Are You Willing?

 “You know we’re moving?” My doctor asked me yesterday as she checked me in to begin my appointment. 

“I know the way someone with ADHD knows,” I joked. “I was aware, I’ve known for a long time, and then I came in the office today and saw the signs and thought, wow! So soon?”

She smiled, then added, “I ask because apparently a lot of our patients say they didn’t know.”

This surprised me. The office announced this quite a while ago and has been periodically reminding patients that this is in the works. It’s on the website. It’s on the patient portal. Signs have been posted on the reception desk. It’s been covered by local media.

And then it didn’t surprise me.

Think of all the folks who are outraged about the decision on the Downtown Library because there was “no public input.”

“I didn’t know” is to them the equivalent of “It didn’t happen.”

I bemoaned this line of ‘reasoning’ back in August of 2024 in Sisyphus at the Lakefront.

I do not know how anything in government is ever accomplished. Ever.

Imagine that you are in a college lecture hall and the professor has begun their presentation right on time when, at about ten after the hour, another student comes in. 

“What did I miss?” 

Imagine that in this world the professor must go back to the beginning of the lecture and start again, every time another student enters the room, because they feel entitled to receive the information that everyone else has received in that very moment and in the same format. No matter whether they had a perfectly good reason to have been delayed or they simply overslept: this is no way to teach a lesson. 

This is one of the aspects of the discussion around the the Downtown Library that drives me to distraction. Whether you are inspired by the concept or not, whether you think libraries are valuable investments in communities or not, the process to get to this point has been going on for years and is well documented. The decision to replace the Central Branch was made a long time ago as a part of the Downtown Plan. 

It wasn’t sudden or secret or a part of a backroom deal. If you didn’t know that’s perfectly fine and there are ways you can bring yourself up to date and become better informed. Using the reasoning that because you didn’t know, we must all go back to the drawing board and start over again makes no sense to me. But that’s what a lot of people are doing.

I understand that it is extremely difficult to keep track of everything. We are swamped with information. I find myself - - all too often - - seeing some local event and thinking, “That happened? I was going to research that and write about it.” But it got away from me. 

In those situations I feel regret and no small amount of self-recrimination.

Any parent who is losing their mind learning of a field trip permission slip (when it is too late) knows this. All the information was there. For whatever reason, we weren’t on the lookout for it. It is deeply frustrating because, in your heart of hearts, you feel that you would not have failed “if only someone would have told me!”

Still, we know it was not the result of a shadowy conspiracy to suppress vital information. Don’t we?

Howard County Government and the Office of the County Executive practically stand on their heads to keep the public informed. For this they are often accused of grandstanding and self-aggrandizement. That must be galling when what they are doing is what their jobs require them to do. Often more.

At a certain point we need to face the fact that the public needs to be willing to be informed. We have responsibility in this. You probably can’t know everything at all times. So, make it a point to stay informed about the local issues that matter most to you.

As my appointment was wrapping up I told my doctor that the new Downtown library project that I’d been advocating for and writing about on my blog had been voted on and was going to be moving forward. 

“And it’s going to be near your new office!”

Village Green/Town² Comments