BEDFORD HILLS, N.Y. - A move to require bigger taxpayer funding of Bedford’s public libraries found broad support at a community meeting last week but also faced tough questions and calls for greater transparency.
Under the library plan, resident-voters—not the Town Board—would set the size of local government’s annual contribution to the three nonprofits. If the plan wins ballot-box approval this fall, the libraries would share $2.6 million in funding next year, a jump of more than $800,000 over the town’s current allocation.
Library trustees filed paperwork in July to secure a place on the November ballot, then made their initiative public at the Sept. 4 Town Board meeting. Last week, the library presidents—Terrie Paladino of Bedford Hills, Scott Harrison of Bedford and Ian Shaw of Katonah—hosted an information session at the Bedford Hills Community House.
Paladino told the Sept. 18 gathering that an approval at the polls will provide the libraries a “stable, sustainable and reliable source of funding each and every year moving forward.”
The libraries have already sliced up the ballot proposition’s $2,628,845 pie, a figure that officially sets the size of town’s contribution and that remains in place until changed by a future vote. Bedford Free Library would receive $766,999; Bedford Hills Free Library, $810,058, and Katonah Village Library, $1,051,788.
Taxpayers would foot the bill, $1.39 for each $1,000 of assessed value, denoted on a separate library line on a homeowner’s property tax bill. It would have no impact on tax-cap restraints elsewhere in the budget, Comptroller Brian Kenneally said.
More than three dozen residents, some with ties to the libraries, turned out for last week’s hour-long presentation and they largely applauded the funding initiative. But two longtime Katonah residents did not.
Instead, Mary Kehoe and her husband, Bob, who is director of finance for the Town of Somers, posed a series of pointed questions while repeatedly calling for fuller disclosure of library spending.
“I always use the library; I’ve always loved the library,“ Mary Kehoe said. But property taxes “have gone through the roof. . . . What I’m asking for is more transparency. Just tell us how you came up with all this.”
Bedford’s “public” libraries are in fact privately run, nonprofit organizations—association libraries—required to submit some, but far from all, financial data to the IRS on a Form 990. Copies can be searched online by library name and must also be available on request from the library itself.
“You’re asking for a lot of money,” Mary Kehoe pressed the library presidents, “I’m hoping you’ll commit to giving us more financial information.”
One exchange turned testy when she asked who owned a given building that houses a library. Shaw, the Katonah president, responded, “The building is owned by the [library] trustees.”
But he added, “I don’t want to be rude, but what does ‘Who owns the building?’ have anything to do with what we’re discussing here tonight?”
Kehoe explained. She wanted to know who would pay if, say, a boiler malfunctioned. Told that the libraries had buildings-and-grounds and maintenance budgets, she persisted, “Can we see all that [financial data]?”
At another point, Kehoe dismissed a slide showing a consolidated budget for the three libraries. “The fact is it’s not really transparent,” she said. “I see one number and then there’s no detail.”
Shaw said the libraries make all required posting and reporting disclosures. “You’re more than welcome,” he said, “to have a conversation with the individual [library] board . . . and we can have a discussion around whatever transparency that you think you’re not getting.”
In years past, as they individually appealed for more-generous town funding, Bedford libraries complained that local government’s allocations, made under tax-cap constraints, were insufficient to meet operating expenses. “We have been making up the difference through fundraising and other ways,” Shaw said.
Former Bedford town councilman Don Scott was in the audience and volunteered “a couple of observations” about the Community House turnout. For one, no Town Board member was present. And, he said, three-quarters of the people were current or former library trustees or their spouses.
Scott suggested the libraries could present some form of their unified funding proposal to the Town Board, but Shaw rejected the notion, saying, “There’s no reason to go back to the Town Board. They had their chance.”
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