Niles Library candidates in April 4 election debate funding, staff, foreign-language books and more

Nine candidates for Niles-Maine Library Board of Trustees in the April 4 election faced off on everything from funding to staffing to the library’s collection at a March 18 debate.

The last two years, after the 2021 election, have been marked by deadlock and acrimony as one faction of three trustees fought for maintaining library services, programs and preventive building maintenance at the level they had been traditionally while another faction of three trustees focused on slashing costs. The bitterly split board argued over how many staff the library should have, whether to spend on roof repairs, the library’s use of legal assistance and myriad other matters.

Current Trustees Becky Keane and Umair Qadeer are running for reelection alongside Jason Trunco and Roberto Botello against current board Treasurer Joe Makula, Irina Byalaya, Steve Folga and Steven Yasell. Michael Movido is also running for the board, but is not affiliated with either slate of candidates. All candidates will appear separately on the ballot.

The teams of candidates running for the board echo the division on the board over the last two years. Makula, alongside current President Carolyn Drblik and Secretary Suzanne Schoenfeldt, have pushed to cut spending in almost every category and keep the hiring freeze in place in order to lower the library’s tax levy.

Keane, alongside board Vice President Patti Rozanski and Trustee Diane Olson, has focused on maintaining library services, programs, personnel and maintenance.

The debate opened with a question asking candidates what the last item they had checked out from the library had been and when they had borrowed it.

Many candidates said they’d most recently borrowed books for their children, including a Matt Christopher book (Trunco), A Brief History of Time (Qadeer) and The Avengers of Father Brown (Folga).

Makula said the last book he had checked out was in 2021, and that he mostly purchases his reading materials on Amazon.

Makula also said libraries are “slowly declining into irrelevance,” hastened by competition from Google, YouTube, Amazon and streaming services.

In response to a question about whether there should be a “community book review process,” most of the candidates said they’d trust the library staff with maintaining the collection.

“If you don’t want to read a book, don’t read it,” Movido said.

“Library staff are trained to deal with difficult materials,” Qadeer said, adding that while he thought the library should address the needs of the community, staff should be the ultimate decision-makers on the collection.

The collection’s offerings for Nobel-Prize winning books in Polish translations was a particular point of disagreement several times over the course of the debate.

Folga said the library’s offerings in this department were insufficient, prompting Trunco to rebut that library staff had found his earlier comments on the number of books in Polish to be inaccurate.

Folga got up out of his seat to hand Trunco a piece of paper and was immediately asked to sit back down.

Later, Makula said the library should increase its offerings in foreign languages. Keane asked to rebut.

“I’d like to point out what a marked difference this is from two years ago when Mr. Makula said we shouldn’t buy any more books and people would assimilate,” she said.

“That’s not what I said,” Makula replied.

From the audience, Rozanski was audible, shouting “Yes, it is!”

A 2021 Chicago Tribune story said: “During library board meetings in recent months, some members of the public have objected to comments Trustee Joe Makula made during a spring candidate forum when he suggested the library focus on teaching users English ‘instead of stocking up on books’ in other languages.”

At last week’s forum, there was some agreement across the table as well: Candidates either said they supported or didn’t know enough about a proposed law that could deny libraries funding for failure to follow the Library Bill of Rights.

“It would be a loss of knowledge if books are being taken out [of circulation] for partisan reasons,” Folga said.

Byalaya and Yasell both said they weren’t informed enough on the bill to offer a position.

Keane said she was a strong supporter of the measure and added that she was grateful to live in a state where such bills are getting consideration.

Several candidates also said they’d be interested in a bookmobile to engage residents of the library district who live further away from the library.

No candidates offered an “ideal” number of full-time staff to work at the library but said it would depend on the services the library offered and the number of patrons.

A major point of contention over much of the last two years was a hiring freeze enacted in May 2021 by four board members, who formed a majority at that time. One has since resigned. Over the 19 months the freeze was in place, library staff levels dropped by about 37%, according to previous reporting.

In December 2022, the newly formed majority on the board voted to lift the hiring freeze.

Byalaya said the library’s cost per user was out of step with how many users it has.

“We have a lot to think about... how to invite more people so the amount of staff will be justified,” she said.

Trunco, who alongside his running mates has advocated to hire back staff following the end of the hiring freeze, said more people would use the library if the institution has the staff to offer programming.

“Of course patron usage is down right now; there aren’t enough staff,” he said. “The library is a service to our community.”

Trunco compared the library’s offerings to that of a municipal service like clearing the roads.

“Services don’t make money for you,” he said. “If Niles Public Works ran out of salt in January and it snowed in February, we’d buy more salt.”

The debate was hosted by local paper the Journal and Topics.