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May 2013 SOCOSOL Recommendations Re: Governance of the
Sonoma County Library

  
 

Dysfunctional aspects

 
  •      We would rather address only the solutions to the Library’s problems, but discussing them is to no avail if there is not a shared understanding of how things are not working well. Therefore we must summarize some of the problems we see with the current Library Administration.

    The Commission doesn’t solicit or accept suggestions from the public or the Local Advisory Boards (LABs). One has only to attend one of several meetings in which the public or the staff attempts to influence the Commission to find that they do not even put the issues on their agenda, much less discuss them.

    The LABs are not functioning as intended. A few of the LABs have taken initiative and are actively involved in improving their library. Most of them, alas, are reduced to listening to reports. They are often poorly informed as to what is happening in the library as a whole, and their dependence on their Commissioner for information prevents them from acting as “checks and balances.”

    The Commission does not provide effective fiscal oversight. Three examples:
    • a. The Director has produced shifting figures on the same topic, especially with regard to the reduced hours, and the cost of restoring them. Commission has not yet received information as to how she arrived at those figures.
    • b. The Library has spent large sums on legal fees (for which it severely under- budgeted), all the while suffering worsening relations with the union and the staff. The Director and the Human Relations officer previously covered negotiations themselves.
    • c. The Library pays two to three times as much for designer furniture as it would for standard library furnishings, an idea imposed by a design firm seeking a uniform look among all the branches at the expense of local branch discretion.
  • The Library has systematically pursued a policy of understaffing. A report by an independent consultant (Goodrich) in 2006 first alerted the Administration to the problem of understaffing in the Library. Nevertheless, the Director campaigned with a PowerPoint presentation claiming that personnel costs were the Library’s biggest obstacle, and the Library accepted early retirements in 2009 in lieu of layoffs. Two years later, in 2012 the Library laid off the substitute employees and reduced the public service hours. When the Branch Managers issued a report in April, 2012 complaining of understaffing, the Director did not forward it to the Commission (SOCOSOL did), and it did not appear in the Commission packet or as an agenda item until October. Now the Administration claims to have just discovered the understaffing issue, and is using that to keep from restoring public service hours

Solutions

There are many options open to the JPA Review Committee for revising the JPA in order to create a better library. We have produced lists of options but they are not exclusive, and we are open to discussing alternative solutions. What our options have in common is the theme of making the Library more responsive to the needs of the public, and increasing the number of well informed people with input into the decision-making process.

We want to create a cooperative and collaborative relationship among the stakeholders. We want the Library’s established funding to be protected, and we hope that the JPA may broaden the possible sources of funding.

We want the branches to have the right to enhance services above a baseline budget allocation level, with possible fund-sharing formulas to benefit less wealthy areas.
We would like to see the Library have an Advisory Board for the Spanish-speaking.

We are against censorship and want to keep materials selection in the hands of the staff, not the elected or governing bodies.

We think the JPA should be automatically reviewed and updated at least every 10 years.

A Commission

Options:
A Commission could be made up of elected officials from each of the JPA signatory jurisdictions.
OR
The Commissioners could be elected at the local level. Some public libraries, for example, Ann Arbor, Michigan do this. [There are lower-cost methods of holding elections: the union uses some of them. The City of Vallejo has a “participatory budgeting” process that allows citizens to weigh in on spending priorities. (http://www.pbvallejo.org/) The same or similar software could be used either to conduct an election online or allow the public to vote on library priorities.]
OR
Local LABs could select their own Commissioner, or conduct an election according to their own rules in their own branch.

Regardless of how Commissioners are selected, they should serve with clear term limits and be recallable by a public process.

The Library Commission should have Commissioners with library expertise, thereby enhancing its access to ideas and information besides those of the Director. This can be done by
     a. Having an elected line staff representative on the Commission
     b. Having a branch manager selected by other branch managers on the Commission

The Commission should seek and respect public input. This can be ensured by
     a. A mandate to put public items on the agenda for discussion
     b. A mandate to submit policy changes to the LABs before implementation. The Commission should not     be able to overrule a majority of the LABs.

Seats on either the Commission or the LABs could be pre-designated to represent an underrepresented population, or populations the Library wishes to attract, such as members of the Spanish speaking community and youth.

The Local Advisory Boards (LABs)


For the LAB members to be better informed, they should both
     a. Meet monthly or bimonthly
     b. Send a member to Commission meetings

For the LABs to be responsive to the public, they should conduct public forums at least twice per year. These could be run jointly by the LABs and the Friends groups.

LAB members should be limited to 2-year terms for a maximum of two terms, and then must rotate out for at least a year.

Finance Manager


This officer will be responsible for overseeing the finances and budget of the Library System. This person must be a CPA. This officer must provide transparent reports on the ongoing budget for the Executive Committee and the Authority, as well as provide leadership in developing long-term financial plans and financing future pensions in an organized manner.

The Finance Manager would be hired and directly supervised by the Commission and could only be dismissed by the Commission, not the Director.


The Director


The position of Library Director could be eliminated. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. A committee of high-level staff could take over the duties. This was done in at least one place we were able to discover, the Oxnard Public Library, for four or five years in the nineties, without any ill effects.

