Overwhelming Community Response Opens Schaberg Library on Saturdays

At tonight’s Library Board meeting, Board members decided to close on Monday in order to open it on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The library already runs on a very limited schedule of 20 hours per week, so the elimination of Saturday hours was an extra blow, residents said.  

The Board and the Library Director, Dave Genesy, responded to the community by creating a survey to ask residents if they would sacrifice closing on a week day to open on Saturday instead. An overwhelming 77 percent said yes, with 18 percent saying no and nearly five percent undecided.  

“There was an overwhelming response from the community,” Genesy said. “We now want to put a big sign outside Schaberg saying ‘We listened to you!’”

With severe budget cuts to the city, Schaberg scaled their hours on Oct. 11, 2010, to just four days a week, Monday through Thursday from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. But the community protested over the closing of the library on Saturdays.

“It was like a punch to the stomach,” said resident Tanja Vierra, who began circling a petition in October when she found out about the elimination of Saturday hours. “I was absolutely heartbroken.”

Other comments from the survey included:

“You make it inconvenient for the people who live in the area. Try cutting hours at the other RWC libraries, so Schaberg can stay open. Why do you always dump on Schaberg?”

While others did not have a preference: “I am retired. Saturday hours mean less to me than they might for others.”

Genesy said he does not anticipate extra costs to open the library on Saturday because hours will be the same. However, he said the logistics of scheduling and staffing will be tough. He and the Board plan to implement the schedule change in approximately two weeks.

The Board also agreed that gate counts from the turnstiles will help determine when exactly people visit the library. If it turns out that people aren’t frequenting the library often enough, Genesy said, the library staff might re-consider the hours.

But residents, including , want to see Schaberg open for more hours. She said the $225,000 library bequest from long-time Redwood City resident Bessie A. Evans, who passed away in 1997, could have been used to fund additional hours. (Note: The Library Foundation Agreement is attached in pdf form.)

However, Genesy said “one-shot money” was not being sustainable in the long-term. He added that this money should be split amongst the libraries and not just used on one library.

“If the community wants to have the library opened on Saturday, we hope we’ll see more visits supporting this schedule change,” he said.  

Other residents agreed that getting the word out about using the library more would solidify the need for opening the library on Saturdays.

“This is a step in the right direction,” Vierra said. “We’d like the library to be opened longer, but this is a start.”