Mayor Ryan’s Press Conference on Springfield Museum Association Lawsuits, Thursday, April 7, 2005
Mayor Charles V. Ryan: Well, thank you all for coming. I appreciate it very, very much.
Springfield Museum Suing City in American Arbitration Association
What I have to say is going to be somewhat astonishing and will take a little bit of time, but we’ll do our best to work our way through this. A week ago today, City
Solicitor Pat Markey was served with papers with a lawsuit started against us by the Springfield Library and Museums Association, now known as the Springfield Museum Association. They have brought this lawsuit in the American Arbitration Association which is an alternate venue to court. My preferable venue is the courts, but ..we had nothing to do with the introduction of this lawsuit. As a matter of fact, I’m kind of surprised that the press hasn’t been informed about it, but it certainly puts into motion the other things I’m going to talk about today, and so you’re entitled to know, and we clearly will be happy to make copies of the papers for you in the event that counsel for the SLMA refuses to do so.
The major thrust of their lawsuit is to ask for the enforcement of certain “contracts” or leases that were purported to be entered into in the waning days of the Albano administration. As a matter of fact, they continue to refer in here to July 1, 2003 as the date of these contracts. That’s a totally false allegation, because it’s clear from law department records that Mayor Albano evidently signed these contracts on October 3, 2003—one month before the mayoral election---certainly with any notice to me, and, my guess is, without any notice to Linda Melconian. And, as a matter of fact, there was no knowledge of the contracts until they were filed at the mayor’s direction on November 26, three weeks after I had been elected and five weeks before I was sworn in when they were advanced to the City Council to ask the City Council to rubber stamp them so that they could be then sent on to Boston to the state legislature and the governor for approval.
These “contracts” are complex. They would create a whole series of new, extremely important fundamental changes in relationships between the City of Springfield and the SLMA. The drafting of these agreements, so far as I’m concerned, was secret. I had a conversation with Mayor Albano, probably around August of 2003, and indicated to him that if anything was going to happen, I wanted to stay informed of it, because I had done a lot as chairman of the city council study committee in the early part of 2003. He promised me he would, but I can tell you that I was as surprised as anyone else when these papers were filed with the City Clerk on November 26, 2003.
Among other things, one of the documents would have provided that the City would have to vacate the main library within three years of July 1, 2003. That would mean that right now, looking forward, we’ve got about 15 months there. As a matter of fact, several days before I was sworn in, on December 31, the leadership of the SLMA held a press conference. And, in that press conference, it said that they had the right to do this, and so far as they were concerned it was no surprise to anybody, everybody had talked about it and agreed about it—which is absolutely totally and irrevocably false and I so stated at this time and even mentioned the situation in my inaugural address.
It gets somewhat confusing, because, in the latter part of July 2004, seven months after their press conference, they had another press conference and at least told the Springfield Republican that that was all a mistake, that they never said that, that it was a mis-communication, and they expected the library to stay there for as long as the library wanted to stay there. However, now, they are filing a lawsuit and asking specifically that these “contracts” and leases signed by Mayor Albano in the waning days of his lame duck administration be enforced. So we’ve gone from them saying we have three years to it was a mis-communication and claiming they never said it to now back into what is essentially a court action asking that this be enforced.
Now, I want to bring out the fact that this is the same central library that the City of Springfield in actions by the Mayor and the City Council, the entire City Council voted for a bond issue of $2.9million four years ago as the major building block in the renovation of that building. $2.9million, that’s a 20 year bond at 5% and over the course of the life of that bond it will cost the taxpayers $4.4million. This is in addition to the hundreds of thousands annually that we put into that building and the millions of dollars that we have done over a cumulative period of time. And so this is something where, this is ours, this is the people of Springfield’s, and for them to try and establish this as a right of theirs is an extremely, extremely troubling situation.
