May 14, 2024
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Election

St. Charles Library Board race remains too close to call

By Eric Schelkopf
Election 2024
St. Charles Library Board candidates Bonnie Dauer, left, incumbent Library Board trustee Karen Kaluzsa and Allison Lanthrum answer questions March 5, 2023 at a League of Women Voters of Central Kane County candidate forum.

St. Charles Library Board candidates Bonnie Dauer, left, incumbent Library Board trustee Karen Kaluzsa and Allison Lanthrum answer questions March 5, 2023 at a League of Women Voters of Central Kane County candidate forum. (Eric Schelkopf)

The race for the two open spots on the St. Charles Library Board remains too close to call.

Incumbent library board Trustee Karen Kaluzsa, along with Bonnie Dauer, Allison Lanthrum and Anthony Catella, are running for the two six-year terms open on the board. According to the latest results from Kane and DuPage counties, Dauer has 3,101 votes, making her the front runner.

As of late Thursday afternoon, unofficial results show Lanthrum has widened her lead over Kaluzsa. She has 2,847 votes compared to Kaluzsa’s 2,755 votes, a 92 vote margin. Catella received 2,189 votes.

The last day for counting provisional and vote-by-mail ballots is April 18. On Tuesday night, Lanthrum had 2,619 votes compared to 2,607 for Kaluzsa, who is running for her second term.

Kaluzsa has been on the board since 2017. Lanthrum is endorsed by AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) Council 31.

In July 2021, the majority of employees at the St. Charles Public Library filed to form a union through AFSCME. The union was certified in November 2021.

St. Charles Public Library employees addressed Library Board trustees Feb. 8 to voice their frustrations over contract negotiations.

The union has been negotiating with the board since April 2022.

Some of the outstanding issues revolve around employees not being given enough hours and not being paid a fair salary and benefits. The library’s administration and managers are not part of the union.

Last month, the St. Charles Library Board announced it is proposing to bring all library employees up to $15 an hour as part of its latest offer with the library’s union. St. Charles Library Board President Robert Gephart made a statement about the state of negotiations after a library board meeting March 8. The statement was part of a news release the library sent out March 9.

“The library’s management bargaining team and the union’s bargaining team have been negotiating their initial collective bargaining agreement since April 2022,” he said. “The parties have successfully reached more than 50 tentative agreements to date. Recently, the parties began negotiating over economic terms and conditions of employment, including wages, group insurance and other benefits. The parties have exchanged several proposals.”

Reacting to the statement from the library board president, AFSCME staff representative Carla Williams, who is the chief negotiator, said “our union members are really disappointed that the St. Charles Library Board decided to make a statement and essentially decide to bargain with us via the media.”

“While wages are definitely one item that we are attempting to address in our negotiations, it’s not the only item that we are discussing at the table,” Williams had previously said. “And while they may want to focus on only one of their proposals, our goal with this contract is that we are trying to address some longstanding issues of understaffing and recruitment and retention issues where we lose good staff because the employer does not seem to value their part-time employees as much as their full-time employees.”