Commissioners Lambast Library Board Of Trustees
The Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners was slated Tuesday night to discuss the governance structure of the public library system and pay levels for its executive administrators. Instead, the meeting turned into an ambush of the Library Board of Trustees.
Commissioners, at times in heated exchanges, berated the trustees for not doing enough to inform the public that a plan to close half of the county’s public libraries was the brainchild of the board of trustees, not the board of commissioners. The plan to shutter 12 libraries was ultimately scuttled in favor of reducing operating hours at all branches to compensate for a $2 million, mid-year budget cut.
The initial proposal to shut down libraries, however, produced a flood of complaints. Commissioner Vilma Leake, who had requested the library trustees appearance be added to Tuesday night’s agenda, said she’s received more than 60 phone calls and 130 e-mails from people who blamed her for putting the libraries in jeopardy.
The board of commissioners sets the amount of money the library system receives, with about 86 percent of its annual funding coming from the county. In turn, the library board of trustees decides how it should be spent.
It could be argued that commissioners grossly botched this year’s budget cycle, triggering the mid-year cuts that totaled $20 million (including $2 million for the library system – about 25 percent of its remaining fiscal-year budget) and putting the library trustees in an untenable situation. The initial decision to close a dozen libraries, though, was made by the trustees, a point commissioners besieged by angry constituents wanted to make clear.
“This body, meaning the county commissioners, did not in any way vote to close any libraries,” Leake said. “And I want the general public to understand that, that they should be calling the trustees of the schools, of the, uh, libraries, so it would get us out of the business of saying we didn’t do it.”
Commissioner George Dunlap echoed that sentiment, demanding to know, “How it is that this community was led to believe that the county commission closed the libraries?”
Library Director Charles Brown said he didn’t know, but suggested perhaps it was because the library system receives the bulk of its funding from the commissioners, while Board of Library Trustees Chairwoman Robin Branstrom noted that the media had repeatedly reported it was the trustees’ decision.
But the board of trustees, Dunlap countered, didn’t do anything to correct a public perception that commissioners were to blame.
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