There’s another fatal flaw here. first of all, they’re claiming that this thing should go on to the legislature. It can’t go on to the legislature without the approval of the City Council. When it went to the City Council on November 26, 2003, there was an objection under Rule 20 which meant that the auditor had to give the council advice. The auditor on December 15, 2003 said that this would call for our removal from the public library. We had no place to go and no money to build a new one with, and he anticipated that it would be somewhere between $25million and $50million, and he advised the City Council to not move forward on it. The City Council tabled it. It’s still on the table. That’s right where it is right now.
So we have “contracts” in which they keep talking about the fact that the “City” promised that they would do this. They know, or at lease their attorneys know, that in a situation like that, the “City” is not just the mayor. The mayor has enormous powers, but the mayor doesn’t have the power all by himself or herself to give away the assets of this city. And so you have to have the cooperation of the of the mayor and the city council. That never happened. It’s sitting on the table.
Furthermore, the ordinance that was enacted by the City Council in the middle of 2003, creating the Library Department and the Library Commission, provided very, very clearly that any contract having to do with the assets or the disposal or the operation of the public library system had to be approved by the Library Commission. Not only did this not ever go to the library commission, when the library commission heard about it as all of us did through the press after the filing of late November 2003, the Library Commission which at that time had five people, all of whom had been appointed by Mayor Albano, unanimously repudiated that provision. So we have something where this law suit keeps claiming that the city had agreed to all of these things, and really all that they had is a backdated series of “contracts” signed by the Mayor without any action, or knowledge, on the part of either the Library Commission or the City Council.
I can assure you that we will contest this lawsuit. I consider it—and I’m a lawyer of over 50 years experience—a frivolous, spurious action, and I cannot understand for the life of me whatever motivated the decision to bring this lawsuit.
Springfield Museum Improperly Deaccessions Rare Books from City Library
Now we go to chapter two. The Springfield library for generations has had what it calls a rare book collection. And this rare book collection has always been maintained up at the library on the fourth floor in the rare book room. It is not only books and volumes, it has some objects of art, and it’s a very, very precious and wonderful part of our heritage. The rare book room was on the fourth floor of the library. When the renovations started about five years ago, it was decided—prudently, reasonably, I would think—to remove contents from the rare book room and put them over in different parts of the museum complex which had room for these valuable assets.
I have here, for the examination of the press later on, the rare books inventory or the inventory of the objects that were in that room. It’s a very, very comprehensive and exciting inventory. As I say, it’s a rich part of Springfield’s treasure and Springfield’s heritage. But the point I’m making to you right now is that five years ago, the physical possession went to another building on the Quadrangle for the understandable reason that the city was interested in getting the building itself renovated. I don’t think anybody ever had any nervousness about that and fully anticipated that the contents would come back when it was time to bring them back.
In any event, three weeks ago, a telephone call came to [library director] Emily Bader’s secretary at the library department from a gentleman, I think, from Texas?...from some other part of the United States looking for some information about some rare books that he had purchased ostensibly from the Springfield public library. I have here hand-outs which I will give to the press which is a pretty good analysis of what we’re talking about. There were some 20 volumes and there were all sorts of what they call plates, but really are drawings or illustrations of the American Indians, a rich part of the history of our nation. These works were created probably about 90 to 95 years ago. The gentleman who produced this was Edward Curtis, and it really is of the quality and significance of the Audubon works which we all know a little more about.
The gentleman indicated that he had bought these works which had stamped all over them the mark “Springfield Public Library” through Christie’s Auction House...in December of 2004, and he was calling because he wanted to get some more information about Mr. Curtis or about the collection or whatever. This was a collector, a distinguished man so far as we know that was just kind of following what seemed to be very apparent. He had bought these things and paid a significant price for them. He wanted further information, a very normal thing to do.
And when he called, he shocked not only Emily’s secretary, but Emily, everybody else in that building and certainly everybody else in this office also, because it turns out that the gentleman paid $680,000 for the Curtis collection, and we haven’t received a penny. We haven’t been told of it. This was a deep dark secret, and, frankly, I don’t think that we would have found out until a) the library’d gotten to the point of asking for the return of the contents of the rare book room or until somebody else had come along and told us they had bought some of the assets from that collection.
