Public Comment by an Anonymous Citizen - August 20, 2026

GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT

Thank you very much, Commissioners. 

Speaking as an anonymous citizen: Stop the hate. Stop the ignorance. Don't give money to the Friends of the Library. Don't accept money from the Friends of the Library. 

I hope to make two points today and I will present them in reverse from the  natural order simply because the second part provides some context. It is a justly famous poem, a sonnet from Peter Bysshe Shelley from 1818. It is considered one of Shelley's masterworks because it is so successful on so many different levels. It progresses from the quotidian to the most profound perspective on the human condition. And it does this with a quotation inside a quotation. 

When you recite it for children, you change your voice because it dramatizes the progression and the change in perspective that is crucial to the appreciation of the poem. Beginning: 

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The other point, the preliminary point really is a couple of principles that we used to call kindergarten wisdom. We are fortunate if we learned them from our mother as I did, but we certainly learned them in kindergarten because that is what kindergarten is for. It is sometimes possible to forget them. But in fact, they are the enduring wisdom that we associate from kindergarten and continue to conserve within us. 

The first is if you are nice to others, they will be nice to you. The second is you only win when everyone wins. Now, aren't those nice basic principles that we all learned in kindergarten? Thank you very much. 

PUBLIC COMMENT ON APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Yes. Good afternoon, Commissioners. 

Stop the hate. Stop the ignorance. Don't give money to the Friends of the Library. Don't accept money from the Friends of the Library. 

Completely omitted from these minutes is an introduction where your affairs analyst told you it is illegal for you to respond to public comment. History should preserve that you allowed yourself to be told that. 

Under general public comment, Mr. Warfield spoke for three minutes and these minutes represent a distorted view of his first minute 10 seconds and stops. Dr. Gibbs also spoke for three minutes and these minutes present a distorted view of his first 1 minute and 10 seconds and stops. Particularly significant in his case because he had some important things to say about those who maintain the standard of service. 

Artificial Intelligence has scrambled the Commissioners' comments for several meetings and it is appropriate that we have a characteristic example here. I direct your attention to page four where the Commissioners themselves discuss the social services presentation. What Mr. Bolander was said is completely omitted. What is ascribed to Commissioner Bolander was from Commissioner Menon. What was ascribed to Commissioner Menon was from Kenniston. And what was ascribed to Kennistn was actually from Lopez. 

This means that no human being even looked at these minutes. Even more significantly, after the end of these minutes, there is a separate document entitled addendum with these speaker summaries that I submitted. 

When did you decide this? After having no such document for three months, did you decide addendum means include? Did you decide this is illegal? Should we assume that you have illegal secret meetings where you decide all these things? Or should we assume that you are mute automatons, zombies who passively accept anything put in front of you? You receive no public input on your decisions because you have no opinions and you exercise no judgment.

We know why. It is because you feel the need to do blatantly illegal things and you don't want to admit you're aware of them. Do you think the city fathers told themselves that they needed seven citizens to form a Library Commission that will receive no information, have no diverse opinions because they exercised no judgment? And no, they thought there would be democratically informed opinions, public decisions, and public access. The question is answered. Not only do you have no opinions and no public access, you have no competence or professionalism because you pay no attention to anything you're doing. None at all.