New York Library Victim :: Local News and Newspapers

: New York Library Victim

October 17, 2008 by Brad
Filed under: Economy

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Southold Library expansion: a casualty of the times

Citing economy, Southold Library trustees put expansion on hold

By Erin Schultz

Memo to taxpayers: You can hang on to your money.

Memo to guest lecturers, artists looking for space to display work and stakeholders looking for a place to meet: You’re still relegated to the basement and/or any available corner of Southold Free Library.

After holding several public informational meetings over a period of years, the Southold library’s board of directors decided late last month to postpone a bond vote to expand the “maxed out” historic library. It would be the first expansion of the building since 1991.

Uncertainty about the future of the economy and concerns voiced by residents caused library trustees to put the brakes on the project, at least for now.

The three-tiered expansion plan, designed by architect Gary Jacquemin and Robert Stromski of Rocky Point-based Searles and Stromski Associates, features a centralized circulation desk, an energy-efficient glass atrium and a large meeting area that would be available even when the library is closed.

During a mid-August public meeting, library board director David Fujita revealed the cost of the project, based on a professional cost-estimate and not accounting for fundraising, to be somewhere between $6.5 million and $7.5 million, equaling out to about $115 to $135 per taxpayer per year over 20 years.

“We’re sensitive to the fact that people are hurting, that they think this is the wrong time to do something like this,” said Mr. Fujita. “But we feel very strongly that the needs [for expansion] are legitimate.”

Leslie Weisman agrees. The professor emerita and former associate dean of the School of Architecture at New Jersey Institute of Technology and chairperson of the Southold stakeholders said the library has always provided outstanding services to the community, especially in providing meeting space to groups like hers. She remembers the early meetings after the expansion first was proposed to be “well attended, with a great deal of support.”

She also believes the cost for the expansion would be minimal over time, but she does understand taxpayer hesitation during a “crisis facing our own local government and our country.”

“The trustees might feel that the timing is unfortunate,” she said.

Bad timing may be what led to the overwhelming defeat Saturday of a referendum for the expansion of the library on Shelter Island. A record number of voters turned out on the island to reject the library plan by a nearly four to one margin.

Mr. Fujita said that the board’s original goal was to have a bond vote on the expansion in March or April of next year, but it’s been postponed until the fall of next year so board members, architects and library staff can review all of the plan’s economic components.

Both Mr. Fujita and library board director Caroline MacArthur have been sifting through all forms of community feedback, like these anonymous entries in the library’s expansion comment book:

“This is one kind of more that’s better. Think about it. Please now.” Also: “Too late, bad economy rising … not now.” And: “This is exactly what we need — nationwide!”

Southold resident Doug Stares, webmaster of www.southoldvotes.com, also has been monitoring the expansion proposal from the get-go. Though he said the libraries are an important aspect of all communities, he said he’d like to find a way to keep the taxes as low as possible in a community with obligations to many tax districts.

He says that with the delay, the library board is being fiscally responsible — “one of the few tax districts that have taken a stand,” he said. “It’s quite courageous.”

Mr. Stares started his Web site about a year ago to educate voters in a region with several overlapping tax districts: libraries, towns, fire departments, parks and schools.

“The problem is,” he said, “you’ve got these fairly older folks confused as to why their taxes are going up.”

“The normal folks don’t get it,” he said.

As a Southold taxpayer, Mr. Fujita said he gets it. That’s why he and the rest of the library board decided to delay the vote — and make time to review the master plan, he said.

“We’re all members of the community,” he said. “We all live here and pay taxes here. Shop locally, you know. We do what we can to help each other out. There are other ways to keep taxes low by raising revenue [and] by supporting businesses that contribute to the tax system.”

He reiterated that the library is one of those businesses. For every dollar put into the library, he said, four dollars in services are returned. Those services include book and DVD checkouts, computer use and a multipurpose community room.

Mr. Fujita said even those who are not library patrons can use the meeting room for everything from gardening club meetings to defensive-driving courses.

But, he said, over the years the meeting room has become cramped, as has the rest of the library.

Before the board approved the current expansion plans a few years ago, Ms. MacArthur said she’d consulted with three different space-planning companies on what she could do to make the existing space work better.

She said all the reports came back with the same information — “You’re maxed out.”

To Ms. MacArthur, this means continuing to live with the break room, complete with coffee, water and small closet area, in the same room as the toilet.

For Mr. Jacquemin, the architect, the delay lends itself to putting the legal and technical aspects of the expansion into place, but he says the design itself will remain very similar to what it was when he presented it in August.

eschultz@timesreview.com