SAN CLEMENTE, Calif.—San Clemente city officials are considering withdrawing the city’s public library from the county’s library system, citing the city’s taxpayers have been paying hundreds of thousands more than the cost of services received from the county.
Meanwhile, residents are worried that withdrawal means fewer resources and services at the San Clemente Library.
“I’m not interested in throwing the baby out with the bathwater,“ Mayor Gene James told The Epoch Times. ”I’m interested in San Clemente getting what it’s paying for.”
According to James, the latest County Library Analysis report from 2021 indicated that San Clemente Library’s operation and furnishing costs approximately $889,000 annually.
However, Orange County Public Library system takes $1.3 million a year from the city’s property tax revenue, leaving approximately $400,000 in excess funds.
Because the city pays more than the cost of library operation, the county’s library system dubs San Clemente a “donor city,” according to a 2014 library analysis report.
However, system-wide expenses are often excluded when cities calculate how much they have to pay for running their libraries.
System-wide expenses—or “centralized expenses”—cover the operations of the library system, which supports its branch libraries, but do not directly cover a specific library’s operating costs like administrative, maintenance, and supplies.
Excluding system-wide expenses “makes it difficult for member cities to know the total actual cost of the services received,” the 2014 report said.
Donor cities like San Clemente or Irvine that pay more than the cost of their operations have three alternatives if they wish to get their excess payment back from the county’s library system.
The system could either directly allocate funding on a one-time or continuing basis to libraries for additional services or hours of operation.
A city could request the system refund excess funding back to the city for alternative library service options.
Or a city could completely withdraw its library from the system, redirecting the library’s property tax revenue back to the city for the city to operate and maintain its library on its own.
During the March 1 city council meeting, San Clemente residents also voiced their concern about the council’s proposal to withdraw, fearing the city’s library could not sustain itself without the county library system’s support.
“Withdrawing from the county library system would be the last thing I would want to do,” James said. “By being a part of the system, our residents have access to more books they can request from other libraries in the Orange County System.”
The council eventually was unable to discuss further due to the lack of recent data available at the time of the meeting.
If the council later approves the withdrawal, city staff has until the Jan. 1, 2023, deadline to notify the Orange County Board of Supervisors.
The discussion could resurface in the council as early as April 5.
The Orange County Public Library System—primarily funded by property taxes from participating cities—serves 1.6 million residents in 24 cities with 34 libraries and support facilities and is the third-largest local library system in California after the Los Angeles County and Los Angeles City systems.
