To the Editor:

I would like to take exception to some of the comments made by the Guilderland library director, Tim Wiles, in your April 29 article [“Guilderland library loses half its revenue but keeps budget on an even keel”] as well as offer some additional information about the issues that were discussed.

First of all, I take strong exception to the library director’s point of view that the confluence of the viral pandemic shutdown along with the construction activity going on in the library since late October (which has resulted in the library being closed to the public for over a year) is actually “a great success” for the town and the library. 

How, I wonder, can anyone possibly conclude that the pandemic tragedy, along with our library being closed to the public for more than a year, should be considered “a great success” is simply too difficult for me to understand, regardless of the possible time-money benefits that may result.

Second, the library director’s statement to you that the Guilderland library has actually been
“open, just differently than in the past” during most of the past year is, at best, misleading if not inaccurate.

Why do I say this? Most people in town are still not aware that, while the Guilderland library has been closed to the public for over a year, the Colonie Town Library has been continuously open to the public since the first week of June of last year.  

Further, I suspect that most people in town are likewise not aware that as the summer went along, nearly all of our neighboring libraries opened back up to the public, although some of them had new restrictions in place.  

But, the director and the majority of the Guilderland board of trustees refused to reopen the Guilderland library ….  

The truth of this matter is that the Guilderland library could have, and should have, been open to the public from June to October, like in Colonie, if there had only been some resolve from the director and the majority of the board to do so.

I note here that the  conteColonie Town Library won best public library in the Capital Region in an Albany Times Unionst, for the second year in a row.

In your article the Guilderland library director stated that he recently visited the Colonie library.   But, he made no mention of offering them any congratulations for their recognition. Instead, he seems to disparage  Colonie for making such an effort to stay open, as only a dozen people were using the Colonie library at the time of his visit. 

However, I would like to point out here that the Colonie library director gave the citizens of that town the opportunity to choose whether or not they wanted to be in their library. People in Guilderland have never had that option.

Third, in your article the Guilderland library director advises us of the reason why the library was not kept open since the construction began last October, as the taxpayers had been promised before they voted. According to him, the majority of the board [initially] wanted to honor its prior commitment to the voters to keep the library open during construction. But the article reports that, when the library staff protested, and a picket of protesters appeared in front of the library in December, “the library board relented.”

All of this information was news to me, as I had always thought that the board based its decision not to be open during construction on their concerns about the increasing holiday and living-room viral spread, which was picking up speed about that time.

Nevertheless, if the board did, indeed, make its decision to “relent” on the basis of staff protests and picket lines, then that is a shame, and certainly does nothing to earn the continued trust  of Guilderland taxpayers who were previously promised an open library during construction.

In reality, I strongly suspect that even before the board “relented,” a decision had already been made a few weeks earlier to allow the contractors to embark on a full-speed-ahead library-wide major renovation effort that then made any previously agreed-on opening during construction too risky, if not impossible. Construction hazards, possible lawsuits, and the difficulty in maintaining a six-foot social distancing just could no longer be dealt with in these major construction conditions.

And so, the Guilderland library has remained closed to the public for a year, and the prior commitment to remain open during construction, apparently, counted for nothing in the face of library staff protests.

Fourth, I was startled to learn from reading this article that someone representing library management had previously signed off on a labor-management agreement that, according to the director, “prohibited furloughs to save money.”

Why? Why, would anyone representing management and taxpayers agree to such a request?  Who exactly negotiated this? Regardless, this flawed labor-management agreement must be honored to the letter, just as it was, and our promises to the employees must always be kept.

Fifth, I note that the director continues to insist that there is, and has always been, very little support in Guilderland to reopen the library to the public. I suspect that this is not true. But, I have very little interaction with the vast majority of the town population, and really don’t know what it is that most people want.

It would have helped so much if some polling had been done to determine what the taxpayers wanted, not just what the library staff wanted, and the board should have also taken this information into consideration, as well as library staff concerns, when important decisions were made.

In closing, it is encouraging that a reopening date of late August has finally been put forth. On the other hand, never should a library that has been closed to the public for more than a year be hailed in a newspaper article as “a great success.”

Dan Alexander

Guilderland