Council to Help Keep Library Open Six Days

Calling the library “a vital resource to the community,” the City Council has teamed with Friends of the Library to provide the funding to keep the facility open six days a week.

“It is a safe haven for the children of Laguna,” said Martha Lydick, Friends of the Library president. “Our senior citizens use it every day.”

In response to cutbacks in state funding, the group has struggled in recent years to increase and then stabilize the hours that the city’s only library is open.

The next nearest library is more than 10 miles away, Lydick said.

After years of being open six days a week, the services were cut in 1993 to only four days. In 1994, a fifth day was added.

By January, the Friends had raised enough money to keep the library, which is a branch of the Orange County Public Library System, open six days a week. It is closed on Sundays.

City Manager Kenneth C. Frank said the group can no longer bear the full financial burden, however, so he recommended that the council cover two-thirds of the amount required to keep the branch open six days a week. Friends would continue paying one-third.

The council agreed this week to spend $10,667 to keep the library operating on its current schedule through the end of the fiscal year and to include the cost of a sixth day of library service in the preliminary 1997-98 budget.