Citizens Dig in to Help Library
Overlook Major Reason for Debt
Citizen interest in the future of the Modoc County Library came together in various communities recently to discuss -- and in some rare instances -- debate how the library system went broke and what can be done to salvage it.
An agenda overseen by Librarian Cheryl Baker was followed prompting the public to deal more with how to salvage the library rather than examine how Baker managed it to the point of insolvency.
Speaking in support of the library branch in Cedarville, and particularly how to keep it open without losing a staff member, Jim Laacke, president of the Surprise Valley Rotary, announced he was facilitating a $13,000 donation to be used for an employee salary.
Another Surprise Valley resident, Ann Young, asked if volunteers could help keep the library open. Baker said they could but added that librarian work is complicated and would require extensive and costly training.
Skirting the issue of mismanagement, Baker read from a prepared statement that was in boldface and underlined for emphasis: “Modoc County Library does not receive any funds from the county’s general fund.”
But when an audience member asked if the county used library funds for other than library-designated costs Baker made a revealing answer.
“I have come under budget to help out other departments,” she said, “and the county always pays the library’s bills.”
Implied is that like other county departments, library funds have been used to off-set debts elsewhere. Baker did not elaborate on her willingness to help other departments with their debts, and did not explain how the library is over budget by an estimated $113,000 this fiscal year if -- as she said -- she had been “under budget.”
At issue, and largely omitted from public discussion, was Baker’s handling the last ten years or more of the library budget, an issue brought to light in CAO Chester Robertson’s Fiscal Restoration Plan.
“The library has been running chronic deficits for many years, utilizing the fund balance available that had accumulated from a fixed assessment from 1987. Historically the library relied on interest from the fund balance available, but declining interest rates and deficit spending has decimated such revenue,” Robertson wrote in the plan.
Neither the public sessions nor the Modoc County Board of Supervisors have addressed Robertson’s findings or asked Baker to account for her role in the chronic deficits.
Instead, Baker in her prepared statement pointed to a “combination of inflation and rising costs, declining revenues (and) the steep rise in property tax delinquency” among the causes of the library’s financial failure.
There was also a vague reference to “Modoc County’s fiscal crisis” which could be interpreted as a fiscal crisis caused by the $20 million misappropriation of the treasury, largely attributed to the on-going practice of using general funds from other departments such as the library to pay down still other department debts.
It was also revealed at the Cedarville session that the library is subject to a county-imposed “cost plan” which means all departments, including the library, are charged a fee by the county for services such as payroll and accounting. The library‘s annual fee is $24,000.
It is not known what that accumulated fee is used for by the county.
Editor’s Note: Barbara March, publisher of the Modoc Independent News, continued to this report. This article first appeared in the Modoc Independent News, p. A1.
11 comments:
Good God. When will the citizens stop enabling this poor fiscal management? The Rotarian's are a great organization, but gifting good money without addressing bad management is foolish.
It only treats the symptoms and not the cause of the problems we all face.
Regarding Librarian Baker's assertion that "the county always pays the library’s bills;” that is not something to crow about, because the County simply illegally borrowed and deficit spent from other accounts to cover the deficit spending that Baker allowed during the past ten years.
"Everyone in government wants to be in control of the money but nobody wants to be in charge of integrity."
~ Darryl Babe Wilson quote
When creating the Library District, did the taxpayers authorize the County Librarian to lend funds to anybody else without taxpayer consent?
That is NOT what I voted for when I cast my yea vote to create the library district.
It seems certain now that the other posters have been right all along about this illegal borrowing.
All this co-mingling in the Modoc Treasury has been for not much else than giving raises and benefit increases to keep the elected and hired county folks as whole as possible - while the taxpayer funded services went into the toilet.
CAO Chester Robertson was hired to be the one responsible to the taxpayers for getting the accountability back into the financial situation in Modoc.
What is happening however, is that although Chester can make statements such as "The library has been running chronic deficits for many years...and deficit spending has decimated such revenue," it is clear that he does not have the power or wherewithal to hold any of the officials under him accountable for their poor fiscal management of our tax dollars.
So unless CAO Robertson takes some steps to hold the department heads accountable for their mismanaged department budgets, then all we have left are the highest paid officials being able to keep the raises they "earned" by mismanaging their budgets - not by using good money management.
This isn't any different than what we had before Charlton exposed this whole mess three years ago.
I noticed from the picture of the Cedarville branch that that building is a lawsuit waiting to happen. The front door and threshhold are not wheelchair accessable. I've never been inside so I cant comment on the inside but one wheelchair bound person sueing under the ADA (Americans with disabilities act) would have a slam dunk win. The fine 20 years ago for the first offence was 50K I'm sure it's higher now.
