Morro Bay Library Begins 25th Year With New Outlook

by Jack McCurdy

The Morro Bay Library has settled its long-running lease dispute with the city, seen its new librarian resign, been assigned a successor and now maybe things will calm down in its 25th birthday year.

The Morro Bay Library has finally been able to exercise its legal right to use the entire building at 625 Harbor Street as a library rather than partly as a meeting place for outside groups, which is expected to result in residents being afforded a significantly wider range of services.

At the same time, the newly-appointed Morro Bay librarian has resigned and her successor has been named. All in all, those developments should end the turmoil that has surrounded the library for the past year and more.

The Morro Bay City Council on August 9 signed a new 25-year lease to the county, which operates the library, supplies books and other materials and provides professional staff to operate the library. The Board of Supervisors had signed the lease on August 3.

The city, which was given the library in 1985 by the Morro Bay Friends of the Library, who built it with community donations on city property, had been the big stumbling block until the City Council on February 22 agreed to allow the 1,500-square-foot Program Room to be used for library services, instead of a meeting place for local groups operated by the city.

Past City Councils and city staff had balked at permitting use of the Program Room as part of the library, despite the fact that the original lease from the city to the Friends specified that the building is to be used for library purposes exclusively. Use of the Room for non-library meetings had only been allowed informally because when the library opened in 1985 there was extra space not needed at that time by the library itself.

Now, by being able to use the Program Room as part of the library, space for books and other services can be expanded by 40% in order to meet the growing needs of residents for library services. Use of the library almost doubled between 1984 and 2001 to nearly 190,000 patrons a year and jumped by 22% just last year. In addition, a survey by the Friends of the Library showed residents want more library space.

The Friends and the county had both informed the city nine years ago that more space in the building for library services was needed because of demand from residents. But the city refused to end the use of the Program Room for meetings until the Friends and supporters mounted a campaign to encourage the city to recognize the Friends' and county's legal right to the Program Room, which included one of the largest outpouring of emails and public comments that some Council members had ever heard of.

The efforts by the Friends of the Library shows how effective a community group can be in securing the kind of city services and policies that it feels benefits residents the most.

The lease will be retroactive to July 1. Under the lease, the rent charged by the city to the county will be $1 a year. The Library will take control of the Program Room on March 1, 2011. Friends representatives are expected to meet with the new librarian and the library staff to discuss the next steps for planning the expansion of the library space into the Program Room.

Dani Porter, who was appointed branch manager of the Morro Bay Library and assumed her duties in April, has resigned after conflict developed with the board of directors of the Friends of the Library over her cooperation with and support of the Friends' efforts on behalf of the library. County librarian Brian Reynolds would only say she resigned but declined to comment further.

Reynolds announced several weeks ago that Jackie Kinsey, currently the school librarian at Dana Elementary School in Nipomo, will become the Morro Bay librarian effective September 8. She was selected among the finalists for the position when Porter was picked. Therefore, it was decided that the county did not need to seek new candidates.

The remaining finalists were interviewed again, but this time representatives of the Friends of the Library were invited to participate, Karen Robert, presidents of the Friends, said. "This provided a community perspective into the hiring process."

Kinsey said she also works two evenings a week as south county campus librarian at Cuesta College.

She and her family moved to California in 2005 from Baltimore, MD, where they had lived for 10 years and where she was employed by the Enoch Pratt Free Library. She started off there as a librarian working with children and teenagers, then became librarian II assistant manager and finally librarian III branch manager of the Patterson Park branch.

Previously she had been a government documents and reference librarian in Galveston, TX.

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