DUMMERSTON — The Lydia Taft Pratt Library has come to an agreement with the Dummerston Community Center to trade building repairs for three years of back-owed rent, keeping the library open.
The resolution to the dispute, which had threatened to close the library on Dec. 9, has resulted in the library requesting a 71 percent increase in town funding.
The town leases the building to the community center for $1 per year, and the center maintains the property. Both the library, which sublets from the center, and the community center itself, are partially funded by the town.
While the two boards never had a written agreement, there was a “gentlemen's agreement,” which, Library Trustee Chair David Patriquin told The Commons, “got lost in the shuffle.”
When new members of the board are elected, “everything doesn't get handed down to the next one that comes in,” Selectboard Chair Lewis White added. “The next person never saw a bill for rent.”
In early July, the community center board invited the library's board of trustees to a meeting to discuss the debt and next year's rent, but only one library representative showed up.
Following the meeting, the community center sent a series of letters regarding the unpaid rent, but received no response until trustees threatened to shut off the electricity and close the library.
“What are you going to do if someone doesn't respond?” asked Jean Momaney, community center trustee.
A handshake deal
“The misunderstanding was there was never any written contract we just didn't have any fixed agreement with them,” Patriquin explained. “They didn't send us bills and they didn't ask for money until last year. It's just poor business management all around.”
Momaney said that the Community Center took some responsibility for the conflict, noting that installing a new computer system compelled her board to look at financial records anew and see that the library had not been paying rent.
Patriquin said the library board did not respond to the community center board because “we were waiting to see what was going to happen.”
“Sometimes it's best to leave things like that alone until they explain themselves,” Patriquin said.
Instead of responding to the community center's letters, the library trustees went to the Selectboard in early October to resolve “what really was later determined to be a misunderstanding,” Selectboard member Bill Holiday said.
“The Selectboard position was: you're an adult organization, you're all reasonable people - sit down with one another and sort this out,” Holiday said.
“That didn't work out quite as well as you would hope,” he added.
After receiving the letter threatening to close the library, the library trustees returned Nov. 14 to a Selectboard meeting, where a number of residents asked the board to step in and make sure the library would not be closed.
One resident, Catherine O'Callaghan, a member of Lydia's Friends, a separate group that raises money to support the library, implored the board to intervene.
“I would like to ask the Selectboard, since you own the library and support the library, to say, 'Please do not close the door that day,'” she said.
The Selectboard expressed some frustration that the two boards were not communicating.
“I tried to stress that they need to speak to each other,” White said. “If you don't pay your rent and someone is going to kick you out and they send you an eviction notice, you don't go to that person's mortgage holder and discuss it; you go to that person.”
White facilitated a meeting between the two boards on Nov. 29, where the agreement was reached.
The library's board of trustees agreed to repair five large windows in the building in lieu of the back rent, an alternative that the Community Center had proposed.
“An accounting problem and some miscommunication - all of a sudden you have the potential for a blow up,” Holiday said. “It didn't happen. What did they say in the Cuban missile crisis? Cooler heads prevailed.”
The project, which will cost in excess of $4,000, stresses the public library's already constrained budget. In the 2010 fiscal year the budget of $10,773.52 was exceeded by $1,168.01.
Town Treasurer Laurie Frechette confirmed that the library's expenses “do outweigh their income right now.”
Library to seek additional town funds
The library, which received $7,000 in town funds this year, will seek a budget increase for the upcoming fiscal year.
Library trustees estimate operating costs at $17,000. The board will seek $12,000 from the town in the next budget.
“We're asking for more this year because we have almost $5,000 worth of repairs to make on our part of the building,” Patriquin said. “We're hoping that the town is going to help us on that.”
Town officials noted the town funding of the library has been essentially unchanged for years, and that library officials had stopped submitting proposed budgets years ago.
“We as a Selectboard back then finally said if you're not going to give us a budget then we're not going to give them anything,” White said. “Then we decided we couldn't do that, but we did level the fund.”
“This year, they sent us a really great budget,” White noted.
“The increase they wanted on paper is significant,” Holiday said. “It's not a significant amount of money [...] but as a percentage of their previously approved budget it's a significant increase.”
By early January, the Selectboard will complete a proposed 2013 budget, which voters will ultimately consider (or adjust) at Town Meeting.
Holiday considers the library an “invaluable resource,” and White expressed similar thoughts.
“I can't speak for the whole board... they might have been underfunded last year,” Holiday said.
“My personal feeling is we're going to get ourselves in trouble by [leveling the budget] because it's great to do that and to say that nothing is going up, but the cost of everything is going up,” White said.
“I myself, I can see why they are asking for the $12,000,” he continued. “They are raising $5,000 themselves, and that's pretty good for a basically volunteer organization.”