TRUSTEE RESPONSE

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MILFORD – Tuesday’s town vote includes major renovation to and expansion of Wadleigh Memorial Library. In advance of election day, library trustees indicated they wanted clarify some data while refuting other misconceptions, according to a document sent to The Cabinet this week by the trustees.

Their statement, dated March 1, addressed The Cabinet’s Feb. 27 article about the $3.45 million library project that is up for vote as Warrant Article 3.

“While the Trustees work extremely hard at the job of overseeing the management of the library for the benefit of the citizens of Milford, they are first and foremost humans. Humans who may have misspoken at a meeting or not had an exact answer to a question, but who have the best interest of the library and the town in mind,” the statement read.

The trustees’ statement continued by adding that “when mistakes are pointed out, they will do everything in their power to address and correct them.”

The Cabinet’s Feb. 27 article had utilized documents such as the library trustee board’s meeting minutes and the library’s annual reports, all of which are available to the public on the library’s website, wadleighlibrary.org. Last week’s article noted discrepancies in those figures, as trustees work to get the project past voters on Tuesday.

The trustees, in their statement, also criticized The Cabinet for not providing them with a voice in the Feb. 27, article. However, the newspaper stands by the fact the information utilized came directly from official library documents, some of which extensively addressed the data used to support the warrant article proposition.

The funding breakdown for the project is a $2,730,000 bond and $687,000 in donations, the large price tag for which has some in the community asking why costs are so high.

​The trustees addressed the issue of repairing the library versus an expansion, which could have proven less costly. The library trustees said that a repair-only option was requested after the deadline for submitting warrant articles already had passed. It is unclear who made the request for the lower-cost option.

“A committee of library trustees, staff, patrons and other community members met starting in 2017, and two public listening sessions were held to obtain feedback,” the trustees’ statement read. “From these, the Trustees and architects learned what Milford residents wanted out of their library, how much they were comfortable spending on the project (which is how the Trustees settled on the roughly $3 million bond) and what immediate needs should be addressed in any project moving forward – repair, renovations, and additional meeting space were the top items.”

When The Cabinet inquired as to how many people were on the committee and how many residents of Milford were representing the town with their wants of the library, library trustee Chairwoman Kathryn Parenti said, “The L.E.T.S. (the Library Expansion Task Squad) committee consisted of 17 members of the community. The people at the listening sessions, all 41 of them (people in total), were present so we could listen to their insight regarding the library, thus the reason for calling them ‘listening sessions.'”

Parenti said the listening sessions were, “publicized in the library, on Facebook and at the town vote last year.”

The trustees’ statement further stated, “At no time during that process was a repair-only option requested. In fact, a number of people specifically requested that a repair-only option NOT be put forward, as they only wanted to consider a major library article once, and felt the renovations and small expansion were necessary to meet the needs of the library.”

The Cabinet asked for Parenti to clarify, what “a number of people” specifically means.

She responded by stating, “The L.E.T.S. committee recommended that we go forward with the entire project, and that’s what we did. They knew if we only did some repairs, we would be back with another warrant article at a later date for an expansion; we all wanted to avoid that. A couple of participants in the listening session also stated they were in favor with going forward with a complete project with agreement among the rest of the participants. We did not take names of who made comments.”

Part of the trustees’ efforts to see the warrant article passed included preparation of marketing materials of which a brochure was one.

As for The Cabinet’s query into how that brochure was produced, Parenti, in a statement, said, “The article also notes that the library has a ‘rich brochure touting the benefits of this renovation and expansion.’ This is absolutely correct, and the Trustees are incredibly proud of it.”

“A Milford High School senior designed and created the brochure (as well as a postcard) for the project. They did so as part of one of their classes for credit and completely free of charge to the library,” she continued. “The brochures (and postcard) were printed with no expense to the library or taxpayers, thanks to personal donations and funding from the Friends of the Library.”

Parenti also wanted to clarify use of the term café. In speaking with The Cabinet’s editorial board Monday, Parenti assured that this term only referenced an existing Keurig coffee machine that already is in use at the library. She said free coffee is available, but she was unable to indicate how that coffee service was funded.

