District Library board votes 6-1 to repay penal fines with payment plan

Sharon Peters, chairperson of the Belleville Area District Library board, said she just wanted to pay off the $122,733.64 the library received in error over the last ten years and be done with it.
She was the only no vote in the 6-1 vote at the May 13 board meeting on the motion to ask Wayne County to forego future penal fines in order to pay off what is owed.
Board member Dr. Maria Jackson-Smith at first decided to vote against the motion with Peters, but then changed her vote to join the majority.
In giving her report on the issue, library director Mary Jo Suchy said she is confident with the revised numbers. She said, after a county employee retired, the county started calculating what the court took in from traffic tickets and should have been using the percentage set by the state.
Suchy said the Library of Michigan has been exploring processes and resources that can be put into place to assist in identifying any problems moving forward and the likelihood for future errors is low, now that we all know what to look for.
“Nobody wants this to happen again,” director Suchy said, adding that the library has enough money to pay it all off at once.
Board member Joy Cichewicz maybe they should just pay it off.
Vice-chairperson Linda Priest was concerned it might make extra work for Suchy with a payment plan.
“It would be good to pay it off,” Suchy said. “Then we won’t have to worry about it any more.”
Board member Dan Fleming said he was concerned errors would happen again and there should be something writing.
“We are in a position to pay it back,” Suchy said. She said some of the libraries that ended up owing money can’t pay it all at once and will pay it back over future years.
“There’s no way to know if they will make mistakes in future years,” Cichewicz said.
“Our attorney said if we fought it in court it would cost half of our total in attorney fees,” Suchy said.
Peters noted the money they pay back will be redistributed to the libraries that were paid less than they should have been.
Suchy said an option was the payment plan where the library would have the amount owed taken out of future penal fines until it was paid. She said she would do whatever the board wanted to do.
The library usually received about $36,000 a year in penal fines so it will take three to four years to pay it off.
Fleming said if there is litigation by another board and a change in the situation, that would make a difference.
“Do you want me to ask them to take it out of penal fines?” Suchy asked.
Fleming said that was just his opinion.
“I like the idea of getting it over with and not having this mess to worry about,” Peters said, adding she sees some reluctance on the part of board members and they’ll do whatever the board wants to do.
“If there’s no interest, I’d say pay it on time,” said treasurer Tanya Stoudemire.
“If we take time, does that make it longer for libraries they didn’t pay enough to get their money?” asked Dr. Jackson-Smith.
No one knew how the county was going to handle that.
Peters said they need an answer since they have been give 30 days to either pay the amount or decide to take it out of future penal fines.
Treasurer Stoudemire made the motion to forego future penal fines in order to pay off what’s owed and it passed 6-1.
“I’m sure we can change our minds later and say we want to pay it off,” Peters said.
In other business at the one-hour-five-minute meeting on May 13, the board:
• Unanimously approved a change from the current carrier, The Standard, to Principal Financial Group for Short/Long Term Disability health insurance for the 14 full-time library employees. Suchy said the current plan through The Standard, which they had through their affiliation with MERS, has not been meeting their needs. She said there have been multiple SNAFUs, errors, decimal point errors, and sending things to the wrong place. She said the change will cut the cost per month for the insurance from the current $720.01 to $601.56 as of June 1. This will increase the coverage and the services, Suchy said;
• Heard Suchy report that the automatic bathroom door openers have been installed. She said they are keeping an eye on the bushes in the parking lot because some are brown and might need to be replaced;
• Learned the original computers are now five years old and they have money in the budget to replace them;
• Discussed the recent visit of American Library Association President Cindy Hohl, who gave a talk at the library that was attended by many library colleagues from surrounding libraries. She gave an inspiring message, participated in a children’s storytime, and received a tour of the library. Suchy thanked one of her librarians, Nakenya Lewis-Yarbrough, for inviting Hohl and planning the event. Belleville’s library was the 33rd library she visited on her national tour; and
• Discussed the President’s Executive Order impacting the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the legal challenges taken. Chairperson Peters said she was angry about the Librarian of Congress being fired without reason and, “The thorny issues at the federal level way outdo the penal fines.”