2005 Negotiations between City and SMA on Mason Square Library and Other Matters
Now, the interesting part of this is that for the first three months of this year, I have had a series of negotiations with the chairman of the SLMA, Mike Wallace. And the reason for that is—and I took the initiative on this—we have a lot of unfinished business that we have got to get through with the SLMA about buildings, contents, understandings, and so on. 2004 was a very busy year around this city--we are in insolvency, we are under a control board--but I started this year with the private resolution that one of the things I would do was move forward and try as best I could to constructively meet with the leadership of the SLMA to begin to resolve some of these issues.
And, so what I felt is that the one that offended me the most--or that I felt was really the litmus test that we had to resolve in the beginning and that if we couldn’t do that we couldn’t do anything--and that was the issue of the Mason Square library. And so I reached out to Mr. Wallace. I asked him to come in. We met. The meetings certainly were cordial and mutually respectful, but I told him that I wanted to, you know, put a full court press on resolving our problems, that we had to do Mason Square first, that if we couldn’t do Mason Square, we couldn’t do anything. And, you know, he reciprocated, and so over a period of at least eight, maybe ten weeks, we have had a half a dozen meetings on the issue of Mason Square, and, in these meetings, not one word was ever said about the disposition of the rare books for $680,000. I had no idea that this had happened until we received a call from Emily Bader a couple of weeks ago with the knowledge that she had received through the phone call by the purchaser.
And so I wrote a quick letter to Mr. Wallace telling him how offended I was, how shocked I was. I told him that this was absolutely improper and that we would have to have assurances from the board that they wouldn’t do any more, because, as I indicated to you before, there’s a lot of other assets there, too. And they’ve got possession of them so we don’t know what else, if anything, they are trying to sell or actually have sold. And so I said I wanted to speak with him as quickly as possible.
He did not respond to that letter, and so several days later, I asked [my secretary] Michelle [Webber] to call him and set up an appointment. He came in here several days after that. And I told him face to face how shocked and offended I was not only by what they did, but by the fact that this had been kept secret, that these were assets that clearly were assets of the Springfield library, and they are so marked, and they are so catalogued, and this has been the ownership down through the years of the Springfield library owning these assets. There were certain assets up there that were museum assets, some were library assets. And by the time I met with him, I had the records from Emily Bader, and so we knew exactly what the situation was.
I knew what the procedures were and the trustees’ votes were which indicate that any time you’re going to dispose of property that you’ve got to be able to go through appropriate sub-committees and finally you have a meeting and a decision and then when you do so, if you sell library assets, the proceeds from the sale of those library assets would go to the library. If you sell museum assets, the proceeds would go to the museums. In this case they sold library assets, and the proceeds evidently went to the museums. They certainly didn’t come to the library, and so I told him of all of this.
And I told him again in a desperate, in a desperate last ditch attempt to try and see if we had something we could build on in our discussions of Mason Square, I said to him several things: The $680,000 has got to go into escrow. I need a written commitment from your organization that you will sell no more. And we have got to sit down—“we” meaning both sides—and negotiate in good faith the ownership and the rights with respect to these assets or the proceeds from these assets. Essentially, the answer was this lawsuit arrived a day and a half later.
And I would say to you that that lawsuit wasn’t prepared in a day and a half. I would say to you that when he was in my office and we’re having this discussion again, it was something that he knew more than he was telling. He had to have known that this lawsuit was being prepared by their law firm, and, as I say, it was delivered to Mr. Markey a day or two later. Interestingly enough, David Shrair who was their lawyer was in my office two days before the papers were delivered on a couple of other matters he wanted to see me about involving other clients of his, and again, he said nothing. And so, we find ourselves now with this unusual situation that we’re faced with.
Mason Square Sale, Status and Negotiations
Now let me tell you what we were doing with the negotiations about Mason Square. With Mason Square, I told him that the bottom line (this goes back to January), the bottom line was that if we were going to have a constructive relationship, the people of the Mason Square neighborhood—and it’s identified in a geographic terms as comprising about 26,000 individuals---had to have a library restored.
