This letter to the editor appears online today at the Independent, it was written by former Middletown Library Board of Trustee President Randal Gabrielain. The letter contains a few harsh words critical of the Township Committee and the circumstances that lead to his resignation from the library board earlier this year.
I left the Middletown Public Library board of trustees after 25 years’ service following a campaign of vilification by the mayor. Some wonder why, especially in view of the denial of wrongdoing.
One hopes the new board realizes that library trusteeship is about the public, not themselves, requires advocacy for the library, not the governing body, and is about service, not politics. I wish them well, not merely for their sake, but for the well-being of the library so beloved by the people of Middletown.
I expressed my thoughts in these remarks at an honors ceremony at the April 18 meeting of the board of trustees:
Since many have commented on why I am not on the board, often in craven anonymity, I add my word on the accusations about conduct: They are preposterous. With respect to the cited statute, it is ambiguous. With reference to its interpretation, it is ridiculous.
Anyone who really knows anything realizes I am no longer on the board as a consequence of political retaliation for opposing the township’s takeover of library funds.
Why did I leave? When an all-powerful governing body, one in office for a generation or more, which operates as if might makes right, is out to get you and will stoop to tactics as low as spreading innuendo with one’s employer, let alone what other dirty stunts they could employ, discretion may be the better part of valor. The Township Committee was not satisfied with getting the money, they had to eliminate an independent voice on what is ostensibly an independent library board.
At one point, my first thought was that voting against giving away the library’s money, which was not municipal appropriations by the way, was my finest hour in over a quarter-century’s service. But then I realized my finest hour was Oct. 23, 2004, when I was the first to speak in this room at the dedication of the new Middletown Library.
My legacy is this library, a legacy shared with key colleagues and supporters who planned and built it, and foremost among them is the director, Susan O’Neal. So, we forgive our tormentors, not for their benefit, but for our own so we can move on.
I will close with a paraphrase of Benjamin Franklin, who, on leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1787, was asked what type of government was being given the people. He told them, “You got a republic — if you can keep it.”
Randall Gabrielan
Middletown
