LSSI Wins New Contract in California
By Michael Kelley Oct 19, 2010The Camarillo City Council voted 5-0 on October 13 to withdraw from the Ventura County Library System (VCLS), CA, and contract with private, for-profit company Library Systems & Services (LSSI) of Germantown, MD, to run the city's library system.
Camarillo becomes the second city to leave the county system and privatize the management of its library services. Moorpark made the same decision in 2007 and in June renewed its agreement with LSSI.
A day after the Camarillo vote, the Ventura City Council also voted to put the operation of the city's two branches out to a competitive bid process, the Ventura County Star reported, with the tentative goal of withdrawing from the county system by June 30, 2011.
"The idea is ...seek bids for library operations and see what we get," Ventura City mayor Bill Fulton wrote on his blog, although he was critical of Camarillo's decision to bypass the competitive bid process for the LSSI contract.
County pushback
Jackie Griffin, the county library director, also told LJ that the process lacked transparency.
"On so many different levels I find this decision incredibly disturbing," she said. "We were never invited to be part of the actual process. They restricted me to a three-minute public comment, which says a lot about how truly open they were."
Even more important, Griffin told LJ, "I think privatizing library services is just disastrous.... for our communities.... Ultimately, what they are doing is cutting services so they can make a profit."
Camarillo opened a new 66,000 square foot library building in 2007. Nevertheless, she said, the decision will cost 30 employees their jobs.
"I met with the staff for 2.5 hours; they were devastated," she said.
City issues
Under the terms of the agreement, Camarillo will have a five-year agreement with LSSI, beginning January 1, 2011. The city will appropriate $1.5 million to run the library system annually. The city will also have a $400,000 optional "multimedia book" budget, which City Manager Bruce Feng told LJ the city plans to use.
Camarillo has been unhappy about the size of its financial obligation to the county. The city (followed by the city of Ventura) is the largest source of revenue to the county system's operating budget of $10.7 million, providing $3 million for FY10/11.
The contract contains a section on confidential information in which the city agrees to take care to protect LSSI's "proprietary library management techniques" and "limit duplication of Confidential Information to the extent needed to perform this agreement."
Feng said the deal will save Camarillo a projected $673,000, once it factors in the county property tax revenue Camarillo will lose (about $425,000).
"It will ensure a high level of sustainable library services at a lower cost to our taxpayers," he told LJ.
In a letter to the mayor and Camarillo City Council, Janice Parvin, the mayor of Moorpark, wrote that LSSI had followed through on its promises to her city.
"Over the past three years circulation of material, patron visits, and program attendance
have all increased and we have seen firsthand the positives such an arrangement can bring," she wrote.
Robert E. Windrow, LSSI's vice president for sales and marketing, told LJ the company was excited about the contract with Camarillo.
"The city will set all the policy and continue to own all the assets," he said. "It's the county that's been setting all the policies until now. They have just hired LSSI to provide the expertise on a day-to-day basis."
Sharp words for librarians
Typically, when a community contracts with LSSI for library services, library employees must reapply for their jobs; if they are rehired, they become employees of LSSI and lose their civil service rights and pension vesting, a source of possible savings. LSSI offers its employees a 401(k) plan instead.
LSSI CEO Frank A. Pezzanite told the New York Times in September that many library policies are only about job security, which "is why the profession is nervous about us."
He has backtracked from that comment, telling LJ, "I have a lot of respect for the profession and for the people who work in the profession." He cited a letter he wrote on the company's website.
Some librarians don't see it that way.
"Asking your current employees to reapply for their jobs is humiliating," Dale Redfield, former branch head of the Port Hueneme library and a managing librarian with the county system, told the Ventura County Star.
Griffin said the decision amounted to union busting. The library's employees are represented by the Southern California Service Workers, Unit 721 (SEIU).
"This does away with the union in Camarillo. I hope someone starts organizing LSSI employees," she said.
Windrow told LJ that the contract with Camarillo had not yet been executed (a meeting is scheduled later this week) and that he could not yet provide numbers on staffing and salaries but that he expected the number to be comparable and that most staff would be rehired.
"It's that way most every way we go," he said.
Feng said that under LSSI, salaries would be comparable to the current pay, but benefits packages could be different.
In its proposal to run the Stockton-San Joaquin Public Library (a decision that is still pending), LSSI said "professional level hires would typically start around $40,000 increasing to $55,000 or higher depending on education, experience, and level of responsibility."
That is not comparable to current salaries, however.
Under San Joaquin's current system, a Librarian I earns $45,338 to $58,204 a year, while a Librarian II earns $55,362 to $71,082 annually. LSSI's proposal in San Joaquin would also reduce the number of MLS-bearing employees from 19 to 17.
On his blog, Fulton, Ventura's mayor, wrote that Ventura should test the market and issue a request for proposals (RFP) to control the process better and protect wages and benefits.
"We can specify in the RFP anything else that's important to us-a certain number of librarians, for example, or compliance with the city's Living Wage Ordinance, which requires city contractors to pay a certain per hour wage plus health insurance.
"And then anybody can bid on what we want. LSSI can bid, and we will see if they can meet our terms if those terms deviate from LSSI's typical contract (living wage, minimum staffing, etc). The county library system will bid, and we can see if they can provide a low enough price."
Feng said that LSSI is the only vendor operating in southern California, which Fulton also acknowledged. LSSI was the only vendor to reply to an RFP from Stockton-San Joaquin. Feng said the city had approached the county about a contract for city services, but nothing came of it. Griffin said she was only approached at the very end of the process.
LSSI is majority-owned by Islington Capital Partners of Newtown, MA, a private equity firm that recently recapitalized LSSI. Pezzanite declined to provide LJ with specifics.
The company has about 750 employees, Pezzanite said. About 500 work in the library sector, and about 100 have MLS degrees.
