GPL plans $4M budget, upgrades systems

GUILDERLAND — The Guilderland Public Library’s board of trustees has approved an operating budget for 2017-18 of $4,038,583, based on a tax levy of $3,689,217.

Guilderland residents will vote on the budget on May 16 at the district’s elementary schools; they will also vote on the school district budget, and elect library trustees and school board members.

The proposed library budget will mean an estimated cost per $1,000 of assessed value of $1.18 for Guilderland residents, up from an actual rate of $1.15 last year.

Estimated rates for the coming year in other towns with pieces in the district are $1.03 for Bethlehem and New Scotland, and, $1.67 per $1,000 in Knox.

This year, library Director Tim Wiles said, the library board wants to install a sprinkler system in the building for the first time. When the building was built in 1992, Wiles said, “The thinking was, there was a lot of money put into the electrical system and a sprinkler system would jeopardize that.”

Nowadays, Wiles said, “We think that people are more important, and sprinklers would buy you a couple of seconds to take out live bodies.”

One of his firefighter friends told him, Wiles said, that he was “so glad” the library was getting a sprinkler system. “He said, ‘You’ve got a building full of paper and a lot of kids around.’”

The board is also considering, Wiles said, putting in four or five additional exit windows, including one in what he called “the deep corner” of the children’s section of the library. These windows would improve fire safety as well as offer additional escape routes if the library were ever to have an active shooter, Wiles said.

Currently, the board estimates needed total repairs to the building’s management system at $541,000, Wiles said. The repairs would include upgrading the computer system that would allow maintenance staff to control the heating and cooling remotely; and replacing all the ceiling tiles, which are old and discolored, as well as all the heat pump. The building is heated, Wiles said, by a system of pipes that are filled with water.

The $541,000 figure also includes the installation of the sprinkler system. Since the estimate is rough, Wiles said, the board made the figure, for “Properties,” higher in the proposed budget, setting it at $637,604, up from $287,997 this year.

Next year’s budget calls for $5,000 less for programming than did this year’s. “There won’t be less programs,” Wiles said. “We just didn’t use all our money last year.” He reports that the library has had a 48 percent increase in its adult program attendance, and offered 13 percent more programs — for adults and children — overall; participation in the Summer Reading Club was up 23 percent. “Why budget it if we had a good program this year and didn’t spend it all?” Wiles asked.

Salaries and benefits go up $68,000 in the proposed budget. Last  year, Wiles said, the board negotiated new contracts for management and other employees. “They hadn’t done so well previously,” he said, “and now they are competitive with other libraries in the Capital District and have a better starting salary.” He believes that this increase will make it easier for the library to retain employees.

Libraries are being used, Wiles said, more and more as a “third space”  — a place to go that’s not home or work, that is also not a commercial space and so is different from a mall.

“We’d like to be a place where people can hang out,” he said.

An increase of $43,500 in professional services will be used on two projects. Part of it will go to ME Engineering of Schenectady, which has been hired to provide design engineering services on the project involving the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems; the building management system; and ceiling tiles, Wiles said.

The remainder will be used to retain design consultant Paul Mays of Butler, Rowland & Mays, to evaluate the interior layout and develop a long-range plan that can keep the library relevant and up-to-date for years to come, Wiles said.

“We’d like to find out what a cutting-edge library looks and feels like,” he said, noting that the current layout has been tweaked in many ways, but not substantially changed, since construction was completed 25 years ago.

“He may recommend fairly substantial changes in the way services are laid out,” Wiles said.

As just one example, he said that the current entryway may be changed. With the current configuration, he said, if two families — one going in and the other going out — stop to chat in the entryway, no one else can get in or out.

That problem could be solved, he said, if there were a dedicated entry and a dedicated exit. An entry could be added on the left side of the lobby — beyond the two outer sets of doors, and before the current entryway. There is a plate-glass window there now, Wiles said. The current entryway could become a dedicated exit.

The board will hold a public comment session on the budget on Thursday, May 11, at 6:30 p.m. in the Tawasentha Room.


Corrected on May 4, 2017: The date of the public hearing was corrected to May 11.

 

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