If you are a regular Sunday user of the Park Ridge Library, you’ve just become a pawn in a local political battle.

That’s because the Library is scheduled to be closed every Sunday this summer, from Memorial Day through Labor Day.  And that closing for 14 Sundays is being done purposely to anger you Sunday users enough to demand that Mayor Dave Schmidt and the City Council give the Library the hundreds of thousands of additional tax dollars the Library wants, but isn’t getting, from City Hall.

The customary five hours (from noon until 5:00 p.m.) you Sunday Library users have enjoyed for more than a decade have become acceptable collateral damage to Library Director Janet Van De Carr and her executive staff (“Staff”), and to Library Board members John Benka, Audra Ebling, Margaret Harrison, Dorothy Hynous, John Schmidt and Jerry White.  And you Sunday users have become cannon fodder in their political battle with City Hall, viewed by them the way King Edward Longshanks viewed the Irish in “Braveheart”: expendable.

Why the Sunday shutdowns?

First and foremost, because the Library Board and Staff want to cause pain to the group of Library users they consider least valuable and least dependent on the programs and services Staff is most concerned about preserving and expanding – the vast majority of which are offered during the week even though Sunday per-hour Library attendance is often higher than any other day of the week.

But what is most frustrating, dishonest and just plain wrong with the way the Library Board and Staff has gone about stiffing you Sunday users is the misinformation/disinformation campaign that is being employed to actually mislead the taxpayers on what the Library is doing, and why.

For example, The Board and Staff issued a January 23, 2014 Press Release about the Library’s finances and operations that is most notable for the information it omits.

Let’s start with the fact that it makes no mention whatsoever of the cost of keeping the Library open those 14 summer Sundays, which is believed to be only about $20,000.  Nor does it mention that roughly that same $20,000 will, instead, be spent on raises for Library employees.  This Board and Staff don’t want the Sunday users or the taxpayers to think that the Library will be closed 14 Sundays this summer just so Library employees can get raises.

The Board and Staff also don’t want you Sunday users or the taxpayers generally to know that, if the Library charged users of the Library’s computers a nominal $1 fee per log-in, the Library’s own computer usage figures through February 2014 suggest that such a charge could generate over $63,000 of new revenue on an annual basis.

That’s right, folks: over $63,000.  Three times the cost of keeping the Library open those 14 Sundays this summer.  Enough to keep the Library open and pay for those employee raises.

But as infomercial king Ron Popeil would say: “Wait, there’s more!”

The Library regularly shows movies and runs a variety of programs for which it charges nothing.  Yet based on the Library’s  program attendance figures, just a nominal $1 admission fee for those movies and programs could generate another $31,000.

Don’t expect to see those figures in any of the propaganda the Library is generating to goad its Sunday users into fighting its battle against City Hall.  The Library Board and Staff don’t want you Sunday users or the taxpayers generally to even consider the possibility that the way the Library currently is being run isn’t the only way, or even the best way.  And they hate any data that suggests otherwise.

Even if it’s their own.

Which is why those figures also don’t appear anywhere on the Library’s anonymous “survey” that asks the people who have been getting free programs whether they want to start paying for them.  That survey apparently does not prevent respondents from taking that survey as many times as they want, so “ballot box” stuffing is permitted if not tacitly encouraged (despite the perfunctory “Only one survey per person, please” request).  And the Board’s and Staff’s preferred answer to the pay-to-play questions is “no.”

The survey is the Board’s and Staff’s attempt to stave off any Library funding referendum, especially in light of the recent suggestion of such a referendum by Mayor Schmidt and Ald. Dan Knight (5th).  That’s because, despite their insistence that the Library is so beloved and treasured that the taxpayers want nothing less than for the Council to give the Library whatever additional funding it asks for, none of those Board or Staff members want to give those taxpayers an actual vote on that funding via a referendum question – especially on the November general election ballot when turnout is expected to be much heavier than for our local elections in April 2015.

An actual vote – democracy instead of bureaucracy, or oligarchy – on additional Library funding carries too great a risk of the Board and Staff being proved wrong.  They know (as did the Park Board when it arrogantly refused to ask the voters whether it should spend $8 million for the new Centennial water park) that the voting taxpayers often see “amenities” where bureaucrats and sycophantic public officials see “essentials.”

It’s one thing to manipulate pawns and a rig-able survey.  It’s quite another to manipulate a majority of the voters.

Especially when sombody else is counting the votes.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

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