By Kevin Gosztola, Editor
The Elmwood Park Public Library’s Board of Trustees temporarily suspended the meeting room fee while trustees complete a review and consider changes to the meeting room policy.
During a library board policy committee meeting on November 10, right before a full board meeting, Library Board Vice President Peter Fosco told trustees he wanted more time to consider the fees, compare the fee structure to other libraries in the area, and see if they should be adjusted.
Fosco motioned for a “moratorium on the fees,” and the policy committee’s vote on suspending the fee occurred during the Elmwood Park Advocate’s appeal against paying a fee when using a meeting room for “Community Conversations.”
The motion passed, and the newsletter’s appeal was suspended while meeting room policy changes are developed by trustees and Library Director Michael Consiglio.
At the full board meeting, the motion passed with unanimous support.
Elmwood Park Advocate editor Kevin Gosztola thanked trustees for hitting the pause button and expressed relief that the newsletter will be able to hold the newsletter’s final “Community Conversation” of the year on Saturday, November 15 at 3 p.m.
The policy committee had planned to consider a meeting room policy proposal offered by Library Board President Chris Pesko that would have further created a financial barrier for informal groups of residents that wanted to use the meeting room. That, and the newsletter’s appeal, inspired multiple residents to participate in public comment.
“For months, we’ve hosted ‘Community Conversations’ right here at the library, open and respectful gatherings where neighbors come together to talk about the issues that matter to them,” Elmwood Park Advocate deputy editor Sara Lindsay said during public comment at the policy committee meeting.
“These meetings have created a sense of belonging, dialogue, and civic pride—exactly what a library is meant for. Now the library wants to charge us $100 to meet here.”
“Let me be clear,” Lindsay added. “To date, we can find no evidence that any other group has paid a penny to meet in this public space. This interpretation of the policy only occurred after our meetings began. That’s not neutrality. That’s viewpoint discrimination.”
Julia Bell, a 24-year resident of Elmwood Park who had attended multiple “Community Conversations,” reminded trustees of language that they had used while campaigning for election. She said if their words were not just platitudes they should oppose making it more costly for resident-led groups to use a meeting room.
“The way you have this policy worded is very shortsighted,” said 20-year Elmwood Park resident and Garden Club president Donna Clesen. She emphasized that if every group without 501c status was required to pay $100 then the Garden Club would have to spend $1000 a year to continue using the room.
“That really takes a chunk out of the budget [of a group] that was created by Peter Silvestri years ago, and to my knowledge has always met in [the Ferrentino] Room.”
When called by the policy committee, Elmwood Park Advocate Editor Kevin Gosztola presented an appeal. He urged trustees to simply interpret “the meeting room policy in a manner that supports the library’s mission and the principle for meeting room use in the Library Bill of Rights.”
The library’s mission statement says that the library will seek to “empower individuals, enrich lives, and strengthen our community to provide access to information, resources, and lifelong opportunities.” The meeting room policy says meetings rooms are “crucial in upholding the Library’s mission.”
‘Nobody Should Have To Pay For The Room’
Fosco opened discussion on the appeal with a statement that reflected his uneasiness with the appeal and the proposed meeting room policy change. “What I would like to do is make a motion to suspend the meeting room fee for right now until we can really look at what the story is, and if we have to rewrite it and look at it.”
(Note: The video embedded at the top of the post contains the discussion about meeting rooms that the policy committee had.)
At one point, Fosco even referred to a chart that the Elmwood Park Advocate compiled with information on 46 different libraries in the north and northwest Chicago suburbs. While he did not detail the information, this chart shows the vast majority of libraries in this region do not charge residents for meeting room use. On average, the libraries that do charge a fee ask for $50 or less, not $100.
Library Board Trustee Alice Balundis hesitated. “I think everyone knows what’s on the table. Everyone has read everything about it. I don’t know what else, what other research we can do because everybody researched and everybody brought forward what they had.”
In response, Fosco acknowledged that plenty of research had been done, however, he believed the fee structure could possibly be adjusted.
