The council voted last week to pull out from June 30 next

year, fulfilling a technical requirement of the corporation’s

constitution that required members to give 12 months

notice if they wanted to leave.

Board members have criticised the council for waiting

until the last minute to withdraw, and propose an alternative model of library management.

‘‘They’ve had six months to tell us what the benefits would be and have stalled every step of the way over that period,’’ said corporation chairman and Hepburn Shire Cr Tim Hayes.

A confidential report, which was accidentally posted on the Ballarat council’s website last week, revealed a 2009 review of library operations had found the present corporation model was unsustainable.

It said the library was under-resourced and underfunded.

Other member councils are understood to have agreed to a model that would see branch staff in each municipality employed by individual councils instead of the library corporation.

Under this system, the corporation would be retained,

with money saved from branch staff costs ploughed into buying new books and other services that would be fed to the council-run branches.

But Ballarat City Council believes more money could be

saved if a larger council took over the administration of the corporation and on-sold library services to council run libraries in the region.

But Ballarat City Cr Mark Harris said the time taken was

necessary to work out if its position stacked up.

‘‘It’s not an easy place to come to. It’s certainly got to be costed out in some detail,’’ Cr Harris said.

‘‘They’re getting 12 months notification, during that time

one would hope there would be time for dialogue.’’

‘‘We can’t make a decision for the board, (but) we can take our position to the board.’’

He said the fact the council’s decision been made when the library corporation’s chief executive officer, Tania Paull, was on leave was ‘‘unfortunate’’ but not a problem.

Ms Paull is understood to be in the United States on a

personally funded trip to research libraries there.