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Library late fees total more than $850,000
| Monday, Oct 6 2008 6:30 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Oct 7 2008 7:19 AM
Those who think a late library bill is a small matter might consider this number — $879,313.
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The Kern County Board of Supervisors meets for morning and afternoon sessions at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Tuesday at the county administrative center, 1115 Truxtun Ave., across N Street from the Rabobank Arena downtown.
You can also watch the meeting live on KGOV, the county’s local cable television station. The station lists available channels at www.co.kern.ca.us/gsd/KGOV.
The board’s agenda as well as some background materials are available online at www.co.kern.ca.us/bos.
That’s the value of three years of unpaid bills, lost books, vanished CDs and unreturned DVDs that, on Tuesday, Kern County supervisors will probably write off as bad debt.
All that money is lost taxpayer dollars said Sherry Gomez, deputy director of libraries for the county.
People don’t really understand that their small bills to the county add up to substantial impacts on county coffers, she said.
“If they do not pay their fees than it does affect our budget,” Gomez said. “It does really affect the community when people don’t choose to return materials or pay the fees they legitimately owe.”
Kern County has been trying to collect the $879,313 debt for more than four years.
It represents fees charged and materials lost on 21,901 library accounts in the three years prior to June 30, 2004, according to a county report on the problem.
Nearly half the total, $396,000 is money required to replace lost materials.
The other $483,313 is the value of late fees and administrative costs on delinquent accounts.
People who didn’t pay up or return their borrowed materials, Gomez said, have all been sent repeated notices and warned of mounting late fees.
All have been sent to a collection agency. None have been collected, she said.
“We’re trying our best to be responsible,” Gomez said. “In an attempt to be fiscally responsible we do block people from borrowing if they owe $2 or more.”
But for people who take out a large number of books or materials late fees can accumulate quickly.
And those people can be hard for the county to find and bill.
The average overdue balance on the delinquent accounts is $40.15, the library department report states.
And library losses continue to accumulate.
Newer debts, incurred since the middle of 2004, are still in the collections process, Gomez said.