The Buellton library is facing an administrative shake-up to save costs and cut operating hours by combining it with Solvang’s library.
“It’s been talked about for quite a while. It doesn’t make sense that they’re up there in the Santa Ynez Valley quite close to one another but they belong to two different [library] systems,” said Irene Macias, director of the Santa Barbara Public Library system.
If the Board of Supervisors approves the change at its June 7 meeting, the Solvang and Buellton libraries would continue to operate at their two existing locations but share resources, duties, off hours, and staff.
Buellton and Solvang straddle the dividing line, which runs down Highway 101, that splits Zone 1 and Zone 2 of the county’s library system. Buellton’s site is currently operated through the Lompoc Public Library system, and Lompoc’s in the process of restructuring its public library. Macias said the changes have been proposed before, but differences between the Lompoc and Santa Barbara library systems made it a hard sell.
“Lompoc, for a long time, had a much different classification and salary scheme than we do. To have moved [the] Buellton library into our system then would have resulted in a significant loss in hours,” she said.
Macias hopes that combining the two branches will bolster their long-term financial solvency by bringing down operating costs in a time when funding for public libraries has become as rare as rain.
“The state has for over a decade been reducing funding to public libraries,” she told the Sun.
“During the recession we were really hard hit, we lost almost all of our funding. … Now the only funds we receive from the state goes to our Black Gold Cooperative. That was a huge blow, and when costs are continuing to go up and you lose money, that’s just a double whammy.”
This article appears in Jun 4-11, 2015.