Letter: Questions library support

Who is the Hudson Area Library Foundation? Who do they report to? Where do they acquire their power? These are all questions that should be asked before you cast your vote for or against the library question.

The Hudson Area Joint Library board has never taken a vote for the library. The ballot questions were never approved by the board. The split funding has never been approved by the board. The increased operating budget has never been approved by the board. The NMC building has never been approved by the board. In reality, the board has no rights to own anything under its current agreement.

So, if the board has no jurisdiction in the matter, who is the Hudson Area Library Foundation? They are a self-appointed entity that answers to no one and who somehow came up with a plan to try to coerce half the cost of a new $10 million library on the taxpayers because they believe they want one. They are the good ol’ boys network in town who can get all four joint library members to agree to a ballot question that the joint library board never saw. They started a campaign without board approval and, to top it off, they got a question on the ballot in the city of Hudson that is wrong (see Hudson March 3 meeting on www.accesstv15.com).

The foundation has so much pressure on the city that the city could not do the right thing, and the right thing to do would be to pull the question from the ballot. The question is wrong, and everyone knows it. Proof of this is that the council, by advice from the city attorney, was to reopen the resolution and make a change. The proof is that the foundation’s attorney wrote a letter to the other three joint members suggesting that the explanatory statement be revised.

The proof is that both the city attorney and Bye Barsness (the crossover link to St. Joe, the joint library board and the library foundation) called me to deny any problems with the questions, but yet both attorneys suggested changes.

The new library under the current proposal is flawed, severely flawed. It is a bad plan. The proposal is asking for something to happen that the current agreement cannot legally allow. Please vote no for a plan that is being promoted by an entity that is accountable to none.

Tags: opinion, hudson, libraryfoundation, library, new