You may already  know that a group of twenty-odd people worked for about a year trying to figure out how the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor, could expand so as to offer more and better services to the community. This group, known as the Community Library Committee (CLC), was appointed by the Library's Board of Trustees, after a referendum in which the Trustees' plan to expand the library by constructing a new building adjacent to Mashashimuet Park was defeated. After studying the issue for a year, the CLC decided that the Trustees' plan was, in fact, the best way to proceed, but that more attention needed to be paid to certain details. (Read the CLC's final report at http://clcreport.wordpress.com, to find out more about those details.) So, the CLC recommended that the Trustees create a new committee to refine the original plan to better take into account the needs and desires of the community. The Trustees accepted the CLC's report and quickly recruited a new group, which they christened the Library Development Committee (LDC).

The LDC is made up of some of the former CLC members (all were invited, but some chose not to participate), the Library Trustees and a few other community members who were not on the original committee. By the way, all these people -- the Trustees, the CLC members and the LDC members -- are volunteers. Since then, the LDC has been busily at work trying to fill in the details of the plan in a way that will satisfy the needs of a broad cross section of the community. All their meetings are open to the public. In addition, they are holding a series of  meetings specifically to keep the public informed about the progress they're making and the avenues they're pursuing. They're also looking for feedback from anyone and everyone.

Nevertheless, some members of the LDC have a recurring nightmare. They worry that despite their best efforts to keep the public informed and to solicit feedback, ideas and suggestions from the community, a large number of people will not come to any meetings, read any literature, offer any feedback, or voice any objections. But, when it comes time to put the plan to a vote again, these folks will vote no because their objections have not been addressed, nor their ideas incorporated in the final design.

In his novel of the same name, Joseph Heller called this nightmare Catch-22, a problem that can only be solved if the problem is solved. In other words, you can't get there from here.

The LDC wants Sag Harbor to have the library that Sag Harbor wants and needs, but they'll only know what that library looks like if people tell them. Your job is to speak up now. By the time we get to voting it will be too late. At that point, if you haven't made your thoughts known, you'll only have one option: voting against a plan you don't like. So, be a local hero. Come to one of the LDC's feedback sessions. Write a letter. Put a comment on the CLC Report website mentioned above. Make a phone call. It will only take an hour of your time, but will validate the countless hours that the volunteers on the CLC, LDC and Library Board have put into creating a library the whole community can embrace.