Despite protests from parents, children, state senators and a state representative, the Niles-Maine District Library Board approved a $6.6 million spending plan for the 2022-23 fiscal year Monday night a day before a legal deadline and after months of argument over spending on staff, materials, programming, preventive maintenance for the physical building and other items.
President Carolyn Drblik, Treasurer Joe Makula and Secretary Suzanne Schoenfeldt pushed to cut spending, including on such items as preventive building maintenance, and to preserve a hiring freeze enacted in May 2021.
Trustees Becky Keane and Dianne Olson voted for the plan but called it “mediocre” for not funding the 35 vacant staff positions at the library. Vice President Patti Rozanski voted no.
Rozanski, Keane and Olson have vocally opposed the spending cuts made by Drblik, Makula and Schoenfeldt for more than a year. The Rozanski-Keane-Olson bloc has advocated for funding to prevent the roof from leaking and for hiring traditional levels of staff, deferring to the leadership of library professionalson operational questions and funding items like overnight cleaning for bathrooms.
Over the past year, meetings with trustees deadlocked 3-3 have gone on for hours, punctuated by shouting. The board approved a tentative spending plan in August after Rozanski indicated that she’d vote for a budget so the library could start paying its bills but accused Drblik, Makula and Schoenfeldt of using “bullying tactics.”
Though libraries have guidelines for paying bills for a time without spending plans in place, Drblik, Makula and Schoenfeldt said they would not approve payments until the board approved a tentative budget.
Olson was the first of her side to cast a vote Monday. After some hesitation, she said she would vote “yes, for the library.”
“I don’t want to damage any more programs or services,” she said. “I would really like us to get started on a path, whatever that may be. So I’m gonna say yes.”
Keane said it pained her to vote for the spending plan even though the other bloc of trustees had raised the line item requests for expenses like materials and programming.
“The one line that they were absolutely not willing to negotiate on is the staff salary line,” she said. “And that says a whole lot and everyone is hearing what it says; that you don’t care. You don’t want the staff here.”
Illinois law dictates that libraries must pass a budget by Sept. 27 or the fourth Tuesday of September, meaning that if the trustees had not agreed on a budget Monday, they would have been in violation of the law.
The budget is worth $1 million less than the budget requested by library staff, but Makula pointed out that it still raises spending over what the board approved last year.
“This is $300,000 more than we budgeted last year,” he said. “And [it’s] $1.2 million more than we’re actually spending at this time anyway. So it’s more than adequate in that we are budgeting more than we need.”
Schoenfeldt read a statement emphasizing possible new programs for the library like live cooking demonstrations and said the trustees needed to pass a spending plan in line with the institution’s long-term goals.
“Our goal is to make the total tax package for property owners in the district less burdensome due to the variety of fixed incomes,” she said. “The library constitutes the heart of our community, but we need to stay within our budget.”
After Schoenfeldt concluded her statement, Keane, Olson and Rozanski pointed out that the library does offer live cooking lessons.
The Save Niles Library campaign of the Niles Coalition held a protest before the budget hearing began, calling for a more expansive budget that funds the 35 vacant staff positions and invests to maintain the library building, among other priorities. Activists also decried the delay in seating a seventh, tie-breaker trustee, who was scheduled to join the board last week. That issue has sparked a new round of fireworks over the last month.
Secretary of State Jesse White, acting in his capacity as the state librarian, appointed a seventh trustee on Sept. 16 to the seat that’s been vacant for more than a year—since August 2021.
Before that appointee, Umair Qadeer, could be seated at a scheduled Sept. 21 meeting, however, Makula went to court to request a temporary restraining order, which was granted by Cook County Judge Alison Conlon. Therefore, Qadeer could not vote Sept. 26 on the budget.
An hour before the meeting, people lined up to make public comments at the meeting. Elliot Osheman, who brought a gavel and a shoe to make his points against board leadership at the last meeting, returned with his gavel and a sign to hold at the meeting.
