The library board should meet in public, not behind closed doors

I have volunteered at the Port Alden Public Library for eleven years, first shelving returns on Tuesday afternoons and now helping run the summer reading program at the Chestnut Street branch. I love this library. That is exactly why I am writing this.

Every year, the library board's finance committee meets in a closed session to work out which branches get funded at what level before the board's public vote. By the time that vote happens, usually in a ten-minute agenda item at a regular meeting, the real decisions have already been made. The public sees a resolution to approve a budget that was written behind a door we were never let through.

This year, that closed committee decided to cut the Chestnut Street branch's Saturday hours in half to cover a shortfall at the main branch downtown. I found out from a flyer taped to our front desk, not from anyone on the board, and certainly not from any meeting I could have attended to ask a question before the decision was final.

A closed committee is not required by law

I looked into this. Nothing in the library's charter requires the finance committee to meet privately. The board adopted that practice on its own, years ago, and has kept it out of what I can only guess is habit. Other town bodies, the planning board, the school committee, hash out budget tradeoffs in open session, with residents in the room, before anything is finalized. There is no reason the library board should be different.

I'm not asking the board to abandon planning or to conduct every conversation in public in real time. I'm asking that the tradeoffs, this branch or that one, these hours or those, be debated where the people who use the branches can hear the reasoning and say something before the decision is locked in, not after.

A library exists because a town decided that access to books and a quiet room and a computer shouldn't depend on what you can afford. It seems worth extending that same principle to how the library decides its own budget. Open the committee meeting. Let us in before the vote, not just for it.