January 15, 2003

Hall Monitor

By Savannah Blackwell

Supervisor slim-down: Sup. Tony Hall wants to dissolve a handful of city commissions. He introduced 13 resolutions Jan. 13, each of which would dismantle a rather arcane group that hasn't met in more than a year. The list includes the Citizens Advisory Task Force for the Central Freeway, a panel whose usefulness was eliminated several years ago when voters decided what to do near Octavia Street. The Abandoned Shopping Cart Task Force, a relic of former supervisor Amos Brown's antihomeless crusades, is also on the list. Then there's the Video Display Terminal Advisory Committee, an organization whose origins no one seems able to trace.

What's to prevent the proliferation of hundreds more groups with such specific mandates? Hall and recently elected San Francisco Board of Supervisors president Matt Gonzalez are pushing a new board rule that would dissolve any group that failed to meet for four months – provided, of course, it didn't have special permission for such a limited schedule. (Tali Woodward)

Read it and weep: Much to the chagrin of library activists, the San Francisco Public Library Commission will use a hefty portion of its reserves for operational expenses rather than to purchase more books this year.

The library's budget is set to increase by $1.6 million come July, despite a citywide budget crisis. A set percentage of property tax revenues are devoted to libraries in each year's city budget because of the 1994 Library Preservation Act.

At a Jan. 7 meeting, commission members approved a $55.1 million budget and the allocation of 40 percent of the library's $3.5 million in reserves for one-time operational projects for the fiscal year 2003-04.

Library activists who attended the meeting said they were disappointed to find that reserve funds will be used for improvements such as computer replacement ($300,000), telephone replacement ($270,000), and a new delivery truck ($40,000). "I think that it's a most inappropriate use of the reserves, and I think that it's unfortunately indicative of a tragic de-emphasis of books," patron and library activist Peter Warfield said after the meeting.

The library spent $5.4 million on collection materials last year, $3.6 million of which was spent on books, according to city librarian Susan Hildreth. She told us the library's first priority is to provide different ways to access information. "It is just as critical to have up-to-date computers as an up-to-date book collection," she said.

Chief financial officer George Nichols told us the commission usually spends reserves on library operations and has not spent them on books in the past four years. He added that the book budget will increase by 3 percent this fiscal year.

But for many library activists that is not enough. James Chaffee, an activist who has attended commission meetings for 28 years, told us he is concerned with "book defamation" in the library system. Books are always the first to go when the library renovates its branches; when the Main Library was moved to its current location in 1996, between 200,000 to 500,000 books were removed, he said.

Library surveys have also revealed that patrons want more books. Sixty-four percent of the 362 Marina Branch patrons surveyed in September said increasing the library's book collection was "very important" to them. Seventy-three percent of those surveyed said they visit the library to check out books, while only 22 percent said they visit the library to use the computers or Internet.