Your Turn
Retired library director seeks to set record straight
Joseph E. Lyons
Guest Column

I am writing with regard to the article, "Unsupervised children cause issues at the library," (Suburban, April 19). Since I am falsely represented by name by the Sayreville business administrator in this article, I thought it proper to correct the record.

Your Sayreville readers who use the library know this issue goes back to the beginning of the school year in the fall of 2006. I brought it to the attention of the library board of trustees at that time, and continued to address it at every subsequent board of trustees meeting up to my retirement in March.

Know that the business administrator is nominally a member of this board as the mayor's representative. His absence at more than half of the meetings in 2006, and the first two months of 2007 unfortunately indicate the lack of interest of both himself and the mayor in library matters, including this one. This lack of concern is also reflected by the Borough Council: Councilman Dan Buchanan attended one meeting in 2006, and no others attended up to my last meeting in February.

The business administrator, either through ignorance or intent, spoke falsely when he stated that I am pursuing charges personally against a borough woman, despite the fact that the library board and the municipality want to see them dropped.

I did file a complaint against the woman in February for trespass and disorderly conduct in the library (offenses committed in front of multiple witnesses). I dropped the charges during a hearing with a state mediator arranged by the Sayreville Municipal Court on Feb. 27, with the provision that the woman attend one meeting each of the Board of Education and Borough Council to solicit assistance in resolving the overall issue. Based on your article, all she did was reiterate her alleged treatment. If the municipality or the board of trustees ever had an opinion on this matter, it was never expressed to me. But then, they don't do the "hard" things well, and becoming involved would have underscored that deficiency.

I filed these charges to attempt to protect the library staff from further harassment. The staff had been (and continues to be, apparently) abandoned by the board of trustees, the governing body, the Board of Education, the mayor and the borough administrator, all of whom collectively failed to take any action on this community problem. The board of trustees had become so ineffective that it could not even figure out how to address this issue in writing with the Board of Education after several months of dithering. The Sayreville police have, however, supported the library to the limits of its resources

In over 40 years in the work place all over the country and as an elected official, I have never encountered a more dysfunctional municipal government than Sayreville. Is it any wonder I retired as library director, for who would want the job?

Joseph E. Lyons, now of High Point, N.C., is retired as director of the Sayreville Public Library.