GUILDERLAND — On May 20, voters served by the Guilderland Public Library will choose among five candidates to elect four trustees.

Incumbents Michael Hawrylchak and Michael Puspurs are running along with challengers Matthew Grunert, Joseph Otter, and Bethany Stever.

The library follows the Guilderland school district’s boundaries — which includes parts of Bethlehem, New Scotland, and Knox as well as most of the town of Guilderland — but is governed by its own elected board, which has the power to set policy and to levy taxes.

The library board originally had 11 trustees but downsized last year to nine. The posts carry three-year terms and are unpaid.

The top two vote-getters will win full three-year terms while the next two will have shorter terms, filling out posts from which trustees resigned.

The library went through some upheaval last year after its 10-year director retired just before the library’s first-ever café abruptly closed with the owner alleging racism. Two trustees resigned in the wake of the upheaval.

The library board hired Guidepost Solutions, for $15,000, which found no evidence of racism by library staff but did make some policy recommendations that the library’s new director, Peter Petruski, who started last May, said are being carried out.

Voters will also decide on a $4.6 million library budget for next year. The $4,633,011 spending plan is about $85,000 higher than this year’s budget

The lion’s share of the budget is paid for by property taxes with just $34,450 coming from fees, grants, and donations.

The proposed levy increase is 2.41 percent, which is just under the state-set tax cap, meaning a simple majority will pass the budget. The library has never suffered a budget defeat. Last May, the current budget passed with 70 percent of the vote.

Matthew Grunert

Matthew Grunert is running because he feels “we are obligated to defend institutions that we find valuable in our community,” he told The Enterprise, continuing, “I consider civic engagement to be a duty.”

He also said that he is “looking to see what we can do to take this sort of a bastion of knowledge to defend it to ensure that it stays open and accessible, that it stands as a beacon of truth in whatever happens in the future.”

Grunert said Timothy Snyder’s book, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” is “one of the motivators for my run for trustee.” Grunert said he is glad to see “academic institutions starting to push back against some of the egregious overreach …. If that comes knocking at Guilderland, I want very much to be ready to stand by those doors and say that that doesn’t belong here …. I think that the work the library has done already makes that abundantly clear.”

He also said, “The library is such a perfect amalgamation of a melting pot, of a community space that is so open, vibrant, and welcoming and anything less than that is an absolute disservice to our community.”

Grunert, who has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and computer science as well as a master’s degree in business administration, works as a consultant with a local not-for-profit.

He pointed to his earlier work as an elected Westmere fire commissioner and says he grew up in a family devoted to community service with his mother serving as a library trustee. His dog, Oatmeal, is trained as a therapy dog and has been part of the library’s Paws to Read program.

Grunert would like the library to explore “how we can develop media literacy around artificial intelligence,” he said.  He’d like the library’s deserted café space to be used as a café again.

“The library is one of the last true third places that exists, at least in the Guilderland area,” he said, noting the space is free and engenders collaboration and conversation. “Balancing against the library’s programming concerns, of course, and it’s necessary to ingest the lessons learned from Café con Mel.”

Grunert said his “absolute favorite novel" is “Dun,” the 1965 science fiction novel written by Frank Herbert.

“On its surface, ‘Dune’ is a fresh take … a progenitor of modern science fiction. In a deeper way, he went on, “it challenges the power of a cult personality.”

Grunert vividly remembers having a conversation with his English teacher after he wrote a book report on “Dune.” “The entire novel is written around being aware of charismatic amassing of power and unleashing this sort of rapid and uncontrollable thirst on the rest of the world to the detriment of the rest of the world, right? That resonates a bit more strongly lately than I’d prefer it to.”

Michael Hawrylchak 

Michael Hawrylchak, who has served on the library board for four years, is running on his record and also because he wants to complete the work he started, he said.

“The library has made some great improvements in the last year or two,” Hawrylchak told The Enterprise.

Hawrylchak said he has been working to make changes in the budget process to make it more transparent and regular.

