LOCAL OFFICER CHALLENGES MONROE COUNTY PRIORITIES

On Tuesday, June 8, CSEA Monroe County Local 828 VP and City of Rochester Library Unit President Ove Overmyer spoke before the Monroe County Legislature.  This was his 2 minute talk:

If you went to the Monroe County website today, you would know that the County Executive kicked off a summer reading program at DeWitt Road elementary school in Webster.

But what you didn’t read on the homepage is that the Monroe County Library System and specifically the Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County did not receive the county funding request it deserved for the next fiscal year. Library advocates asked for a modest increase based on usage and demand and we are getting considerably less than what we expected.

I also want you to know that this funding blunder hurts all 30 public libraries of the Monroe County Library System, not just the Central Library.

Even with using some library reserve funds to help bridge a gap for the operation of the Central Library, we still need an additional $300,000 to stay even and keep our existing staff and services in place.

This development has resulted in the proposal by the library boards to close the Central Library on Sundays this fall...a severe blow to many of us in the library community. On any given Sunday in a four-hour period, over 1,100 patrons walk through the doors of the Central Library.

Now, at the same time, there has been some media attention given to upping the salary of our Public Administrator (PA). For those who are not aware of who the public administrator is-- he is a court-appointed lawyer who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars a year tending to the estates of County residents who die without a will or an executor.

He draws most of his pay from the estates in attorney fees intended to offset office expenses, netting anywhere from a half a million dollars annually.

Our PA also collects another $48,000 a year from the county for "the operation of his office," a unique arrangement that enables him to be compensated twice for expenses his office incurs.

Now, the County Executive has asked you to double this contract to $100,000. Before the PA was appointed by the Surrogate Court Judge in January 2000, the county offered a stipend of $12,500.

That's a 567 percent increase in just nine years. Wouldn't you say that is a little excessive? Where are our priorities? Are they with one well-connected lawyer or with 1,100 library users?

Additionally, if I am not mistaken, there is a building on West Main Street which is rented to the County at a cost of nearly $500,000 a year and at last report was occupied by only 3 (yes 3) County employees.

Can someone in this room tell me why we can't even come up with $130,000 to keep the Central Library open on Sundays? Let me pose this question, if the Central Library was in Webster or Pittsford, would we even be having this discussion?  Not funding the Central Library downtown reeks of geo-political posturing.  It's offensive.

The library community is asking the County Legislature to reconsider this funding misnomer-- give us the resources we need to keep our communities whole. We need a library champion to step up-- so; who is it going to be?
 

To view past Monroe County Legislature full session meetings, you can go here.