With library you'll find accountability

Transparency, accountability, responsibility - actions we all seem to desire from our federal and state governments.

Depending upon who you talk to, we need or don't need bailouts, tax increases and more spending. Listen to both points of view for a half-hour and soon you truly do not know who is correct. The one real truth is that the individual taxpayer has little control over exactly how their federal and state tax dollars are being spent today.

On a local level, though, we are allowed to have referendums. This great democratic process allows us to argue whether something may or may not truly help our own towns and counties. We finalize the question when we choose to vote.

Several years back, more than 2,000 voters chose to build the Sugar Grove Public Library but since that time those same voters have not stepped up to vote for the separate referendum required by our state to fund its operations. This library will serve more than 15,000 library residents who live in Prestbury and other parts of Aurora, parts of Montgomery, all of the Village of Sugar Grove and most of the Sugar Grove Township residents.

If it is truly transparency, accountability and responsibility that you want then it is the Sugar Grove Library Director Beverly Holmes Hughes and her staff you should thank for figuring out new convenient patron hours, resolving staffing issues and figuring out how to build a well laid out, energy efficient, community minded building well within the voters' budget.

Planning meetings were advertised and the public was invited. Every decision made for the new library was done so at public meetings and publicly recorded, every dollar spent was accounted for, and the bookkeeping is available at the library for anyone who cares to take a look.

Your local tax dollars are spent by local people you know and trust and the results of their hard work make your community an even better place to live.

The opening date of the Sugar Grove Public Library and the Janice Catherine Rich Technology Learning Center is Aug. 8. Naming opportunities and donations to the book and media collections are available and needed now.

Patricia Graceffa

President

Friends of Sugar Grove Library