Staff members, who unionized with AFSCME in response to the changes on the board and at the institution, reported to work in their union-branded wear.
Students roamed, some toting their own signs. Parents leading children by the hand filled in the chairs that had been set up in the board room and eventually the overflow space on the library’s first floor.
Forty-five minutes before the hearing was set to begin, about 50 supporters of the Niles Coalition gathered on the library lawn looking out onto Oakton Street with their signs.
Organizer James Suh used his time with the microphone to tell the crowd about his memories of using the library as a child. His family hadn’t been able to afford many new books, he said, so he’d been an enthusiastic library patron.
“I knew where all of the Goosebumps books were, I ran straight there, I picked up the next book from the section,” Suh said. “And I literally dropped to the floor and I spent hours and hours on end reading.”
Cate Levinson and Mary Ann Rohn, two members of the library union leadership team, said “change is coming and we are hopeful.”
State Rep. Mike Kelly (D-Chicago), Sen. Laura Murphy (D-Des Plaines) and Sen. Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago) also attended the rally and condemned the actions of Makula, Drblik and Schoenfeldt.
“I have never seen a case like this where somebody doesn’t want kids to read books,” Murphy told the crowd. “We are working here so that kids have access to books.”
Murphy and Villivalam sponsored the law that empowered the Secretary of State to make appointments to fill library board vacancies more than 90 days old.
In the motion for a restraining order filed last week, Makula’s attorney argued the measure does not apply to vacancies that existed before it was passed.
Murphy said that interpretation was not in line with the legislative intent behind the law.
“The [90-day] clock started the day the governor signed the bill,” she said.
As for Qadeer’s appointment to the board, the officials said they’d never met him but they were happy to see someone of South Asian descent appointed to the board to reflect the district’s large South Asian population. They also said they were happy to see that Qadeer lived in the unincorporated Maine Township portion of the Niles-Maine Library District, where none of the current sitting trustees live.
Nineteen members of the public spoke at the budget hearing. Of those, 18 spoke against the spending cuts.
Two were Genevieve Esterling and her father Carter Esterling. Carter Esterling said he’d moved to Niles in part because of its access to institutions like the library and called the budget reductions a “deflating and long-term horrible look.”
“I think [the library] is one of the greatest resources, if not the greatest, that this village has to offer,” he said.
Genevieve, 8, asked trustees to raise money for the library so she and her friends could visit and enjoy the institution.
David Carrabotta, the only member of the public to speak in favor of spending cuts, said the library could stand to reduce its budget further, to under $1 million every 60 days.
“I’m hearing dirty bathrooms,” he said regarding comments about spending cuts to the cleaning budget. “I’ve been in the bathrooms. They’re not dirty.”
He also questioned the handful of children who made public comments at the meeting.
“All the flowery things we say and all the children we push up here and all the bullying that’s done, doesn’t change the numbers,” Carabotta said to hisses and boos around the room. “Somebody’s got to pay that bill and you know who pays their bill? I do.”
Carrabotta finished his comment by telling listeners who wanted to fund the library further to “reach into your own pocket and get out of mine – I’m being way overcharged.”
Former Village of Niles Trustee Rosemary Palicki was one of the last to speak and said the library was not the physical building or even the books it contains.
“The library is not lights and walls and chairs,” she said. “It’s the people who took the time to come here tonight. And then people who couldn’t take the time to come in during all those nights and speak for their love of the library.”
Palicki said she didn’t know if it was possible to get the restraining order against White lifted but asked the trustees to accept Qadeer’s appointment to the board.
“I’m ashamed to be standing here and having to almost beg you to do what the law says we’re supposed to do,” she said. “If you want this library to survive, get that seventh trustee here, move forward.”
The hearing on the temporary restraining order against Secretary White will take place Sept. 30 at 10 a.m.
An earlier version of this story contained an erroneous budget amount. The correct amount is $6.6 million.
