Letter: Library choice is clear — except to this Tiverton council

Posted 2/7/19

To the editor:

Determined to make an easy job difficult, the Tiverton Town Council showed worrisome dysfunction in its January 28 meeting, as it did in previous meetings since the new TTA …

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Letter: Library choice is clear — except to this Tiverton council

Posted

To the editor:

Determined to make an easy job difficult, the Tiverton Town Council showed worrisome dysfunction in its January 28 meeting, as it did in previous meetings since the new TTA (Tiverton Taxpayer Association) majority took their seats. On this particular evening they were to consider two rival applicants for a vacancy on the Library Board of Trustees.

Is this so difficult? We’d expect to hear first from the current Board of Trustees regarding their needs and the qualifications they look to. Appropriately they would have interviewed candidates and then report to the council on their qualifications, experience and compatibility. We’d hear the board’s recommendations and perhaps public comment.

In this case, Applicant One is a communications professional with an M.A. in English and experience as an assistant director of communications at Portsmouth Abbey School, including composing and editing text for multiple publications, fund raising and social media. She professes avid use of libraries since childhood and is known in town as a library patron.

Applicant Two had not read the library’s long range plan and admits not to read much, write well or even use the library. Apparently from a grudge after a family member was turned away per the Town Charter’s prohibition against partisan political events on library property, he now favors ignoring that Charter. Additionally he feels the library does not deserve taxpayer revenue. Most troubling, incident reports testify to his verbal harassment and belligerent behavior toward library staff. As if this weren’t enough, the individual says he would, as a library trustee, “...question everything. It's not going to be easy for them to get things through.”

Take a breath. Friends, what seems an obvious choice to everyone else is not that to the council majority (Cook, Coulter, Driggs and Katz). Against all common sensibility, and against the library board’s unanimous recommendation, there is a real possibility that these folks will use their authority to appoint Applicant Two for a seat on the Library Board of Trustees. After all, he is their TTA political buddy.

The TTA council majority takes a page from the White House procedure book when they ignore rules while making up new ones and appoint individuals who are their personal friends, but are either unqualified or actively hostile toward the agendas of their new departments. (Ousted EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke are examples.)

The TTA and its agenda of disruption now have full grip on the citizens of Tiverton. Like the Trump Administration, they are not going away soon.

Ron Marsh

Tiverton

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