With school out for summer, it’s the perfect time for Oakland’s youth to hit the library. It offers music, magic shows, arts and crafts activities and more — a whole litany of things for youngsters to check out.

And speaking of checking things out, how about all those books, DVDs, CDs and games?

In hopes of encouraging youngsters to do just that, the library is developing a pilot program to reduce or eliminate many of the fines and fees they can run up.

The Oakland City Council quickly got on board with the plan, unanimously endorsing it following a presentation by Director of Library Services Gerry Garzon on July 26.

The way things are now, if patrons rack up fines of $12.50 or more, they are barred from borrowing until they bring that balance down to no more than $12. Accordingly, 58,515 people, or 12 percent of the library’s patrons, are unable to check anything out, according to a report Garzon presented.

Although the library is on a campaign to boost patronage across the board, the council and Garzon primarily addressed removing barriers to youngsters’ use.

“This is not the same environment that we may all have lived in at one time,” Garzon reminded the council, noting some families struggle with displacement, living with a single parent or grandparents, moving from one home to another or just trying to get around.

“Frankly, it’s those kids that need to be using our libraries so they become lifelong readers,” he said.

“We all realize that this is a major barrier to these kids,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is experiment and see how we can stop that from happening.”

With the council’s blessing, the library will devise specific proposals and get public input for the one-year pilot program it hopes to launch when school starts, Associate Director of Library Services Jamie Turbak said in an interview.

Among the changes being considered is raising the fee cutoff barrier to borrowing from $12.50 to $25.

Oakland’s young people are not charged late fees on books or CDs, and the library hopes to extend that to DVDs and games, Garzon told the council. Currently, the fine is $1 a day up to $6 per item for overdue DVDs and games.

Turbak said the current fine for overdue DVDs might be reduced to a quarter per day.

The pilot program also will examine how patrons are charged for materials that are lost or never returned, Garzon said.

The library currently charges the retail price of the item. However, it generally gets a price break because it buys in bulk and wear and tear is not factored in.

The library loses money assessing fines, Garzon noted in his presentation to the council. It collected $204,792 in fines in fiscal 2014-15, he said, but its 16 branches and finance office spent $304,504 collecting, reporting and transferring that money.

Although patron behavior is hard to predict, making the cost of the program hard to assess, Turbak guessed that the library’s revenue from fines could drop by as much as half. Or, if more people are using the libraries, it could grow.

Turbak said the library is on a push to become more accessible and considering some other changes, such as allowing patrons ﻿to borrow more items at once and raising the limit from 40 to 50. Also being considered are increasing how many things a patron can put on hold and doubling the amount of time people can use library computers daily, from one hour to two.

Contact Mark Hedin at mhedin@bayareanewsgroup.com or 510-293-2452.