“Let me give you from my perspective how this whole thing started,” Library Director Michael Consiglio declared. “Somebody complained. I was open to charging no one because no one from the village should have to pay. I agree with the situation. Now all of a sudden I get push back from another group saying your policy says this.”
“I spent a lot of time in the last four months dealing with forty-some emails, multiple FOIAs. We got to move forward. I’m not giving in. I just want you to understand my point, my reading. Just come to my office and ask me. I’ll give it to you.” (Elmwood Park Advocate editors met with Consiglio on July 28.)
“You have to understand there’s two sides to everything, and I’m in the middle,” Consiglio added. “I would have stopped this months ago”
“Nobody should have to pay for the room,” Consiglio emphasized. Yet he said that his concern was the “security of the building.”
“Anybody can be a community group. That’s anybody more than two people. So how do I monitor? You could put anything on a reservation,” Consiglio claimed.
When residents fill out a meeting room reservation request form, as required for each reservation, they must include their library card number.
The meeting room policy has guidelines that prohibit acts, such as smoking or alcohol use. “If the organization using the room does not adhere to the rules and regulations set up by the Library Board, the Library Board reserves the right to withdraw the privilege of using the room by providing written notice.”
‘There Are Some Things That Look Nefarious Here—But They’re Not’
Security costs had never been raised as a potential reason for insisting that the Elmwood Park Advocate or other groups and organizations pay a $100 fee, but that was what Pesko contended during discussion.
“My whole thing on this was always let people use the room, but we incur costs when that happens. And I have to be fiscally responsible for this library, right?” Pesko said.
“Anybody should be able to come here, whether you’re the Advocate group, whether you want to have ICE come in and do a presentation and stage here, I’m not going to stop you because if you’re part of this community, you have a right to do that.”
“Now am I going to incur costs? Probably. I’m going to have to have our security guard here to make sure the room is setup. I’ve got liability costs if somebody using this room decides to smuggle in alcohol, and now I’ve got a liability issue,” Pesko maintained.
“So that fee, although it might be high, a lot of times that’s our break even point on the cost of the staff, keeping it on the schedule, making sure that the room can be monitored, getting it setup, getting it cleaned if somebody cleans,” Pesko added. “That’s why it’s historically there.”
It’s unclear how much is spent by the library on security when residents use library meeting rooms.
“When it all first started, it was you’re violating our free speech rights. I’m a journalist,” Pesko recalled. “So we had to make sure that our policy holds water, with Klein, Thorpe & Jenkins and our lawyers, to make sure that we’re not doing something. Maybe we do need to reword it.”
“And then it became about the fees because [the attorneys] made the determination that you’re letting people use it. You’re not denying anybody, but it’s the fees. And now people are taking the idea that the fees are the reason that we’re keeping you from having your free speech. That’s not true. We’re covering our costs.”
“There are some things that look nefarious here, but they’re not,” Pesko said, dismissing accusations of viewpoint-based censorship.
To Gosztola’s knowledge, informal groups or organizations were not told they must pay $100 for meeting room use because the library needs the money to fill a budget gap.
He said during the newsletter’s appeal, “[T]he decision to more aggressively charge fees undermines any promise to equitably allow access to library resources and services for all users.”
Pesko seemed to argue this point, mentioning that Cook County had failed to send out property tax bills. The library has been without significant funds for months. (The Elmwood Park Advocate reported on the corruption behind this mismanagement back in August when the library board grappled with the issue.)
Neither the library director nor any library board trustee had previously suggested that the Elmwood Park Advocate needed to pay a $100 fee because the library must be fiscally responsible.
But if fiscal responsibility is the issue, according to a document the newsletter obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the library has already spent $19,000 on legal expenses for the fiscal year (which runs from April to May).
Only $14,000 was budgeted for legal expenses. A sizable amount of those expenses stem from trying to suppress the Elmwood Park Advocate’s access to the library meeting room, as a handful of people had urged the library to do.
That is partly why Pesko and other trustees must monitor library spending closely until the next fiscal year rolls around, and why residents can be relieved that the library is taking a more rational approach to the newsletter’s use of the meeting room.
