KFPL to Close Ompah Branch

Jeff Green | May 05, 2011

It was a case of “paranoia is total perception” for a group of Ompah residents who were invited to make a presentation to the Kingston Frontenac Public Library Board last week.

Library Board Chair Claudette Richardson phoned to invite members of the group to attend, saying that the branch would be discussed at the meeting.

“We were not told that branch closure was going to be considered,” said Marily Seitz when interviewed afterwards. “We did know that our request for the return of the two hours a week that were taken away from us would be dealt with, but that is all.”

The branch had traditionally been open six hours a week, but for a couple of years it was open 14 hours a week when the Plevna branch had to be closed because of a mould problem. When a new Plevna branch was opened in 2009, the library board decided to open Plevna 10 hours a week and reduce Ompah all the way back to 4 hours. Ever since then, the Ompah users have been trying to get their two hours back.

Seitz, North Frontenac and Frontenac County Councilor John Inglis, and Ompah resident Janice Arthur, all made presentations to the library board last week in support of their branch.

Last April a request to reinstate the two hours at the Ompah branch was put off for a year. After hearing the delegation from Ompah last week, Library Board Vice-Chair Wilma Kenny delivered a report on the request. She pointed out that the Ompah branch does not meet the minimum standards set by the board for a branch, and that a consultant’s report in 2004 had called for the closure of the branch. She also referred to the branch services master plan that was completed last fall, which pegged the cost per circulated item at the Ompah branch at over $30.

Then, Kenny said, “I'm going to put this out there just to see what board members want to do. I move that the four existing hours at the Ompah branch be moved to Plevna. In other words, I move that the Ompah branch be closed.”

John Purdon, a Frontenac County Council representative on the board, moved that Kenny's motion be deferred until the matter is brought to the attention of Frontenac County Council and North Frontenac Township.

Frontenac County provides the funding for rural service to the library board, and North Frontenac Township is responsible for providing facilities.

After some debate, the motion to defer was defeated, and the motion to close the Ompah branch was then passed in a 5-4 vote.

Later in the week, the library staff announced that the branch would be closing on May 29.

“We have been afraid that this was going to happen ever since that consultant’s report came out in 2004. When our hours were cut to four after the Plevna branch opened, we said it would hurt circulation. Now they say circulation is too low and the branch must be closed. There you have it,” said Marily Seitz.

Seitz also questions the calculations that were used to demonstrate to the board that the Ompah branch was too expensive for the library board to operate.

Appendix C of the library branch master plan pegged the cost of running the branch at $40,000. When that cost is divided by the annual circulation at the branch (1,320 items) it costs the service over $30 for each item taken out at the Ompah branch, which is $13 higher than the cost at the next most expensive branch, which is Plevna, and way higher than the mean in the system, which is $6.72.

However, Marily Seitz pointed out in her presentation last week, that the1,320 circulation figure is wrong.

“In appendix B of the report, the circulation at Ompah is 1,920, but whoever did the calculations transferred the wrong figure over,” she said. With the correct figure, the cost per item at Ompah is about $20, still high but not that much higher than the cost at the other small rural branches.

Members of the Ompah users group also asked where the operating cost of $40,000 came from

When contacted on Monday of this week, Chief Librarian Deborah Dafoe explained.

“There are two kinds of costs allocated to the branches, direct costs and a share of what we call core costs, the cost of books, technology, administration, etc., which is shared by the entire system,” she said.

The direct cost of the Ompah branch includes $6,000 in staffing costs, as well as the cost of phone and Internet service, and delivering materials to the branch.

“The county share of core costs is divided by 12 and allocated to each of the 12 rural branches,” Dafoe said.

This means that larger rural branches, such as Sydenham and even Sharbot Lake, are allocated the same amount of core costs as the Ompah branch, which is only 225 square feet. It also means that closing the Ompah branch will merely result in raising the core costs at the 11 remaining branches but will not lower those costs.

Dafoe confirmed that because the Ompah hours, and staffing costs, are being transferred to Plevna, “The savings that will be realized by closing the branch will not be substantial.”

Deborah Dafoe said she did not know in advance that Wilma Kenny was going to propose a motion to close the Ompah branch at last week's meeting, but, “The impetus behind the motion really was the same impetus behind the branch master plan, which was to bring branches up to a minimal standard of service. The impetus really was to bring the Plevna branch the hours it needs, given that it is a branch that approaches the standards of a satellite branch.”

She reiterated a point that had also been made at the library board meeting, that when North Frontenac Council decided to put a new, improved branch in Plevna, it should have known that the Ompah branch would be closing.

She said that a motion to that effect was presented to the library board in 2008.

That motion outlines what the township agreed to do to get the Plevna branch built, and what the library agreed to do. It also contained a third part - “that the library transfer the combined library collections, staff, and hours from Ompah / Plevna to the new facility.”

The third part of the motion was deferred at the time at the request of the then County Board representative, Jim Vanden Hoek.

“We were clear that we were building a branch to serve the Ompah/Plevna area,” Dafoe said, “we left it to the township to decide where to locate it.

Letters were written to North Frontenac Mayor Maguire about it at the time, according to Dafoe, but there was no response.

It's unclear whether Jim Vanden Hoek ever brought the deferred motion to the attention of County Council, or whether it was brought forward at North Frontenac Council. Members of the Ompah users group were not aware of its existence.

“We have made it clear to the library board on many occasions over three years that people in Ompah do not travel to Plevna,” said Marily Seitz. “Our travel pattern is to Perth.” Seitz said she is has enquired into the cost of purchasing a library card for the Perth library now that the Ompah branch of her own county’s library is closing.