At the May West Hempstead School Board meeting, Ralph Reissman, the president of the West Hempstead Library Board, presented his annual budget to the community. As is the norm at these meetings, not many residents attended. But, if you did attend you would have been quite surprised to hear some of the things that Mr. Reissman had to say.

You may have noticed that the library board took a long time to post their budget. In fact, it came out just a few days before the joint annual budget meeting. We should ask ourselves why? What did they have to hide? Well, after attending this budget meeting, I can tell you one thing. I know that they were hiding.

During Mr. Reissman's report, he went down a laundry list of line items. He read the line for rent. It was noted that for the 2005-2006 budget, they were showing a total of $20,000 up from $12,500 per year. The printed budget stated that they paid $12,500 when they actually pay $14,400. This is misinformation, which has been allowed to reoccur for three years. After hearing this item mentioned, the school board stated to Mr. Reissman that they never asked for a rent increase nor did they ever even consider a rent increase, figuring that the library would be moving in a year or two.

It seems that the library board put this one "line item" into their budget and never even asked the school board, "Will our rent be increased?" Of course, now our community will be paying or overpaying the library an additional $5,600 of community tax dollars.

When I asked Mr. Reissman what could be done to correct this supposed error, he told me there was nothing that could be done and passed it off as a miss-communication between the library board and the school board.

The school board confirmed that there was no increase in rent a second time nor had there been any communication on the subject of rent. Mr. Reissman further replied that it had already been voted on and approved by the library board." When I pressed Mr. Reissman for more of an answer by stating, "I feel that this is mismanagement of funds," he responded by saying if I didn't like it, then I shouldn't vote for the budget.

If this letter could have been sent to everyone in our community before the library budget vote, I would have urged everyone to vote "no" on what I strongly feel is a defective budget.

Unfortunately, they plan these events close to the vote so in cases such as these, no one can be notified. I must say that I have been a strong supporter of our library. For the first time ever, this year, I followed Mr. Reissman's advice and didn't vote for the library budget. If you are as concerned about our community as I am, I urge you to join me at the next library board meetings. They'll be held at 8 p.m. on 6/27, 7/25, 8/22, 9/26, 10/27, 11/28, 12/19.

Scott M. Jablow

President, Cathedral Gardens Civic Association