“It’s still a work in progress,” he said, noting that changes are needed to “longer-term budgeting — how we plan and track cash reserves.”

He believes the way future expenses are planned should be less haphazard.

Hawrylchak, who graduated from Guilderland High School, went on to get a bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a law degree from Harvard.

He worked as a software engineer before he became a lawyer and now specializes in civil litigation.

Hawrylchak said his training in reading legal documents is useful for his role as a library trustee.

Asked what should be done with the café space, Hawrylchak said the board has no specific plan at this time and he, himself, has “no strong feeling.”

The board, he said, needs to determine if there is still enough interest in having a café to find another vendor or if people would rather move on.

“A survey is in the works right now from our long-range planning committee,” Hawrylchak said. The survey will be broad, he said, to gauge community interest on a range of different services “to see what things people care most about.”

Asked about the effects the Trump administration’s stances on diversity, equity, and inclusion or on academic institutions might have on the Guilderland library, Hawrylchak said, “I don’t think it will have any appreciative impact.”

He noted that the library “represents a wide range of viewpoints in our offerings.”

When asked about a favorite book, Hawrylchak said “I enjoy any book that gives me something to think over and play around in my head.”

He settled on “Kindred,” a 1979 novel by Octavia Butler, describing it as having “a science-fictiony premise” in which the main character, an African-American woman living in the 1970s, “suddenly travels back in time to when her distant ancestors lived on a southern plantation in the early 1800s.”

She needs to navigate that experience as she travels back and forth between the two timeframes.

“It makes you empathize with characters in extreme adverse conditions without any easy answers,” said Hawrylchak. “It’s made me think about how we should judge or not judge people in the past who acted in the constraints they had.”

Hawrylchak concluded, “That can apply to our own time with people in difficult situations … Not everyone has the freedom to act as they would in an ideal world, he said,” engendering empathy.

Joseph Otter

“Libraries are crucial community resources,” said Joseph Otter.

He grew up using the Guilderland Public Library and wants to make sure it remains a valuable resource “for generations to come,” Otter told The Enterprise.

The Guilderland library, he said, is “a regular ritual” for his family now. Everyone in his family has been enriched by the library, he said, particularly his special-needs child.

“Libraries are beloved cornerstones of community and democracy and an informed citizenry is a strong and empowered citizenry,” Otter said in his profile on the library’s website. “I want to be a part of promoting and supporting this crucial cornerstone and give back to an institution that has played such a strong role and provided such benefit in my life.”

After graduating from Guilderland High School, Otter went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Oswego State — and then, all from the University at Albany: a master’s in social welfare and advanced graduate certificates in both school building leadership and school district leadership.

He puts those skills to use for the Lansingburgh schools as the director of school-community partnerships.

As a library trustee, Otter would like to continue and expand the collaboration between the Guilderland school district and the library, he said. He noted that his children’s artwork has been displayed in the library but thinks that partnership could be expanded.

The library, besides being a source for literature and archives, Otter believes, should be a place “where people share their expertise and passions.”

Asked what should happen to the former café space, Otter said, “We don’t want to see it empty too long.”

He said he is open to trying different things, including opening an eatery there again.

Asked about the effects the Trump administration’s stances on diversity, equity, and inclusion or on academic institutions might have on the Guilderland library, Otter said, “It’s crucial that libraries are reflective of the entire community they serve and the broader world around it.”

He stressed the importance of learning about various cultures and religions. “The library needs a collection that’s inclusive,” said Otter.

Asked to name his favorite book, Otter replied, “Only one?”

Finally, he settled on “Leaves of Grass,” which Walt Whitman revised and expended throughout the second half of the 19th Century.

Otter first read “Leaves of Grass,” as a young teen when he was in college, he said. “It was my first exposure to poetry that was different than the classic, rhyming stanza.”

He said of Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” which is included in the collection: “It showed me what poetry could be.”

Otter also said, “I love poetry about nature.”

Michael Puspurs

Michael Puspurs is persistent.