If there is a Director, a separate search and hiring committee could be formed, consisting of (for example) three city JPA signatories, one County representative, and two staff representatives.

The Commission would thereafter be charged with conducting annual reviews. It should solicit public and staff opinions as part of this process. It would also have the power to fire the Director.

Conclusion


These are not the only possibilities; they are only the ones we have considered to date. What is important now is for the JPA signatories to commit in principle to the democratization of the public library, with increasing transparency and collaboration.

These recommendations were presented to the Joint Powers Advisory review committee on May 3, 2013 in a public meeting. Santa Rosa, Calif.

 

 

THEY DID IT IN CHICAGO and WE CAN DO IT TOO!

We wanted to let you know some very good news: Thanks to you and thousands of other Chicago residents who made clear the importance of your neighborhood branch, staffing and hours have been almost completely restored throughout the Chicago Public Libraries system. Over the past few weeks, nearly all of the library employees who were laid off last winter were recalled to work, and the library’s “summer hours” have returned the system to its regular schedule.

As you know, last fall Mayor Emanuel proposed a budget that would have cut library hours on Mondays and Fridays and eliminated 552 library staff positions. Knowing how much Chicagoans value their public libraries, we launched a campaign that let library lovers like you push back against these cuts.

We started with “story time” in front of the Mayor’s office on Halloween. Hundreds of people showed up, including kids in costumes, people with handmade “I love my library” signs, and concerned library staff. Together we delivered petitions signed by more than 5,000 Chicago residents. And in the following days we made thousands of calls to aldermen and garnered citywide media coverage of this outpouring of public support. In response to the outcry, the Mayor agreed to restore the funding needed to reverse some, but not all, of his planned cutbacks.

In January, the city began closing libraries all day on Mondays. Once again concerned citizens from across Chicago came together to press for full funding of the public library system. We held “People’s Library Hours” with hot cocoa and colorful signs in front of the closed library branches. And once again the Mayor responded, agreeing to keep the libraries open on Monday afternoons.

But he also ordered the layoff of more than 120 library pages, the system’s lowest-paid, part-time employees who keep shelves restocked when materials are returned. With the pages gone, librarians struggled to keep up, taking time away from assisting patrons to restock shelves. Lines were long, and often books just piled up for weeks.

Fortunately, reason prevailed, and in recent weeks nearly all the pages have been recalled to work. Bringing them back will improve access to books and free up other library staff to serve patrons and conduct popular programs. And for now, branch libraries are open a full eight hours on Mondays.

Library staff are hopeful that CPL will maintain these hours into the fall. If not, however, we know we can count on thousands of supporters like you to again speak out in defense of their libraries.

Thank you for standing up for Chicago’s vibrant network of neighborhood branch libraries.
source:  http://www.keepchicagoworking.org/

 

To all interested Library Patrons: Here is the link to the Grand Jury Report, which contains a 9 page report entitled Whose Library Is It?

www.sonomagrandjury.org.    Library Report begins on page 12 (scroll down)


who's library is it?

Cutting libraries


• Who are our Library Commissioners and how do we reach them? Map and Chart
What you need to know about how our library commissioners are chosen.

  • If you were a Library Advisory Board Member, what questions would YOU ask?  Ideas so far >>read more

Important Dates and events:

May 31, next Joint Powers Agreement committee meeting,
2 pm County Sheriff's office

Link to SOCOSOL TIMELINE OF EVENTS

Archive News July, 2011- May, 2013:

Sonoma County Save Our Libraries. Get involved now!
We want: 

  • Budget transparency.
  • Library Advisory Board transparency, so our representatives are able to serve the communities they represent.
  • Library Commission accountability to communities they represent.
  • Roll back to hours in effect prior to August 1, 2011.

    Documents available to download, print and distributed.
  • Library Commissioners' contact and service area information and MAP

 

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

In hard economic times those holding the purse strings cut services and staff, forgetting what Andrew Carnegie said, “A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.”

Sonoma County Save Our Libraries (SOCOSOL) formed in June of 2011, when we learned that the County public library system would close on Mondays and all branches assigned the same hours regardless of community needs. SOCOSOL’s explicit purpose is to get the Library Commission to restore Monday hours, but we have uncovered other problems with the library system. The worst is the lack of transparency in the budget, and the lack of public input into library priorities.

Our task has grown past the ability of our steering committee to pursue alone. We need people who are willing to go to Commission and Library Advisory Board (LAB) meetings. Each branch has its own LAB. The LAB’s function is to make recommendations to the Commission and Library Director on all matters affecting library service. In order to be heard, you must attend your area LAB meetings so your Board knows what your needs are. Each LAB sets its own meeting frequency and times, so check the Library website or www.socosol.org.

Also, we are recruiting new members for the SOCOSOL steering committee. If you are interested in joining the steering committee, please go to www.socosol.org and leave us an e-mail. If you care to donate to SOCOSOL, please do so on the website.

Now is the time to jump in and help out. Please participate!

 
Visit our ARCHIVE For past commission meeting video clips and past actions.
 

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