GUILDERLAND — The Guilderland Public Library has finalized a $3.9 million budget that will go before voters on May 15. The budget, if passed, would raise the tax levy by 3.17 percent, from $3.7 million to $3.8 million.

Guilderland residents paid a tax rate of $1.18 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2017-18 and will pay an estimated $1.21 next year. The library follows school-district lines.

Bethlehem residents in the Guilderland School District paid 82 cents and will pay 92 cents. New Scotland residents paid 91 cents and will pay 94 cents. In Knox, a town that hasn’t revalued in decades, the rate of $1.48 will go up to $1.53.

Expenses are lower this year, but revenues are also down.

The lion’s share of the budget — $2,659,150, up $106,879 from last year — goes to staff salaries and benefits.

‘Counted our chickens’

The main reason revenues are down is that the library expected to receive about $280,000 in grant money that didn’t come through, said library Director Timothy Wiles.

“We counted our chickens before they were hatched,” Wiles said.

The line for “gifts, grants, and donations” fell from $282,000 to $1,500.

The library is replacing its heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system — “hopefully by June 1” — with more energy-efficient models that use 20 percent less energy to heat and cool, said Wiles.

The estimated expenses last year for the HVAC, building system, ceiling tiles, and sprinklers were about $500,000, Wiles said. The library had been eligible for a maximum return “of possibly half,”  he said, but the money for the state’s Public Library Construction Fund went to building a new library elsewhere, which takes precedence.

The new HVAC system, Wiles said, “is in effect already paid for through savings.” He explained that the anticipated savings in energy costs is expected to pay off the entire investment within 4.1 years.

The building-and-equipment-maintenance line in the library’s expenses went down dramatically, from $530,000 to $73,274, because the library doesn’t have any anticipated major projects next year, he said.

The winning bid on the HVAC project, Wiles said, was from Family Danz, for $264,762. That money is from last year’s budget, from the $530,000.

“We’re investing that money and hoping for the payoff of that amount in 4.1 years,” he added. “What we don’t spend out of that line will go into the fund balance.”

Consultant

Outside consultant Paul Mays of Butler Rowland and Mays has come up with a not-quite-final plan for the library’s expansion, estimated to cost $6.9 million. The board will vote once it receives a finalized plan from Butler Rowland and Mays, said Wiiles, possibly at its May 10 meeting.

If the board endorses the plan, there are still steps to complete before it can be voted on by the public, Wiles said.

The board would need to ask Mays to draw up an architectural plan that is far more detailed than the current conceptual plan, Wiles said. The current plan is intended to help people visualize the proposed changes; an architectural plan would be used to actually build the project.

The board would also need to figure out how to pay for it, Wiles said. “We have some fund balance and hope to do a little fundraising, too,” he said.

Wiles anticipates that the public vote on the proposed expansion would not be held until May 2019.

The earliest that construction might begin, if the public endorses the expansion, would be about May 2020, Wiles said, adding that it would take at least six months to do architectural drawings and the same amount of time to get New York State Education Department approval of the plans.

Increases

The proposed budget for next year adds $7,500 to last  year’s $33,000 for special programs, to pay people to speak or perform, Wiles said.

The library plans to increase the number of Sunday concerts held throughout the year. It has recently “jazzed up” the summer reading program to include magicians and jugglers, Wiles said.

Generally speaking, Wiles said, musicians’ fees are increasing.

The budget adds $10,000 for its books, audiobooks, and e-books, raising this amount from $276,945 last year to $286,945 this year.

That increase is mostly for e-books, Wiles said. Print books are not going anywhere, he said, but demand for them is relatively flat, although, in what he said is a hopeful sign, it’s increasing among millennials.

In the Upper Hudson Library System, Wiles said, the average wait time to take out an e-book is currently 40 days. Trying to reduce that to two weeks would cost the system’s libraries a collective total of $1.5 million. “Nobody has that,” Wiles said, but the $10,000 is intended to reduce it a little.

‘Library of Things,’ including hotspots

Over six of the past eight months, Wiles said, the highest circulation rate for any one object in the library has been for folding tables, which people use for parties.

Another extremely popular item, he said, has been hotspots, which provide internet access. Each of the 30 or 40 library hotspots is about the size of a hockey puck and comes in a zippered case about the size of a hardback book. They circulate for two weeks at a time.

The library is allowed only a certain maximum number of hotspots by internet providers, although that number increases periodically, Wiles said. The library gets the hotspots at a subsidized rate, of about $10 or $12 a month each, he said, as compared to the $50 or so per month it would cost the average consumer.

This is important, Wiles said, citing a recent Siena College poll that he said found that 30 percent of New Yorkers rely on public libraries for their internet access.

The library is always looking for input on items that residents would like to see added to its Library of Things. “Some libraries have collections of tools that you can check out, but we don’t have a ton of space to store them.” There might also be liability issues connected with items like nail guns, he said.

Likewise, he said, some libraries offer prom dresses that they save from year to year, but again those take a lot of space to store.