Arches at heart of library dispute?

Noaki Schwartz

NEWPORT BEACH -- Library foundation members are now saying they know what

is at the heart of their impending divorce with the library’s board of

trustees -- a difference in vision over the very institution that brought

them together.

Foundation member Don Adkinson said the problems with the trustees first

started when the nonprofit entity refused to support the board’s plans to

build $200,000 arches in front of the library.

But trustee chair Jim Wood -- leading the effort to make the library more

visible -- and the other trustees say the accusation is ludicrous. They

maintain the problems are simply that the board wants responsible

financial reporting and that the foundation is refusing to comply.

“It was like pulling teeth for a year just to get clear financial

reporting,” said trustee Patrick Bartolic. “The foundation should be

asking donors what they want done with the money. We could care less

about controlling the foundation’s money.”

This latest effort to explain the puzzling dispute just adds another

perspective, leaving the community scratching its head and wondering

precisely why this is happening.

The situation culminated this month when the board demanded that the

foundation move out of its library office and leave its $1.5-million

endowment fund to the library.

The fight eventually landed in the Newport Beach City Council’s lap

Tuesday. Despite insistence that it had no jurisdiction over the two

groups, the council offered the foundation a temporary office at City

Hall. And despite offers for professionally facilitated meetings,

Bartolic said the trustees had spent enough time on meetings.

“This kind of conflict when Ben Jackson was chair did not exist. It’s

only occurred in the last couple of years with a shift in the chair,”

said former trustee and foundation member Frank Lynch, adding that the

council did have the power to appoint the trustees.

The relationship between the two bodies, though independent, is

symbiotic. While the foundation raises money, it’s the trustees who

decide how it’s spent. And while the foundation wants to keep a majority

of its savings for an endowment fund, the trustees would prefer to have

the money available for more immediate uses.

The 6-year-old foundation annually donates 2.7% of the library’s budget.

However, despite the small percentage, those funds are used for some of

the library’s most popular programs, which help make it one of the best

in the nation.

The issue over the arches surfaced more than a year ago, when the

trustees approached the foundation to build a structure that would make

the library more visible.

“I just thought it would be a good idea and that the foundation would

like to use it as a naming event in their endowment campaign,” Wood said,

adding that building the arches is still on the board’s agenda. “They

refused because they said their money goes to things inside the library.”

Trustees agree the problems began a year ago when it began to request

better financial reporting in a proactive move to avoid a scandal that

could occur, should the nonprofit mismanage donor’s money.

However, they were also quick to point out that nothing had surfaced to

indicate the foundation had been doing anything illegal.

Further muddling the picture is a glowing letter the trustees sent to the

foundation just six months before the dispute publicly exploded. The

letter, signed by Wood and the other trustees, thanked the foundation for

its $100,000 contribution. The letter gave no indication of any problems

simmering below the surface.

“We were trying to be positive and appreciative,” Wood said. “It was

heartfelt. They have done some good things.”

It wasn’t until the fall, after the request to build the arches, that the

trustees’ frustration hit a boiling point. A strongly worded letter was

sent to the foundation, threatening to sever relations with it.

Since then, the effort to save the library’s good name has spiraled so

far out of control that the trustees are evicting Tracy Keys -- the

foundation’s only paid employee -- from her one-room office in the

library at the end of this month.

“This is more damaging to the [library’s] reputation than anything that

has gone on,” she said.

Tuesday, a reluctant City Council stepped in and offered Keys temporary

space at City Hall.