To the Editor:
I would like to share some concerns that I have had over the past year about what I consider to be the much too over-cautious response to the viral pandemic by the Guilderland library bureaucracy.

As you are all aware, the Guilderland library has now been closed to the public for more than a year.  However, most people are probably not aware that our neighboring Colonie Town Library has been continuously open to the public since the first week of June last year.

If my memory is correct, once the New York State authorities gave authorization for reduced staff to return to their library assignments, the Colonie library staff were back to work in their building on June 1, while it took 11 additional days until June 11 for the Guilderland staff to return. The Colonie staff immediately began offering curbside take-out services, the chance to return library books, and had the library open to the public by the end of the first week of June.

Guilderland library staff, on the other hand, did not offer any curbside take-out service until around June 16, two weeks later, and did not even begin to accept book returns until around June 25, more than three weeks later. More importantly, the Guilderland library never reopened the building to the public, while Colonie has been continuously open to serve its community since June 2020.

Of course, construction-related issues, beginning in November, have made it much, much more difficult to reopen the Guilderland library. But, during the period of time between June and November last year when there were no construction issues to consider, and when most of our neighboring libraries had reopened to the public, the Guilderland library remained closed.

How did it happen that the Colonie library staff have been able to deliver so much more, and even faster, to their town than has been the case here in Guilderland?

In my opinion, one of the reasons for this was a difference is the attitude of the two library systems. In Colonie, the attitude toward reopening the library was one of “can Do.” In fact, the Colonie library director issued a statement that “whatever circumstances and difficulties we face, staff will be rolling with it” to accomplish the mission.

In Guilderland, by contrast, the attitude was: “it's just unsafe”; “we just can’t do this”, “we are just so backlogged with work”; “the building is in need of upgrades”; “staff safety is our primary concern here”; and that there was actually no real interest or clamor in town to reopen.

This mindset continued into August when the Guilderland library director proposed that the library be closed for a year during the planned construction of the addition to the building. This recommendation was put forth in spite of a prior commitment to the voters that the library would remain open during the construction. The library board unanimously rejected this suggestion.

Yet, somehow the plan to keep the library open was scrapped later on and a massive library-wide construction effort began in November. This decision has now made it risky to consider reopening the building at this time, and will probably result in the library being closed for months to come, just as the director recommended but the board rejected.

And so, the Guilderland library continues to remain closed.

But, I am mostly disappointed by the majority of the Guilderland library trustees who have enabled this unnecessary situation, which has continued on for the past year. All too often the board has focused on worst-case pandemic scenarios of possible harm to library staff, rather than the more likely outcomes. 

Again and again, the majority of the board has put forth the argument that its decision to make complete 100-percent library staff safety (an impossible goal) its top priority is the only correct one. Over and over, we have heard that science is their guide in deciding to keep the library closed.

In my opinion, too many of the board’s decisions to keep the library closed have not been based on actual facts and level-headed science, but on unjustified fear and occasional hysteria.

Does anyone actually believe that the decision-makers in the libraries that reopened to the public were any less concerned with their staff safety than the Guilderland board? No, I believe that they were equally concerned. But, they concluded that, if proper safety procedures were strictly observed, as they were in Colonie, then there would have been no unreasonable risk to their staff in reopening to the public.

Besides an abundance of caution, the board and the Guilderland library bureaucracy also need an abundance of plexiglass partitions as well as just a little bit of one factor that is abundant in Colonie, but missing in Guilderland — courage.

If only there had been just some measure of leadership encouraging staff to try to find the resolve to meet the challenge of this dangerous pandemic, things could have, and should have, been so different, just as they were in Colonie.

Why am I now taking the time to write this? It is because people who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat the past.

I am so worried that the majority of the board and library bureaucracy still believe that they have acted correctly in keeping our library closed for a year. I am also concerned that this viral pandemic is far, far from over.

With the continuing viral mutations, the refusal by so many people to follow safety procedures and accept the vaccines, we are almost certain to see more viral flare-ups in the months to come. What then? Will the board once again refuse to reopen, or shut back down?

With leadership, resolve, and just a little measure of courage, maybe not.

Our town deserves better!

Dan Alexander

Guilderland