BUCKFIELD — Selectmen reviewed and sent a letter to the town attorney Tuesday night asking for advice on how to get back what they thought was already theirs — the library as a town department and the land the Zadoc Long Free Library is on.

Board of Selectmen Chairwoman Martha Catevenis said the board wanted to ask the attorney how to officially declare the library as a full-fledged town department since it was granted nonprofit status by the state six years ago. She said she wasn’t trying to cause heartache when she raised the subject, but was worried about liability issues.

“A mistake had been made and we wanted to make sure it got corrected so there weren’t tax liabilities,” Catevenis said.

It was October 2014 when Town Manager Cindy Dunn discovered the conflict, according to the letter she wrote to town attorney Curtis Webber. As part of the town’s 2013-14 financial audit, it was recommended the town manage all financial transactions of the library. After meeting with the library’s board of trustees about the finance issue, she learned a former library director took it upon herself to apply for nonprofit status, which took effect in April 2009.

“(It) turned them into basically their own entity,” Catevenis said at Tuesday’s meeting. “There’s some question there — did they fall out of the town? How do we get them back into the town?”

The letter asks if selectmen can bring the library back as a town department or if it will have to go to town meeting for the voters to decide.

Catevenis and Dunn agreed the move toward a nonprofit status for the library was not ill-intended.

“As I understand it, the reason why she did this was not to separate the library from the town but to have the ability to apply for grants on behalf of the library,” Dunn wrote in her letter. “I truly believe her intentions were not of a malicious nature.”

Catevenis said that in 2009 when the nonprofit status was given, many of the grants available required the applicant be a nonprofit. Now, many of them can be granted to municipalities as well.

Dunn wrote that the town has always considered the library land town property, the librarian as a town employee and the library as a town department because Buckfield pays its operating expenses. But when she conducted a title search in January through Tower Title Company, it pointed to the property owner as the Zadoc Long Free Library and not the town.

Dunn suggested the library board of trustees sign a release deed.

“(It’s) so they can release the title to the town. It seems that it actually had not been done,” Catevenis said about the land the library sits on.

The deed also includes a clause that the trustees could be the first ones to purchase the property if the town ever wants to sell it, as long as they — or a nonprofit if the trustees decide to pass — will use it as a library.

Catevenis said the library’s nonprofit status can be dissolved easy enough by filling out paperwork.

Dunn’s letter also asked about changing the board of trustees to a town committee. Catevenis said she was fine with keeping the title of trustees if that’s what the trustees wanted to do.

Dunn said after the meeting that once she receives a response from the town attorney, she will put it on the selectmen’s agenda for a future meeting.

eplace@sunmediagroup.net

Copy the Story Link