Los Altos OKs Library Study For Possible Seccession

In a move that sounded more like saber-rattling than a full-on secession movement, the Los Altos City Council voted 3-2 to endorse a study of possible separating its libraries from the county system Tuesday night.

Many key Los Altos and Los Altos Hills library advocates have been unhappy with a looming July 1 change that will charge non-residents $80 if they want a Santa Clara County Library card. While residents of the two cities are not affected, those in all three surrounding cities—Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale—are. 

“I am not in favor of charging ahead with a mandate to sever from the county system, that is not the goal," Mayor David Packard told the council." I think the goal is to better understand the options.”

Neither Los Altos, nor Los Altos Hills, which gave its go-ahead earlier this month, will pay for the study. Instead, it will be paid for by North County Library Authority (NCLA), which administers the funds from the $76 library parcel tax that residents of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills voted to charge themselves in addition to what they already pay.

Packard, who sits on the NCLA, and others, have objected to the $80 card fee on philosophical grounds. The April decision to charge the fee, however, has prompted a closer examination of what Los Altos and Los Altos Hills get among the nine-city  library district in exchange for what tax money residents contribute.

Packard and council members David Casas and Jarrett Fishpaw voted in favor of a study by the NCLA to determine whether the two cities can negotiate a better sharing deal with the Santa Clara County Library system.

Currently residents of the two cities contribute 22.2 percent of property tax revenues into the nine-city library system while receiving 16.9 percent of county library services, Packard said.

Los Altos Hills Councilmember Jean Mordo, a former chief financial officer and a member of the Joint Powers Authority (JPA) board that oversees the library system, estimates the two cities contribute between $1 million and $1.5 million a year more than they receive back at the .

By contrast, Packard said the City of Milpitas receives about $1 million more in services than residents contribute. 

Mordo has been a vocal critic of a recent decision by the . He has at the NCLA and the Los Altos Hills City Council.

While Packard would not go as far as saying the two cities should definitely withdraw the Los Altos Library from the system, his proposal before the council did include a provision for the NCLA to investigate the costs of a separation, should negotiations over cost sharing falter.

The vote came over the strong objections of both Mayor Pro Tem Val Carpenter and Council member Megan Satterlee. Both said they are against any notion of pulling the Los Altos Library from the county system. They said the high quality of the county libraries and the combined resources available to residents was far greater than Los Altos and Los Altos Hills could provide separately.

They also pointed to an earlier study done by Milpitas over possible succession which cost that city $90,000. In the end the city decided to remain in the system.

But Casas suggested the Milpitas decision was driven by the fact that the city gets more in benefits than it contributes. He said the NCLA study was necessary in order to go into negotiations with the county for a more equitable sharing arrangement.

“The only way to navigate a different decision is by having facts in front of you,” he said.

At the top of Packard’s list of why negotiations with the county are needed: public employee benefits. Because the library staff members are county employees, the cities have no say over benefit and pension packages negotiated with unions.

Packard said he feared that as pension costs rise, the county system will have no choice but to make further cuts in services, exacerbating the gap between what Los Altos and Los Altos Hills residents contribute into the system, and what they receive.

“We need to explore options because the costs are going to go higher and higher and we have no control over the employee costs,” he said. 

Packard said the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors “have given lifetime benefits for health insurance, benefits we’ve never given to our employees. It’s going to come back to bite us.”

Another concern on Packard’s list was the fact that union contracts prohibit volunteers and part-time non-union employees to step in to provide services once provided by union employees when cutbacks occur.

“These arrangements are antagonistic of the extraordinary volunteerism which characterizes our community,” Packard said in his memo to the council. A county library representative told the council that volunteers give 7,700 hours of time each year to the Los Altos Library.

In its vote on Tuesday, the council also gave Packard the permission to write a "polite but firm" letter to the JPA expressing concern over cost sharing inequities. He will also ask that union contracts be amended to remove any prohibition of volunteers and non-union employees fulfilling former employee duties.

The NCLA will meet today to discuss next steps on the study, now that it has the go-ahead from both cities.