A new director, Peter Petruski, started at the Guilderland Public Library on May 22. We wish him well.

At this juncture, a look back is useful as library leaders get their bearings going forward.

In the nearly four months since the last director retired, the library suffered a blow to its reputation that has led to cascading complaints, and two trustees have resigned.

After a decade at the helm, Timothy Wiles retired on Feb. 2. Later that month, on Feb. 21, the library’s first-ever café closed after less than six months as its owners, Melanie Diaz Partak and Joy Mercado Anderson, whom The Enterprise has been unable to reach, leveled charges of racism on the café’s Facebook page.

“I have faced racism, harassment and constant disrespect,” said a Feb. 21 post on the Café con Mel page. “These issues have not only come from patrons, which I am no stranger to dealing with, but they have come worse surprisingly from the Library staff members.”

The library board wisely held a listening session attended by 75 people seeking truth. There were more questions than answers.

Abdul Jabbar, a resident of Guilderland for 13 years, said at that session that it needs to be understood whether the café closure is a matter of racism or bad business. “When it is not discrimination, we don’t call it discrimination” as that trivializes the hurt of actual discrimination, he said to resounding applause.

Several allegations raised at that Feb. 26 meeting led The Enterprise to look more closely at problems with the business.

New York State records show that Melanie D. Fillerup, of D&L Hospitality, owes $6,880.65 in sales tax while a 2021 state certificate-of-doing-business-under-an-assumed-name form shows Melanie Diaz Fillerup doing business under the name of Café Con Mel at 133 Remsen St. in Cohoes.

Researching minutes from meetings of the Cohoes LDC, we found that “Diaz Enterprises - Café con Mel” was given a $10,000 loan in February 2021; minutes show the lowest the balance ever got was $9,367.73 in July 2021. At its Jan. 25, 2024 meeting, the Cohoes LDC board voted to commence legal action against Café con Mel, the minutes say.

Of course, someone can have business problems and also have been the victim of racism.

The board, again wisely, decided to find an outside firm to investigate the charges of racism and eventually hired Guidepost Solutions, based in New York City, for $15,000 plus travel and research expenses.

While that investigation is ongoing, we have tried our best to piece together the truth by filing various Freedom of Information Law requests. After two months, we received 77 pages from the library in response to our request for any and all complaints by or about the café.

We ran a front-page story with a banner headline, equal to that of the initial story on the café’s accusations, that said racism was not revealed in those documents.

The documents did open our eyes to a number of other issues such as Diaz Partak being behind in rent, the library hiring her husband to do significant amounts of work, and a huge amount of money being spent on setting up the café; the “total café project costs” are listed as $92,784.76.

Those documents also made us aware that the library was not always the quiet sanctuary for learning that we had supposed it to be. Rather, police were called frequently enough that a code was issued for use on the public-address system to let staff know when police were coming, presumably without alarming patrons.

The documents listed patrons who had recently been banned from the library for selling items stolen from a bookshelf, for cursing with an aggressively raised voice, and for threatening another patron with physical violence.

Reading of these incidents made us empathize with library staff having to deal not with what they were presumably hired to do but rather to put up with incivility and even abuse.

Over these four months, we’ve received letters written to enlighten the public as to the truth of the matter.

Jason Kuhn took it upon himself, as the library trustees had suggested to the public, to look at the posted videos of library board meetings to find the truth.

Kuhn wrote that what he saw at the Dec. 21, 2023 board of trustees meeting shocked him.

The roughly 20-minute discussion at that meeting was provoked by a report that a patron told Diaz Partak “cheaters never prosper” because the café’s rent with so much space was low compared to what vendors paid to be in the farmers’ market in the library parking lot.

Wiles, then the library’s director, said that the farmers’ market paid the same monthly rent as the café, adding, “Our legal counsel had advised us not to set market rent because that would make us a landlord and jeopardize our tax-exempt status.” Rather, the library charged the café $200 per month to cover costs.

Trustee Elish Melchiade, who is a friend of Diaz Partak, said, “I did field one of the particular people that gave odd feedback about her nationality … I think it was less ill-willed than it was ignorant.” The patron had complimented the Mexican food and Melchiade had corrected her that the two café owners were Puerto Rican and Filipina to which the patron replied, “Oh, are they visiting?”

Wiles said that, although he hadn’t heard the exchange himself over the misnamed Mexican food, the question about visiting was followed with, “They couldn’t find anyone else.” Wiles said that implied the library should have found a farm family “that had been here since the Dutch were here” as opposed to a second-generation American who grew up in Bethlehem.

The library had, indeed, been unsuccessful in finding other vendors to fill the café space.

