Library Trustees Plan To Meet Tonight Despite Cancellation

The New City Library Board of Trustees was scheduled to hold its annual meeting tonight at 7:30 p.m. followed by its regular monthly meeting but on Wednesday they were both postponed.  Despite that decision, four trustees still plan to meet at 7 p.m. although without a quorum of board members, they cannot take any action.

Trustee Jeffrey Greenberg said expressed frustration that the meeting has been postponed at with no explanation provided.

“I have not heard a reason, excuse,” said Greenberg. “I find their conduct to be extremely unacceptable.” 

Board Secretary Joseph Reiter notified the board by email on Wednesday evening. Library Administrative Assistant Barbara DuBois said she received the information about the cancellation on Thursday morning and that no new date for holding the meetings has been determined. She noted the library’s bylaws require the annual meeting to be held within a week. The regular monthly meeting does not have to be rescheduled within that timeframe.

Greenberg said current trustee Ed Kallen and newly elected trustees George Jacobson and Victor Berger will join him at the library at 7 p.m. The other five members, who are unavailable for the meeting, are Board President Tom Ninan, Reiter, Vice President Anthony Feliciano, Treasurer Matthew Mulrooney and Olahannan Poulose.

Ninan, Reiter and Feliciano could not be reached for an explanation of why the meetings were postponed.

“The four of us will be at the meeting,” he said. “Will we have a quorum? No. We have pressing issues that everyone needs to deal with.”

Greenberg listed those items as the library’s boiler situation and the search for a new executive director. The boiler had not been working properly and the library was trying to get it repaired instead of replacing it. The library has been without a permanent executive director since May. The interim director stepped down from that post in December and returned to her regular position.