Post-Meeting Analysis:

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Sometimes these library board meetings are just hard to watch. The level of incompetence and ignorance displayed by the people charged as trustees of a $12 million library system that sees nearly three quarters of a million visits each year is just staggering. Cases in point from the August meeting:

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1) The board seems poised to re-hire the same director they illegally voted to fire one year ago. How much time, energy, and taxpayer dollars have gone into this little fiasco? What an embarrassment for our community and our library. This is in addition to the loss of our Assistant Director, who, after having to endure the board for nearly a year as interim, finally had enough and left.

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Interesting to note that there was no Director's Report on the agenda. Even previous interim directors gave this report monthly. Does this mean Danny will no longer be allowed to publicly inform the board on the overall state of the library?

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2) It's clear at this point that the new NE Regional library is being stalled. The "community committee" has yet to meet. When asked recently, appointed members were told the committee would not meet until there were "shovels in the ground." However, at the August meeting, board member Ella Arsement seemed clueless about what was going on. As committee chairman James Thomas had resigned his board seat that very day, the library board president, Daniel Kelly, appointed Ella as committee chairman on the fly right then and there. The board seemed to think that library staff(??) would somehow come in and schedule committee meetings...by the time the discussion was over no one in the room could keep up with what was going on or if any action would be taken any time soon. Ella is on it, though, apparently.

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3) Board PRESIDENT Daniel Kelly mixed up the construction report for the upgrades/repairs at South Regional with the construction of the new NE Regional library. Somehow, he got it into his head that construction on NE had ALREADY BEGUN, even as Facilities and Finance Manager Larry Angelle was giving his monthly report explaining the status of the South Regional project. Keep in mind that all board members receive copies of these reports. Stunning ignorance from the man who is supposed to be guiding this massive community resource.

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And speaking of Daniel Kelly...

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4) The board meetings are now effectively run by board Vice President Stephanie Armbruster. Which isn't surprising since Kelly stated after he was elected that he would be relying on "his boy" Robert Judge to help him out. Judge now carefully sits several chairs down from Kelly, but both he and Armbruster are clearly in charge. Kelly does little more than call for votes and read from the agenda.

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The other thing on the agenda was the annual discussion of what library millage rates the board should recommend to the parish council. Last year, the board rejected a recommendation from library staff, the public, and the Lafayette Assessor to roll up millage rates in order to bolster LPL's budget and allow for things like...reopening on Sundays and funding the new library. This year, after being told by Danny Gillane that the parish council must, by state law, roll down the millages in order to collect the same amount of revenue as last year (property values have risen), chose instead to...recommend rolling millages up to their current levels. After being told this could not happen. Repeatedly. 

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It's beyond frustrating and sad to watch our once great library system run into the ground by this group of people who clearly still do not have any knowledge about how it is supposed to function. Every month is either a policy change that is detrimental to the library and the community, or a complete circus of incompetency like the one we witnessed this month.