The most important portion of Tuesday night’s Park Ridge Library Board meeting occurred at the very beginning, but it got the least attention from the assembled multitude.

It was a 45-minute presentation on modern libraries by Rick McCarthy of StudioGC architects, the firm retained by the current Library Board – that Board now being maligned by an assortment of myopic malcontents as wanting to “close” and “destroy” the Library – to advise about a planned renovation to the current building that will modernize and improve it for the entire community.

A renovated Library not just for one or two special interests intent on lining their own pockets and/or dodging $10 user fees, but for the benefit of ALL 37,000+ residents.

For most of the 40-50 folks who braved single-digit temperatures to get to City Hall Tuesday night, that presentation was just something to endure, a meaningless warm-up for the headline act that brought them there. And it showed.

As McCarthy provided a wealth of information about the current building (e.g., that it’s only 2/3 the size it should be for a community like ours), about its current inefficiencies (like all the space wasted on too many desktop computers) and the various design and furnishing changes that can make its limited space more flexible for 21st Century uses, most members of the audience fingered their smart phones, yawned or shifted impatiently in their chairs.

Once all that Library renovation talk was out of the way, however, they snapped to attention for the discussion and vote on the adoption of a Library policy addressing the continuing use of the Library by private, for-profit tutors and other private businesses.

After an hour and one-half of public comment (three times the 30-minute limit prescribed by Library Policy No. I A 14), a 6-2 majority of the Board – Trustees Joe Egan, Char Foss-Eggemann, Dean Parisi, Mike Riordan, Jerry White and this editor v. Steve Dobrilovic and Judy Rayborn, with Pat Lamb absent – rejected Dobrilovic’s proposed amendment to delay charging the $10/hour user fee; and then adopted the policy as written by a vote of 5 (Egan, Foss-Eggemann, Parisi, Riordan and this editor) to 3 (Dobrilovic, Rayborn and White).

Adoption of that policy was effectively a gift to tutors and other business people who have been using the Library as their personal, overhead-FREE business space, because neither the Library’s “Mission” nor its “Vision” include providing free space for the operation of private businesses.

The Library’s “Mission” makes no mention of “tutoring,” or of “education,” or of doing any form of “private business” on Library premises:

“The mission of the Park Ridge Public Library is to provide the community with access to information, recreation and enlightenment by providing and promoting materials, programs and services.”

Neither does the Library’s “Vision” statement, which is intended to go hand-in-glove with the “Mission”:

“The vision of the Park Ridge Public Library is to be a community resource that dynamically provides relevant materials and stimulating programs, accomplished through a friendly and professional staff in an enhanced building with reliable and accessible technology.”

Reading those two statements together results in only one reasonable conclusion: any “information, recreation and enlightenment” furnished under the Library’s “Mission” must come through “materials, programs and services” provided, if at all, by the Library’s “friendly and professional staff” – not by an assortment of unidentified (by the Library), unregistered (by the Library), unregulated (by anybody) and unsupervised (by the Library) freelance tutors having no formal affiliation with the Library.

That might explain why Trustee White wants NO tutoring or other business operating in the Library. And, strictly speaking, he’s not wrong.

But a majority of the Board was willing to compromise with these tutors and parents by permitting tutoring on the premises, albeit with registration of tutors and the payment of a $10/hour user fee.

And when such a policy first came up for a vote by the Board in October 2015, and the tutors objected to its adoption by claiming it discriminated against them, the Board compromised once again by extending the policy to ALL business people – even though no evidence was presented that any businesses besides tutors regularly used the premises for one-on-one activities.

Not surprisingly, those kinds of compromise are lost on the “me first” entitlement-minded tutors: When you’re getting $40-$50-$60 or $70+ per hour – with no overhead because your “office” rent, utilities, etc. are being covered by the Library, a/k/a Park Ridge taxpayers – your self-interest and greed are not easily mollified.

And when you’re the parents of kids receiving such services, you’re not enamored with the prospect that any Library user fee being imposed on those tutors will likely be passed on to you.

Hence the clamor from both tutors and their parent/customers.

And hence the campaign of misinformation, propaganda and outright lies propagated by those two factions in an attempt to intimidate the Library Board, intimidate the Mayor and the City Council, and to whip up public opposition to the policy – including just plain despicable lies spread about the owner of the Academic Tutoring Center who actually pays rent for office space on Main Street that includes RE taxes which flow back to the Library so that it can provide overhead-FREE space to…wait for it…his freeloading competitors.

That’s because our resident freeloaders (and their non-resident “parasite” counterparts) hate to be recognized for what they are: people intent on taking out of the system far more than they put in.  We’ll address that misinformation, that propaganda and those lies in our next post.

For now, however, there’s a fair, honest and responsible business-user policy in place at the Library.

But if the tutors and their supporters really believe all their own propaganda about how THEY – and not the Library Board – represent the will of a majority of The People, they should immediately ask the City Council to put a referendum on the November 2016 ballot that reads as follows:

“Should the Park Ridge Public Library repeal its current policy of registering and charging an hourly fee for use of the Library by private businesses, including tutors?”

We’re betting they won’t ask…because they know they won’t like the answer they’ll get in November.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor

Park Ridge Public Library Trustee

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the Editor in that capacity, and not in his capacity as Library Trustee. None of these opinions should be viewed as representing those of the Library, its Board, its staff, or any other Trustees.

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