Library Hours Cut on Anastasia Island

Update: hours change delayed -- see Record editorial appended below.

The St. Johns County Public Library Branch on Anastasia Island is only open five days a week.
Closed Sundays and Mondays -- the same days that many restaurant, bar, hotel and tourism workers have off. Go figure!
Since circa 2007, thanks to County Administrator MICHAEL DAVID WANCHICK.
The Anastasia Branch is the most popular library in St. Johns County, often frequented by tourists and snowbirds.
Yet its hours are being cut -- AGAIN -- in possible violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, knowing that special needs children receive tutoring and other services there.
This Saturday, the library will not open until Noon.
Yesterday, a librarian said the hours were cut because it was so popular.
The cities of St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach were not consulted before library hours were cut.
There was no market research or customer surveys.
This is not data-based decisionmaking.
Our County government officials are misbehaving. They do not act like they are part of a customer service organizations so much as satraps.
County Administrator MICHAEL DAVID WANCHICK is once again acting like unelected "Republican Lord of All He Surveys," in the inimitable phrase of the late William F. Buckley, Jr.
It is time for WANCHICK to go.

P.S., In response to this blog post, the Record emitted not a news story, but only PR "spin" for the County, an editorial, to wit:

Editorial: Libraries feel revenue squeeze
Posted: January 7, 2016 - 7:47pm

The county’s libraries will be cutting operating hours. Though not yet etched in stone, it looks as if three of our county branches will be effected by mid-month. But it could have been — and was to have been — this coming Monday.

It’s important, we believe, to say upfront that this does not smell in any way of the county making good on its dire predictions of local cuts to libraries, law enforcement and nonprofits if the penny sales tax went down. And it did.

It may well be that additional squeezes may be in store, but none of that seems to have yet trickled down.

The library system basically operates on the “physician heal thyself” theory. It decides how best to run the system on what it gets. True, the county determines what it does get each year, but there was no financial cut to the system for coming fiscal year. It, in fact, got a little more, says director Debra Gibson, for some new books.

No, what’s happening at the library in the simplest terms is that it’s getting the same money, while the county population and the demands on the system continue to grow. It’s pinched.

The libraries involved in the cutbacks are the main branch, Bartram Trail and Anastasia. Gibson said these are the busiest of the branches. The cut in hours, she says, mitigates the need for cuts in staff and services. The idea is to condense operating hours in order to eliminate double shifts by staff. This, she says, will save money. But more to the point, having full shifts available during operating hours allows for better service — albeit shorter service — to the library patrons. It also allows the libraries to continue to offer some of the extra programs that go on there.

Gibson tells us that the last cuts (much deeper, including Sundays) were done back in 2008. There was a small cut to the Hastings Branch the following year.

We’ll have stories to follow outlining the exact operating hours of the branches. Suffice to say that at worst it represents around six fewer hours a week.

The library gave the county the plan and it would have gone into effect Monday . But the county administration held off to allow commissioners to review it prior to its meeting Jan. 19. This is not an agenda item, but under the rules of public comment, residents could weigh in.

While we said upfront that this isn’t a cut by the county directly because of the failure of the sales tax referendum, it is a harbinger of things to come. County Administrator Mike Wanchick said the county remains upside down in needed capital expenditures. The libraries are but one example: they’re not only serving more people, but all the branches are aging — and operating dollars will be competing with maintenance dollars more and more down the road.

This is much larger than the libraries — as roads, fire stations, county administration buildings, ball fields, equestrian centers, boat ramps and more, all built during the boom, begin to age.

What might be more ominous yet, is that looking at the record number of housing starts in 2015 and the number of permitted developments already on the books, the real boom may be in front of us, not behind.