The City Council’s summer recess has given me some time to ponder the interesting matter of the library takeover proposal. Though the City has promised it can deliver more hours and services if it takes over the library, the public has remained skeptical. I think I know why.
Even in this day and age of corrupt governance (Bell!) and mistrust of public institutions, the public values and trust a well-run government service like the County of Los Angeles Library system.
And while our City government is lean, professional, skilled -entrepreneurial even- they don’t specialize (nor have they ever specialized) in running traditional government services like libraries, police departments, fire departments and other municipal services. Indeed, the City has actively avoided taking on those roles in its 23 year history by contracting with the Sheriff’s Department, the Fire Department, the Library system, and even outsourcing the operation of the transit fleet.
And we like that. We want a City government that is lean and entrepreneurial, an organization that attracts businesses to the SCV, that encourages job creation, manages development, and tries to set the conditions for a vibrant and prosperous local economy.
So where’s the disconnect then? Why is there mistrust of an otherwise competent City’s intentions when it comes to taking over the library?
Because libraries are different. Like schools, libraries are loved by the public. The public associates all sorts of good values and virtues with libraries: learning, sharing, freedom, thinking, etc. Libraries are the most visible form of the public trust: they warehouse information and distribute it freely and without bias to citizens.
What’s more, the public likes their librarians. In the pantheon of the dreaded “public employee” label, I bet “librarian” scores highly in the public’s mind just like “teacher” and “firefighter” does.
Which brings me to my next point. Margaret Donellan Todd, the chief COLA Librarian who has vociferously disputed the City’s talking points, is a real and professional librarian. Libraries are what she does for a living. Her opponent in the public sphere is Darren Hernandez, a skilled City of Santa Clarita finance official who has been promoted through the ranks to the position of Deputy City manager. He is not a librarian; if he is successful in wresting control of our three libraries from the County, he will move onto other projects.
If the topic is “libraries” who would you trust on the matter more? A real librarian or a finance guy? Let’s change it up: if the topic is health care, who do you trust more? An insurance underwriter or a physician? An education bureaucrat or your kid’s teacher? That’s the disconnect. Perhaps the City should have consulted with or hired a real librarian to sell this idea to the public rather than just treating libraries as one more thing to optimize, one more thing to outsource like the bus system.
The City may yet succeed in taking over the County libraries, but it won’t be without a fight from the public for the reasons I outlined above. They underestimated how much the public values not just the libraries, but the librarians, the good service and yes, the tradition.
In a real sense, the City is a victim of its own success in that it has always refused to run services like these and the public, naturally, doesn’t expect them to.
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