Fifteen members of the public, two members of the board of trustees, two library employees and two members of the press attended the Sept. 23 fall kick-off meeting of the Great Neck library board. No meeting took place due to the fact that the seven-member board is required to have at least five members in attendance in order to hold a meeting. The last public meeting of the board was June 24.

Trustee and treasurer Marietta Di Camillo announced that the meeting would not take place. Norman Rutta was the other board member present.

The next day the Great Neck Record spoke with board president Martin Sokol who said that he had been aware since Aug. 14 that there would be no quorum for the meeting. He stated that the board attorney Kevin Seaman had given an opinion that the board should not formally cancel the meeting in advance.

The Record called Mr. Seaman who stated that indeed the board has nothing in its by-laws that would give authority to change a previously scheduled meeting; however, he expressed surprise that people actually showed up for the meeting. He said that in the few instances of his 30-plus- year-career working with boards of education and libraries, in which such non-meetings have occurred, "word leaked out that there would be no meeting and the public was not inconvenienced."

The board had met on Sept. 14 to take care of essential business that could not wait a month. Usually, the Record receives an email reminder of a public library board meeting. No notice was sent for the Sept. 14 meeting.

However, a notice of the Sept. 23 non-meeting and an attached agenda was emailed to the reporter.

According to director Laura Weir, board member Linda Cohen had given advance notice that she would be on vacation at the time of the regularly scheduled September meeting. Ms. Weir went on to note that board member Janet Eshaghoff has enrolled in a law school class on Tuesday evenings and will not be able to attend any regular board meetings for the next three months. Mr. Sokol said that he was unaware that Ms. Eshaghoff has an on-going conflicting commitment for the remainder of the calendar year.

According to Mr. Sokol, the building committee along with board members not on the committee, have been meeting regularly and often (nine times in September) in executive session to interview architectural firms. They have now winnowed the applicants down to two firms and are in the process of visiting libraries that the two firms have designed. He declined to state the names of the two finalists.

On Sept. 26, the Record received a copy of an email which had been sent to all the board members from Norman Rutta. According to Mr. Rutta, he had cleared his calendar to visit and tour a library designed by one of the finalists that was set for Sept. 26 at 3 p.m. Prior to the allotted time, he received a call from Laura Weir informing him that the visit had taken place that morning instead. He had not been notified of the change in time to attend.