$2,000 a month for payroll services is quite a high fee. A lot of outside services will do the job cheaper than that.
Finally you folks are realizing that it isn't about the taxpayers or the library or other services we pay for, it's about the highest paid folks and those elected (the BOS, former Auditor, current Treasurer, etc.) keeping their paychecks and retirement at the expense of the rest of us.
Still don't think that's the case in Modoc?
Name just one former or current elected official, CAO, or higher paid county worker or department head that has had their pay and benefits reduced BY PUBLIC BOARD ACTION since this money mismanagement came to light.
The only one that comes to mind:
Former CAO Mark Charlton, the man who took the blinders off the Modoc taxpayers eyes.
The most important skill of a manager of people or a library is to plan for future problems. These people seem to have no clue about doing that. They just keep doing the same old thing and hope for a miracle to save them. The library services should have been reduced immediately when the money started drying up. Most of the people involved in these county fiascos are very nice, likeable people but very poor money managers. When situations get this bad volunteers are always begged for but it's difficult to find volunteers when they know they are being used to rescue incompetent, and overpayed people more than the library. Cantrall alone is enough to scare away many volunteers. Threats of "I'll blow his head off" doesn't make people comfortable about volunteering or attending meetings.
Fact is the issue of additional funding should have been addressed several years ago. Any accuarial service will tell you that X amount of dollars in todays dollars will not have the same purchasing power 20 years from now.
What role does the Modoc Record have in influencing public policy and decision making in Modoc County when it chooses not to report on important events that affect the entire community? Does non-reporting means acceptance of the status-quo?
At first glance, one would be hard pressed to come to the conclusion that the Modoc Record is in any way complicit regarding the Modoc County financial crisis. After all, newspapers do not actively set public policy; in fact, the Modoc Record rarely examines any controversial event to the extent needed to help its readers determine what is in the publics’ best interest and what isn’t.
The Modoc Record also does little, if any, reporting to provide impartial evidence to its readership once questions do arise – such as the financial troubles that have plagued the Modoc taxpayers for at least the past ten years; or providing the real numbers and facts surrounding why the County library has suddenly gone bankrupt.
But such laissez-faire attitudes about the reporting by the Modoc Record disregards the fact that the newspaper has a choice to make – each and every week – concerning what to print and what not to print. The absolute lack of reporting by the Modoc Record on the recent county budget committee meetings which were legally supposed to be public, but instead were subjugated by the Modoc County Board of Supervisors and rendered ineffective is just one example of this non-reporting of late – the aforementioned Library insolvency is yet another.
Which brings up a question: Has the failure over the years by the Modoc Record to make factual statements or to make moral distinctions regarding how our taxpayer dollars have been misspent thus contributed to the County now being up to $20 million dollars in debt?
For the past decade, at least, and particularly during these last few years spent in the middle of the Modoc financial crisis, the Modoc Record has been acting like they were shackled inside Plato’s Cave, and somehow completely uninformed of the real world events of the Modoc financial crisis which has been going on all around them, and consequently its affect on their neighbors.
But unlike the prisoners in Plato’s Cave, the Modoc Record and its imaginary lack of knowledge about the real goings on in Modoc County has been a ruse; and the subsequent lack of reporting a clumsy defense against self-recrimination accomplished by simply reporting nothing of substance at all.
Politicians, most would argue, are the ones who had set the agenda and made the decisions that resulted in the worst financial crisis to hit Modoc County. This view however, discounts the fact that the Modoc Record is not now, nor has it been for at least the past ten years, an objective party to most of what has occurred – nor has it been reporting the facts of the Modoc financial crisis to the public.
The lack of reporting of the Modoc Record is but a disguise – a way to obfuscate by omission and thus to allow them to take no stance whatsoever on the things that affect all of the citizens in Modoc County.
In the end, as evidenced by its own inaction, the Modoc Record has proven itself to be a part of the problem in Modoc County, and not a part of the solution.
"Donations from local citizens mean the Cedarville library will remain open two days a week."
I suggest that you modify the above caption to your photo of the Cedarville library building to reflect the current state of affairs as we the public understand them:
"The prospect of donations from local citizens may mean that the Cedarville library wil be able to be open two days a week."
The reporting by the Modoc County Daily News has definitively shown that the answer to the question posed by the blogger @ February 7, 2012 2:35 PM is a resounding "YES":
"Has the failure over the years by the Modoc Record to make factual statements or to make moral distinctions regarding how our taxpayer dollars have been misspent thus contributed to the County now being up to $20 million dollars in debt?"
On second thought, better make that a double...HELL YES.
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