Two boards and two millages

continued

The incumbents--Rebecca Head, Nancy Kaplan, Margaret Leary, and Prudence Rosenthal--praise library director Josie Parker's leadership and fiscal discipline, noting that she supervised construction of three new branches within the AADL's existing millage, all finished on budget and on time. They argue that if voters turn down the bond to replace the main library, the AADL will be forced to spend more operating funds on what Head calls "Band-Aid repairs."

At a League of Women Voters forum in October, Lyn Powrie Davidge described herself the "renegade in the group," because she opposes the millage. "There may be a need for a new library," she says, "but now is not the time." Davidge, who ran for the board unsuccessfully in 2010, also thinks the library needs to "communicate better" with the community--for example, she emails, by "[h]olding Board meetings in branches or other neighborhood locations."   

[Originally published in November, 2012.]