Friday, May 13, 2011
An auditor spoke to the issue of a forensic audit at Thursday's board meeting.
Five new members were sworn into the board of the Morton Grove Public Library Thursday night after a spring election that swept in four of them. The fifth, Christa Quinn, was appointed at the April board meeting over the public objection of the four trustees-elect, who ran under the party name B-PAC, an acronym of the last names of Paul Berg, Catherine Peters, Mark Albers and David Calimag. The group ran on a platform of lower taxes and the retention of the current library building, and seemed to raise the specter of financial mismanagement with the promise of a five-year “forensic audit” of the library. Such an audit would probably cost in the neighborhood of $50,000, the trustees learned from Dan Berg, an auditor who annually charges …
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Morton Grove resident and library board member Laura Frisch discusses the upcoming library board election and candidates.
- OPINION
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Sunday, February 13, 2011
To the Editor-- My name is Laura Frisch, and I am a candidate for the Morton Grove Public Library Board in the April 5municipal election. In a hearing on Feb. 9, Judge Paul Karkula determined in less than five minutes that the objections to my candidacy, which were submitted by a group calling themselves BPAC, were invalid. Consequently, the Cook County Clerk ordered my name be put back on the ballot. Judge Karkula ruled that this group failed to meet the fundamental elements of an objector’s petition and dismissed the entire objection, overturning the judgment by the Morton Grove Electoral Board of Jan. 12. At that hearing three of the four BPAC candidates failed to show up. The remaining candidate, one Mark Albers, testified, “My …
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Written by Morton Grove resident and former library board member Patrick Kansoer
- OPINION
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Tuesday, February 8, 2011
In an opinion piece recently, a contributor asked the question: "What Happened to Democracy in Morton Grove?" The answer is, "It worked," and here's why. Representative government is based on rules. The rules are very specific. In the case of running for office and the steps getting to that point, the rules can be complicated. So can the job of holding public office be complicated. There is a whole body of printed rules available to every citizen that show, step-by-step, what needs to be done before you can be placed on the ballot. These are not suggestions, they are requirements. Do them the way you are supposed to, you get to put your name in front of the electorate…don't do them the way you are supposed to and you run the risk of not …
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Local students learn improvisation skills at Morton Grove Public Library.
Young comedic hopefuls flock to Chicago for improvisation training at places such as The Second City, i.O Chicago Theater and Piven Theatre Workshop. For Morton Grove teens, the same theater games can begin when they join the Teen Improv Club at the Morton Grove Public Library. Jill Wehrheim, youth services librarian and club moderator, credits Teen Library Councilmembers with the idea for starting a Teen Improv Club. The Improv Club held its first meeting Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Baxter Room. The first game Wehrheim introduced was “Only Questions.” Parkview 7th grader Jason Chung reached into a bag labeled locations and selected a haunted house as the location for the first scene. Several players walked onstage and began asking …
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Patrons to receive $1,000 worth of Playaway audio units for Morton Grove's third-place finish.
After months of promoting, voting and hoping, the Morton Grove Public Library rang up a third place in a national contest and won $1,000 worth of audio units for library patrons to use. Since early November, Morton Grove sat atop the national polling in Playaway's "Picture This Contest," as voters cast ballots from across the U.S. in support of their favorite library branch. From among hundreds of libraries, Morton Grove made the top 10 finalists with its slide presentation that involved mannequins dressed up as library patrons utilizing Playaway products. The contest organizers announced Friday that the top prize of $10,000 went to Rapides Parish Library – Westside Regional Branch in Alexandria, La. “I was disappointed at first,” said …
Renée Miller
7:10 am on Monday, May 16, 2011
Since Mr. Berg stated that there has NEVER been anything out of line in the library audits, why would we need a forensic audit. There is, at present, no money to cover such an audit and I for one would be most upset if money earmarked for REAL library needs were to be reallocated to such a wasteful activity. MGPL has a healthy budget, no outstanding debts and has had a board that has watched very… more ›