You may remember that when this whole Urban League transfer happened in April, or buy and sell happened, in April 2003, the rationale for it is that this was going to be a wonderful thing and was going to build the library capacity in Mason Square. This was ironic, because at least a month prior to that signing of the contract, the City Council by a 9-0 vote had established a sub-committee and given it the charge to look at the feasibility of the City taking over all of the libraries. And so, in spite of the fact that you had that very, very important indication of where the city leadership really wanted to go, they decided to sell this property—again in the dead of the night, no notice to anybody, no notice to the City Council which had a year and a half before put in a significant bond issue for that particular building—and in the mean time...we find out, and this is some papers which we’ll show you later too, that Emily Bader has given us which really indicate that over the last year and a half, the Mason Square Library which is staffed by our people at the expense to the City is really something in name only. The vitality of a library which we need in that neighborhood, which we have in every other neighborhood, has been absolutely destroyed, absolutely destroyed and in criterion after criterion. We have a very small telephone booth of space that we’re allowed to operate in, and what we have seen is the demise of the Mason Square branch library in the last year and a half to two years, because of this decision.
It’s hard to believe that a community which desperately needs the tender loving care and the assets and the help that can be given to a community by a fully functioning public library would find itself, of all things, deprived of it when they were better off financially than every other neighborhood in the city. Why? Because fifty years ago, a wonderful woman who lived in that neighborhood thought enough of that need to leave her entire estate to the SLMA for the express purpose, to hold it in trust for the establishment and maintenance of a branch library in the Winchester Square, now Mason Square,neighborhood. So this was a gift, but it was a gift that directed how it was going to be spent. And at the time that this was all done two years ago, there was between $2.5 million and $3million dollars in that account. There was no other branch library in Springfield that had anything like that, and so if there was going to be any branch library that was healthy economically in troubled times, it was the Mason Square Library.
And then, the City indicates, as I have said, that it’s coming forward with a significant feasibility study on whether or not we would take it all over, and in that kind of climate, that kind of environment, they sold the property. They not only sold the property, they in essence gave it away, because the property is probably worth, I would say, $2million. They sold it for $700,000. We got none of the proceeds of that in spite of the fact that a year and a half before, our City Council, at their request, at the request of the SLMA,had bonded for $575,000 for the renovations of the Mason Square library. that’s a 20 year bond that over the course of the 20 years, it will cost us $930,000. And we’ve lost the building. And, I can tell you, we’re only in about year 4, and so the taxpayers of Springfield for the next 16 years will continue to pay a significant amount of money every single year for this public purpose which has just been plain taken away. So we got $930,000 there. We’ve got $4.4million at the central library. We’ve got $680,000 in rare books and without the comfortable feeling that there aren’t more rare objects, books and art, going to auction houses even as we speak.
I have copies for the press also of the critical words of Annie Curran’s trust which was set up in her will, and we would be glad to give you that.
In any event, because of everything I’ve told you today, and looking at where we are, I’ve come to the conclusion that, in spite of my very, very considerable efforts—and I don’t mind that part of it, I mean, I’m here to work, so sometimes you do things, and it doesn’t have fruition, I don’t mind that, but what I do mind is hidden agendas and secrecy and a failure to disclose facts. From a fiduciary...This is a fiduciary that the people of Springfield have paid to their [SLMA] coffers probably $100million over the last 15 years.
Lawsuit against Springfield Museums Association on Mason Square
We’re entitled to better, and we’re not getting it, so I have instructed Mr. Markey to complete and to enter in the Hampden County Superior Court a lawsuit against the SLMA for breach of trust on a whole variety of theories, all of which I feel very comfortable with as a lawyer, to really hold them accountable for the loss of this property to the Springfield library system which, as I say, the evidence will indicate had a value as of the day it was disposed of somewhere in the $2million area and then, even more particularly, to talk about the fact that, when the property was sold, money went back in the coffers of the SLMA, and money went back in the coffers of the Annie Curran Trust, but the $930,000 that we are in the process of spending, of public funds, not one single dime has come back to the City of Springfield. This is an absolutely intolerable situation. There is no way in which we can allow this to happen and go on. And so what we will do, this will be Case Number 1. My guess is that it will be filed within a week or so.
