MUNICIPAL FINANCE: City has an $11 million library surplus
by Mark McDermott
The City Council last week grappled with an unusual problem. Its library fund has an $11 million surplus.
The City of Manhattan Beach operates its own library, but the facility is a branch of the Los Angeles County Library System. Property taxes paid into the system by local residents far outpace the cost of operating the library, resulting in the surplus — including a $1,455,730 surplus for the last fiscal year alone. The funds can only be used for library-related purposes, and due to agreement the City entered into with the library system a decade ago, any monies not used by 2043 will revert back to the County.
The upshot is the City has millions of dollars that are accruing and must be used or lost. The Manhattan Beach Library Commission, which is tasked with creating a work plan for the library, made a few recommendations to the council, including participating in the “One Book, One County” community reading program (this year featuring the novel “L.A. Weather” by author María Amparo Escandón) and launching a speaker and music series at the library. The total cost of the two recommendations is $46,000.
Other recommendations were to possibly use some of the funds to continue digitalizing the City’s historical collections and to investigate the creation of a “Maker Lab,” which would be a community-serving creative laboratory that would offer 3-D printers and other tools available for use by residents.
Councilperson Steve Napolitano was underwhelmed. He conveyed to staff a message for the Library Commission.
“We have an $11 million surplus,” he said. “Frankly, I would send this back to the commission and tell them to think bigger.”
Napolitano suggested the library find more ways to serve kids and also that the commission could look into ways the funds could be used that would also benefit the Manhattan Beach Unified School District.
“This is little piddly stuff on the side,” he said. “I like it, but we have an $11 million surplus that the County, at some point, is going to say ‘No, you can’t keep it anymore…’ Whatever the limits are on this money, work it out. But do more. Involve the kids more. You want to bring bigger speakers? Bring bigger speakers. We have a speaker’s series that goes on over at the Redondo Beach [Performing Arts Center] — with the money we have, we could have done a whole series here in Manhattan Beach, at the library, if we want to. Think bigger.”
Mayor Joe Franklin said as he listened to his colleague urge the City to think bigger, he was thinking much, much bigger — that is, to rebuild the former library at Manhattan Heights, which was decommissioned three decades ago and is now the City’s Creative Arts Center.
“Let’s rebuild the Arts Center at Manhattan Heights and include library services and books, and you can have a second story that can also be used by cultural arts,” he said. “We can have exhibits, and the Maker [Lab] setup would be great there….This is a new age. When we decommissioned that library, that was how many years ago, and look at what we have now. Look at the sources of information, look at the consumption of that information, look at the tools you need to consume that information. That can all be brought back into that area and bring a lot of life.”
The council unanimously approved the commission’s recommendations while also providing direction: think bigger. ER