VOORHEESVILLE — Two seats are open for the Voorheesville Public Library Board of Trustees, and petitions for nominations are due April 20.

Voters will head to the polls on May 19 to elect new library trustees and to decide on the library’s budget, which staff pared down to $1.1 million for 2014-15; updated budget figures will be available in April, according to library Director Gail Alter Sacco. 

Trustees

Incumbent trustees David Gibson and Lance Moore have picked up nominating petitions, Sacco said. At least two other community members have also taken petitions at this early date, she said, and there is still time for other interested residents to get the forms.

Each candidate’s petition must have 25 qualified voters’ signatures in order for the candidate to make the ballot, Sacco said. 

Gibson was elected to the board in 2013 to complete an unfulfilled term.

“I was a write-in,” Gibson told The Enterprise. “I was filling an opening.” At that time, he recalled, two board members left but no one filed a petition to run.

“I thought it was a real pity,” he said. He and Clifford Erickson let the community know after the deadline for petitions had passed that they would serve, and they were elected, he said.

“I think it’s important. The library is a resource. It brings people together,” Gibson said.

Gibson, who declined to give his age, has a degree in economics and management, and founded a local technology company, among other endeavors.

“I understand making goals and making tough trade-offs,” he said, noting that he came on the board at a time when there were “hard feelings” soon after the library bond for an expansion failed. “You can never have everything,” he said.

Trustee Lance Moore was appointed to the library board two weeks ago.

“The position was open. I applied for it,” Moore said. He interviewed for the seat and was then appointed to fill a seat vacated by former Trustee Robert Kent, who resigned Dec. 31, 2014.

Sacco said that the trustees spoke with several people who were interested in the position, then interviewed two, ultimately choosing Moore.

According to Sacco, Kent was on the board for 10 years, and had served as its president until July last year. Kent did not return calls for comment.

The candidate receiving the highest number of votes would win Gibson’s open seat on the library board, with a full five-year term. The candidate with the next highest number of votes would win Moore’s open seat and fulfill the remainder of Kent’s term, which ends in four years.

Moore said that his parents and he and his wife have been involved with the library for decades. Moore’s two daughters also worked as pages at the library, he said.

“I am an ardent supporter of the library. It’s a real asset to the community,” Moore said. “It performs a real needed service.”

Moore, 65, also serves on the New Scotland Zoning Board of Appeals.

“You make time for the important things in your life,” he said. “I’m at the stage that I’m looking down the road at retirement.”

Moore is a local contractor and also an executive chef.

“I’ve always had two professions,” he said. “One is a creation you create for people’s pleasure. You hope they enjoy it,” he said of his work in restaurants. “One is static,” he said of carpentry. “What you do, you leave a mark.”

The Voorheesville Public Library, he said, “is a crown jewel of what New Scotland offers.”

Library redesign

“The library is going through a strategic redesign,” Sacco said. The redesign is not about the building, she said, but about the library’s programs and services.

The board hired Nancy Meyers Preston, Ltd., a Latham consultant who offers strategic planning for not-for-profits, to guide the board in deciding “what the library should be doing in services for the next three years,” Sacco said.

The board set five strategic goals, she said. The planning should evaluate library administration; collaborative community partnership; programs and services; governance and leadership; and marketing, Sacco said.

Regarding governance and leadership, she said, the board hopes to find out some of the ways the “library framework could be…improved — what trustee responsibilities are, and if they’re still appropriate.”

Preston is “guiding them through the development of the strategic plan,” Sacco said. Preston’s fee is $6,000, and is paid out of the consultant piece of the library budget, Sacco said.

The board pursued the evaluation after two new members said they heard mixed responses from the community about what people want from the library, she said.

Rather than start from scratch, Sacco said, the trustees hired a consultant with experience in strategic planning, who would be an outsider to keep the plan objective and inclusive.

“Three years is a time where you can get something accomplished, but it doesn’t get you started on a road that’s difficult to move from,” Sacco said.

The process, which includes community input, is a way of “refreshing our lens, and cleaning the lens off,” she said.