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Commission probes budget increase and reliance on hourly staff after LCS merger
Summary
Commissioners sought explanations for large department-level spending increases and a decline in library-coded FTEs after the Library & Community Services department merger; staff said shared admin accounting and increased hourly staffing for new facilities drive the changes, and the Commission requested comparative pre-pandemic figures.
The Menlo Park Library Commission spent a substantive portion of its March 16 meeting on a financial overview and staffing questions after staff presented a multi-year budget view and FTE counts.
Staff advised that part of the apparent discrepancy stems from the 2021 merger of library and community services budgets, which shifted some administrative positions out of library-coded accounts while expanding services at new facilities such as the Belle Haven campus. That change, combined with higher operating needs for the new building, produced a larger department-level operating budget even as the line-item library FTE count fell and the Department increased use of hourly staff to meet service demands.
Assistant Director Nick Schengen told commissioners the department "added a lot more hourly staff to the team" to cover expanded hours and two floors at the newer facility and because hiring at lower-skill entry levels has remained difficult since the pandemic. Staff reported FTE history that included roughly 14.2 FTE in an earlier fiscal snapshot, a decline to about 11 FTE, and a current figure reported as approximately 12.5 FTE; temporary-hour totals were provided in the packet but commissioners asked staff to retrieve comparable pre-pandemic temporary-hour baselines for clearer comparison.
Commissioners also asked about the department’s roughly 72% rise in total spending shown in the packet; staff attributed much of that to the broader set of services now coded to the combined department, new facility operating costs and capital projects, and noted steady support from the Friends of the Library and the Library Foundation during tight budget periods. Staff flagged two citywide fiscal uncertainties that could affect the budget outlook: the status of vehicle-license-fee repayments from the state and an unresolved legal matter regarding the utility users tax.
Commissioners requested follow-up: (1) an audit or reconciliation of temporary-hour estimates versus past years, (2) clearer division of costs between library-specific and department-shared accounts, and (3) continued updates about citywide revenue risks during upcoming Council priority-setting and CIP discussions.
