Long Beach’s 12
public libraries have been hit hard by the city wide budget cuts, receiving back
very little of the extra money they had to give to the city to cover a deficit.
“The police, the firefighters, and
the libraries all have to give money to the city because we are all in a
general fund”, said Bayshore Library Branch Supervisor and Adult Librarian Debi
Vilamder. “This year we had to give
$17.8 million but on top of that the libraries had to find another $1.2 million
to give to the city for a deficit which means when they do that then we’re
cutting”.
The $1.2 million the city’s
libraries had to give is due to a reported $18.5 million budget deficit the
city of Long Beach is facing.
Even though the Long Beach Public
Library system received two thirds of the extra money they gave to the city, not
much it can be used to buy new books, hire new staff, our restore the budgets
of each library.
$400,000 of the money we get back is
going to be used to buy checkout machines”, said Vilamder. “We are only getting
back $56,000 to restore the budget at our library”.
Bayshore Public Library has been one
of the libraries hit hard by the budget slashing.
“This year we’re
losing our children’s librarian, so we have no children’s storytime” said
Vilamder. “They are taking the children’s librarian from this library and
taking her back to the main Long Beach Public Library”.
Vilamder
says it’s not just losing the children’s librarian that is hurting Bayshore
Public Library, but also the fact that staff support is also being cut
dramatically.
“They’re also cutting the hours of our page
staff” said Vilamder. “The pages are the ones that put the books back on the
shelf and they also work the front desk when the clerk isn’t here or I’m not up
here. They’re cutting 55 hours of paging time down to 30. The budget cut this
year cut 400 hours of clerk time for the entire Long Beach Library system”.
Viladmer admits that the cutting of
paging hours have made things harder for the staff at Bayshore Public Library.
“For us cutting paging hours means a
lot of work because that means we have to cover lunches, we have to do a lot of
things when there are only two full time people, the rest are just part time”,
said Vilamder.
Getting less money back from what
they gave to the city also means that Long Beach’s public libraries have less
money to actually buy books for people to read and to check out.
“Our book budget was slashed $90,000
citywide so that’s less money that can be used to buy items”, said Vilamder.
Even though the public libraries in
Long Beach have been hit hard by the budget cuts, Vilamder says they were
guaranteed some relief by the city.
“The city is eventually going to
give the libraries more clerk hours to help”, said Vilamder. “They said they
will give us 25 extra clerk hours and they’re going to give us another adman
intern which is 20 hours to help with some programming”.
Vilamder says that budget cutting at
Long Beach’s public libraries has been happening for quite some time now.
“From 1959 when all the libraries
were built to the early 1970s Long Beach got 75 percent of the oil”, Vilamder
said. “Then the state of California said no we don’t want you to get all of that
so after that we only got 25 percent of the oil. The oil is what funded the
schools and the libraries. That’s why we have so many libraries because we were
getting so much of the oil money at that time”.
Vilamder says that what used to
happen was people working in the library would retire and then that person’s
position wouldn’t be filled again by another person.
“What happens usually is we don’t necessarily
have to lay off someone”, said Vilamder. “What happens usually is someone
retires so we just lose that position. We don’t gain it back”.
Despite all the stress the budget cuts
have caused to Bayshore Public Library, Vilamder is thankful from the support
that the libraries are getting.
“We have a lot of community
support”, said Vilamder. “Our community is behind all the libraries and we have
a lot of friends of the libraries and foundation so they are all behind the
libraries and helping to support them”.
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