The Trenton Times published the following article on March 3, 2013. To read the full article click here.

$200k in Trenton city funds spent to refurb, operate Mayor Tony Mack’s “learning center” libraries in 2012

By Emily Brill/Times of Trenton 
on March 03, 2013 at 7:30 AM, updated March 03, 2013 at 1:24 PM

TRENTON — Nearly a year ago Mayor Tony Mack began reopening the city’s four shuttered library branches, ignoring criticism of his plans from City Council, the independent board of the Trenton Free Public Library and the state library association.

Mack was full of promises about the buildings he dubbed the “mayor’s learning center libraries,” controlled by his administration instead of the board. Trained volunteers and a site coordinator would staff the centers in lieu of certified librarians, Mack said.

Funded by a combination of city money and grant funds, the centers would operate at a fraction of their old library budget.

A skeptical council fired back with a promise of its own: No city money would go toward funding the centers.

Ten months later, almost none of those promises has been kept.

Trenton needs this. It’s wonderful for kids to have a place to go.

Of the four former branches Mack reopened, three have been closed for the last seven weeks. Even before that, they were rarely open, neighbors said.

At the one open center, the former Skelton branch, the “trained volunteers” are actually offenders completing court-ordered community service hours, officials said. Once promised a salary, the Skelton site coordinator has never been paid. On a recent Tuesday, a city park ranger serving as a security guard ambled in around 5:30 p.m., two and a half hours after the building opened.

As for money, despite council’s pledge to not fund the centers, the city has spent nearly $200,000 renovating and operating the buildings since January 2012, according to records obtained by The Times under the state Open Public Records Act.

While Mack spoke of the learning centers as a new, less costly approach to providing library services, their current state only distantly resembles the vision he first laid out a year and a half ago.

In response to a request for records of learning center expenses, the city provided documentation of $186,135 spent on utilities, repairs and upkeep for the four buildings.

The largest single source of funding was the budget for public property, a division of the Public Works Department supervised by Harold Hall, a close associate of the mayor who formerly headed the department. More than $86,000 of public property funds went into climate system repairs, paint, carpeting and light fixtures for the centers from March 2012 through last month.

A recent expenditure out of public property authorized by mayoral aide Anthony Roberts was $8,600 in December for a carpeting job at the East Trenton center, one of the closed buildings. Roberts oversees the centers.

Other sources of funding include the budgets for the mayor’s office, administration, recreation, sewers and Trenton Water Works. About $91,000 in PSE&G bills is not linked to any departmental budget in the records provided.

Councilman Zachary Chester said council upheld its promise not to budget any city funds for the learning centers, rejecting Mack’s request for $105,340 for salaries in 2013. But the buildings must be maintained whether or not they are open, he said.

“The buildings belong to the city, so yes, the city still has to maintain the buildings,” Chester said. “And we’re going to pay for the utilities because we have alarm systems on the building. That’s a part of the city’s utility budget.”

At the opening of the Briggs center last spring, Mack said he planned to fund the centers through a combination of city money and Community Development Block Grant funds. The city money would put nine learning center employees on payroll — one senior site coordinator, four individual site coordinators and four security guards — and the CDBG funds would go toward supplies.

But council rejected Mack’s staffing budget, meaning site coordinators like Terry Jones at the Skelton center work for free.

Offenders as volunteers

Jones, who has experience working in libraries, said she often manages the two-story Skelton learning center alone. On those days, she does not allow patrons upstairs except to use the bathroom.

Sometimes she does get help: Working at the learning centers has become a way for people to perform their mandatory community service hours, Jones said and Roberts confirmed.

When Mack initially pushed the learning center plan, he emphasized that all volunteers would undergo background checks. In a brief phone conversation last month, Roberts said that they do.

“They’ve all been vetted and they’ve all gone through background checks,” Roberts said. “We made that abundantly clear at the beginning.” He declined to describe the background checks.

City Council and the New Jersey Library Association both pointed to the lack of oversight over staffing as a key reason they did not support the centers.

“There’s an issue with background checks for volunteers,” Chester said in an interview last month. “People have good hearts, but you want to make sure you don’t have someone with a (problematic) background around children, which would leave the city open to liability.”

Roberts said the centers will likely reopen when the mayor’s office announces an as-yet unnamed funding source, which he expected to happen soon.

“The mayor and the business administrator are working on a funding source that we’ve identified several months back,” Roberts said. “There’s been a deadline set, so all four will be funded shortly.”

Business administrator Sam Hutchinson could not be reached for comment.

Roberts and Mack have also previously identified federal CDBG money as a funding source. Last year, a little under $10,000 in CDBG money went to the purchase of five 55-inch LED flat screen TVs for the centers. Three have since been stolen. No other CDBG money has been spent, according to city records, but Roberts said more of the federal funding could be allotted to the centers soon.

Contact Emily Brill at (609) 989-5731 or ebrill@njtimes.com.