PALMDALE – On December 5, the Palmdale City Council voted 5-0 in favor of awarding a contract to Library Systems & Services, LLC (LSSI) to operate the Palmdale City Library.
Under the public-private partnership agreement, the library will remain in the public trust, managed by the City of Palmdale and operated by LSSI.
“Our family of experienced library professionals is excited to join the City of Palmdale in this new chapter of its public library,” said Ron Dubberly, CEO of LSSI. “The public-private partnership is an excellent solution for library patrons and will enhance the quality of life so many of the residents in Palmdale have grown to expect.”
Under the new LSSI proposal, the hours of operation will increase by 41%, allowing the library to reopen seven days per week.
Under the new LSSI proposal, the hours of operation will increase by 41%, allowing the library to reopen 7 days per week; maintain the current book and materials budget at more than $200,000 per year; re-establish vital programming for children and young adults; reduce overall operations cost by approximately 5%, and provide more professional growth opportunities for the existing staff.
Leading up to the vote, city officials worked closely with members of the library community, including professional staff, library trustee board members, and Friends of the Library volunteers to demonstrate the benefits of partnering with LSSI.
ABOUT LSSI
Founded in 1981, LSSI provides library operation services and solutions to public and government libraries.
LSSI helps communities and institutions improve their library operations and customer service, accomplish more with their library budget, identify and secure additional grants, leverage library automation and technologies, and create library programs specific to the needs of the local community. To learn more about LSSI, visit www.lssi.com.
(Information via press release from Library Systems & Services.)
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Sshhhhh!!!! says
I agree. Outsourcing this vital resource to a company on the other side of the United States is the wrong choice to make. No longer is the Palmdale City Library going to feel as being part of the Palmdale community. Instead of keeping Palmdale’s tax dollars local, Palmdale is going to lose several jobs to volunteers work and ship the money to Maryland all to save a measely 5%. Unfortunately the City kept this move hidden from the public for a long a possible. Futhermore, I highly doubt the authenticity of the following statement taken from the above article: “Leading up to the vote, city officials worked closely with members of the library community, including professional staff, library trustee board members, and Friends of the Library volunteers to demonstrate the benefits of partnering with LSSI.”
Forward says
Some people say there’s no NeoCons in Palmdale?!!
What else will Mayor Ledfoot be OUTSOURCING next with our Measure DD monies? This company is known not to “re-hire” existing employees – are we subsidizing employment for imports from Maryland?
Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries
By DAVID STREITFELD
Published: September 26, 2010
SANTA CLARITA, Calif.
— A private company in Maryland has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system.
J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times
The basic pitch that the company Library Systems & Services makes to cities is that it fixes broken libraries — often by cleaning house.
Now the company, Library Systems & Services, has been hired for the first time to run a system in a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy.
A $4 million deal to run the three libraries here is a chance for the company to demonstrate that a dose of private management can be good for communities, whatever their financial situation. But in an era when outsourcing is most often an act of budget desperation — with janitors, police forces and even entire city halls farmed out in one town or another — the contract in Santa Clarita has touched a deep nerve and begun a round of second-guessing.
Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort — and maybe not even then?
“There’s this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries,” said Frank A. Pezzanite, the outsourcing company’s chief executive. He has pledged to save $1 million a year in Santa Clarita, mainly by cutting overhead and REPLACING UNIONIZED EMPLOYEES. “Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization.”
The company, known as L.S.S.I., runs 14 library systems operating 63 locations. Its basic pitch to cities is that it fixes broken libraries — more often than not by cleaning house.
“A lot of libraries are atrocious,” Mr. Pezzanite said. “Their policies are all about job security. That’s why the profession is nervous about us. You can go to a library for 35 years and NEVER HAVE TO DO ANYTHING and then have your retirement. We’re not running our company that way. You come to us, you’re going to have to work.”
The members of the Santa Clarita City Council who voted to hire L.S.S.I. acknowledge there was no immediate threat to the libraries. The council members say they want to ensure the libraries’ long-term survival in a state with increasingly shaky finances.
