If private library can raise $30k in 13 days, they were deceptive

To The Daily Sun,

It would seem that the recent events surrounding the Gilmanton Year Round Library have finally slipped from soap opera level hyperbole into the depths of absurdity.

In yet another seemingly biased front page article, titled: "GYRL fights to stay open" (March 22), it was reported that the GYRL had already raised $30,000.

Let's put that into perspective: The GYRL secures $30,000 from "sources unknown" in 13 days (since they lost the vote on March) 8 and that's considered a fight to stay open? Seams like a walk in the park to me. Thirteen days ... $30,000? I believe there are many in Gilmanton who would really like to know exactly where these monies are coming from.

Also, the deceptively, seemingly evasive disclosure that the GYRL trustees may consider gifting the library to the town flies in the face of the fact, believed by many, that the initiative of the original founders (those who truly still have influential control) did not build the GYRL library for the town ... but for themselves. So there is as much chance, then, that the library is gifted to the town as there is for any of us to grow wings and fly off to parts unknown. It's simply a statement designed to distract those in Gilmanton from the GYRL's real purpose, which is to manipulate a now friendly Board of Selectmen into a long-term contract. And possibly again behind the backs of the voters, as they attempted before, when past Selectman Guarino was compelled to intercede on the voters' behalf.

Worse though, while being forced to play out this year's "myth of closure" scenario, the GYRL has carelessly overlooked the fact that they have deliberately and unnecessarily stressed out and misled the very people who support them. The GYRL's Facebook page testifies to this. It's actually disturbing to read.

Knowing they had the means and resources to stay open, they allowed their faithful to believe they were closing — definitely closing. Yet it was not only tears and sadness expressed in so many Facebook entries but also streams of divisive and negative comments, targeting those who apposed town funding and also even our own municipal town library, further driving a wedge of contention deeper and deeper into our community. Go to any town library's Facebook page in the state of New Hampshire — any town — and see if you can read anything as oppressively manipulative, contentious and hostile as the GYRL's page.

I've searched. You'll find nothing. And as I've said, it's disturbing.

If the GYRL, then, can raise $30,000 in 13 days, it certainly demonstrates to me that they are more than capable of fulfilling what they have come to conveniently refer to as "only a goal," but many believe to be a pledge, to raise an endowment to operate their private librar y. . . and leave Gilmanton's already stressed-out tax dollars alone while putting an end to this ugly division.

Al Blake

Gilmanton