3/26/09 Ledger Letter re Library Mailing

The library’s “Building Project Update” mailing was a welcome addition to a dialog which should afford Lewisboro residents a better chance to inform themselves about the plan to move the Library to the Town Park. My 250 words permits a only limited response here. The mailing states that the 20 plus year-old master plan is a policy statement only, a set of guidelines. The implication, not fully expressed, is that the principles and findings therein are no longer applicable, or, somehow inappropriate in this situation. Preserving the hamlets is one of the key themes of the MP, and removing the library from Main St. South Salem is not consistent with that. The proponents of the move to the park may feel that the benefits they cite outweigh this negative impact, but it remains a negative impact by any reasonable standard, not at all diminished by the fact that the Master Plan is a plan, and not legislation.

A late nineties survey is declared to have defined the needs of the community. I hope the library will post the questions and response summaries on the library website to help us understand the basis for the project scope. These days, it is a rare project which is not obliged to submit itself to the realities of compromise. A series of discrete questions (e.g., “is the children’s area adequate?”) may yield an attractive wish list, but designing a project which optimally balances these with un-surveyed factors, budgets and current reality is another thing.

2/12/2009 Letter re Library Project Worksession

I want to thank my colleagues on the Town Board, the Library Board and other participants for a good exchange last week in our work session on the library project. The thing that really stuck out for me was that, as much as it has been portrayed as being the best solution for the project, there was a marked lack of enthusiasm from the great majority of participants for the plan to move to the Town Park. The majority of the Board expressed the sense that keeping the library in the hamlet was the better option, yet ultimately voted 4-1 in favor of authorizing our engineering consultant to proceed with examination of the latest proposed site for septic, water and other details. Perhaps, understandably, this reflects a desire to be sensitive to the hard work done over the last decade, but we should be basing our decision on the larger picture; this plan fails to fulfill one of the key elements of the town's Master Plan - the preservation and enhancement our hamlets.

I'll say it again: if the library is to go anywhere, the only place that makes sense is at the heart of Cross River, as part of a larger effort to make that area realize its potential as a livable, functional hamlet, and a Town Center that Lewisboro never had. But, since a suitable plot and that larger plan are nowhere in sight, the best option now is to stay put. Design the project around the funding that is available now, put a second story on the front of the building, maybe do without the “multipurpose room,” and go forward – now.