County Set to Approve Library Services Plan
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The county Board of Supervisors is poised to take a giant step Tuesday toward retooling Ventura County’s libraries.
After months of negotiations, representatives of seven cities agreed last week to a plan that would scale back the Library Services Agency’s overhead costs to expand hours and give cities more financial and operational control of their own branch libraries.
The board’s approval is one of two remaining steps.
The other is approval by the seven city councils whose representatives made up the County Library Implementation Committee. Those cities are Ventura, Fillmore, Camarillo, Moorpark, Port Hueneme, Simi Valley and Ojai.
The Ventura, Moorpark, Camarillo and Fillmore city councils already have approved the plan.
A major point of contention had been how to distribute property tax money. Ventura and Simi Valley--two of the largest participating cities--had threatened to pull out of the system if they did not receive their fare share of tax revenue.
The most recent version of the plan calls for branches to receive funding in proportion to taxes raised in their region, but also calls for a minimum amount of funding for all branches.
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