The Mount Vernon Public Library Board of Trustees has no term limits. This is a change from Tuesday.
On Wednesday night, April 22, at what was styled as a Finance Working Session, the board took two votes.
The Library’s bylaws (Article XII(a)) require that a proposed amendment be voted on at the next regularly scheduled meeting, not the one where it is proposed. That built-in delay is the public-notice window. It gives residents time to see a bylaw change coming, raise objections, and show up. Resolution #034-26 suspended it for the night.
With the waiting period gone, the board immediately took up Resolution #035-26, which repealed Article IV, Section 4(b) of the bylaws: “No Trustee shall serve more than two (2) consecutive full terms.” The board declared the repeal “permanent, unconditional, and of continuing force and effect.”
The library trustee election is May 19. Nominating petitions are already circulating.
The sitting board president, Hope Marable, is running for what would be her third consecutive term.
The Back Story the Board President Would Prefer Stayed Back There
In February 2022, the New York State Board of Regents commenced removal proceedings against five Mount Vernon Public Library trustees under Education Law § 226(4). The verified petition laid out three categories of misconduct: failure to submit a compliant library registration application, failure to file the 2020 annual report (which cost the library state funding), and oversight of more than 1,400 undocumented financial transactions totaling over $4.9 million.
Four trustees resigned. Marable did not. The Regents granted summary judgment, found unrebutted evidence of neglect of duty, and removed her from office. Under Education Law § 226, the panel noted, the only available remedy for neglect of duty is removal.
Marable then ran for a second term and won. That second term is the one ending this year. She is running for a third.
Her Theory Was Interesting
Until Wednesday night, Marable’s public position was that the two-consecutive-terms bylaw did not bar her because her first term was cut short by the Regents’ removal. By her reading, she had served only one “full” term (the second one); the first, truncated by removal, was “partial.”
Put plainly: being removed for neglect of duty gave her an extra term of eligibility. The worse the conduct, the more terms available.
A February 13, 2026 legal memorandum prepared for Mount Vernon residents took this apart. The bylaws set trustee terms at five years. Marable was elected to a full five-year term. Her inability to complete it was the direct consequence of her own misconduct. The memo walked through the Riggs v. Palmer principle (115 N.Y. 506 (1889), foundational New York law that no person profits from her own wrong) and the New York City Charter, which addresses this exact fact pattern by statute:
“A [mayor/public advocate/council member] who resigns or is removed from office prior to the completion of a full term shall be deemed to have held that office for a full term for purposes of Section 1138 of the charter.” (NYC Charter §§ 4, 24, 25, 1138)
The case against Marable’s interpretation was substantial.
In public, Marable took a different line. A campaign video she released after the term-limit question entered public view dismissed the scrutiny as “ongoing attempts to create chaos where none exists” and told supporters “this is their strategy, we have already won.” In the same video she announced that, when re-elected, she would begin her “first full five-year term” on July 1. The second term, the one currently ending, apparently does not count.
The library board’s April 22 vote suggests otherwise.
The Board’s New Theory
Resolution #035-26 does not argue that Marable’s first term was partial. It argues that the term-limit bylaw itself was never lawful. Its WHEREAS clauses say that Education Law § 260 governs school-district library trustee elections, that § 260 imposes no term limits, and that Article IV, Section 4(b) was “derived from” Education Law § 225, which “does not apply to this Board.” On that basis, the board declared the provision “inconsistent with governing law” and repealed it.
Convenient. Also new.
The Mount Vernon Public Library Board itself amended these same bylaws on December 10, 2025, four months ago, and left Article IV, Section 4(b) in place. If the term-limit provision was unauthorized, the board had the chance to say so then, on regular notice, at a regular meeting, without the procedural contortions of April 22. It did not. The inconsistency with governing law became urgent only after a resident put the board on notice that the bylaw as written would block the sitting president from running again.
The Conflict
The Mount Vernon City School District administers the library trustee election. It accepts nominating petitions. It determines ballot eligibility. The District Clerk is the first stop for any challenge to a candidate’s qualifications.
The President of the Mount Vernon City School District Board of Education is Dr. Donna Marable. She is Hope Marable’s sister.
Whether Dr. Marable recuses from any deliberation or vote touching her sister’s ballot eligibility, and whether the school board addresses the conflict on the record, will be visible in the next set of minutes.
The Rest of the Pattern
None of this is happening in isolation.
In June 2025, Justice Sheralyn Pulver of Westchester County Supreme Court ruled in Ebermann v. Board of Education et al. that Library Board Resolution #099-24, which had authorized the acquisition of a single-family home at 101 Summit Avenue as a satellite library, “was adopted in violation of lawful procedure” and annulled it. The Open Meetings Law violation turned on quorum. The satellite-library plan, which Marable publicly championed during a period of acute library financial stress, required a court to undo.
In April 2025, Marable launched a Facebook page titled “The Receipts” that attacked candidates in the May 20, 2025 library board election. A verified petition for her removal, filed with the Regents by another candidate, Tamara Stewart, describes Marable using the official trustee4@mvplibrary.org account to promote and defend the page and to send confrontational communications to residents who had criticized library decisions. One such email, sent from her library address and copying fellow trustees, the library director, and library counsel, contained the line: “I advise you to keep my name out yer’ mutha fucking mouth before I sue you for LIBEL.” And the list goes on.
And per MVCIP’s earlier reporting, there was also the matter of the board approving gala tickets for itself out of public funds.
These are not episodes from the distant past. They are from the last twelve months, involving the same trustee whose continued eligibility Wednesday’s vote was designed to protect.
What Happens Now
A resident has written both to the Mount Vernon City School District Clerk and to the New York State Board of Regents, asking that Marable’s nominating petition be rejected on the grounds that she has already served two consecutive full terms.
The Regents have standing to intervene: they removed her once, and the theory Marable was relying on, if accepted, converts every Regents removal order into a free extra term for the removed trustee.
The repeal vote on Wednesday does not end the term-limit question. It sharpens it. A board that eliminates an accountability rule thirty days before an election, at a Finance Working Session, in order to protect its own president’s ballot eligibility, has told the public something about how it understands its job.
The rest is up to residents at the ballot box, the school district, the Regents, and if it comes to that, the court.