labor negotiations will be continuing through November.
Oldham said that the bulk of the library system expense was payroll, and that the deficit has declined from 2013-2014 to 2015-2016 in part because of the attrition of Mammoth’s Senior Librarian Sulin Jones and Diane Thoman in early 2015. Thoman moved from the Mammoth to Crowley Library branch, and her position at the Mammoth branch has not been backfilled.
But County Librarian Ana Danielson, who succeeded Bill Michael in 2014, explained that in spite of attrition, staff costs keep rising. “The union [California State Employees Association] generally negotiates a small cost of living increase, and then the big increase is the cost of benefits, which can increase substantially,” she said. “… Even if our property taxes were to increase about 5 percent per year, that probably wouldn’t cover the increase in staff costs.”
Oldham and Mono County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Stacey Adler agreed that former County Librarian Bill Michael should have done more to address the deficit problem before waning property tax and rising staff costs ate away so much of the reserve.
“I think that he did make an effort to be conscious of the budget, but I don’t think he was as aggressive as he probably could have been,” Dr. Adler said.
“Now we’re at the point where we need to institute some changes, or we would have drastic changes if we run out of reserves,” said Danielson.
Cuts and changes
The proposed 2014-2015 budget would make the following cuts and changes:
Reducing operational and staff hours at Benton and Coleville from 20 to 15, closing during school holidays and reducing to 5 hours per week during summer; reducing hours at Crowley from 20 to 15 with seasonal closures or other reductions; reducing hours at June from 20 to a year-round average of 15, with fewer hours in winter and more in summer; reducing hours in Bridgeport to six days per week at four hours a day (24 hours) or five days per week at six hours per day (30 hours); and reducing hours at Mammoth by one day per weekday, eliminating Tuesday late nights by a three hour reduction, and reducing Saturday by two and a half hours.
The Bookmobile would also cease operation.
Proposed changes also include eliminating part-time Library Assistant Judy Jeude from the Bridgeport Library and reclassifying Bridgeport Branch Librarian Abbie Bridges and Mammoth Branch Librarian Doug Oldham to Senior Librarians.
“It’s essentially, unfortunately, a demotion,” said Danielson of Bridges and Oldham. The Senior Librarian position would be represented by the union, “but I believe it worked out to about a $6 an hour decrease in pay,” she said.
When called for comment, Bridges said the change in pay would actually amount to about an $18 per hour decrease for her.
Bridges is currently the only fully credentialed librarian in the County system, and has been Branch Manager in Bridgeport for eight years. She noted that Bridgeport’s is the second largest library in the County after Mammoth’s. Bridgeport accounts for 14.5 percent of total County library system circulation, and is allocated about 16 percent of the total library system budget.
Bridges said that if she loses Jeude, “one staff member wouldn’t be able to get the work done processing the materials, hosting programs, and dealing with circulation.” She noted that the Bridgeport library offers a range of programs each week to kindergarten through fourth grades, bi-weekly to seventh and eighth grades, and once a year to fifth and sixth graders, who work on their term papers during the spring, using the library for its online database and research books.
Should her hours and staff be cut, Bridges said she couldn’t possibly run these programs.
“It was horrible to contemplate what they were going to do,” she said of the proposed changes.
Bridges argued that the library is a crucial watering hole during the winter.
“Everything pretty much closes down,” she said. “The library has played a vital part in keeping everyone from going off the edge.” One winter activity, a book group potluck, would likely also suffer from changes to branch and librarian hours, Bridges said.
Doug Oldham has been with the Mammoth Lakes library for 14 years. He’s spent 12 years in his current position as Branch Manager.
“It’s a difficult situation,” he said of the proposed changes. He said he believed the MCOE Library Authority Board, which has the ultimate say on these changes, “was initially given worst-case scenarios … the first projected budget deficit was close to $160,000, which would have wiped out the reserve. I think that scenario caused some of this unrest.”
Oldham emphasized that the Mammoth Lakes library has already worked hard to cut costs, most importantly through attrition. He noted that when he first moved into the new Mammoth Library in 2007, “We had a staff of four on each day.” In spite of an increase in circulation by almost 20,000 books since then, “Now we have a staff of three,” Oldham said.
Mammoth’s circulation accounts for about 59 percent of the total County library system circulation. About 300-400 people visit Mammoth each day, Oldham said, for a total of about 80,000 annual visits. The Mammoth branch receives 37 percent of the overall library system budget.
Community concerns
On Thursday, August 27, the MCOE Library Authority Board convened to discuss the budget and proposed cuts and changes. At that meeting, Gary Nelson of Mono County worried that reducing library hours would undo the growth in circulation.
“Reducing hours would lead to declining attendance and circulation, which would lead to more cuts … it would be a downward spiral,” he said.
Others expressed concern that Senior Librarians might lose their jobs altogether. But Dr. Adler said firing Oldham or Bridges had never been considered.
“There has never been any discussion that Doug or Abbie would lose their jobs completely,” she said.
At the meeting, several members of the public questioned why the MCOE had failed to make budget documents available online prior to the discussion.
“You’re telling people here you’re going to cut their services, and they have no access to that information,” said Vincent Goetz. He asserted that under the California Public Records Act, “legally, that information should be out there an available, and it isn’t.”
In a follow up interview, Dr. Adler maintained that the pertinent financial information was available to the public—by request at the MCOE office in Bridgeport. “There’s nothing in the Public Records Act that mandates the budget information be made available online,” she said.
But Abbie Bridges argued that the MCOE does have to make financial information available online in accordance with the Brown Act. She, and others at the Library Authority Board meeting, noted that the Mono County Grand Jury had received complaints regarding the Eastern Sierra Unified School District’s (ESUSD) similar behavior, and that the Grand Jury ordered the District to post budgets and other financial documents online.
Dr. Adler’s response was that the Grand Jury responded to a complaint regarding ESUSD, not MCOE. “Agendas and minutes are required to be posted online [under the Brown Act], yes, but the other [financial] information is provided upon request,” she said.
Bridges called MCOE’s reticence to share financial documents “very suspicious … People in this [Bridgeport] community are filing another complaint. People want to understand why they [MCOE] need to cut these libraries, especially in these outlying communities where we have so little.”
The Library Authority Board agreed at the August 27 meeting that the public should have more time to review the necessary financial information before the Board makes its decision. Board members agreed to table their discussion of the library system deficit and proposed cuts and changes for two months. They also made a motion to “come up with the financial information that will help the community.”
“Libraries are central institutions in our rural communities,” concluded Board member Karl Seiberling, “and I don’t like the idea of cutting them either.”
“The library is a great equalizer,” agreed Oldham. “It allows people with limited resources to have incredible resources at their disposal; that’s the bottom line.”
Oldham said he hoped the Board and MCOE would see that drastic changes might not yet be necessary, considering the deficit is likely closer to $67,000 than $160,000. “Is it, ‘the sky is falling,’ or ‘hey, it’s raining’?” he said. “If we kept on the way we were, the sky was falling. But Michael is gone and the current County Librarian is trying to bring things under control. We’re doing better.”
