Impact of County Fee Still Unclear for City Library

Start saving your pennies!

After a recent decision by the Santa Clara County Library District Joint Powers Authority (JPA) to charge non-residents $80 per year starting on July 1, the 9,341 Mountain View residents who love to peruse the shelves of the Los Altos Library and use the Internet on their computers will need to fork up the cash or come back to their city library.

"Our circulation will go up, no doubt," said Library Services Director Rosanne Macek for the . The question is how much and whether or not we can meet the workload. We'll see."

According to the JPA press released issued on April 29 announcing the fee, the county library district "lends far more books to non-residents than District residents borrow from other libraries."

However, the governor's proposed 2011-12 budget could eliminate several library programs, including the Transaction Based Reimbursement, a cooperative system of borrowing and loaning books. At one point the State of California reimbursed the county "over $2 million annually" for the program.

The potential for the loss of this funding has forced county officials to take drastic measures.

“We know how popular and valuable the Santa Clara County Library District services and programs are," said County of Santa Clara Supervisor Liz Kniss, delegate to the Santa Clara County Library District Joint Powers Authority. "But we have to have the funding to continue to offer them to non-residents.”

The Mountain View belongs to a consortium called the Pacific Library Partnership of libraries funded, in the most part, by the general funds of their cities. The Santa Clara County Library System funds, administers and manages the libraries in Los Altos, Milpitas, Campbell, Gilroy, Morgan Hill, Saratoga and Cupertino.

“An annual fee for non-residents will extend County Library privileges to them, including access to an impressive collection of materials and resources," said Kniss. "There will continue to be no fee for residents of the Library District.”

For the Mountain View residents that use the Los Alto Library, the convenience could be the location, an expanded collection of books and the ability to borrow up to 100 items at one time.

Macek expects some of the 9,300 Mountain View residents who use the Los Altos library to return to the Mountain View Library. She noted the library's automated system would be of great help with the added circulation. However, she admitted, "it takes a human to re-shelf" and that where "we'll have an issue with staffing."

But while Mountain View residents would have to pay to use county services, that wouldn't be the case for county library cardholders who use the MVPL.

"The MVPL is not obligated to provide services to Santa Clara County residents," said Macek. "But we are not going to charge or deny service. We'll wait and see."