Until now, the three branch locations have been part of the Los Angeles County library system. Under the new contract, the branches will be withdrawn from county control and all operations — including hiring staff and buying books — ceded to L.S.S.I.
“The libraries are still going to be public libraries,” said the mayor pro tem, Marsha McLean. “When people say we’re privatizing libraries, that is just not a true statement, period.”
Library employees are furious about the contract. But the reaction has been mostly led by patrons who say they cannot imagine Santa Clarita with libraries run for profit.
“A library is the heart of the community,” said one opponent, Jane Hanson. “I’m in favor of private enterprise, but I can’t feel comfortable with what the city is doing here.”
(…)
The suggestion that a library is different — and somehow off limits to the outsourcing fever — has been echoed wherever L.S.S.I. has gone. The head of the county library system, Margaret Donnellan Todd, says L.S.S.I. is viewed as an unwelcome outsider.
“There is no local connection,” she said. “People are receiving superb service in Santa Clarita. I challenge that L.S.S.I. will be able to do much better.”
As a recent afternoon shaded into evening, there were more than a hundred patrons at the main Santa Clarita library. Students were doing their homework. Old men paged through newspapers. Children gathered up arm’s loads of picture books. It was a portrait of civic harmony and engagement.
Mrs. Hanson, who is 81 and has been a library patron for nearly 50 years, was so bothered by the outsourcing contract that she became involved in local politics for the first time since 1969, when she worked for a recall movement related to the Vietnam War.
She drew up a petition warning that the L.S.S.I. contract would result in “greater cost, fewer books and less access,” with “no benefit to the citizens.” Using a card table in front of the main library branch, she gathered 1,200 signatures in three weekends.
L.S.S.I. says none of Mrs. Hanson’s fears are warranted, but the anti-OUTSOURCING forces continue to air their suspicions at private meetings and public forums, even wondering whether a recall election is feasible.
“Public libraries invoke images of our freedom to learn, a cornerstone of our democracy,” Deanna Hanashiro, a retired teacher, said at the most recent city council meeting.
Frank Ferry, a Santa Clarita councilman, dismisses the criticism as the work of the Service Employees International Union, which has 87 members in the libraries. The union has been distributing red shirts defending the status quo. “Union members out in red shirts in defense of union jobs,” Mr. Ferry said.
Library employees are often the most resistant to his company, said Mr. Pezzanite, a co-founder of L.S.S.I. — and, he suggested, for reasons that only reinforce the need for a new approach.
“PENSIONS crushed General Motors, and it is crushing the governments in California,” he said. While the company says it rehires many of the municipal librarians, they MUST BE CONTENT with a 401(k) retirement fund and NO PENSION.
L.S.S.I. got its start 30 years ago developing software for government use, then expanded into running libraries for federal agencies. In the mid-1990s, it moved into the municipal library market, and now, when ranked by number of branches, it places immediately after Los Angeles County, New York City, Chicago and the City of Los Angeles.
The company is majority owned by Islington Capital Partners, a PRIVATE EQUITY firm in Boston, and has about $35 MILLION IN REVENUE and 800 employees. Officials would not discuss the company’s profitability.
(Sorry, Americans have to accept the 90/30 ratio of wealth)
Some L.S.S.I. customers have ended their contracts, while in other places, opposition has faded with time. In Redding, Calif., Jim Ceragioli, a board member of the Friends of Shasta County Library, said he initially counted himself among the skeptics.
But he has since changed his mind. “I can’t think of anything that’s been lost,” Mr. Ceragioli said.
EXCEPT ALL THE JOBS IN YOUR COMMUNITY – but what the hey?
The library in Redding has expanded its services and hours. And the VOLUNTEERS are still showing up — even if their assistance is now aiding a private company. “We volunteer more than ever now,” Mr. Ceragioli said.
At $35 MILLION IN REVENUE in profits – who’s the stupid one’s who still VOLUNTEER? They should be washing down our driveways….
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0