POLAND — Former Poland Village Councilman Sam Moffie is joining in the fight to save the Poland branch of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County by gathering information through the Freedom of Information Act.

“The Poland Save Our Library Campaign is the greatest grassroots effort I have ever witnessed in my lifetime,” Moffie said. “This was my contribution to help their efforts.”

Moffie is requesting a variety of items surrounding the relocation of the landmark Poland Library. The document contains a request for 32 named records. Many of the requests involve records related to the library board itself, the director, the maintenance records for the Poland branch, and records dealing with the relocation of the branch.

Maria Pappas, chair of the Poland Save Our Library’s Action Committee, said she is grateful for the effort Moffie is making to keep the Poland branch at the present location.

“He (Moffie) is not on our committee,” Pappas said, “but he strongly supports it remaining in the current location.”

She said at the roundtable discussion last week hosted by the committee, elected representatives and leaders identified the problem with the unresponsiveness of the PLYMC to public sentiment in the community to be their governance structure — “a private non-profit board that is largely funded by taxpayers.”

“This was best demonstrated by county Commissioner Geno DiFabio’s testimony that when he and fellow county commissioners requested a meeting with their own appointed representative on the board, Tom Frost, they got a call from their prosecutor’s office that the attorney for the PLYMC notified the prosecutor that he would not be meeting with them.

“This is not what you would at all call an example of representative government,” Pappas said. “Our committee will continue to share public information that we uncover as we believe the trustees and the public have been misled on cost options. We cannot allow the adult problems we discussed last Monday to rob Poland’s children of a landmark library that is within walking distance of our city’s elementary and middle schools.”