Did We Attend the Same Meeting?

Today in the Santa Clarita Signal, Tammy Marashalian wrote and editorial on the Thursday night meeting The Making of a Library System. I got a completely different take on the meeting. The article sounds all warm and fuzzy and that Mr. Dubberly was a competent individual--which clearly he is not. As one observer said, "This man makes slightly less sense that I do...When I'm drunk."
Ms. Marashalian makes it seem as if, there were no frustrations amongst the committee members with the process and the city. Clearly this was not the case. I don't remember seeing Ms. Marashalian at the meeting, so I suspect she got her information from Mr. Hernandez--the city mouthpiece.
This is what I heard at the meeting:
* "We are frustrated that the City is making decisions without giving us a headsup that they are coming or asking for our imput."
* "We are frustrated that city is not updating us on what is happening with the libraries."
* "We are frustrated with not having information provided to us for the meeting before hand."
* "We are frustrated that the city is up to it's same old tricks."
* "We are frustrated that we haven't been given a clear vision of what this committee is all about.
* "We are frustrated that Mark Smith has to jump in and answer a question directed at Mr. Dubberly who clearly did not understand the question.
Last Tuesday, the City approved joining the Inland Empire Library consortium. The city plans to truck books across LA County from San Bernadino and Riverside Counties. I am so thankful that the City of Santa Clarita is looking after its carbon footprint and is extremely environmentaly in their decision making. Wait while I clean up some of the dripping sarcasm.
Speaking of economics and environmentalism, city fails again on the economics of scale. The Inland Empire Consortium will not let out it's new title for about the first six months of ownership. Santa Clarita plans to do the same. Santa Clarita plans to use their enhanced book budget of 100K to buy additional copies of titles. Here is where the economics of scale comes into play. Let's say the title is super popular. The County has 85 libraries that share their materials. If an item is very popular each library will receive a copy and some may receive two copies. In all there would probably be at least a 100 copies available. Let's say that the item has 1000 people waiting for it. Mind you 1000 people on a waiting list does happen but when it does we usually have far more than 100 copies available--this is just for the sake of arguement. That means that these 1000 people would need to wait for 10 cycles for the item to go out and back. Let's say that 100 of these people were from Santa Clarita--this is not a way off figure because the Santa Clarita Libraries are among some of busiest in the system. Let's say that LSSI bought 10 copies of title so satisfy the demand--still we have the same math--100 waiting for 10 rather than 1000 waiting for 100. But when demand dies down and all these copies are no longer needed with the County, most libraries will keep their one copy and some of the larger ones may keep two or possibly three depending on demand. Economy of scale means that there is little waste. However, when demand dies down at least half of the Santa Clarita copies will be sitting unused on the shelf. This translate as waste. One hundred thousand dollars do not translate to much in the world of books. Santa Clarita will need this amount and possibly more to keep up with the same demand that a larger system is able to handle more economically and conservatively. Go Green Santa Clarita!