To the Editor: 

What is the Supervisor’s vision of the future?

Some things are scalable and some things just aren’t.  You can’t decide that a ticket to a baseball game is overpriced at $45 and promise the stadium you’ll only stay for 6 innings if they’ll sell you a ticket for $30.  You either pay the minimum price for a ticket, which entitles you to stay for the entire game, or you don’t go to the game.  This is a fundamental concept which our Town Supervisor fails to grasp.  A library to meet the minimum basic requirements for a town of 86,000 people costs about $16 million.  You don’t get a library which is 2/3 as good for 2/3 the price – you simply don’t get a library.

The really interesting thing about a library (and many other cultural assets) is that going from a baseline facility with a $16 million price tag to a world class facility doesn’t raise the price proportionately – Greenburgh could build a world class library – state of the art and the envy of most colleges and universities – for only slightly more.  Sad to say, as things currently stand, we won’t be building a world-class library, in fact we probably won’t even be able to talk about what it might cost to build one.  That’s because our Library Board has been told by the Supervisor that he doesn’t want to spend more than $10 million, and to consider spending even that much, the independent Library Board must first endorse his vision of the Town’s future. 

So, we come back to the original question - What is the Supervisor’s vision of the future?  Well, it includes the sale of the old Town Hall building to a hand-picked developer for less than the fair market value of the property.  The facility the Supervisor has in mind for the site is not a cultural site, nor is it parkland (a high priority for the Supervisor), nor is it his current societal flavor of the week “affordable housing”; rather it is some as yet economically undefined “assisted living” arrangement.  Is the project a not-for-profit or market rate? No answer.  Will the operator require tax incentives (beyond the below-market price)? No answer.  How many people will it serve? No answer.  Will its clients be permitted to retain their cars? No answer. Will the builder need to abide by the Town’s newly enacted “steep slopes” ordinance? No answer.  But, the Supervisor is, on his own recognizance, going ahead with negotiations to establish an exclusive relationship with his chosen developer – even before the Library Board has presented its vision to the Town Board.  The Supervisor, as if making a threat, says that if the Library Board wants to spend more than he thinks it should, he will call for a referendum. 

A referendum might not be a bad idea – provided the Library Board is given the opportunity to make a full public presentation of all the options and the Supervisor, as the law intends, remains both silent and neutral.  Critics might observe that the Supervisor rejected a request for a referendum on the recent acquisition of Taxter Ridge.  Those 200 acres of beautiful, passive parkland will be enjoyed by hundreds of visitors annually, and is “a crown jewel” among Greenburgh’s facilities.  Why not add a world-class library, which would be used by hundreds of people every day, to the Town’s tiara? 

Very truly yours,

/signed/

James F. Lasser