By Igor Studenkov
For the Bugle
After a nearly hour-long discussion over how it should handle budgeting, the Niles-Maine Library Board of Trustees ended 2017 in the same place as it has been for much of the past year.
Trustees Carolyn Drblik and Dennis Martin both argued that, when the board considers a budget, trustees should have more details about how the library staff spends its money. In the past, Drblik had argued that it would give the board a better idea as to what aspects of library operations can be cut in order to reduce the tax levy. Martin argued that this would make the budgeting more transparent.
During the Dec. 13, 2017 board meeting, library director Susan Lempke pushed back on the idea, arguing that it would infringe on what the board hired her to do – manage the library’s operations. And other trustees – most notably board treasurer Tim Spadoni – wondered whether it was worth the time and effort. While Drblik considered making a motion to “create a budget process,” she ultimately decided to talk to Greg Pitz, the library’s Business Manager, before proceeding any further.
As Lempke explained during the Dec. 13 meeting, for most of her time working for the library, the process of setting the budget was largely informal, with department heads talking to the library director and figuring out how much money they needed. But that changed once she became a director.
“One of the things Greg and I set out to do is to formalize this process,” Lempke said. “We asked [department supervisors] to think ahead of what the needs of their departments are going to be and to tell us about it in some way.”
Since then, the supervisors did just that – either verbally or in writing.
Drblik said her issue with the way the library currently handles budgeting is that, she felt board members don’t get enough details about what each department is planning to spend.
“As we go through budget, we look through one line item – a number,” she said. “We have no idea what it represents; so we couldn’t even tweak numbers, because we lack that information. Budgets from other governmental agencies all begin with a process where identifying how they fared last year and what new goals or what they like to purchase for the upcoming year. We have nothing from them to understand what they’re doing now.”
Drblik said she wanted every department to prepare documents detailing what they spent the past fiscal year and what they hope to spend the next fiscal year. It would also include how much the library spent on each program and how many patrons took part in them.
“These programs you talk about – there’s a lot involved in these programs,” she said. “How do you ascertain, or justify, what we spend and what the outcome was? There has to be a report that’s submitted.”
Trustee Linda Ryan, who works as a librarian at Maine South High School, argued that much of the information about the library spending is already presented to the board every month.
“It shows exactly how much they spent this month and what they spent year-to-date,” she said. “So we see, basically, what they’re spending, plus we see the criteria that breaks it down even more once we get to actual vendors. So I’m not exactly sure what more of a breakdown you’re looking for.”
Lempke said that, when preparing a budget, she operates under an assumption that trustees are familiar with everything mentioned in those reports. She also noted that all trustees have access to copies of library checks and receipts. And she said that, during the budget process for the FY2017 budget, she specifically tried to have more information.
“If I thought I need to start with explaining piece by piece, we can certainly do it,” Lempke said. “In fact, I did try to make the binder have a lot of background information because we had some new trustees [elected].”
Martin said that he felt that having a department-by-department budget breakdown seemed reasonable. Lempke responded that, in the library, it isn’t always easy to separate out which expense falls under which department.
Martin then asked what she would do if, for example, the board asked her to cut the budget by five percent.
“It would not be on department basis, it would be on the entire library,” Lempke replied. “It would be hours the library is open. It would be something like that, not a departmental thing.”
When Drblik pressed her about the budget process, the library director explained that she had no intention of making the reports department heads submitted to her available to the board.
“One thing that I promised them is that this is for our eyes only, that they could be frank about what they were thinking,” Lempke said. “Under the [Freedom of Information Act], preliminary documents are opinions that are not FOIA-ble.”
As she saw it, this represented a trustee overreach.
“Whatever information we got from the supervisors, I try to formalize it,” Lempke said. “But I have to say, whenever you say- ‘well, I’m going to stick my nose in that, and I’m not going to believe that you, as a director, are not going to make this decision, because I, as a board member, am going to make that decision.’ – then you make me want to tell my supervisors ‘do not put anything in writing, don’t tell anything.’”
Board President Karen Dimond said that she felt that preparing more detailed reports would consume more hours, but she was willing to discuss it.
While Drblik said that she felt that Lempke’s and trustees’ comments showed that they “don’t understand how to go about a budget process,” Martin tried to strike a more conciliatory tone.
“I’m not here to tell Susan how to do things,” he said. “She runs the library, she should be able to produce a budget, she says she’s moving in that direction [of a more formal process]. Lets have her move in this direction.”
At the same time, he emphasized that he felt that the current budget process fell short, and should be discussed, and that people who were more knowledgeable about budgeting processes in libraries should be part of that discussion.
Dimond tried to move on to another topic because she “ don’t know if anything can be said in this discussion that hasn’t already been said.” However, she said that Drblik was welcome to make a motion to put an action item on the January 2018 meeting agenda. This led the trustee to make a motion to create a resolution to establish a budget process, which, in turn, led trustees Dianne Olson and Ryan to object.
“It’s not your process, but we have a process,” Olson said.
“ No!” Drblik retorted. “We don’t have a process, there’s no information given to us.”
“[Lempke] has a process,” Martin said. “Whether it’s the right process or she’s working toward it, she has a process, she should be able to present that at some point.“
After some more back and forth, Drblik decided to speak to Pritz, who remained silent throughout the entire discussion. Spadoni asked if he could be present for the discussion – which she accepted.
Lempke reiterated that, while department-based, detailed budget breakdowns are common in municipal budgets, that isn’t usually the case with library budgets.
“ This not what any of other libraries do,” she said. “In fact, I was talking with the director at Skokie [library]. Their board gets a list of 33 line items in the budget – he doesn’t even break down the departments and spending in programming or materials. It’s all just in buckets, and that’s because they know that he’s an extremely competent person. And [library] staff – they manage their departments, they judge whether their program has been successful or not.”