What in the world is going on at the Mount Vernon Public Library? At the September 24th meeting, the board passed Resolution #053-25, which changed the board’s regular meeting schedule. Instead of meeting on the third Wednesday of every month (except for August), which had been the schedule for decades, the board reduced the number of its regular meetings from eleven to eight. Going forward, the January, March, April, May, June, and October regular meetings will be held on the fourth Wednesday of the month, with the September and December regular meetings taking place on the first Wednesday of the month. February, July, and November meetings were eliminated in addition to August.
As if this new schedule wasn’t confusing enough, an undated notice on the library’s website outlines a completely different meeting schedule, which contradicts the resolution schedule and the library’s bylaws. According to the notice schedule, the board will only hold four regular meetings a year in June, September, October, and December. The board may also conduct four work sessions in January, March, April, and May. According to the notice, the June, September, and October regular meetings will occur on the fourth Wednesday of the month, but the December regular meeting will occur on the second Wednesday of the month. The March, April, and May work sessions will be on the fourth Wednesday, but the January work session will take place on the second Wednesday. There will still be no meetings or work sessions held in February, July, August, or November. (Board Meeting Notice)
If the library’s meeting schedule is a test, we’re all likely to fail. Neither of these schedules is easy to follow, and neither one should be implemented. Will the library stop receiving bills in February, July, and November? If not, when will the board vote to approve payment for them? According to the bylaws, the board’s July meeting marks the time when new trustees are sworn in, board officers are elected, and the Treasurer is appointed. Both of the proposed schedules eliminate the July reorganization meeting when these important position changes take place. Will the reorganization meeting take place in September going forward? Will no bills get approved for payment in the first half of the year? How’s that going to work? If the board doesn’t need to meet for half the year, why does the library still need a board?
No other Westchester public library has only four regular meetings per year. Other library boards understand the importance of their fiduciary duty to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars all year round, and not just when it’s convenient for them to do so on a haphazard schedule.
On September 22nd, the library’s board voted to suspend public expression until further notice. Now they’re making their meeting schedule so confusing that the public won’t even know when to go and silently watch the proceedings. If you believe that this board’s decisions are hurting our library, please attend the Mount Vernon Public Library’s regular board meeting on Wednesday, October 22nd, at 6:30 pm in the Community Room. Come out and tell this board to rescind Resolutions #053-25 and #058-25, which suspended public expression. It’s our library, and it is our responsibility to hold the people in charge of it accountable for its care.
Tamara Stewart
Library Advocate
This library boards new meeting schedule is more confusing than a politicians promise! Reducing meetings and contradicting themselves? Makes you wonder if they’ve checked their own bylaws lately. Sounds like they’ve got more meetings about *not* having meetings. Maybe they should just hold one really long meeting where they decide *not* to meet. As for suspending public expression? That’s like putting a No Parking sign where there *is* parking. We’ll be there on Oct 22nd to show them how *we* run this library – with clarity and a lot of questions!
To whom it may concern,
The scheduling of Library Board meetings is at the sole discretion of its Trustees in compliance with New York Education Law 260-a Section 5 which specifies four (4) mandated meetings within a year’s time.
Wednesday, September 24, 2026, the Trustees voted unanimously in favor of a new meeting schedule of eight (8) within one year’s time.
The Board will meet fourth Wednesdays in January, March, April, May, June, and October; second Wednesdays in September and December.
With the exception of Committee Meetings and Special Meetings, the Board will not assemble in February, July, August, and November.
Agendas for January, March, April, May are as follows:
January: Working Session/Annual Review
March: Working Session/Personnel
April: Working Session/Policy & Governance
May: Working Session/Finance
Due to our Library’s current state of stability, it is unnecessary for the Trustees to regularly assemble twelve (12) times annually.
The new schedule enables the Executive Library Director and his Staff to serve our Patrons with a greater focus on quality assurance, technology, and innovative programming.
The next meeting of the Board of Trustees, Mount Vernon Public Library is scheduled for:
Wednesday, October 22, 2025 at 6:30pm in the J. Gary Pretlow Community Room.
As always, the public is welcome and encouraged to attend.
Sincerely,
Trustee Hope Marable, Board President
Mount Vernon Public Library
The Mount Vernon Public Library Board President, Hopeless Marable, epitomizes a disgraceful example of bureaucratic chicanery and power abuse that actively erases public accountability. Her letter, filled with legalistic smokescreens, attempts to justify a board schedule that slashes vital meetings while suspending public expression. These actions sabotage the very oversight taxpayers deserve.
Equally despicable is the choice to hold these so-called public meetings in the J. Gary Pretlow Community Room, a venue that stands as a symbol of erasure of women’s history. This shameful act is not only perpetrated but also abetted by the convicted criminal Hopeless Marable herself. The complicity extends beyond Marable to include Congressman George Latimer, the former son of Mount Vernon who is now missing in action while loudly denouncing Trump but failing to call out the Mount Vernon Library Board of Trustees for ending public discussion. Also complicit are the Westchester Democratic Party leadership from Latimer downward, all female members of the State Assembly, Senator Cousins, and the entire Mount Vernon Library Board of Trustees.
