Can You Put a Price on Literacy?

Santa Clarita City Council thinks it can.

The five-member city council wants to sell library services to a for profit corporation called Library Systems & Services.

LSSI makes its money by providing the fewest services possible with the least qualified staff possible. LSSI has failed other communities, why would we want them to fail ours?

‎“The City of Santa Clarita wants to sell our library services to the lowest bidder and pull out of the LA County Library system. This will greatly reduce services to 125,000 residents. Join me at the next council meeting and tell them Santa Clarita deserves better.”
Elaine Braddock, LA County Librarian and Santa Clarita Resident

Our community deserves the highest quality and most experienced library staff possible and we won’t get that from a corporation with substandard pay and substandard benefits.

If Santa Clarita leaves the LA County Library system its residents will lose free access to the more than 7 million books, videos, periodicals and other resources and residents will lose 2 million in revenues from unincorporated areas which support this massive collection.

In 2009 Santa Clarita Libraries provided services to 4,000 children in the summer reading programs at Canyon Jo Anne Darcy and Valencia libraries.

LSSI on the other hand: 

• Lost its contract in Linden, NJ for failure to pay its bills on time.
• Lost its contract with Fargo, ND for failure to pay its bills on time and after requesting a 28 percent budget increase.
• Is opposed by the American Library Association.
• Failed in its bid to take over libraries in Passaic, NJ; Bedford, Texas; Hernando, FL; Nevada County and Truckee Friends of the Library; and Dartmouth Public Libraries, MA.

How can a corporation from Maryland meet the needs of our community?

TAKE ACTION to save our Libraries!

Help stop a bad decision that will harm our community and cost us millions of dollars.

• Santa Clarita City Council Meeting 6:00 p.m.,         Tuesday, Aug. 24 
  Santa Clarita City Hall
  23920 Valencia Blvd
  Valencia
• Call Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s office and tell him to support our LA County community libraries!
  661-287-3657

“An out-of-town corporation has no incentive to develop long-term community ties, which are essential to successful public libraries. Once the contract term is completed, the private company can simply pick up and leave.”

Letter from Friends of Stockton Public Library to San Joaquin Board of Supervisors July, 2010

“Library service to these parts of the community is the responsibility of the community and it makes no economic sense to have that service run by a private, “for profit” company whose legal duty is to maximize the returns to its shareholders.”

Letter to San Joaquin Board of Supervisors from Michael Gorman,  former President of American Library Association