Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Budget Situation

Unfortunately, the news on the City’s budget continues to be bleak. The City has just completed preparations for the next two year budget, 2010 to 2012. Revenue declines continue from the lingering housing crisis and losses in sales tax revenue. Despite the best efforts of all of the City departments, a $6M gap exists between expenses and revenues for the 2010-2011 fiscal year and a $7.5M gap for the 2011-2012 fiscal year. Previous departmental budgets are financially unsustainable, so the City cannot continue to provide City services at present levels. Ongoing discussions have identified across the board service reductions to address the City’s on-going structural deficit. Each City department was asked to reduce expenditures by an additional 10%. Unfortunately, some of these reductions will result in additional layoffs.

For the library, this will mean the elimination of a vacant Librarian position and the reorganization of our Technical Services Department with the reduction of a Library Assistant and two part-time Library Clerks. Due to seniority in the organization, several staff will be relocating to the public service areas. We will also be relying more heavily on self service for our patrons as there will be less staff available for assistance, particularly at the Civic Center Library. We are not alone as all other departments in the City are experiencing cuts as well including Police. We can only hope that things will get better over time.

On a positive note, the library faired very well in the community budget workshops. The top three city services as ranked by attendees were public safety, library and economic development. When asked to reduce, maintain or increase funding for city services, the library branches received the highest votes for increased funding from the community budget workshop attendees. Therefore, when budget cuts were to be made, it was felt that the branches had already suffered enough and were not to be cut further. Cuts in hours for the Civic Center Library were considered but it was felt that the facility should remain open for use but with less staffing. Therefore, the Civic Center library will continue to offer 63 hours of service, seven days a week, evenings and weekends. However, there will most likely be longer waits for service and a greater emphasis on the use of the self check machines.

Library staff continues to be committed to offering the best possible resources and services with limited staffing. I continue to expect that the community will use the library and its wealth of resources and bear with us as we cope in these difficult times.

The Friends of the Library are helping to fill some gaps in our budget by providing money for many of our programs. The Friends are supporting our Paws to Read program and the Free2 Succeed Job Center. The Friends have helped support our limited materials acquisitions by funding the popular ReferenceUSA database.

Our volunteer opportunities continue to grow. If anyone would like to volunteer, please contact Librarian Blanche Angelo at 925-373-5500 Ext. 5574. Your help is very much appreciated.

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