Sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s, a handful of women, many young "housewives" with lots of little children, came up with a dream. Tired of trekking off weekly to meet the "Book Mobile" from the Pittsburgh Library System, someone said, "Let's start a library." I don't know who they were or how they organized, given that they lived in a half dozen neighboring suburban boroughs and townships, but their idea caught on and spread. It was a remarkable achievement that they managed to get positive commitments to form a regional library from the governing officials of five separate municipalities. But the five towns had one condition. The library proponents must convince Ross Township, the sixth, largest, and most populated of the neighboring North Hills suburban communities, to agree to join the effort.
The northern half of Ross Township was rapidly suburbanizing with new neighborhoods filled with young people moving in to raise their families. The already developed southern half of Ross Township, which borders the City of Pittsburgh, was built more than a half-century earlier.
My wife, Karen, and I, with our two small children, lived in the northern half of Ross, the newest part of the township. Karen, along with many women in our surrounding neighborhoods, became involved in the effort to gain Ross Township Commission approval. They met with each of the nine elected Commissioners, each elected by the voters in their township ward. After a lot of work, the women finally succeeded in getting a majority of the nine to agree to place the library concept on their regular Commission meeting agenda for action, ostensibly for approval.
I wasn't involved in their effort. Still, I joined a bunch of the other spouses to attend the Ross Commission meeting "to help celebrate final approval." There wasn't a public hearing; the library matter was a formal vote in favor with little fanfare. Our "standing room only crowd" patiently waited as the Commission dispensed with several routine municipal business matters first. Finally, the library issue reached the top of the agenda, and we held our collective breath. The key proponent, one of the Commissioners, introduced their resolution; "to present a referendum to the Ross Township citizens in support of a community library and underwrite the cost with a property tax increase."
We were stunned because we did not expect this to happen, and that wasn't what the citizens agreed to when they met with the Commissioners one-on-one. The other five municipalities approved the library, but the Ross Township Commission deferred any decision to a referendum.
Bear in mind this occurred 50 some years ago. "Institutional Transparency" was not yet the norm in the political arena or any other institutional system of that time. "Smoke Filled Rooms" were the political reality of the day, literally and figuratively. The Commissioners did not invite public comment, and their motion to submit to a referendum vote was unanimously approved. The Commissioners made their decision behind closed doors before the Commission meeting started. It was a move to derail the library by moving the tough decision from the politicians' plates to the electorate and tying approval to a substantial tax increase.
We uttered a collective gasp and silently filed out of the Commission chambers to the parking lot, where the spoken words included "double cross" and many whispered curses. Several children were present, so we felt compelled to maintain a degree of civility.
What would we do? Would all our work be for naught? We were discouraged but not broken.
"When one door closes, another door opens." We attribute this quote to Alexander Graham Bell, but there's more to it.
"When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."
There had to be an open door somewhere, but where?
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