Features

The Library Board of Trustees will meet Wednesday to approve a budget that looks to be far less controversial than it appeared two weeks ago. 

A greater-than-anticipated increase in the Bay Area personal income growth index, which is used to set the percentage increase for the library tax, and the implementation of mandatory time off will each add about $300,000 to the library’s bottom line next year, said Executive Director Jackie Griffin. 

Griffin’s plan to lay off employees and reorganize staffing to close a $850,00 budget shortfall over the next two years was criticized by library staffers, and she has since ruled out layoffs. The library employee union’s refusal to reopen its contract, which doesn’t expire until 2008, has stymied a part of her reorganization plan. She had proposed upgrading the classification of library aides to library assistants with the aim of creating a more flexible workforce. The union still opposes other facets of Griffin’s plan, including centralizing children’s librarians at the main branch.  

Mandatory time off means that the library, which last year reduced hours and closed its doors on Sundays, will be closed an additional day every month. Griffin had originally opposed the idea, which City Manager Phil Kamlarz has proposed for other city workers, but she said that to avoid complications, Kamlarz wanted mandatory time off to apply to library staff as well. 

The mandatory time off is officially a one-day layoff, Griffin explained. If the library were to remain open on a day when other city offices were closed, another city employee with a similar classification in a different department could insist on working in place of a library employee with less seniority, she said.