Representatives of the five municipalities that make up the Community Library will be meeting tonight to see if they can come to an agreement on changes Twin lakes would like to see in the library’s administration and operations.
The meeting, which will be open to the public, will be at 6 p.m. at Paddock Lake Village Hall, 6969 236th Ave.
Paddock Lake village President Marlene Goodson has said she felt it was important that the meeting be public to gather opinions from residents, if they desire.
Twin Lakes has been contemplating leaving the joint library and forming its own library. To stay, its representatives have said, Twin Lakes wants expenditures tracked by branch to assure tax money raised in Twin Lakes is spent on the Twin Lakes branch.
A key issue during the discussions of changing the agreement is likely to be representation on the Community Library Board. When the library was formed in the early 1990s, the charter agreement called for equal representation from each municipality on the library board. Since then, state statutes have been changed to call for representation for joint library boards to be based on population of the member municipalities.
An open question is whether the opening of the agreement for the changes Twin Lakes seeks means the representation section will need to be updated. If it is updated, Goodson pointed out, power on the library board will decisively shift to Salem, which would likely have four representatives and each of the other four municipalities one. The fate of the current high school representative is unclear.
The municipalities of Salem, Twin Lakes, Paddock Lake, Silver Lake and Randall make up the Community Library. There are library sites in Salem, Silver Lake and Twin Lakes.
