PASSAIC PUBLIC LIBRARY
PASSAIC PUBLIC LIBRARY IN THE NEWS
The purpose of this page is to provide the public with a fair appraisal of the facts based on the information available. In cases where the newspaper article runs juxtaposed to the opinion of the Library Director and Board of Trustees you will see a highlighted box.
Quit foot-dragging, refurbish the Reid - Editorial
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 HERALD NEWS EDITORIAL |
"We need the Reid. The books, the resources, the history in it. We are standing here together to save the Reid."
-- Alberto Jimenez, 12 years old
How is it that so many people in Passaic, and so many young people like Alberto Jimenez, can understand how vital an institution a public library can be, but the City Council, the city's Library Board and Mayor Samuel Rivera do not?
Last week, at a City Council meeting, Alberto and five of his friends from the The Learning Center turned up to join a gathering show of public support for Reid Memorial Library on Third Street, which the Passaic Library Board of Trustees has proposed closing. The board claims the 104-year-old building has structural damage, perhaps needs a new roof and is too costly to repair.
Now it turns out that the city has long had monies to refurbish the Reid, or at least to maintain it, through federal Community Development Block Grant funds, money that can be used because the library primarily serves low-income immigrant children. In that regard it is not far removed from the mission established by its benefactor, Peter Reid, who understood the importance of bettering lives of other immigrant children more than a century ago.
At the recent council meeting where the library was discussed, Councilman Daniel Schwartz indicated there were residual CDBG monies left over from previous allotments that could conceivably be used for the Reid. According to the city's Community Development Office, that figure is in the neighborhood of $200,000, more than enough than the Library Board says it needs to rehabilitate the Reid.
However, it remains unclear as to whether the Library Board is prepared to dedicate any of that money for use on the Reid, citing a project already under way to repair the roof of the city's other library, the Forstmann. Further, library Director Alan Bobowski said that the discovery of these unused funds comes as "a surprise."
This episode seems to point once more to incompetence on the part of a Library Board, which has trouble making a quorum, and foot-dragging by the library director, who seems not to have worked too hard to find funding to keep the Reid open. And where, one wonders, is the mayor on all this, and when will he speak up and take a definitive stand on the issue?
It is time for the city and the board to either make a compelling case for why the Reid should be closed -- with detailed documentation from architects instead of merely hearsay -- or else to be about the business of doing the necessary repairs and renovations to keep this library open. Certainly, there are enough residents who care about the library and will show up at the special meeting at 3 p.m. Sunday at the library to voice their opinions on the subject.
The Reid has too much value, both aesthetically and educationally, to be so easily discarded and sold as the Library Board, and some City Council members, so desperately wish to do. It is worth reminding that once such a grand and historic institution is gone, it is gone forever.