Harvey library forms new committees while some trustees blast HWH coverage

In October, the Harvey Public Library District board formed committees, faced criticism over its attorney from one resident, and pushed back against recent HWH coverage. 

McCaskill and Tamika Price will serve on the finance committee. McCaskill will also serve on the maintenance committee alongside Keith Price. McCaskill will also serve on the committee on policy and personnel with treasurer Tamika Price, and secretary Chappelle Hooks.

Trustees Charwana Morgan and Monique Williams were absent that evening. They were not named to any committee assignments.

Treasurer’s report

Treasurer Tamika Price gave beginning and ending balances for several of the library’s financial accounts, as of August.

The library has had both a beginning and ending balance of $7,913.70 in its “First Merchants bank account number ending in 863,” treasurer Tamika Price said during her report. Another account at the bank ending in 775, she said, had a beginning balance of $1,476,431.17. By month’s end, it was $1,675,000.43. The Illinois funds account ending in 535 had $182,266.22 on August 1 and ended with $183,907.99 on August 31.

Public comment

Cheryl Jones voiced concern over the role of the attorney in public library proceedings in reference to the library’s issues with transparency and proper filing of vacancy paperwork with the state. “So my question to both the board and the lawyer: ‘Why are the residents paying for both bad advice and service? ” Jones said. 

Trustees Anthony McCaskill and Keith Price both took issue with recent reporting from the HWH and voiced their disapproval during the public comment period.

McCaskill threatened legal action against the HWH if it were to publish his name or likeness again. “Your recent article pertaining to Harvey Public Library District and my brand was derogatory and slanderous towards me, my name, company, brand image and likeness,” McCaskill read aloud from a letter addressed to the HWH. 

“Per my attorney’s request, this is the first and last verbal warning. Please be advised any further uses of my name, Anthony L. McCaskill, will be resolved in the cease and desist letter followed by subsequent court legal actions.” 

Trustee Keith Price called the HWH’s reporting “targeted.” “I have a problem with Harvey World Herald as well. The reporting has not been accurate,” he said.

The HWH previously reported Keith Price is at least $37,000 indebted to the Illinois State Board of Elections, as of March 2023, and ineligible to appear on a municipal ballot. That came after a woman criticized the board for his appointment, vacancy paperwork, and his indebtedness, saying Price was “improperly sat.”

“We have a mayor who just appointed a convicted felon as the collector for the City of Harvey, yet Harvey World Herald didn’t mention that, at all,” he said. “We had $1.5 million in chicken wings stolen from school district [152]. Harvey Herald didn’t mention nothing, at all.”

The week before his comments, the HWH reported on the hire of Adonnis Shaw, who plead guilty to theft and forgery in 2015, as city collector. In the aftermath of that reporting, Shaw was fired. Last year, the HWH reported on the theft of 11,000 cases of chicken wings, amounting to $1.5 million, by the food service director at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School.

“There’s a lot of things going on in Harvey that can really be written about, if you’re trying to give people an idea of what’s really happening out here,” he went on. “So, I don’t appreciate some of their inaccurate comments, and I’ll just be keeping an eye on Harvey World Herald, as well.”

Leadership offers comments on deposits

The board approved the October bills list while Tamika Price reflected on her tenure as president following a recent leadership reorganization.

“My goal as president was to get the audits caught up,” Price said. “We were three years behind, and we are caught up to date.” According to Illinois state comptroller records, the library is complaint with fiscal audits, to date.

McCaskill commended Tamika Price as president for getting to the bottom of the library’s financial issues. He said that there had been no deposits in the library’s bank accounts from 2018 to 2022 when Price became treasurer. 

“The last deposit that was made from our machines, and when I say our machines, from the prior directors and prior administrations, right, the last deposit was in 2018,” McCaskill said. 

“There was no deposit made to the bank until president Price and myself as a treasurer came in and started reconciling and finding out what the issue was.”

McCaskill said himself and treasurer Price have made a lot of deposits in the past few months since locating this money that had been sitting in the library for years. Library contractors reported on recent library initiatives, including Cook County’s Digital inclusion week, where the library offered free online literacy classes and a fee amnesty period. Anyone with outstanding fees was able to bring in non-perishable food items for donation and receive a dollar off of their debt per item.