It’s been barely a month since an unresolved legal dispute led the Friends of the Santa Maria Public Library to pack its bags, close its used bookstore, and move out of the library lobby in mid July.
Now another bookstore occupies the recently emptied space, and the business opened its doors to customers on Aug. 13.
The new used bookstore, which is managed by the Santa Maria Public Library, is stocked with roughly 2,500 donated or discarded books, DVDs, magazines, encyclopedias, and art, according to Mary Housel, director of the Santa Maria Public Library.
“So many patrons were saying, ‘Where’s the bookstore? We really liked buying the used books.’ There were teachers who would say they liked to get a handful for students,” Housel told the Sun. “So far people are pretty happy that we’re offering it.”
The lobby space was vacated after the Friends of the Santa Maria Public Library refused to sign a proposed memorandum of understanding with the city and library in April 2016, a revised version again in 2018, and lease agreements in March and May of this year.
Through the lease, the city would have charged the Friends–a nonprofit that helps support the library financially–$2,051 each month for the space it had used pro bono for a decade.
The groups still disagree about the legality of the proposed contracts, which would have given library administration managerial control over some of the nonprofit’s operations, access to its financial records, and would have forced the Friends to use all of its net proceeds to “support library operations.”
In several emails to the city throughout negotiations, Friends members expressed concerns over the proposed contracts, citing a state law that gives a nonprofit’s board of directors complete managerial control over the organization’s business and affairs. In an email sent on May 23, the city gave the Friends 30 days to sign a contract or move out of the library lobby. Two months later, the Friends left without signing.
“We’re very disappointed,” Friends President Joyce Hall said in a previous interview. “Some of us are very, very–more than disappointed. We are dismayed that this is happening.”
Jan Masaoka, CEO of the California Association of Nonprofits, said it’s not unusual for an organization and its nonprofit supporter to develop and adhere to some form of contractual agreement. Friends of local hospitals, libraries, and state parks, she said, often have memorandums of understanding or contracts that outline volunteer screening processes, funding, and managerial roles.
When Masaoka heard the most controversial portions of the city’s proposed contracts with the Friends, she said nothing sounded too far out of the ordinary.
“Well I’m not a lawyer,” Masaoka told the Sun. “But I think in English these things make sense. All of [the Friends’ proceeds] going to library support makes sense.”
The issue, Masaoka said, comes when two parties interpret the language of a contract differently. If Friends members want to buy new supplies for their office or buy lunch for a meeting, she said, is that considered supporting the Friends, the library, or both?
The relationship between an organization and its friends group should be symbiotic, but Masaoka said libraries often feel they own friends groups, and friends groups think they should be able to operate completely independent of library administration. When that happens, she said, “both sides lose.”
“You know when a library and a friends of library get into this kind of argument, there is something else going on,” Masaoka said.
Despite the unresolved issue, Friends board member Beth Schneider said the nonprofit will continue supporting the Santa Maria Public Library through various fundraising efforts, including an upcoming book sale scheduled for Sept. 20 through 22 in Shepherd Hall.
Though the Friends group no longer sells books in a physical shop, Schneider said members continue to sell donated books online through Amazon, and they work out of a 500-square-foot office at 1000 S. Broadway.
“We’re still the Friends of the Santa Maria Public Library,” Schneider said. “That relationship is not going to change.”
Schneider didn’t have much to say about the library’s new bookstore, which runs on a slightly different business model now but looks and feels essentially the same.
Item prices still range from about 50 cents to $2, but Housel, the library director, said it will run without a cashier or volunteers managing the store. It’ll be up to buyers to pay for their items on the honor system, Housel said, and customers deposit cash in a white pay box posted to the right of the store’s entrance. A pricing sheet, which is displayed near the box and on several of the store’s shelves, clearly outlines how much each available item costs.
The 1,052-square-foot shop, which Housel said made about $50 opening day and $15 the next, is lined with packed bookshelves that surround two large tables where customers can sit and read with coffee or food. The shop’s built-in counter space, which once housed a cash register and a Friends employee, is now a designated computer space with free WiFi, where Housel said visitors can sit and work on their personal laptops.
A small glass case to the left of the store’s entrance is currently displaying a local artist’s smaller works, and another display area is still empty.
There’s more work to be done before the bookstore’s official ribbon cutting ceremony in September, but Housel said she wanted to get the store up and running as soon as possible due to popular demand.
Housel said that while the library is continuing to work with the Friends, she and the city will need the group to sign some form of contract in the near future. But Friends board member Schneider said right now, that looks unlikely.
“Not as long as the city has taken the stance that it has,” she said.
Staff Writer Kasey Bubnash can be reached at kbubnash@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 23-30, 2018.