Library shows ‘community's commitment its future'

To the editor: As a homeowner in New York State, every year when I see my property taxes I am horrified. I can understand why there are people in Warwick who want to send a message that taxes can’t go up any further. So why is it that I am going to vote for a new library building, even though my own family no longer uses it much? The answer is very simple. I look at what it will cost me and I compare it to what a new library building will give to our community, and I think, “Yes, I can do a little bit more.” A library says something important about a community’s commitment to its future. It says something about whether the community really cares about education and access to information for all, one of the essential elements for a true democracy. It says something about whether a community considers the public good to be as important as personal comfort. Anyone who has ever walked into our library knows, the building became too small to meet the needs of the community a very long time ago. Both the library building and our taxes are victims of the same process, which is an exploding population that increases the need for all social services. It is easy to think that voting no for a library will somehow send a message against higher taxes. The truth is it won’t. The problem will only continue to get worse until the population of Warwick levels off, no matter how the library vote comes out. I am urging everyone in Warwick to look beyond that property tax bill, to the future of our community. It is up to us to make that future. Bob McGrath Warwick