Two additional appointments to the Asbury Park Library Board of Trustees has propelled its president Don Stine to offer his letter of resignation, effective Aug. 1.
The appointments were made without ‘due process’ or the consultation of the sitting board, Stine maintains in a written letter to the public published Thursday in local newspapers.
Stine said the library board was blindsided by false accusations and the new appointments during May Asbury Park City Council meetings.
“There was no due process here,” Stine said. “I’m not against more members but you don’t do it like this. You come to the board first.”
Stine said the City Council should have approached the library board before voting to increase the seven-member board to nine seats.
“If they presented this in a logical way and it didn’t look like a political takeover of the board I would be more compelled to go for it,” Stine said. “Just because you can do it doesn’t mean that you have to do it. They should have asked the [library board] about it so they had input. We already had a vacant seat on the board. Why not fill that before adding two new seats.”
The two appointments were made during a May 13 City Council meeting but questions about the Board not holding meetings due to a lack of quorum where raised during the May 27 meeting.
During the May 27 meeting Stine cleared up the misperception that meetings were not being held due to a lack of quorum by saying meetings were occasionally moved to accommodate scheduling conflicts.
While Mayor John Moor immediately apologized, he said “There are a lot of people in Asbury who see the potential of the library and they just want to see it take off.”
Both Moor and Deputy Mayor Amy Quinn said Stine was notified via telephone prior to the May 13 vote that the City Council wanted to increase the board’s size.
Moor said the entire Council approved the decision to increase the board’s size, the two appointments, and the filling of the vacant seat before he made his appointments.
“They were my appointments but I would never take it upon myself to make the decision,” Moor said.
The appointments came after the new form of government’s codification process revealed the board could have up to 9 members.
“We’ve had a lot of people express interest in the library,” Moor said. “Once we found out we could add two more members we thought why not.”
While Quinn said Stine had a valid point that they could have attended a board meeting prior to making the decision, she said during an April 29 telephone conversation with Stine he agreed to the member increase.
“He said it was fine,” she recalled.
Quinn said the two members added during the May 13 meeting were chosen due to their experience and qualifications; one being the director of the Bradley Beach Library who implemented a program that brought a mobile library and registration into the community, and the other a retired school teacher who created the free little libraries posted throughout Asbury Park.
“I think they are innovative,” Quinn said. “I think they have a lot of insight as to how to bring the library into the 21st century.”
In response to Stine’s paid open letter to the public Moor said, “Wow that’s a whole lot of words, too many for me to count.”
“Unfortunately many of them are just not true or taken out of context,” Moor said. “[Stine] talks about transparency yet he takes the remarks of two meetings and combines them as if they were one meeting which is not the truth.
“He adds words such as dysfunctional which I do not believe was ever said,” Moor said. “Don Stine seems to have selective memory of many important facts. I’ve shared emails with him showing this was not done behind closed doors and that all five Council members were a part of the process.”
Moor said the open letter made not mention of that fact that he immediately appologized after being corrected during the May 27 City Council meeting.
“Again he has a different perspective,” Moor said. “I guess I’m lucky that even after he wrote this paid advertisement he still claims to be my friend. If he did not like me I can only guess as to what would have been written.”
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