Auchincloss said it would be “madness” for the library to go to court over the MOU. Even if the Library were found to be right, it would be blamed. “It would set fundraising back forever,” Auchincloss said.
Trustee Barry Samuels thinks the board should reopen a discussion with the town over the MOU instead of going to court. “I think we’re forgetting an important word. Negotiation. We need to sit down and talk to the Town Board.”
Trustee Caroline Ritchey said she felt some of Hanowitz’s comments were directed at the board. Ritchey said she also finds the tone on both sides “troubling,” including that of Friends of the Library. “To have someone come in and validate us for our work, that’s nice. But there’s an edge to it.”
Director in support of Annex
Library Director Amy Raff said the annex was never given a full chance to succeed and was halted when a vocal group began attending meetings last year.
“When we started planning the annex we never thought or said that it was going to satisfy all our needs. It was going to be very specific needs that we were hearing from the community that they wanted,” Raff said. “It wasn’t a response to something that was just made up in an office. It came after our five-year plan and there was a certain momentum to the opportunity of the property becoming available and having the money to acquire it. There was definitely support for it.”
Raff said there was plenty of opportunity to speak with architect Joel Sanders about the project’s scale, but the process was halted midstream.
“We’ve never been through the process with him (Joel) to see what we could get for a lower price. We were in design-development when this whole thing was halted. It wasn’t a done deal,” Raff said. “We weren’t at construction documents so we’ve never had the opportunity to talk to him about it. He’s never had the opportunity to respond to it. It just got stopped and there wasn’t any follow-through on that which I think would be really important. Because it wasn’t over.”
Raff said the project got dropped too quickly without the board staying committed to it.
“Whatever is decided, the board has to be behind it and 100 percent committed to seeing it through,” Raff said when asked by Trustee Jesse Jones about her thoughts moving forward.
Raff thinks it’s time for the board to pick up where it left off last year and get the annex built. “But I also work at the pleasure of the board, so it’s my job to make your dreams come true,” Raff said.
Simple resolution
Trustee Katryna Barber said since much effort was devoted to the annex, the board needs to have environmental questions answered. Otherwise it will have been a waste of time.
“I mean it’s pretty silly to keep fighting about all this stuff when we don’t know exactly yet what we can put over there and if it’s going to be approved,” Barber said. “So if we don’t pursue that it’s like we wasted a bunch of money.”
Jones suggested a motion simply to hire an architect to update the master plan “as soon as possible.” Trustee Doris Goldberg suggested a motion expanding on Jones’ motion, specifying an architect well-versed in libraries and directing the board to follow the request-for-proposals process. That motion failed and reverted back to Jones’ broader motion, which passed 7-1 with Hanowitz opposed. Trustees Elaine Hammond, Kathleen Lee and Barry Miller were absent. The resolution entrusts Auchincloss and Raff to hire a master plan architect following the RFP process.
Jones offered words of encouragement for the process, saying few major projects succeeded the first or even second time.
“We’re in just a part of a process, which I hope, which I even expect, is going to be brilliantly successful, and that we should approach it with that idea,” Jones said.
“We took the bat, and we swung for the fences and we struck out. But there will be lots of at-bats.”
