"Unfinished Business" To Be Discussed at Wednesday's Middletown Library Board Meeting

Tomorrow night’s (Wednesday) scheduled Middletown Library Board meeting on the surface seems rather innocuous and uncontroversial when you consider the course of events that transpired over the last few months between the Library and the Township Committee over surplus funds, but as we know appearances can be deceiving. The dangers that lurk under calm surfaces may be hidden from view but nonetheless still exist.

Having looked at the agenda for the upcoming meeting there is a discussion scheduled to take place title “Unfinished Business-Update” for line item #8.

Under this title a number of items will be discussed such as the Strategic Plan ,the Lincroft Needs Assessment and the Maser Consulting Proposal. Also under the auspices of this line item, a discussion will take place about the proposal received for engineering work for the Main Library parking lot.

This discussion could get interesting because this project was one of the priorities of the library’s Board of Trustees prior to the Township’s money grab last month, and as such, it was included in the agreement between the library and the Township on the $500,000 transfer of funds.

What make this interesting is that the Township’s trusted engineers of choice, T&M, would be the engineers on this project with no options given to the library for consideration of other firms, which means no competitive bidding on the project that could reduce costs and no say in the final design or outcome of the project by the library trustees.

So the question is, who will be watching out to ensure that the parking lot expansion project will be done properly and in a cost efficient manner? This is the first test for the Township to see if it can be trusted to do what’s right with the monies that will be given it by the library when the funds are finally transferred in the near future.

If you’re interested in attending the meeting it begins at 7:00pm and will be held in the Community Meeting Room of the Main Branch located on New Monmouth Road.