Brentwood Library: a Needless Monument

So the city fathers and mothers pony up $350,500, and Brentwood gets a new branch library worth $1.7 million. Sounds capital, doesn’t it?

If you live in Brentwood, sure.

But what if you live near Echo Park or South-Central Los Angeles or Koreatown ?

The Echo Park community has gone 17 years, since the Sylmar earthquake, without a permanent replacement library facility. Pio Pico Branch Library, serving a predominantly Asian clientele on West Olympic Boulevard near Vermont Avenue, has occupied temporary quarters for a couple of years in a commercial building. One South-Central regional library, designed and staffed to be a cut above the typical branch library, was equipped for years with a malfunctioning air-conditioning/heating unit; it put out so many excess BTUs, even in mid-summer, that neither staff nor patrons could stay alert for long.

And what if you’re a young person condemned by fate’s fickleness to having to go outside your home to do your homework? Chances are, the nearest branch library is the first place you’ll go. What’s optional in Brentwood becomes a necessary adjunct for many residents of disadvantaged communities.

To keep things in perspective, let’s admit that $350,500 wouldn’t go far if distributed throughout the entire library system. After all, there are 62 branch libraries. According to a report in this newspaper, 21 are on the priority list among 25 capital improvement projects for the coming fiscal year. Four on the list are closed because of earthquake damage and seven more remain open but are seismically unsafe.

Councilman Marvin Braude argues that Brentwood has had a substandard library for many years. So isn’t it a capital idea for the city to get a bigger, better branch worth five times as much as the taxpayers are shelling out?

Braude, again: “The question is, where is the threshold? It is clear that with a 100% (donation) you build the project. . . . In this case, with private contributions covering 80%, it seems that it is close enough to 100% to fully justify it.”

The president of the Board of Library Commissioners, Ronald S. Lushing, contributes his own two bits: “It is true that many areas don’t have a wealthy individual to make a commitment for half a million dollars, but I don’t think we should turn away individuals who wish to do something for their city and their particular community . . . The entire city benefits. We are all part of Los Angeles.”

Library Department officials note that a 1985 city library master plan described the Brentwood facility as “much too small for the amount of its usage” and recommended that it be nearly quadrupled in size. But money was nowhere in sight; Brentwood’s affluence prevented it from being a candidate for federal funding. Then, the widow of a prominent Brentwood businessman decided to give $600,500 toward a replacement library in her husband’s name, and she energized the Brentwood community to raise $750,000 more. Late last fall, the City Council agreed to kick in $350,500 from the general fund.

An old friend of mine, Library Commissioner Frank W. Terry, remembers spending something like 18 months getting somewhat more than $2,500 in public funds for a replacement lighting system in an inner-city library.

All in all, I think the Brentwood library-to-be is a bum decision. Mostly because it can set a precedent, a bad one: selling library policy to the highest bidder.

The library board needs to take hold of matters such as this before they get out of control.

One method might be to tell potential donors at the outset that their generosity is to be shared citywide. A sharing formula might provide for 10% of any gift to go to the donor’s selected branch (if any) and 90% to an overall development fund. After all, it is a good deal for a particular branch to get 1/10th rather than 1/62nd of funds to be otherwise distributed among all branch libraries. If the donor balks, he or she might be reminded that giving 10 times as much would achieve the desired result.

In any event, I believe that, particularly in Proposition 13 times, it is incumbent upon the library and other municipal departments to become more sophisticated in handling donations. Can Councilman Braude really mean what he says about a threshold--that with close to a 100% donation, the city has no choice but to go ahead with the Brentwood project? Other considerations may be controlling, such as whether the staffing required to operate the facility is affordable.

The city should stick to a recognized principle in institutional fund raising: Insofar as possible, encourage “no-strings” giving and discourage a donor’s preoccupation with having a facility bearing someone’s name.

I am not sure that the library board president is correct in his observation that “the entire city benefits” and “we are all part of Los Angeles.” How do citizens served by 21 branches already on a priority list benefit by having millions rather capriciously expended on one branch? What happens if a serious earthquake occurs before the 11 unsafe branches and the bookbinding facility can be adequately protected?

And will all Los Angeles truly be part of a new Brentwood branch library? Or will we Angelenos who “belong” in South Central or East Los Angeles or elsewhere be made to feel less than welcome in “our” new facility?

This week, the city announced an $88-million library bond issue, $8 million of which would upgrade seismically unsafe facilities. The question is, will the Brentwood experience harden the voters’ historic opposition to bond issues?