Overdue books to cost more; new charge for community room
use
Various library fees and fines will increase after the county
Board of Supervisors this week approved a resolution designed to
provide
”
better cost recovery
”
for services at the San Benito County Free Library.
Overdue books to cost more; new charge for community room use
Various library fees and fines will increase after the county Board of Supervisors this week approved a resolution designed to provide “better cost recovery” for services at the San Benito County Free Library.
The hikes are expected to align the local fees and fines with those of libraries in neighboring counties and to encourage the prompt return of library materials, which are at a premium at the Fifth Street branch. Another revenue issue, the proposed closure of the library on Saturdays, will be discussed at a later date.
As part of the approved plan, overdue book fines will jump to 25 cents per day from 15 cents per day, with the maximum fine for a book doubling to $6 from $3. Overdue daily fines for digital media remain the same – $1 – though the maximum fee has doubled to $10.
The cost of printing color pages from the Internet at the library will now be $1 per page. The library previously did not charge for that service. The test proctoring fee will jump from $25 per test to $25 per hour for each test.
“The library is not in the business of making money,” Librarian Nora Conte told supervisors during her presentation. “It’s in the business of providing service.”
Library fee surveys obtained by the county in 2003 and 2006 showed that certain fees charged by the library “are well below the actual cost of providing the use of library services,” Conte’s report noted. A recent study by the Monterey Bay Association of Cooperative Libraries, of which San Benito’s library is a member, showed that the recommended fees and fines proposed to supervisors are lower than those in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties.
In addition to charging for Internet color printouts, Conte proposed offering fax services at the library and charging $3.50 for the first page and 50 cents for each additional page. She also proposed charging a $10 per hour fee for use of the Barbara Memorial Room, which until now has been available to groups at no charge.
The latter two proposals spurred the most discussion among supervisors, all of whom favored increasing the daily overdue book fine.
“Most [library] jurisdictions charge for use of their community rooms,” Conte said, adding that the recommended fee from the county study was $29 per hour. “The use of that room is so great that we need to raise the consciousness level so when it’s scheduled for one hour’s use, it needs to be used for one hour.”
Charging an hourly fee will encourage promptness, Conte contended.
Supervisor Pat Loe said she would not support the recommended $10 per hour charge for use of the Barbara Memorial Room unless there were guarantees that every group that wanted to use it would be charged the same fee.
“I can’t support picking and choosing,” she said. “If we’re going to do it, we’ll do it for everybody. I understand maintenance and wear and tear, but everybody has to pay for it.”
Conte said that because the proposed fee was “very minimal,” the librarian should have some leeway to waive the fee, such as when the library fundraising group Friends of the Library uses it or the library co-sponsors programs there that are open to the public.
“We’d look at those individually,” she said.
However, supervisors did not favor that approach.
“We’re opening up a can of worms” if the librarian has the ability to decide which groups have to pay or not pay for use of the room, Supervisor Reb Monaco said. “You either put the rate where it’s affordable to everyone or you have no fee at all. We’re going to spend more time explaining the fees than what you’re going to recoup for them.”
Conte then told the board that she would be OK with charging the $10 fee across the board if that was the board’s direction.
Supervisor Margie Barrios recommended charging $5 per hour for use of the room in a motion that died for a lack of a second because it included a proposal to offer fax services at the same cost that Staples charges – $1.25 for the first page, rather than the $3.50 for the first page noted in Conte’s proposal.
However, after some supervisors felt the proposed per-page fax charge was too high and some questioned whether adding a new service to the library during tough financial times was prudent, a new proposal surfaced.
Monaco made a motion to eliminate the fax proposal and to charge $5 per hour for use of the library’s community room, which was unanimously approved by the five board members.
Conte’s original report, which included the fax service and the $10 Barbara Memorial Room charge, predicted the fees and fines would generate approximately $8,000 in revenue this fiscal year. The financial impact of the modified and approved resolution is not yet known.
Overdue fees at area libraries
San Benito County: 25 cents per day; $6 maximum
Watsonville: 20 cents per day; $2 max
Salinas: 25 cents per day; $5 max; 3-day grace period
Santa Cruz: 50 cents per day; $10 max
Monterey County: 25 cents per day (adult material); 10 cents per day (juvenile and senior material); $5 max
Pacific Grove: 25 cents per day; $5 max
Monterey Public: 25 cents per day (adult material; $7.50 max); 15 cents per day (youth and teen material; $4.50 cap)