Parenti indicated the term café only was being used for a description for some additional seating that is part of the library’s new architectural plan. There seemed to be confusion as to why the term “café” was used by the architects and continued to specifically be used — and in some cases — omitted, in library information, something Parenti refuted, despite documents obtained by The Cabinet that showed otherwise.

The trustees’ statement read, “Nowhere in the description of the project have any plans to have an actual cafe ever been described. It is simply an area where people can enjoy a coffee or tea and read a book or a newspaper. We did tell SMP (the architects for the project) not to use the word cafe in June 2019,” referring to library trustee board meeting minutes.

The Cabinet maintains that in those meeting minutes, dated June 18, 2019, in the trustees’ discussion of the “new lobby area,” they use the word, “café” under Line 2. In section 13 of those same minutes, in the 3-D Public Presentation Discussion, line E states, “Don’t use the word ‘lobby or café.'” This was in reference to how to promote the project to the public.

The trustees’ March 1 statement further stated, “the definition of a ‘café’ is ‘a small restaurant selling light meals and drink.'” They maintain this coffee station and seating, doesn’t meet that definition, even though it’s designated as such by the architects, whom they secured.

Additionally, the trustees’ statement read, additional square footage was incorrectly stated in the Feb. 27 article. That article stated that “the total new square footage totals more than 18,000 gross square feet.’ That is incorrect and vastly overstated. The total square footage for the entire library, including the existing space, will be 18,285 square feet, not the new footage, which is only 3,009 square feet.”

The Cabinet’s intention was to state that the new square footage of the library — the 3,000-plus square footage in addition to the existing square footage — would total more than 18,000 square feet and acknowledge any confusion cause by that component of the reporting.

In addition to cost and size of the library project, public parking near the facility also has been in contention for some members of the public.

As for parking situation, the library trustees’ statement said, “Parking was brought up in this article and the Trustees would like to re-address this issue. Previously, the policy was no public parking during library hours, and that remains true for most of the lot.”

“But,” the statement continued, “the policy has changed for the spaces that were purchased partially with tax dollars.”

“As always, when the library is closed, the parking lot is made available to the public. The Trustees have met a number of times with the town parking committee and will continue to be an active partner with them as they work on addressing the town’s parking needs.”

Much like public parking, which often is seen by members of the community as being in short supply near they library, another form of traffic was called into question in The Cabinet’s Feb. 27 article. That traffic was daily average attendance figures cited in the library’s annual reports.

Parenti stated, “In addition, library patronage and usage was questioned and a number of figures were specifically attacked. Daily patronage fluctuates greatly based on season, programming, and the number of hours the library is open. In 2019, the number of visitors ranged 116 on May 18 (a four-hour Saturday), to 745 on March 28 (an 11.5-hour Thursday during Tax Season) with a median of 358 visitors a day. The quoted number of 800 average per day was a misstatement based on the foot traffic tool utilized by the Library. The Trustees apologize for this misstatement.”

The Cabinet, in its Feb. 27 article, questioned discrepancies in the daily average attendance. The misstated 800-person-per-day figure, appears in the trustees’ Dec. 17, 2019, meeting minutes. The paper’s questioning of that error or misstatement comes from the fact meeting minutes often must be approved by board members prior to being accepted and publicly posted. The Cabinet did not receive verification of this process or a response as to how this error continued in print on the library website without any correction or clarification.

“Anyone who has been on a board or committee knows the meeting minutes are not a transcript of the meeting,” Parenti said. “They are a record of the votes and a general sense of the conversation. As such, these are accurate. They show the votes that happened and reflect generally what we talked about. Unfortunately, we missed the oversight, and it was posted. As we said in our response, we are only human.”

“If you would like more information on average patronage, please see the annual reports on the library web site at https://www.wadleighlibrary.org/Pages/Index/87/annual-library-reports,” read the trustees’ statement.

Editor’s note: The Wadleigh Memorial Library Board of Trustees’ March 1 statement appears in its entirety on The Cabinet’s website, cabinet.com. The Cabinet strongly disagrees with assertions made in portions of the statement, specifically with regard to the newspaper’s Feb. 27 article and the claims the trustees were not represented in that article. Documents produced and published by the trustees were utilized for the data presented.