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Opponents to the establishment of the Lansing Public Library suffered a setback Monday when School Board President Tom Keane announced that the board would not act on a petition presented to it last month.  The petition, signed by 138 school district voters and presented to the board by 30 year Lansing resident Dan Pace, charged that the election was invalid because procedures were not in place to validate each person who came to vote.

"The essence of the advice we received from counsel was that since the proposition to establish and provide funding for the school district library was approved by district voters, the board has no authority to schedule a further vote to reconsider this question," Keane said.  "So our legal council has said that once the issue is settled affirmatively we're done.  It is now in the hands of the library trustees."

Pace received a letter from Keane on Christmas Eve that explained that a revote is out of the school board's hands, but noted that a section of state education law allows anyone to send a petition to the Commissioner of Education.  Pace sent an appeal to the commissioner this Wednesday to conform with the 30 day time limit allowed for challenging a vote.  But library officials are optimistic that the vote will be upheld.  "We had a certified, legal election that established the board of trustees," says Marlaine Darfler, who as chairman of Friends of the Library led the push to get the library vote approved, and is now Vice President of the newly formed library board.  We're certainly moving ahead until we're officially told it is being challenged."

"Any financial issues, any library operation issues are dealt with by the library trustees, not with the school board," Keane explained.  "We don't have any say over the library, so our legal council advised us that that is pretty much the end of it."

School board member David Dittman asked whether it is possible for the library board to hold a recall.  Keane replied that his understanding from the school attorney is that they can't.  "They can't until that board decided to abandon its mission, or to dissolve," he said.

While it is clear that a cadre of Lansing residents are opposed to a public library, or at least opposed to a new taxing authority, the challenge is made on the basis of voting procedures used by the school district.  The library is actually independent of the school district, but state law says the vote to establish it must be conducted by the district, because it shares the boundaries of the are it taxes with the schools.  This has led to some confusion over whether the tax is for a new school library when the district already has three -- one in each school.

Lansing residents on both sides of the controversy agree that there are problems with the voting procedures used by the school district, including school board members.  "A lot of inconsistencies happened in the voting process," Pace says.  "A lot of people were told absentee ballots were not allowed in the vote, yet there were 51 absentee ballots handed out, so people were disenfranchised.  Even Marlaine Darfler agrees that she knows of seven people that voted in the December vote that shouldn't have.  It doesn't matter whether they voted yes or no -- they voted, and that's the problem."

Darfler has said several times over the past month that something should be done to fix the voting procedures, but that she hopes the library doesn't become the 'sacrificial lamb' in the process.  The school board discussed the problem last year, but were distracted by the necessity to hire yet another school superintendent after Mark Lewis left.  Dittman asked Keane whether it is on the agenda for the board this year.

"I would hope that we could do it before our next election," Keane said.  "I'm not sure if there is enough time between now and the next election to pull that off.  But that's one of the tasks that we want to bring Mr. Helmer back to help us organize and manage that."

"It seems to me we should do something about it now," Dittman said.  "Then we won't get too close when the election comes up in May."

A few fraudulent voters have been identified in the log that people signed when they came to vote.  The issue is that while voters must sign their name and address there is no voter registration or process  in place to certify that voters are actually allowed to vote in district elections.  Problems with the log included some voters living outside of the school district and others who did not write down their full address.

That brings the process into question, but not necessarily the legality of the process.  Even Pace conceeds that the election process is legal.  Thus the jurisdiction for Pace's petition is taken away from the school board and placed in the library board's bailiwick.  "The question we asked was specifically whether we should accept that petition and do anything related to that," Keane explained.  "The advice was no."

Meanwhile library officials are confident that the vote was conducted legally, and that they will receive a charter from the state.  "We have been working with Lisa Areford, a library specialist with the Division of Library Development, and Karen Creenan from the Fingerlakes Library System," Darfler says.  "They have worked with us every step of the way.  So we are very optimistic that we will get the charter."

She says that state officials came to inspect the library a few years ago and were impressed with the job local volunteers have done.  "They were very impressed," Darfler says.  "They said, 'You dotted the Is, you crossed the Ts."  

She also says that the board has to proceed with its agenda to get the library officially chartered.  The paperwork was sent to the state by postal mail and e-mail Tuesday to meet yesterday's deadline, and other initiatives are going forward.  The library is conducting a book sale February 9th, and is initiating new programs including a women's book club.

Because the vote passed the library is beginning work on two projects funded by grants.  The first will use a $20,000 grant from the Triad Foundation to set up the Polaris library management (computer system).  A John Ben Snow grant is funding a security system for the downstairs handicap-access entryway.  "We didn't want to spend it until we knew that it had passed," Darfler says.  "We felt it wasn't ethical to start using their money and then maybe have to give it back."

If the library vote was problematic, what does that say for all the school district votes using the same procedure over the past several years?  "That's what we're leading to," Pace says.  "I met with Superintendent Grimm last week.  He wants me to follow up with him, which I think is very gracious of him.  We're going to get Lansing to be a registered school district.  I've lived here for 30 years now.  I've seen in the last decade how things have gotten so drastically out of hand.  We need more institutional control when we're dealing with a 23 million dollar budget."

Pace accuses library supporters of choosing a school district charter over a town charter because of the softer election process, and says that when supporters raised money to start the library as a volunteer venture it was with the promise that it would never go on the tax roles.  He also charges that taxpayers are taxed five times including the library tax, town money that is given to the library, county, state, and federal funding.  

Library officials say that the county, state, and federal money represents taxes Lansing residents pay anyway, and the library is a way to bring some of that money back into the town.  But Pace argues that raises taxes for all taxpayers.  "People use that theory and it drives taxes higher and higher and higher," he charges.  "That is the 'me too' attitude.  because somebody else gets it we have to have it."

Darfler says she is saddened by the challenge to the library vote.  "I have to reiterate that we had a very legal election that was certified," she says.  "We're moving ahead.  There's really nothing else we can do. We're moving on with excitement and enthusiasm.  This is happening on the side, and we will respectfully wait to see what happens."

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