The Niles-Maine District Library Board of Trustees has spent the last year and a half locked in a bitter stalemate over a hiring freeze, patron services, building maintenance, legal fees and more– but with the 2023 municipal elections approaching, a quartet of candidates for the board pledged Monday night to bring change to the library.
Current Trustee Becky Keane is running for re-election along with Roberto Botello, Umair Qadeer and Jason Trunco as a slate they’ve named “Reclaim Our Library.”
“We chose the name Reclaim Our Library because we want the community to get back the five-star institution that they deserve,” Keane told a small group of supporters outside the library. “We will dedicate ourselves to being accountable, respectful, and collaborative partners in restoring programs and supporting staff.”
Slate members said they wanted to use the library funding to support the institution’s growth and services.
“What’s going on currently is not what should be going on in the library,” Trunco said. “The library is a place to learn, to get educational needs, things that you may need from that you can’t afford at home.”
Botello said he was running because he has “heard from community members that they want our library to remain strong, vibrant, and be relevant to their needs.”
The library has been losing staff, with its most recent headcount showing that its workforce is down by about a third. Under the temporary hiring freeze enacted in May 2021, it hasn’t been able to replace them.
The library’s former executive director, Susan Dove Lempke, and its former business director, Greg Pritz, both resigned last year. Both were present at the announcement, which also featured Niles Mayor George Alpogianis and State Sen. Ram Villivalam.
“We do need to put some things back into place here at the library and make sure that it’s a good solid foundation and educational place for children, for seniors, for the village of Niles and both Niles and Maine Township,” Alpogianis said.
Alpogianis was referring to the deadlock that’s paralyzed the library since the second half of 2021 due to disagreement between two diametrically opposed sets of trustees: Keane, Vice President Patti Rozanski and Trustee Dianne Olson on one side and President Carolyn Drblik, Treasurer Joe Makula and Secretary Suzanne Schoenfeldt on the other.
Keane, Rozanski and Olson support lifting the hiring freeze and doing roof repairs, bathroom cleaning and preventive building maintenance. Drblik, Makula and Schoenfeldt oppose that.
The board is supposed to have a seventh member in the seat formerly occupied by Olivia Hanusiak, who resigned in August 2021 after helping implement the hiring freeze. The remaining board members were not able to agree on a replacement appointee to the seat, prompting the Illinois General Assembly to pass a law empowering Secretary of State Jesse White to make appointments to library board vacancies older than three months.
White appointed Qadeer, a former trustee on both the Niles Library Board and the Des Plaines Public Library Board. Hours before Qadeer was set to be sworn in, Cook County Circuit Judge Alison Conlon granted an emergency restraining order to Makula that blocked White from appointing Qadeer to the board.
Qadeer was not present at the slate’s announcement Monday due to a work trip, Keane said.
Earlier this month, members of the Save Niles Library Campaign, which formed in response to the last 18 months of activity on the board, formed the Committee to Save Niles Library, a political action committee.