The South Bend School Board president has named a new member to the St. Joseph County Public Library Board, but the library says there isn’t an opening.
President Jeanette McCullough made the announcement at the end of Monday’s school board meeting. “To be clear, Vice President [Bill] Sniadecki is going to be – he has been appointed the school board libraries designee,” McCullough said.
Sniadecki would replace Ruth Warren, who was appointed last December. But the library still considers Warren a member, and a school board vote to remove her failed to pass in June.
School board attorney Pete Agostino says the board is trying to correct an issue with the timing of Warren’s appointment. He said the seat didn’t become open until January, under the school board’s bylaws.
“At the time that that appointment was made, there was no vacancy on the library board,” Agostino told WVPE on Friday. “Therefore, it was my legal opinion that that appointment of someone to a nonvacant position is void.”
The school board’s bylaws also say that one of its two library board appointments must be a school board member at the time of the appointment. Agostino explains that the school board president has the power to make appointments, since the rest of the board agreed to delegate that authority at the start of the year.
If the library board doesn’t recognize Sniadecki’s appointment and Warren doesn’t resign, Agostino says the matter could be decided in court. “I think there’s a procedure under state law where Mr. Sniadecki could seek court intervention to have a determination of who’s entitled to sit in that position on the library board.”
The library didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday, but Communications Manager Daniel Lichty previously told the South Bend Tribune that there are no vacancies on the board, and Warren and Christine Pochert-Ringle currently fill the school board’s two seats.
