Library Will No Longer Charge Fee For Meeting Room Use

The Elmwood Park Public Library’s Board of Trustees reformed the meeting room policy to make it clear that individual residents and resident-led groups do not have to pay a fee to use a library meeting room.

At the library board’s monthly meeting, trustees added new language to the policy that requires library card holders without 501c nonprofit status to “post a deposit in the amount of $50 per instance. Their deposit will be refunded after the use provided that no damage to the facility has occurred.”

This effectively ends a six-month-long dispute over whether the meeting room policy required the library to impose a $100 fee when the Elmwood Park Advocate reserved a room for a “Community Conversation.”

It also preserves access to the meeting rooms for all residents and clears the way for the newsletter to hold its first “Community Conversation” of the year on February 21 at 2 p.m.

In June and July, the newsletter held two “Community Conversations” in the library’s main meeting room. No questions were asked about the nature of the Elmwood Park Advocate nor did the library attempt to charge a fee.

According to Consiglio, seven or eight people later realized that the newsletter was using the library’s main meeting room and questioned the “process and rationale behind hosting [‘Community Conversations’] at the Library.”

The Elmwood Park Advocate was clearly eligible to use a meeting room. So the still-unknown individuals objected to the fact that the library had not charged the newsletter. They urged the library to suppress the newsletter’s speech and assembly by interpreting the policy in an unfair manner.

Consiglio, Library Board President Chris Pesko, and several other trustees went along with this idea. The library director even proposed a new meeting room policy that seemed to be aimed at censoring the Elmwood Park Advocate. It would have given him broad power to police speech at the library. (Fortunately, the unconstitutional proposal never made it past the library’s attorneys.)

Several months passed. The Elmwood Park Advocate stood its ground and held “Community Conversations” at the library without paying a fee. However, in November, the library finally denied a meeting room reservation explicitly because the newsletter would not pay for the room.

The newsletter appealed, and the library board policy committee met in November. That meeting resulted in the temporary suspension of the meeting room fee.

In December, Illinois State Representative Norma Hernandez took an interest and contacted a library board trustee, Library Director Michael Consiglio, and Village President Angelo “Skip” Saviano. She expressed concerns about how the meeting room fee was being handled and shared “fee comparison information” so that “all parties had a clear picture of how Elmwood Park” aligned with “other libraries” in her district.

The fee was suspended until January 12, when Consiglio presented a fee change. “For-profit organizations and groups not qualifying as non-profit entity described above pay $50.00 per instance to cover operational costs for room reservations and use incurred by the library.”

The library director then shared that the number was calculated by considering the amount of people who work for the library. “You have a total amount of direct hours that are available possibly to work. You reduce it then by vacation time, sick time, holiday, and you come up with possible hours that are direct available to work, and you divide that into our levy and expenses.”

“We have about 38,000 hours available to work at this library,” Consiglio added. That calculation comes out to a cost of $63. But the library director rounded down to $50.

The Elmwood Park Advocate did a much simpler calculation and examined 46 libraries in the north and northwest suburbs of Cook County. Most libraries do not charge a fee. If they do charge, the average fee is $10-50.

Consiglio suggested the reason libraries may not charge is because they “have more money, more people, and they don’t care what they recover.”

Library Trustee Mike Monahan pushed back on the $50 fee. “We should be encouraging people to use the library space,” Trustee Mike Monahan declared. “Don’t charge for books. You don’t break down that analysis and say, you owe us a dollar to use the book.”

“You don’t owe us a dollar to use the computer in the library. We want people to come and use the space. That is the point of the library.”

Monahan continued, “So if we’re adding a $50 fee, and I want to be perfectly clear I think we are adding a $50 fee—because it’s only when it’s not readily apparent that someone has a 501c status—why are we doing that? Are we adding a $50 fee because we need money? Are we adding because we don’t want people to come here?”

A back-and-forth occurred between Consiglio and Monahan over whether the library should allow the people who reserve space at the Elmwood Park Park and Recreation Center to use meeting rooms for free. Monahan quickly answered, “Yes.”

“It’s not uncommon for government institutions that have facilities to have room policies, facility rentals for recreational programming,” added Library Trustee Jesus “Chuy” Segura, who chairs the policy committee.

But Monahan rejected the comparison to the recreation center. “We should not say we want your money for using an empty room,” and again, he emphasized how problematic it was that this fee was being considered. He said this had clearly come about because of an incident with an individual group.

Although Segura did not mention any specific libraries, he said that he had looked at 10 area libraries. Charging a $50 fee would be “comparable to all of our neighbors.”

The policy committee voted, and the updated meeting room policy passed with a $50 fee.

In between meetings, the motion was changed from a $50 fee to a $50 deposit. (Note: The change was not disclosed until after public comment so editors for the Elmwood Park Advocate spoke out against trustees and the proposed fee before the deposit was passed.)

Pesko, who previously presented a proposal with a $100 meeting room policy fee back in November, discussed the motion, which now contained no charge for meeting room use.

“The reason why we’re changing this policy, if you recall, it was not being enforced,” Pesko declared. “It’s always been the policy. It’s always been that way. Since the advocacy group came in, we found out as a board that it wasn’t being enforced. And that’s why all this trouble came.” [Pesko was apparently referring to this newsletter.]

Like the Elmwood Park Advocate stated, the library director and the library board only took an interest in the meeting room policy when the newsletter started using the room for “Community Conversations.”

Pesko said that the deposit discourages someone from not showing up or showing up with only one person when they “have this massive room.”

He also addressed other changes that were made by the library director and supported by the policy committee. In particular, the updated policy requires 501c status to avoid putting down a deposit and no longer has this “subjectivity” that led to this problem.

Addressing confusion over how to handle a deposit, Thomas Melody, an attorney for the library, said, “Just hold it. Don’t cash it, and then give it back.”

Monahan, who had objected to the $50 fee, opposed the $50 deposit. “Just take it a step further and skip the deposit.”

Consiglio agreed with Monahan. “A group that’s repeated, the Advocate, whatever, I’m not going to every month go through the process of taking a deposit. That’s a waste of money.”

“I think it’s a bad idea to have a situation where some people you ask, you require a deposit and some people you don’t,” Melody advised. “You should either do it or don’t do it.”