More than a month after a highly contentious April 22 encounter with the Nassau Library System board of trustees, members of the Great Neck Library board participated in a more conciliatory public meeting on Wednesday, May 30.
Nassau Library System board President Mike Turner opened the meeting with an apology for raising his voice at Great Neck library trustees in April after what was described in minutes of the meeting as a “lengthy and frustrating” exchange over the information the county system had provided about its fee structure.
“I want to reiterate my apology for the record,” Turner said. “At this evening’s meeting and at all future meetings I and the entire NLS board will do our utmost to maintain civility.”
An dispute over the fees paid by the Great Neck library for access to online databases and other library services has not been resolved. The library maintains that recent hikes in member support, which the county system attributes to cuts in state aid, unfairly targets Great Neck by basing fees on library budgets rather than the amount of services used. Consortium officials have stated that the hike in member support was approved in 2011 by an overwhelming percentage of member libraries, and that it is reviewing the formula used to assess fees.
The Nassau Library System is a consortium of all the county’s public libraries which provides services to and is financially supported by member libraries. Great Neck, like other county library systems, contracts with NLS to provide access to online databases used by library patrons.
The meeting did not feature direct discussion of the dispute over fees, which boiled over last year when the Great Neck library withheld a $13,000 payment to NLS until the system said it would cut off services should the library not pay the full amount owed. But the consortium’s board did hold executive sessions before and after the open session of the meeting to discuss with legal counsel “pending and proposed litigation related to a member library’s claims related to contractual revenues and services.”
Nassau Library System’s attorney declined to comment on the litigation, calling it an executive session matter. Great Neck Library board President Marietta DiCamillo told Blank Slate Media she believed the discussion was about the Great Neck Library’s request to discuss the system’s fees under the terms of its contract with the county system, and that no lawsuit had been filed.
Under the current fee structure Great Neck’s fees are projected to rise from $33,000 in 2012 to $46,000 this year, according to DiCamillo.
The consortium did share some good news for Great Neck at the meeting, releasing a document showing that the Great Neck Library is slated to receive a $15,393 reimbursement for Metropolitan Transit Authority taxes. Albany exempted school districts, but not libraries, from the tax in 2012, and lawmakers allocated funds to extend that exemption to libraries in the 2013 state budget.
