NOTEBOOK -- Steve Marble

“OK kids, step this way. Right through the doors. There you go.

“Notice the tile. Nice stuff. These babies cost a ton. Sent a team of

city types all the way over to England to visit the quarry where the tile

was cut. Kirkstone. Top drawer all the way.

“OK, now over here. And please keep it quiet. This is the reference desk.

Kinda like a real-life search engine. Ask a question, get an answer. And

a smile. Now down there you have your computers. You can come in and get

on the Internet, do a little research, get on the old World Wide Web.

Yep. Now there’s the children’s section and, if you’ll ...

“What’s that, Joey? Oh yeah, those are the administrative offices. Lot of

important people back there. Anyway, back to the ...

“The noise? What’s the noise? Well Joey, that would be the Library Board

of Trustees at work.

“What are they doing? Well son, there doing what they always do. They’re

fighting.”

Yes, they’re fighting. In the restless quiet that envelopes the Newport

Beach Central Library, there is bad blood flowing.

The two citizens groups charged with nursing and caring for the library

-- the Newport Beach Library Foundation and the board of trustees -- have

pushed aside their manners and their better judgment in favor of a good

old-fashioned brouhaha.

The foundation is the group that helps raise money for the library. The

trustees are in the business of spending that money.

All in all, the people on these two boards are sterling citizens -- the

refined, the cultured, the sort of people you’d imagine would enjoy

spending an afternoon debating, let’s say, whether it really was Truman

Capote who wrote “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

So the notion of them fighting is a bit like having an orchestra

conductor sucker-punch the first-chair violinist in the middle of a

concert, or having a food fight break out during high tea at Sherman

Library & Gardens. These sorts of people don’t do these sorts of things.

But they are. The two groups have had a frosty relationship for months.

It may be a personality conflict. Or maybe it’s a control thing. It may

have to do with inflated egos. It may have to do with one group feeling

snubbed by the other. It may be that they simply don’t like each other. I

don’t know.

There is money involved, of course. The foundation has raised more than

$2 million, all in the name of buying books and enriching lives by

putting on literary events. Some of the money -- a lot of it, in fact --

has been tucked away in an endowment fund.

The library board seems to resent the fact that it can’t get its hands on

this endowment fund. The trustees also hint darkly that the foundation’s

accounting practices are poor, though there’s no evidence of that.

What remained of the relationship between the two groups was severed when

the library board -- that would be the spenders -- took up heavy arms and

ordered the foundation out of the library. Forget the fact the

foundation’s predecessors had actually raised the money to build the

library.

The library trustees also threatened to strip the foundation of its name

and ordered the group to hand over its money.

In the words of Jim Wood, a magazine publisher and chairman of the

library board, the dispute has escalated into a “barroom brawl.”

And in the words of Lucille Kuehn, a former Newport Beach mayor and

longtime member of the foundation, the dispute has left her “beside

myself with grief.”

The City Council, which has precious little authority over either group,

suggested that the groups needed professional help -- counseling,

intervention, therapy, a group hug, something.

Meanwhile, after it was pointed out to the library board that it really

didn’t have the authority to take the foundation’s name or money, it

softened its stance just a bit.

Rather than boot the foundation’s lone paid employee from the library, it

would settle for having the employee moved elsewhere in the library. In

other words, the library board felt the need to inflict some kind of

punishment, even if it just meant shuffling offices.

Quick, look up the word “petty.” Oh, and check out “cavalier,” too. Might

fit.

So while the refined and genteel quarrel and bicker, the library hums

right along. Kids check out books and learn and get inspired. People read

newspapers and magazines and explore the Internet. And people come to the

literacy center, seeking the ultimate power: the ability to read.

Even the ballooned egos at work here can’t mess up a good library.

* STEVE MARBLE is the managing editor of Times Community News. He can be

reached at o7 [email protected] .