Kudos to the city of Northampton for providing yearly funding of approximately $1.2 million to support the Forbes Library. This is a generous sum and allows the library to maintain its structure and provide many excellent services.
But it is wrong for the mayor to want to use this funding as an excuse to take away the autonomy from the board of trustees and place the financial operations under the bureaucracy of city government.
Operating as a department of the city would require that repairs and other services would have to go out to bid and be awarded to the cheapest bid (and many times the shoddiest work), while leaving room for cost overruns.
As the Forbes Library system works now, the trustees (note the root word “trust”) have the authority and flexibility to select the most reliable and quality-oriented people and businesses to do a job, even if the original cost may be a more than the cheapest.
Patrons of the library and citizens of Northampton should petition the mayor to stop the nonsense of trying to usurp the authority of the trustees of the Forbes Library.
Samuel Williston
Easthampton