The city of Irvine will hire 37 full-time employees and 19 full-time equivalent part-time positions to staff its new library system.
Hiring for the roles will start immediately. City leaders have set aside about $2.8 million to fund these positions through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends on June 30.
The city has allocated another $2.6 million to establish a new library IT infrastructure and improve its University Park and Heritage Park branches with new carpeting, paint, and furniture.
The city’s library system will open to the public at those two branches on July 1.
Currently, those libraries are run by OC Public Libraries. The Irvine City Council voted last year to leave the county library system to start its own.
City leaders say that, eventually, Irvine could operate as many as five or six libraries, including one at the Great Park.
Starting April 1, as the county begins its exit, the Heritage Park and University Park libraries will experience reduced hours – details are still to be announced.
And, from May 16 through June 30, those libraries will close completely for Irvine to finish the operational transition.
The Katie Wheeler Library also is scheduled to close for six months, from July through December.
The city will begin leasing the Katie Wheeler Library from the county on Jan. 1.
Irvine City Manager Oliver Chi said his staff is working to “have that gap shortened.”
City staff plan to present additional funding requests to the City Council for operations at the Katie Wheeler branch at a later date.
The city already hired its chief librarian, Julie Zeoli, who comes to Irvine from Yorba Linda libraries. Zeoli is overseeing the transition.
City staff say they will aim to hire 15 additional librarians, a library services manager and a number of paraprofessional staff.
Irvine is recruiting applicants from the county system, nearby city-operated library systems, recent graduates from local universities and even from outside the region, officials said.
City officials say they expect the department’s hiring and onboarding to be done by June.
“I couldn’t be more excited about moving this forward,” Councilmember Mike Carroll said. “I know a lot of work has gone into this. To bring forward this program is really exciting for those of us that grew up very close to public libraries.”
