The Moniteau County Library District (MCLD) and its board of directors are spending money illegally for some library operations, three western Moniteau County residents and the City of Tipton alleged in a lawsuit filed last week.
Judith Ann Willis, an attorney with the Kent Brown law firm of Jefferson City, filed the 12-page civil suit in Moniteau County Circuit Court, arguing a countywide library district doesn't legally exist because voters in the Eastern Subdistrict never approved a property tax for it.
The plaintiffs - the City of Tipton and county residents Joe Ed Hartman, Cindy Dix Suddarth and Leroy F. Knipp - want the court to:
• Dissolve the library's Eastern Subdistrict and declare "the Western Subdistrict is the only validly-created entity" that can be called the "Moniteau County Library District."
• Require the library district to pay Tipton "all monies collected in 2014 within the Western Subdistrict, for the sole purpose of funding the Price James Memorial Library."
• Invalidate the 2013 transfer of the Wood Place Library to the district.
• Remove any district board members who don't live within the Western Subdistrict.
• Require the library district to operate only in the western part of Moniteau County.
Moniteau Library Director Connie Walker told the News Tribune the board is scheduled to discuss contract negotiations during a closed session Thursday night.
She referred questions about the lawsuit to John Kay, the district's attorney, who didn't return a call seeking comment.
"This litigation does not change our responsibility to serve all the residents of Moniteau County, including the Western Subdistrict, with library services," Walker told the California Democrat.
Moniteau County Commission's created the public library district in 1996, establishing the Eastern and Western subdistricts and the property tax rate.
The Western Subdistrict voters approved the tax in 1997, but, the lawsuit argued, the Eastern Subdistrict voters never have approved a library property tax.
Citing a state law that says voters must endorse a property tax rate "within a five-year period from the establishment of a library district, (or) such library district shall be dissolved," the lawsuit said: "The Western Subdistrict of the Moniteau County Library District is a valid library subdistrict (while) the Eastern Subdistrict ... is not a valid subdistrict (and) must be dissolved."
A 2004 vote inside California's city limits approving a library tax wasn't valid, the lawsuit said.
When the county commission created the library district in 1996, the suit noted, the county had no public libraries and was served only by two "non-governmental, not-for-profit libraries" - the Price James Memorial Library in Tipton and willed to the city in 1978, and the Wood Place Library in California.
So the newly-formed district contracted with the two libraries "to provide free public library services to patrons within each respective subdistrict," and continued to do so through this past June.
In December 2013, the lawsuit said, the board wrongly accepted a donation of California's Wood Place Library and renamed it as the "Moniteau County Library at Wood Place."
The lawsuit charged the district and board "now incorrectly contend that the" California library "is a valid County Public Library" serving all residents, when the only "legal" library district is based in Tipton, so the legal board must "provide (library) services within the Western Subdistrict" only through the Price James facility.
The board and district are "not authorized to accept the donation of a library building outside the confines of the valid library district," the lawsuit said, nor can they "accept tax money from portions of the county where there is no valid library district."