Does another ethical question taint library board's site recommendation?

The Cedar Rapids Library Board of Trustees might limp a bit when it reports to the City Council this evening on the board's recommendation of where the city should build a new $45-million library.

On Tuesday, the board admitted an embarrassing ethical lapse in which board member Phyllis Fleming -- a 45-year Gazette Communications Inc. employee who was assistant managing editor when she retired in 2002 -- voted to put the new library on the downtown block of property owned by Gazette Communications Inc. even as she continued to do work on a short-term contract for the company.

It is second time questions about the ethics of a library board member have surfaced related to the board's effort to pick a preferred site for a new library.

In late July, board member Dennis McMenimen resigned from the library board in frustration after questions were raised about his support for putting the new library in an area of higher ground above where flood waters reached in 2008. He did so even as he was the legal representative for the investment company, St. Martin Land Co., which controlled most of one of the library board's most-favored blocks on higher ground. That is the block on which the Emerald Knights Drum and Bugle Corps used to be housed and which now has come to be called the Emerald Knights site. McMenimen was defended by the library board and he denied any conflict of interest.

After the McMenimen matter, though, the library board announced it would step aside and play no role in recommending where a new library should go.

However, new Mayor Ron Corbett, after his election in November, asked the library board to take up the matter again.

Last week, each of eight members of the library board expressed his or her preferred site for the library, with the straw poll, 5-3, for The Gazette Communications block over the Emerald Knights block. Fleming preferred The Gazette Communications site as did a second former Gazette employee, Hilery Livengood, who worked for The Gazette from 1995 to 1999. The library board then cast a formal 8-0 vote for The Gazette Communications site.

The library board issued a statement on early Tuesday evening, stating that Fleming was in the midst of two weeks of work on an accuracy study for Gazette Communications at the time of the library board vote and now realized that she should not have participated in the library board's discussion of the library site or cast a vote in the matter. Fleming said she had a conflict of interest, the library board reported.

In the library board's news release Tuesday evening, Susan Corrigan, the library board president, noted that the board's vote was 8-0 and so Fleming's "unfortunate and unintentional mistake" did not have any bearing on the board's recommendation.

Both Fleming and McMenimen served on the library board's special building committee.

Looking ahead to the council meeting this evening, Mayor Ron Corbett said he may ask his council colleagues if they have any earlier preferences for where they want the library to be built. The council makes the decision, and Corbett would like to see a formal vote on the matter on Feb. 24.

On Tuesday, Corbett thought four of the nine-council members, at least at this point, might like a third library site, one now occupied by insurance and financial services firm TrueNorth. That site sits across Fourth Avenue SE from Greene Square Park.

Corbett publicly has said he likes the Emerald Knights site, and he said council member Chuck Swore still wants to ask if it's possible and sensible to build a new library on the site of the flood-damaged one on First Street SE.