Other City Lawsuits against the Springfield Museum Association
We will also then move forward to Case Number 2 which will be an appropriate legal request to have the courts determine, not only the ownership of the library rare book, rare art objects collection, but also who is entitled to the proceeds of the sale. And I say that because of this fact: that in the original charter that set up this organization in 1864, it made it very clear that every single thing that it owned in 1864 and every single asset that it ever thereafter would acquire by gift, by purchase, by trade or whatever was going to be held in trust for the people of Springfield for the purposes of a library and a museum. And so the whole notion of trust was engrafted on this 140 years ago. That’s a fundamental legal relationship. Those are the ground rules, and we’re going to insist that that trust is there, so if, by the vagaries of the history, they can even say that they’ve got, let’s say, bald legal title to some of these assets, in my opinion they will never be able to establish that the have the beneficial ownership which is really what happens in any trust relationship. And so I’m very confident that in the courts that we’ll have a man or a woman decide this case who understands the law and who will apply the law and that we will be successful in that.
Case Number 3...(and, again, these are all complex actions, and we’ve got an overworked law department as it is, and so these things are each going to take several weeks to marshal and to file)...Case number 3 will be on the whole issue of the ownership of all these buildings. It is absolutely ridiculous to take, for example, the Springfield public library which was essentially paid for by Andrew Carnegie and the people of Springfield giving their own donations and which has been maintained and supported and renovated down through the years by the taxpayers of the City of Springfield and say that, somehow, this little group that feels no responsibility to the City is the owner of it and can dispose of it any way it wants.
I might also point out that in the last two or three years, we spent $1,350,000 of bond issue on an Indian Orchard branch, and so we’ll be contesting the ownership on the one hand and the right to the use of these buildings on the other hand on all of the library facilities with their contents.
And last but not least, the final lawsuit if we have to go that direction will be a very serious decision about illegal deviation of library assets over the last 10, 15 or 20 years to the museums without the permission or knowledge of the City government of Springfield. So Mr. Markey understands that instruction, and I’ve indicated to him that if we have to try, if we have to follow this path, I want these cases to be tried aggressively. I want full discovery. I want ample depositions. I want it put on the record under oath as to who knew what when and who made these decisions, because it’s very important the people of Springfield understand exactly what has happened in this kind of ambivalent relationship which we find ourselves in for historical reasons.
The last thing I would like to say is this: I would hope that the men who are the leaders of this organization will understand that we are nothing but stewards. We’re in the government here, we are stewards. They are the trustees of some assets, and they are stewards also. It is foolish, it is unseemly for us to be fighting with each other about these problems. By the same token, I am not going to sit here and let them carry away the assets of our library system piece by piece.
And so we have nothing that’s clearer to me than a tremendous responsibility to draw the line and say, “OK, fine, we’ll defend your arbitration case. We’ll start the Mason Square case within a week. And we’ll keep on going. However, I don’t want to discourage them from really looking in the mirror and having a sober effect on this and have them decide, “Well, gee, it really is something we ought to be sitting down with the administration and trying to do something collectively that’s in the best interest of the people of Springfield.”
Questions from the Press
Mayor Ryan: Now you recognize the city solicitor who’s here, [library director] Emily Bader, members of the library commission are here, and I’d be glad to respond to any of your questions, and I’m sure that these appropriate officials also would be glad to respond.
Questioner: Have you spoken with your predecessor about this? Have you been able to have a conversation about what the rationale was?
CVR: No, I have not. I really haven’t had a conversation with him in well over a year.
Questioner: Will you now?
CVR: Well, I’m not sure. I think that...you know, I’m looking to my relationship with the SLMA. What Mayor Albano did is on record, and why he did certain things, I’m sure that will all come out in discovery, but I want to concentrate on this case, and we’ll go forward. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a casual conversation, but the important thing is that whatever he purported to do, he might himself—my guess is that he’d agree with this instantaneously—he didn’t have the power to get this down to the legislature by himself. He knew that; that’s fundamental. To get to the legislature, you need the cooperation of a majority of the city council, and that never happened. It went on the table on December 15, 2003, three weeks before I took office.
