‘You really can’t fight city hall’: Richmond Hill library board chair quits over service cuts

Coun. Greg Beros named new chair of the public library board

Yorkregion.com
Nov. 13, 2019
Sheila Wang

It certainly wasn't the way David Bishop planned to wrap up his decades-long service on the public library board in Richmond Hill, but he wasn’t left with much choice either.

Bishop handed in his letter to the board and the city council on Oct. 11, putting an end to 22 years of service as a board member and 10 years as the chair on the library board.

“I don’t want to be associated with dismantling what I consider to be a well-designed, well-organized organization,” Bishop told The Liberal on Nov. 6.

His resignation came less than two months after CEO Louise Procter Maio announced her retirement from the public library service in September.

The former board chair said while there were many factors that led to the decision, he was in particular concerned about the impact of the changes to the board over the past months on the library services in the future.

Four Richmond Hill councillors have taken over the library board amid disputes over legitimacy of the appointments of some board members earlier this year, resulting in the removal of a majority of the citizen volunteers.

The two regional councillors, Carmine Perrelli and Joe DiPaola, as well as two ward councillors, Tom Muench and Greg Beros, are currently sitting on the board with two citizen members only.

Beros has recently been named chair following the resignation of Bishop.

The library board is looking to fill the three remaining seats on the nine-member board, according to the website.

But it would do little to change the fact that the four councillors have had the whip hand of the library board since the representatives and one of the citizen members would always vote the same way, Bishop said.

“You really can’t fight city hall,” Bishop said. “They’re controlling council and the council of course controls the budget and the five of them, they’d be controlling the public library board.”

What concerned him the most was the councillors’ stated intention to cut the costs on library services, he said.

Perrelli once told him, Bishop said, that he’d like to slash the cost by “hundreds of thousands of dollars” and made clear that he didn’t trust professional staff when it came to budgets.

Council also passed a resolution in August to look at the options in moving some library functionalities from the library board to the city, Bishop said, citing as examples replacing the library’s communication services or the IT department with the city’s corresponding services.

If these cuts occurred, Bishop pointed out that the public may not see much tangible change on hand, but “the library’s capacity to evolve and grow will be greatly diminished.”

“Library services is an ever-changing world,” the current chair Beros wrote Nov. 5 of his vision of the libraries. “We will be working with residents to see which services should be increased, and which should be removed.”

Bishop’s months-long wrangle with council started with the dispute on the operating budget where councillors reduced the funding allocations to the library from what was being requested, The Liberal reported.

The library board has undergone a plethora of reorganization since then and Bishop has voiced his opposition openly to several council decisions.

He also brought to light a number of possible violations of the libraries act by the city council.

“I do believe everything that happened up until August was illegal,” Bishop said, noting the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport has been contacted and has not engaged.

Earlier in May -- two months after a nine-member board was formed -- councillors DiPaola, Muench and Beros appointed themselves to the board to expand the board to 12, amid the dispute over Sunday service at the central branch.

Perrelli joined the board shortly after to replace outgoing board member Castro Liu, who was the only council member on the original board.

In July, councillors voted to further expand the board to 17 members, a decision abruptly overturned the following month due to concerns over breaches of the Public Libraries Act.

Subsequently, council decided to boot out five citizen members from the board and look for two new ones.

The two vacant positions have remained open for about three months while two board meetings have taken place with four councillors and three citizen members sitting on board.

With Bishop's resignation, one less citizen member is left on the board.

Ontario’s Public Libraries Act states that the number of municipal councillors may not exceed “one less than a majority” on the library board.