KINGSTON >> The Board of Education has agreed to renew the district’s lease of the former Carnegie Library to Ulster County BOCES for $98,473.32 for the 2014-15 academic year.
The agreement, approved by the board at a meeting Wednesday, drew objections from people who felt betrayed that there would be no district use of a building that was renovated with a bond authorized by district taxpayers.
“I will vote ‘yes’ on this, but I do so reluctantly because I think the Carnegie building, in the three years that it was used by students (of) the district, has provided benefits to a lot of students who participated in those programs,” Trustee James Shaughnessy said. “It pains me that the building is being withdrawn from use by the general student population. We are getting a rent in excess of our district’s share of the bond payments, so … that’s the reason for my ‘yes’ vote.”
The board voted 7-0 in favor of the lease, with two trustees, Robin Jacobowitz and the Rev. James Childs, absent.
District residents in February 2009 voted 1,887 to 1,302 in favor of spending $3.58 million to renovate the Carnegie building, which had served as the Kingston city library from 1904 to 1978. The structure had been vacant since the library moved to Franklin Street. It returned to school district use in September 2011, for high school arts and technology programs, until the lease with the Ulster County Board of Cooperative Educational Services was signed last year.
Funding for construction included state Education Department aid covering 57 percent of the project’s cost, a pledge from former Kingston Mayor James Sottile for $200,000 in federal Entitlement Program grants, a State Historic Preservation Office matching grant for $500,000, and a $100,000 grant from Lowe’s Home Center.
In March 2013, the school board approved an $8,433 lease agreement with Ulster County BOCES for use of the building from March 21 to June 30 for visual and performing arts programs, a computer game design class, and dance classes.
District resident Jolyn Safron told board members that some district parents were among project supporters who urged voters to approve the bonds necessary to renovate the Carnegie Library.
“As a parent who advocated very heavily for the restoration of the Carnegie building and the project that was put forward several years ago, I feel betrayed by the fact that it’s being leased to an outside agency for use this year,” she said. “Our students, other than the 16 or how many ever we have in that program, will not get to use that building. Parents worked very hard to make that facility usable and a beautiful for our community, and the fact that it’s being leased is … a betrayal of the trust of those of us who worked so hard for that, and I am very, very disappointed.”
The decision to renew the lease came out of a board executive session that state Committee on Open Government Executive Director Robert Freeman said apparently failed to comply with the state Open Meetings Law. He said discussions about property leases should be conducted in public unless board members can explain how the district would suffer “substantial” financial harm from a public discussion.
“This is a known property that they already own, that they already have a lease on, and they rent it to a public entity that is associated with the school district,” he said.
Freeman said the board may actually have hurt the district by conducting closed-door discussions about the lease.
“‘Substantial’ doesn’t mean minimal, it means ‘a lot,'” he said. “If you want to sell or lease property that you own, who do you want to know about it? Everybody. The answer is clear.”