Questioner: How do you explain a $600,000...$700,000 asset leaves the city and no one has any idea where it is or where it went or where they stored it?
CVR: Well, first of all, you ask a very good question, because...and I think that what has happened here is that, over the years, an enormous amount of trust has been placed in the leadership of the SLMA by the city government. And really, that is one of the indicia of a fiduciary relationship. I mean, you know, they purport that they’re going to be honorable and they’re going to do things right, and they encourage you to rely on that, and you do rely on it: you’re at the 90 percentile mark of whether you have a fiduciary relationship on that alone. And so I’m sure that it didn’t surprise anybody when the decision was made several years ago to move these assets over into another building or buildings while the renovations were going on. And the expectation was that they were as safe there as they would have been in the rare books room.
Questioner: Christie’s didn’t ask?
CVR: Christie’s did not call. There must have been representations made by the SLMA that they owned these properties.
One of the things that I forgot to tell you is that in one of these contracts that Mayor Albano signed there was working to the effect that the while the contents of the libraries would be used and free for the public to...but the contents of the rare books catalog would be “retained”...“retained.” I don’t think it set off any alarm bells on it to the extent—and I’m anticipating something—to the extent that they want to use that as the basis for saying they’ve got have some rights via that “contract” signed by the Mayor, I would indicate that it gave them no rights.
The mayor of Springfield has a lot of power. He does not have the power to give away the assets of the city. It’s as simple as that. We have statutes, and we have ordinances that govern exactly how you give property away. And to give away several million dollars worth or rare artifacts and books without the knowledge or the participation or the approval of the city council or the following of the procurement statutes is just absolutely impossible.
So what we have is a series of “contracts” that were prepared essentially in secret. My understanding is that [Assistant City Solicitor] Wayman Lee was the man in the law department—I have the highest regard for Wayman---he was the man who was checking these things from the point of view of punctuation and so on and so forth, but this was not a negotiation, this was a contract or a series of contracts... the content, really, 99.44% came from the SLMA, and so we find ourselves there. So if they’re basing their right on the rare books on wording in that “contract,” again it’s a totally misguided legal reliance.
Questioner: This suit is filed with the American Arbitration...?
CVR: The American Arbitration Association, one week ago.
Questioner: What’s their jurisdiction?
CVR: Well, in this “contract,” in one of these “contracts”—that’s a great question—in one of these “contracts,” that I’m saying is illegal for a million different reasons, there’s a provision in there saying that if there’s any disputes, they’ll go to the American Arbitration Association.
Questioner: [Unintelligible] parties are binding if both parties agree to it, isn’t it?
CVR: Well, the “contract” itself is signed by the Mayor. The “contract” is signed by the Mayor as well as by Mr. Carvalho representing SLMA, so theoretically, you know, they could say that’s the basis for going to the AAA. What I’m saying is the whole “contract” is sour. And secondly, I can assure you that in our dispute over Mason Square and these other issues, they will all go into the Hampden County Superior Court.
Questioner: They’re basically looking for what there in that suit? They want...
CVR: They’re looking for...what they’re really asking for is specific performance of all of these agreements having to do with getting us out of the main library in three years...there’s really kind of a “blank check” in here also. As I read the language in one of those “contracts,” so far as the amount of money we’re going to give annually to the museums for the operation of the museums. In other words, under this “contract,” we’re supposed to give as much money as it takes for them to run their place effectively or properly. Well, gee, that raises more questions than it answers. The mayor doesn’t have this kind of power. This is an extraordinary set of documents, back-dated, every single one of them back-dated, and not even brought into public view until three weeks after Mayor Albano’s successor has been elected by the people.
Questioner: Do you have an estimate of ...the rare book collection...the total value of that?
CVR: Well, it’s in the millions. If I said $3million to$5million, I don’t think I’d be far off.