He was elected to the library board last year and is proud of what he has accomplished since then.

For example, while Guilderland students have long had an annual art exhibit in the Helderberg Room of the library, Puspurs wanted to expand that.

He feels that, when the library was renovated and expanded in the midst of the pandemic, many of the decorative elements were lost.

Puspurs recalls being told that the Guilderland art teachers weren’t interested “so I reached out to the head of the art department who reached out to the teachers,” he said.

He has since met with Guilderland art teachers to “develop relationships,” Puspurs said as he enthusiastically described some of the student artwork such as a jellyfish that lights up when backlit and will be displayed by the library’s fish tank.

He also secured donations of canvas and paint from an art store, he said, for students to create a mural of Twasentha Park.

“I’m persistent as a trustee,” Puspurs said. “I don’t give up.”

Other initiatives he is proud of include getting the Guilderland Garden Club to meet at the library where they will tend to indoor plants, and helping to reactivate the once-annual library book sale.

“I worked for 21 hours over three days,” said Puspurs of the sale.

He’s running, Puspurs said, “to continue the work I started … to draw the community in.”

A Guilderland High School graduate, Puspurs went on to get a bachelor’s degree, in English and educational studies, and later a master’s in library science, both from the University at Albany.

Puspurs currently works for the State Education Department, licensing dentists, optometrists, and chiropractors, he said, but enjoys using his experience as a librarian in his post as trustee.

Asked about the café space, Puspurs said, “I’m a member of the facilities committee. We want to make it a flexible space.”

This would include using the room sometimes for meetings; other times as a classroom with desks and computers; and other times as a study space. The “café part,” he said, could include a coffee machine. 

Puspurs concluded, “Some of the trustees still want to do a café.”

Asked about the effects the Trump administration might have on the Guilderland library, Puspurs said, “He’s done cuts to the federal level and fired the head of the Library of Congress but our funding should be OK.”

To counteract cuts to the Institute of Museum and Library Services that could affect Guilderland, Puspurs said, “We can write grants.”

When it comes to the Trump administration trying to cut diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, Puspurs said, “We put out our mission statement so people will know you’re always welcome at Guilderland regardless of race or gender.”

Asked to name a favorite book, Puspurs chose “Master of Me,” written last year by singer and actor Keke Palmer.

“It’s really funny,” Puspurs said. “She went over her life and how to help others. It hit me because I like to help others.”

Bethany Steuer

Bethany Steuer, a public-service attorney, sees libraries as a safe haven.

“I grew up in a small town at the end of Long Island,” she wrote in a profile on the library’s website. The Enterprise could not reach her for comment.

”Our town library was attached to the high school and doubled as our school library,” Steuer wrote. “I spent many hours in that safe, quiet space during my tumultuous teen years. As an adult, I have continued to love libraries — be it my law library in law school, the beautiful library in Park Slope when I lived in Brooklyn, and, as an adult, my local Capital Region libraries where I have routinely brought my children, who are now teens themselves.”

Steuer says she reads daily and two of her latest favorites are “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” by T.J. Klune and “The Starless Sea” by Erin Morgenstern.

Steuer has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a law degree from Brooklyn Law School. She was admitted to the bar in 2004.

In those two decades, she has worked for both New York city’s and the state’s education department and for the last seven years for the state’s office of mental health.

She has lived in Guilderland for 11 years and lists many community activities.

Steuer is on the board of Strong Through Every Mile, known as STEM, a local not-for-profit that supports victims of domestic violence. She volunteers for the Albany Running Exchange and trains for and runs in 5K races.

Steuer has two sons — in 7th and 9th grades — and volunteers with her older son at the Northeast Regional Food Bank.

“When I was a divorced mom,” Steuer writes, “GPL provided me with books, books on tape, and DVDs for long car rides, as well as museum passes. Now my eldest volunteers there. I have spent my career as a public service attorney. Libraries are safe havens for many in our community, and I want to give back to GPL as part of the Board of Trustees.”