This cabal of officials has betrayed the community by silencing voices and undermining democratic accountability under the cover of flimsy legal compliance. It is an outrage that these public servants continue to cloak dysfunction in doublespeak while erasing the rich heritage and rights of women and citizens alike. Shame on them all. The people deserve better, clear governance, genuine transparency, and venues honoring history rather than erasing it.
The Board of Trustees, Mount Vernon Public Library is not, by any means empowered to “silence” anyone.
The Community has the right to attend and observe the Board’s meetings.
The privilege to speak at meeting is at the discretion of the panel and that privilege remains.
The suspension of Public Expression has been suspended temporarily while the Board is updating its Policies and Bylaws.
The new Amendments are anticipated to take effect by on or about Wednesday, December 10, 2025 when the Trustees vote during the Public Meeting.
The Board will be meeting Wednesday, October 22, at 6:30pm inside the Library’s J. Gary Pretlow Community Room.
As always, the Community is welcome and encouraged to attend 📚
Dear Hopeless,
Your recent letter is nothing short of a masterclass in bureaucratic theater. It takes remarkable skill to write so many words and say so little. You assure the community that the Board “is not, by any means, empowered to ‘silence’ anyone,” yet simultaneously boast of suspending Public Expression while you tinker with your Policies and Bylaws. Bravo. Nothing says “transparency” like a temporary gag order dressed up as policy refinement.
Your claim that the privilege to speak “remains at the discretion of the panel” is particularly rich. In other words: we welcome public voices as long as we approve them. Democracy, apparently, is now conditional.
And let’s not forget the choice of venue: the J. Gary Pretlow Community Room. A room that, as you admit, erases women’s history but hey, it’s fine because technically people can still attend. How comforting for those whose heritage you have just trampled under the pretense of legal compliance.
Your letter reads like a manual for obfuscation: long on legalistic smoke, short on substance, and utterly devoid of accountability. Threats to public oversight are not magically nullified by fancy phrasing or calendar dates. The community sees this for what it is: a transparent effort to avoid scrutiny while cloaking dysfunction in bureaucratic doublespeak.
The public deserves more than polite euphemisms. It deserves courage, honesty, and respect, qualities seemingly in short supply at the Mount Vernon Public Library Board under your watch, the watch of a convicted criminal.
Redundantly, the pause is temporary. The Library Board is tasked with conducting the business of the Library while maintaining safety, order, and efficiency in Governance.
Public comment sessions are limited public forums created at the discretion of the governing body, which retains the authority to close such forums if it chooses.
Barrett v. Walker Cty. Sch. Dist., 872 F.3d 1209
We did not write the Law on this; we are simply complying with it as Stewards of the Library that make decisions in its best interest as having been chosen by the People to do so.
Dear Hopeless and her Band of Useful Idiots,
You call it a “temporary pause.” Everyone knows what that means. You want to silence the public, claim it is for order, and hope no one notices when temporary turns into permanent. That is not stewardship. That is cowardice in committee form.
You cite Barrett v. Walker County as if that case gave you a license to muzzle the very people who fund the Library. It did not. It warned that any limits on public speech must be reasonable and fair. What is fair about cutting off the public’s voice in a public building paid for by public money?
You say you did not write the law. No one asked you to. What you are doing is hiding behind it. Every petty bureaucrat in history has used that same excuse while they chipped away at the public’s right to speak.
You were chosen to serve the people, not rule over them. The Library belongs to the community, not to your little circle of insiders. You are supposed to protect access and transparency, not strangle them under the pretense of “efficiency.”
If hearing from the public feels like a threat, then you have already failed in your duty. The Library Board exists to listen, not to lecture. The people will not stay quiet just because you decided their voices are inconvenient.
The Library is a civic space, not a private club. The only thing that needs pausing right now is your arrogance. June 2026 cannot come soon enough. And shame on all of you for erasing the legacy of Grace Greene Baker. Resign.
1). The name is “Marable”. Ms. Marable or Trustee Marable will suffice
2). The pause is temporary, not “permanent” and nor is it intended to be.
3). My colleagues are not idiots and I politely ask that you push back on pejorative language that only serves to diminish your argument
4). Agreed: “Public speech should be reasonable and fair”, which is another reason why the Policies related to public comments are being updated.
5). The Trustees of Mount Vernon Public Library are not enabled to “silence the public”; that is beyond the purview of our duties.
Trustees are tasked with Governing the Library in servitude to its Community.
“The Library Board exists” to conduct the business of the Library and you are mistaken, the Trustees do not engage in “lecturing” during the course of our Public meetings; our core focus is performance of the work and the proof is in the results.
