“Measure twice, cut once.” – old Wilsonian adage passed down from father to son
Why are people so angry about the City’s takeover of our library system?
Well, above all else, I think people feel that the process was too swift, totally lacking in transparency. Few people were against the idea of a takeover & outsourcing of the library; we just wanted more time to debate it. We wanted the City to conduct real outreach -like the kind its trying to do now with its public library committee- before a decision was made not after.
It’s not an unreasonable expectation. Consider how long we as a community debated the expansion of the Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. The Council and Planning Commission debated the matter for years. I remember watching Council meetings late into the night as Council members went back and forth listening to residents & neighbors, hospital employees, hospital leadership, and others.
And that matter -whether to let Mayo expand- only affected a small portion of Valencia along McBean Parkway & Orchard Village Road.
If civic debate is your thing, nothing was more discussed and debated in recent years in the SCV than so-called ‘cut-through’ streets in various SCV neighborhoods. Residents of Benz Road pressured the Council for years to deny or retard drivers seeking a shortcut from Copperhill road to Bouquet. When the Council did just that by installing K-Rails blocking the street, motorists erupted in anger and expressed it before the Council. The Council backed down and ultimately settled on speed-humps to discourage motorists.
Again, this was a debate that only affected a small neighborhood in the SCV, and it took a year or two to resolve.
And after a year or so of discussion about annexation of Tesoro del Valle, the City appears ready to move. Yes, they are caving into the will of two developers over the will of Tesoro residents, but the point is that there has been a public process.
Now compare all those scenarios to what we saw this summer. By mid July and seemingly out-of-nowhere, Laurie Ender was talking up the idea of taking over our libraries. The Signal, ever eager and apparently tone-deaf, embraced the idea in an editorial shortly thereafter. The City issued its RFP in early August, and days later they had a single response from LSSI. Just ten days after that, the multi-million dollar deal was sealed- the Council voted 4-1 to not only seize the three libraries but to outsource their operation to a private company. They did this against massive opposition -letters to the editor, Facebook groups, blogs, and several hundred Council meeting protesters- during a single meeting on August 24.
In the space of 45 days, we had gone from concept to planning to execution of a plan that affects everyone in the SCV from people who occasionally stop by the library to home schooling moms who depend on it every day.
And here’s the rub: it’s proving to be a poorly thought-out plan to begin with. The City apparently never considered that the County might cease renovation of the Canyon Country library. They thought that County would just continue pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a library that they will soon have nothing to do with. Our City Council expressed shock -shock!- at this development.
Well now we see the fruits of this hasty decision: not only has the community erupted with much more than the usual city critics expressing outrage, but the City now has a clever lawsuit and a determined lawyer on its hands. If the County’s recent letter to the City is to be believed, the County will stop collecting that crucial $1.4 million SCV-only library tax, making the City’s fiscal estimates inaccurate, casting doubt on whether this whole effort is even worth it. And to top it all off, we’ve already lost one third of our libraries because the Canyon Country library is effectively closed for the foreseeable future.
Way to go City.
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