Both Wiles and Melchiade said they were aware of “three or four” negative comments altogether, presumably either questioning the need for a café in a library or questioning the owners’ ethnicity.

This month, we’ve published letters from two people who no longer work at the library: Lewis Warner, the long-time head of maintenance who recently retired, and Luanne Nicholson, who was the library’s public information officer for five years before moving on to another job.

Both of them reference low morale at the library while Warner asserts, “Independent investigation on financial matters — not racism — is what is truly necessary” and Nicholson focuses on the need for safety and reorganizational plans.

We were pleased the library’s interim director, Nathaniel Heyer, responded to some of the issues raised and said the library has taken to heart the concerns of workers who recently left.

Heyer also said, in drafting next year’s budget, “We are bringing in sensitivity training … creating those kinds of conversations about diversity and inclusion,” he said.

“That was a big jump from previous years,” Heyer said on the added costs for staff development, “but it reflects our commitment to making sure our staff is well trained …. We want voters to know that we’ve heard community feedback, that they think that training for our staff is really important.”

We value the courage of those who have written us letters, sharing their perspectives so that we can all inch closer to the truth.

We often refer to Walter Lippmann’s idea — “The theory of a free press is that the truth will emerge from free reporting and free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account” — because we believe it is essential to democracy.

Here is one example of truth emerging.

The week the café closed, CBS 6 news reported that the incident triggering the closure was the library’s response to a stolen tablet. Briana Supardi received a statement from Diaz Partak, the station reported, saying she decided to close after a library employee “went through our mail, stole a point-of-sale tablet, and hid the tablet in their work office for weeks …. The library’s response was to offer this employee an early retirement package. It was at that point we knew it was unsafe to continue operations.”

The Enterprise had submitted a Freedom of Information Law request to the Guilderland Police for any reports related to the Café con Mel at the library, and received just one.

As we reported on March 7 , Diaz Partak had lodged a complaint with the police on Jan. 10, alleging that a library employee, whose name was blacked out on the incident report, “signed for a package of hers and kept it in a storage room for a week before giving it to her.” The package was opened but undamaged, says the report, which is posted with this editorial.

Partak told the police that she and her husband, Jonathan Partak, “had constant issues with this individual since opening her business in September” and “wished to make a report in the event that behavior like this continues.”

The incident report does not include a response from the accused employee, and no arrest was made.

Our April 26 response from the library FOIL request added some details as Diaz Parker wrote, “The cafe had not been performing as well as needed to survive in the space for the month of December. In order to gain a bigger customer base I signed up for a delivery service named Grubhub.”

In talking to Warner after he sent his letter to us, we learned he was the employee whose name had been redacted in both the police report and the library’s response.

Warner admits he had conflicts with the café, largely centered on cleaning the café space. “I didn’t want my guys to do it. God forbid they knock over a crystal vase or whatever. It’s a private business,” he said of the café.

Nevertheless, his crew did clean the café every night as he was told it was required by the library’s contract with the café, Warner said.

The Enterprise on Feb. 27 published the terms of the lease, which stated that the tenant was to be responsible for the care and cleaning of the café and the outdoor seating area, and to insure it met all health and safety requirements.

The missing package, Warner told us, wasn’t delivered through the United States Postal System; rather, it came through FedEx.

Warner said he had no idea Diaz Partak was missing a package until six days after it arrived, on Jan. 9, when he got an email from the library’s director, asking about the missing package.

Warner checked his FedEx records and saw that he had signed for a large shipment of janitorial supplies that arrived that same day.

He recalled thinking, “I bet it came in with the cleaning supplies. And lo and behold, there it was on the top shelf … it just got put in our storage room.”

Warner also said, “I never knew the police were there” and would have gladly answered their questions.

As for Warner’s retirement, the library’s interim director had told us earlier that retirement incentives for several long-time employees were in the works before Café con Mel opened. 

That incident at least — reportedly the trigger for the café’s closure — does not constitute racism.

So where does that leave us?

With some hope for the future. Last week, the library’s budget, despite handmade signs calling for its defeat, passed with a resounding 70 percent of the vote.

And both trustees and staff that we’ve spoken to are excited about Petruski taking the helm.

Trustee Barbara Fraterrigo, who was the top vote-getter in last week’s election, has served on the board since its inception in 1988.

She described Petruski as “very enthusiastic” and said she hopes that the “ruffled feathers between staff and administration and the board” get smoothed with “a new administrative team to take us to greater heights.”

We hope so too as we will continue in our quest, sustained by the readers who share their views, to find the truth and report it fairly.

A public library is a public trust. To be strong, it must be built on a foundation of truth.