EDITORIAL

If this were a boxing match, you’d order an immediate eight-count. You’d

send the opponents to their corners. You’d take a commercial break and

pray you could restore order.

Sadly, this is not a boxing match, though it has had its jarring moments.

It is, instead, a growing, gnawing dispute between the two groups of

citizens charged with taking care of one of Newport Beach’s most

venerable and treasured institutions -- the library.

The rift between the Newport Beach Library board of trustees and the

Newport Beach Library Foundation has widened rapidly in recent days.

How wide? Wide enough that the trustees felt the need to toss the

foundation out of the library itself, snatching back the one room it has

allowed the foundation’s lone paid employee to use. Wide enough that the

trustees accused the foundation of financial mismanagement and asked the

fund-raising group to fork over all its collected money. Wide enough that

the trustees threatened to strip the foundation of its very identity --

its name.

The foundation hasn’t blinked. Its members will not hand over the money,

they say. They will keep their name, thank you very much. And if they

must move, fine. But they won’t give up their fight.

The two groups are populated with the town’s elite, people whose resumes

speak of intellect and reason. The trustees, led by magazine publisher

Jim Wood, have a basic responsibility to spend money on behalf of the

library. The foundation, chaired by business executive David Carmichael,

is in the job of raising that money.

But pettiness has contaminated their relationship. The trustees in a

series of letters and requests have made it clear that they find the

foundation an obnoxious partner and want to get their hands on the

foundation’s bank accounts, including a $1.5-million endowment fund

created to see the library through good times and bad.

The fight has spilled over into City Hall itself, where the City Council

has offered to take in the foundation and find a room for its one

employee.

What caused this rumble is murky at best. What is clear, though, is that

library trustees have succumbed to their lesser instincts. To boot a

nonprofit that has raised nearly $2 million for the library is childish.

To threaten to strip it of its name is pathetic. To wrestle away its

funds is simply not legal.

The trustees are at fault for -- as Wood puts it -- creating a “barroom

brawl.”

The City Council, meanwhile, has let down its constituents by not

stepping in. True, the council’s authority is limited with the largely

independent board of trustees and the nonprofit foundation, but need they

sit by idling like spectators at a tennis match?

Where is the council? Where is the mayor? Where is the leadership? Where

is some overriding voice of reason?

Sadly, the council’s one public bit of action to date is to suggest that

the two groups might need professional help, some counseling. Probably

not a bad idea.

Someone needs to stop the embarrassment.