The Library is thriving under the current Board’s panel of five (5) thoroughly committed and elected community stakeholders 📚
If this is what “thriving” looks like, then perhaps convicted criminal “Ms. Marabl”e has redefined the word.
Under Hopeless’s tenure, women’s history has been erased, the local history room sits abandoned, and the Library continues to sink under budget deficits and staff turnover. Library use statistics remain hidden behind the veil of secrecy erected by Marable and her circle of enablers. June 2026 (when her term ends) cannot come fast enough. The community deserves renewal, not concealment.
Tens of thousands of public dollars have been drained to illegally defend Ms. Marable in a second round of removal proceedings before the Board of Regents, money that could have reopened the history room. Her “101 Summit” vanity project accomplished nothing but more waste and self‑promotion.
If governance means secrecy, waste, and erasure, then perhaps the only thing truly “thriving” at the Mount Vernon Public Library is the culture of denial. The community deserves transparency, not platitudes. Good riddance to failed leadership. Please do us all a favor and RESIGN now and payback the legal fees you improperly used to defend yourself.
One can hardly claim an erasure of “women’s history” amongst a panel comprised of five (5) ELECTED women.
Thanks for bringing rise to the subject of the “local history room”. Far from the abandoned, the Board of Trustees, Mount Vernon Public Library voted to assemble a dedicated team of experts to revitalize the Library’s collections with a concentration on preserving its archives, and relics.
There are no “budget deficits” at our Library; we are by no means in “the red”; the so-called “Truth-Teller” is simply not telling the “truth”.
Equally UN-Truthful is the remark about “staff turnover”.
The Board successfully signed the Union’s last contract less than 90 days of the 2024 expiration date of our last agreement.
More than that, the Board agreed to every element of the Union’s terms. (The last contract took over EIGHT (8) years to settle.
There’s no “veil of secrecy” in terms of our Library’s “use statistics” and there’s no incentive for such a thing.
For example, Comic Expo 2025 saw well over 1000 attendees; DMX Day 2024 was attended by well over 700 attendees, as well as the 2025 Tamron Hall Book Signing event and 2025 Black History Month Celebration.
“Circle of enablers”? What on EARTH are those? 🤔
I challenge the LIE-Teller to produce an itemization of his routinely libelous remarks regarding “tens of thousands of public dollars” in legal fees…
I reiterate: “I CHALLENGE YOU TO PRODUCE AN ITEMIZED ACCOUNT”
AND I will happily wait for you to do so…
ALL THE WAY TO JUNE 30, 2031-TO BE PRECISE.
“Warmly”
Hope Marable
Mount Vernon, New York
How much has the Library spent paying Mr Brill to defend you in the removal proceedings before the Regents ? That is 100% illegal. Private counsel cannot be hired to defend individual Trustees in disciplinary proceedings. Oh because you have spent untold sums on legal fees for the vanity 101 Summit project etc, there was NO MONEY to save the history room. And you were ready to hire an 80 year old poltical apparatchik with no qualifications in conservation to oversee it. Aint that true Hopeless?
Five elected women on the board does not erase the fact that women’s history in the MVPL was sidelined to rename the Community Room for ….. Gary Pretlow of all people, emphasis on LOW. Representation is not the same as preservation. A board can be composed entirely of women and still make decisions that erase history as they shamefully did and silence public voices.
The “temporary pause” on public comment is not neutral. It denies the community its right to participate in decisions funded by taxpayers. Public comment is not a privilege granted at the board’s discretion; it is a right in a public institution. Restricting that forum undermines transparency, accountability, and trust. You fear of the public says everything – you are hiding the truth. If the board truly values stewardship, there is no reason to block community voices.But this rogue board is headed by a criminal, Aint that the truth Hopeless?
Mr. Rappaport,
I won’t discuss litigation with you, (no matter how fake and frivolous the charges are).
What I can assure you of is there’s nothing “illegal” going on at our Library and Mr. Brill is not my, or the Library’s “private counsel”.
THE LIBRARY IS NOT IN THE RED and indeed has the money to revitalize the History Room and Library funds are being spent to do so.
The services are being rendered by highly skilled, dedicated Patrons committed to helping our Library flourish…
they should be praised, not condemned for his and her sincere efforts.
Representation is not the same as preservation? I beg to differ, but that’s another topic I won’t engage in.
The Community voted for (5) individuals to Govern our Library and that’s precisely what we are doing; making decisions in the best interest OF the LIBRARY, not the self-interests of a small few that are seeking to exploit the institution in consequence of his or her individual grievances that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the LIBRARY.
Open Meetings Law
“The public has the right to attend meetings of public bodies, listen to debate and watch the decision-making process”.
The public’s voices have NOT been blocked and the Library Board is not empowered to do such a thing; the purpose of our Board meetings is to conduct the BUSINESS of the Library.