Smell issue rises again for libraries

Jace Radke

Friday, July 14, 2000 | 10:44 a.m.

Complaints by patrons have the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District looking into a nearly 10-year-old decree that deals with forcing people with an offensive odor out of the library.

Since 1991 the library district has been working under a judge-ordered consent decree that allows library staff to ask someone to leave the library if their odor or state of cleanliness is offending other patrons, but the decree has been difficult to administer, District Executive Director Daniel Walters said.

"The decree was an attempt by the district, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and legal services to reconcile an individual's first amendment rights to use the library with the fact that library rules must be maintained," Walters said.

The decree calls for staffers to call local social services representatives when homeless people using the library are emanating offensive odors. It also gives the representatives the authority to overrule the staffer on whether the patron should be removed until they can get cleaned up, Walters said at Thursday night's meeting of the district's board of trustees.

District Deputy Director Nancy Ledeboer said that the partnership between area social service organizations and the district has broken down, making enforcement of the decree problematic.

"When it started out, there were two or three groups that agreed to the partnership, but these were mostly nonprofit organizations that don't have the money or staff to send someone out every time we need them," Ledeboer said. "In many cases the people who originally agreed to the partnership no longer work at these organizations, and the replacements are unaware of the decree."

The board directed library staff to look into coming up with an amended decree that is more manageable and enforceable.

"We need to go forward and try to revise it," trustee Lamar Marchese said. "It should be a staff decision on whether someone needs to be removed, not a third party smell police."

The Las Vegas branch at 833 Las Vegas Blvd. North has received many of the smell complaints, and trustee Ricki Barlow said he has experienced bad odors at the building.

"I've walked upstairs at that library, and the smell hit me before I even saw anyone," Barlow said. "I'm sure that if I were a patron I'd go to another library if I smelled something like that. It's something we have to address."

Currently the library rules say that if the odor can be smelled 6 feet away from the person, and if the smell is so offensive that it stops other patrons from using the library, the offending person can be asked to leave.

District legal counsel Gerald Welt said that it isn't a case of the smell simply offending someone.

"We're not just talking about a smell that offends you, it has to be so disruptive that it stops your library use," Welt said. "It's not a homeless issue. It applies to people who wear too much perfume or cologne, construction workers or anyone that works outside in the summer heat here. There's not an easy solution."

In a letter to a woman who had complained about the smell of an individual in the Las Vegas Library, Walters pointed out that the courts have consistently recognized the public library's obligation to allow open access to library services to all individuals.