LSSI Gains CA, TN Contracts

Increased hours, but at the cost of staff benefits package The Redding, CA, city council, which has agreed to take over the Shasta County Library System, has awarded a 3½-year management contract to Library Systems and Services LLC (LSSI). According to the Record-Searchlight, LSSI will keep the main library open for 60 hours a week for the same budget the city would have used to keep it open 40 hours a week. One major difference: LSSI staffers don’t get a public employee benefits package, including pensions.

As part of the contract, Redding will grant LSSI free space in the library for retail sales, business services, and other “new revenue-generating services,” according to the newspaper. The new contract was supported by the three main library booster groups in the county, which sought LSSI’s help in running a new main building, more than twice the size of the current facility, which is scheduled to open in January. The county, which is 3850 square miles, has two branches in addition to the main library in Redding.

LSSI is required to interview current library employees and provide five “preference points”—on a scale up to 100—in evaluating them. A union representative for library employees had asked for ten, saying that LSSI’s expansion “would be balanced on the backs of the employees themselves.” Library director Carolyn Chambers told LJ that a meeting with LSSI left the library staff “a little more encouraged,” saying that vacation and sick leave policies were similar to county benefits.

Some two weeks after the board of the Jackson-Madison County Library, TN, suspended discussions of privatizing library management (see News, LJ 9/15/06, p. 16), the board unanimously decided to negotiate with LSSI. The decision, according to the Jackson Sun, surprised onlookers because board members had said they’d wait until a court resolved a challenge to the concept by county representatives.

Some tensions emerged. County commissioner Fred Birmingham was barred from asking the board questions until after the meeting, even though he serves as one of the commission’s library liaisons. Some groups in the community are concerned that staffers would get lesser salaries and benefits under private management. “I was surprised because I don’t think they should take action until they know it’s (legally) proper or not,” Birmingham told the newspaper.