Only four or five people showed up at the Lansing Central School District budget hearing Monday night. Considering that we're voting on a $23.95 million budget next week, that was low, though historically attendance has always been low. Only one candidate is running for two vacant school board seats, which means that only a few write-in votes will decide who takes the second seat instead of the community at large.
Does that mean low voter turnout? If history is a guide it very well could. That would also mean that the library's fate is decided by an unrepresentative fraction of district taxpayers. Will the controversy surrounding the library and school board election bring voters out, or will Lansing be content to let a minority decide? We won't know until next Tuesday.
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 The Library Vote
Privately and sometimes publicly someone on one side or the other will accuse the other side of lying about the library issue, of being deceptive, or spreading rumors that don't match the facts. Most of the time it's obvious what's true and what's not if you bother to get the facts. But not always.
The Lansing Star set a record last week for the most 'Letters to the Editor' in a single week, and every single one of them were about Tuesday's vote. School district property owners will be asked to vote yes or no on this proposition, put on the ballot after a petition was presented to the Board Of Education by Dan Pace earlier this year:
"Resolved, that the Lansing Community Library Center be abolished as a Public Library under the Lansing Central School District, and all funding of said library through taxation of taxable property of said School District be terminated."
The Lansing Star interviewed the leaders of each side of the argument this week. Here is what they have to say:
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Friends of the Library President Donna Scott is frustrated with accusations that nobody uses the library. If people believe that rumor she fears they will vote to abolish the library on Tuesday. She is fighting back by releasing statistics (see her Letter to the Editor ) that show exactly how many people use the facility, materials used, program attendance, and more. Library supporters are doing their best to get the facts out, and get taxpayers to vote on Tuesday.
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Dan Pace has led the fight to make the Lansing School District polls require that voters be registered. Last year he was successful in getting that to happen when the Lansing Board Of Education voted to change voting procedures and requirements for the district. The library may be a victim of this campaign. While Pace originally opposed putting another taxing authority on property owner's annual bill, he now says that it's about a certifiably fair vote.
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Next Tuesday's school district vote is a curious combination of propositions. Two school board seats are up for grabs, but there is only one candidate. A budget proposal is structured to keep the same tax rate, meaning that if all else is equal property owners will pay the same as last year. A second resolution would allow voter registration any school day. The third asks voters to decide whether to abolish the public library.
On the face of it the ballot is straightforward, but the issues are intertwined. The apparent lack of controversy about the school budget and voter registration propositions are seen by some as a threat to the library. But for some reason nobody is talking about the potential for disaster with only one candidate running when there are two vacant school board seats. A single write-in vote has the potential to turn the board in the wrong direction, that vote being the reflection of an individual rather than the Lansing community at large.
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Tuesday's School and Library Vote: Apathy And Controversy
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