Library, support group reach a tentative deal but part ways

By Brian Eckhouse

Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008 | 2 a.m.

The Las Vegas-Clark County Library District and its former nonprofit partner have agreed on a framework to end their 8-month-old court battle over the profits from book sales.

In a preliminary settlement, Friends of the Southern Nevada Libraries has agreed to donate $75,000 to buy children’s books for the Centennial Hills Library, which is to open next month, said Gerald Welt, an attorney for the district.

The president of the Friends, Mary Barkan, declined to comment on the accord this week because the settlement had yet to be signed. Friends attorney Kimberly Wanker could not be reached for comment.

Before the dispute reached District Court in April, representatives of the district’s audit committee found the nonprofit had not turned tens of thousands of dollars over to the library system, Welt said. The group had raised the money by selling the district’s discarded books at stores in the libraries. So the library district asked the Friends group to submit to an audit and instructed Welt to formalize the district’s business agreement with the nonprofit, he said.

District representatives, he said, didn’t suspect any dishonesty or theft, “but we thought (an audit) was a prudent thing to do.”

Representatives of Friends initially balked at the request for an audit but later agreed. The audit found the Friends’ finances to be “reasonably clean,” Welt said.

But the dispute spilled into court. The Friends group alleged the library district owed it almost $23,200, and the district claimed the nonprofit owed it about $26,300. The district also sought a restraining order to prevent Friends from disbursing its money to any other organization.

The 75,000 settlement amount is a little more than the difference between what the Friends collected in one year and how much it gave the district, a difference the audit did not fully resolve.

Despite the legal settlement, it isn’t clear whether the 34-year relationship between the library district and the Friends has a future. The district took over management of the bookstores months ago, and Welt said this week the district no longer has any association with the nonprofit. But Barkan, noting the overlapping objective of connecting the community to books, told the Home News she isn’t ruling out a reconciliation.