Questioner: That which is already gone, Mayor, you’re not expecting to see that back again.
CVR: I don’t expect to see it back, but I can tell you one thing, I’m very interested in getting the $680,000.
Questioner: Is there litigation against the guy who bought it?
CVR: No, he didn’t do anything wrong at all. I mean, the man went in good faith. I’m sure that, my guess is that Christie’s was satisfied. The SLMA must have presented a story that indicated they owned this property; some third party that none of us ever knew or probably will ever meet bought it. I’m prepared to accept that as evidence of its fair market value, and that’s why I wanted the $680,000 put in escrow. You know, look at, we’ve got some unfinished business as to that $680,000, let alone “Stop the engines. Don’t sell any more.” Let’s...this thing is getting out of control. So that’s why we now have to turn to the courts as a last ditch effort to restore some sort of sanity.
Peter Goonan, reporter for the Republican: Did you say that the first three suits will be filed and the fourth suit may be filed?
CVR: No, no. I’m saying that, inevitably, if we’re not able to resolve this and put the genie back in the bottle, all of them will be filed...sequentially.
PG: Right now, do you plan to file four suits?
CVR: Mr. Markey’s going to be very, very busy... Yes, yes. There’s four distinct areas: first one is Mason Square, and that’s 95% ready to be filed, we just need to....
PG: The other thing...you say that this collection, this is owned by the Springfield library, but at the time it was obtained, wasn’t the Springfield library owned by the SLMA?
CVR: Oh yes, yes. And as I indicated earlier, Peter, we have a dual question here not only with respect to these rare books, but also with respect to the buildings themselves. They will establish that the bald legal title lays in them. What I’m saying is that from their inception, the beneficial ownership, the beneficial title has reposed in the people of Springfield. The mandate for holding this property in trust was put on there by the Legislature in 1864. Those were the ground rules under which the SLMA has got to operate. They have no right or power to go beyond that, so everything they ever have owned including the assets we’re talking about right here are owned in trust for the people of Springfield for the purposes of a library and a museum. What I’m saying is that these assets were so segregated, so identified as library assets that in a court of law, the principles of equity, the principles of trust...I feel very, very strongly that we will be successful in being able to establish the people’s rights to the objects themselves and, if they’ve been sold, to the proceeds of those sales.
Questioner: You say you wanted to know who knew what when. That’s a very popular question.
CVR: Howard Baker.
Questioner: Yes, very good, Mayor, but have you had a chance to look at, obviously, their minutes of their meetings, they’re public record.... Has anyone looked?
CVR: I’m not sure they are public records. They’ve always been very reluctant to share those things. It’s a non-profit corporation, OK? It’s not a part of the government.
Questioner: It’s a 501c3 though.
CVR: Yeah, but that doesn’t...No, to answer your question, no, we have not seen those. In discovery, I’m sure we’ll see anything we want to see. That’s the beauty of discovery.
Adam Gorlick from Associated Press: Mayor, the bottom line on the assets of the library, the rare book collection, the owner of that property is the City...or the SLMA?
CVR: You’re talking about the rare books?
AG: Rare books.
CVR: I’ll say it now for the third time...
AG: Please.
CVR: We have a dis-...it’s easy for me as a lawyer and I’ve lived in this world for a long, long time: You have legal title and you have beneficial title, in other words, there’s a trust imposed. If there’s no trust and you have title to your car or to your house, that’s yours. There’s no question about it; it’s not Peter Goonan’s. On the other hand, if you own a piece of property, but you hold it in trust for Peter Goonan, then while you may have the right to sign a deed, the proceeds of that are Peter Goonan’s, because of the fact that he is the beneficial owner. And what I’m saying is that, by the enabling legislation in this case, they have never been the beneficial owner. They have always been a trustee. They remain a trustee to this day, and so even though they, in some of these cases, they will establish let’s say, legal title, what I’m saying is that legal title is for the benefit of the people of Springfield in the trust that was created, not by Annie Curran, but created by the legislature that enabled it to even form itself as a corporation in the first place.
