Jan. 11, 2012:  The hushed precincts of the Bronxville Public Library are being disturbed by a dispute between the library director, Laura Eckley, and the library's board of trustees.  A pay raise of nearly $18,500 was given to her in October of 2011 but rescinded by the library board the following month at the request of Mayor Mary Marvin.

A lawsuit filed by Laura Eckley charges that the trustees cancelled a raise at the request of Mayor Marvin.  The raise brought her salary to $100,000 from her probationary salary of $81,640.

The suit, filed in New York State Supreme Court in White Plains by Ardsley attorney Anthony Pirrotti, seeks restoration of Eckley's initial raise plus other funds deemed "just, suitable and proper"; it also seeks a restraining order prohibiting Bronxville Village officials from "interfering" with library financial decisions.

Eckley has since been granted a $3,500 a year raise and a $7,400 bonus.

The vote to rescind Eckley's $18,500 salary, however, was not a unanimous one.  Former library board president Sean Abbott was alone among the eight library trustees to vote against cancelling the original raise.  He said the salary increase was "consistent with the overwhelmingly positive performance evaluations" unanimously voted upon by the library board in the last two years.

In addition, Abbott has charged that some of his fellow trustees have held meetings on the matter without public notice, in violation of the state's Open Meetings Law.  "In action consistent with a pattern of interference in library matters by village hall," Abbott further declares that Village Administrator Harold Porr revealed the salary cancellation to "a shocked library staff during a union negotiation meeting."

Village officials have refrained from commenting on the case on the advice of Village Counsel James Staudt.  An official reply is expected by the end of the month.  Fern Watters, the former president of the Friends of the Bronxville Public Library, a volunteer support group for the library, said her group was not involved in the library board's salary decisions.  She hoped that "this situation can be resolved quickly and in the best interests of the library."

The next meeting of the library board is scheduled for this evening, Wednesday, January 11.

Pictured here: The façade of the Bronxville Public Library.

Photo by A. Warner