Library Board

I’d like to commend The Times for its balanced reporting of the controversial events and circumstances surrounding the recent reinstatement of Monterey Park’s library board (“Library Board Reinstated After Two-Year Struggle,” Metro, June 28).

As was the case in 1987 when the Monterey Park City Council majority acted to disband the city’s library board, I disagree with the archaic requirements of the Municipal Libraries Act--requirements that force the City Council of Monterey Park to hand over the taxpayers’ money to an autonomous library board in return for negligible control of the fiscal and administrative activities of that body.

Consideration of the applicability of the act to local governments in a post-Proposition 13 era, a time when the public has vociferously demanded thorough accountability from its locally elected officials in regards to expenditures of general fund monies, was, to all outward appearances, lost amid the emotional, image-manipulating accusations of the opposition.

We had our day in court and lost. I can accept that. Nevertheless, what remains hard to accept are the myriad of reports in other publications that obscured a valid legal issue in the embroidery of a pseudo-controversy.

BARRY L. HATCH

Mayor

Monterey Park