AG: So basically they’re selling assets and not paying money when they have no right to do that, the money is the property of the trust. The proceeds of any sales would come into this trust which is why you want the money put in the escrow?
CVR: Absolutely.
Questioner: OK.
CVR: And, you know, I had hoped and anticipated that reasonable people coming at this from two distinct points of view would be able to compromise and settle this issue. And, as I say, even after the turbulence of 2004, that was where I started this year. And I thought we were making some progress on the Mason Square question. Little did I know that even before my new negotiations had started, they had compounded the problem by selling secretly $680,000 of rare books from the assets of the Springfield library.
Questioner: The gentleman who purchased the rare books, when did he call?
Library Director Emily Bader: I can get that information for you. It was a Friday afternoon at 5:00.
CVR: (to questioner) You may have to go on the road and find that fellow and interview him.
Questioner: Pat, are you going to supply everything or are we going to have to chase these people all over the place or...?
City Solicitor Patrick Markey: We’ll be happy to supply anything that’s public record and everything the public would be interested in.
Questioner: Do you have pictures of some of this collection here, Mayor?
CVR: Yes. I’ve got copies of Annie Curran. These are really to look at. Here’s some indicia of how the Mason Square library is really just a fallen into almost disuse. We’re in about 1800 square feet there, and we really need 6500 square feet to do the job properly.
Peter Goonan: Are you in any way want to invalidate that agreement that separated the Springfield libraries and the museums? Do you want to start from scratch or is that not an issue at this time?
CVR: Which agreement are you talking about?
PG: That major agreement where it created a Springfield library commission and a separate library department and the Springfield museums is their own separate entity...
CVR: There is no agreement right now. This, this...these “contracts” that they would like to have enforced are their view of what the agreement is. What I’m saying is, these “contracts” never really became contracts that are enforceable, because of the absence of City Council action and the absence of library commission action.
And that the Mayor, by himself, did not have the power to bind the City in these “contracts.” And that will be the major issue in the arbitration case. There’s no doubt in my mind that...I mean it’s like the president and Congress. To get action by the federal government, it’s not enough for President Bush to say whatever he’s going to say that “This is what we’re going to do.” The Congress inevitably has a role, and unless the Congress does what it has to do, there’s no action of the federal government. So when, in this lawsuit, they keep talking about “the city government promised this” and “the city government promised that,” city government which, clearly, in this framework, needed the participation of the library commission and the city council, the city government never acted, just the mayor who was one part of the puzzle, but there were two very important missing ingredients.
Questioner: Mayor, what’s the headline tomorrow?
CVR: I don’t know. That’s your choice.
Questioner: But, based on the hour that we’ve listened to this--some would say—soap opera or comedy...
CVR: I know.
Questioner: What are you most angry about...that has happened in this case?
CVR: I’m most disappointed in the fact that we have not been able to resolve these problems across the table. This is deplorable. Well, I can tell you, that, right now, we’ve got to eat $930,000 on the Mason Square building. We’ve got to eat $4.4million on the central library. $680,000 worth of rare book assets have passed out of our control. They refuse to give me a written assurance that they will not sell any more. They refuse to follow my request that we sit down immediately in good faith and negotiate the ownership and the rights to this, this is discouraging.
So, you know, anger is an emotion I don’t allow myself. Disappointment is one that is very real and is at a high mark, but I’m just hoping sooner or later, we’ll get through, but I think the headlines are going to be interesting.
Peter Goonan: When you were involved in the negotiations, before being mayor, with the library folks, the...Albano, yourself, there was some agreement that was reached, but you seem to be clearly saying that none of this you agreed to.
CVR: No, no. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I mean, I ...the details of...there were only two meetings, in this case, they say there were four meetings, there were only two meetings, and the details of those meetings are engraved on my head. I mean, I know exactly who said what, and these were not ever talked about, and here we go. And I’ll be surprised if Mayor Albano was going to try and stand on the fact that he had the right to dispose of millions of dollars of rare books, too. I mean, the Mayor, a veteran mayor of eight years in here, he knows things you can do, and things you can’t do. End.