EDITORIAL: The Trustees of the AADL Have An Obligation To Inform Public About Crime
THE PRESIDENT OF the Ann Arbor District Library’s Board of Trustees is Prue Rosenthal. At a 2013 board meeting, a member of the public urged the AADL trustees to be more open and transparent, “asking them to allow the public to attend committee meetings, to videotape their meetings for broadcast on Community Television Network, and to explain their use of closed sessions in relation to the Michigan Open Meetings Act,” according to an account of the meeting. At yet another meeting when residents suggested that the AADL Board televise its meetings, it was Rosenthal who sent a prepared statement to be read in which she defended the Board’s policies and its transparency.
Public service is difficult, but consistent calls for institutional transparency demand answers. The public trust is earned, not appropriated, borrowed or inherited. In the case of the Ann Arbor District Library Board of Trustees, there have been repeated calls—including from this newspaper—for trustees to stop using their personal email addresses and for them to instead use AADL-provided email accounts to conduct the public’s business. There have been repeated requests from the public that the trustees televise board meetings.
The recent public revelation by the director of the AADL that there have been serious drug-related crimes committed at the library’s main branch, including the sale and use of Class A drugs (felonies punishable by fines up to $500,000 and 30 years in prison), shocked the public. That those crimes stretch back over a 36-month period, according to the Library’s director, is even more shocking.
AADL Executive Director Josie Parker told a reporter on March 18 that needles and drug paraphernalia are found in library bathrooms and garbage containers on a daily basis. She also reported that over the past 36 months, there have been five instances of heroin overdoses at the AADL main branch. She did not realize, we suspect, that she had opened the door to a multitude of questions concerning why she, as director and the trustees, as stewards of the system, had not made this information public.
Had the crimes in question been sexual assault and child molestation, and had Ms. Parker announced five instances of either had been perpetrated at her main library branch over the past 36 months, and not reported to the public, we have no doubt the community’s reaction to her public “confession” would have been much less sympathetic.
We question why no mention of the fact that the public library was being used as a cocaine drop and sale location was reported to the Board of Trustees during the course of an open meeting. We are equally disappointed that Ms. Parker did not report during the course of an open meeting the ongoing problem with the Class A drug heroin in her downtown facility. Finally, we believe that the public has a compelling need and a right to know that there have been five heroin overdoses in the main branch of the library over the past 36 months. The public needs to know that needles used, presumably, by those taking drugs have been found in the library on an almost daily basis.
If certain members of the AADL Board of Trustees were made aware of these (or any other) serious public health and safety issues and kept that information from the public, those trustees must step down. Finally, we urge the AADL to compile and release a detailed report of all crimes committed in its facilities and reported to police over the past 36 months. This way, the public can take all necessary precautions. Going forward, library patrons must be made aware of health and safety issues in a timely manner.