By David S. Lewis

NEW SCOTLAND – Residents can expect to pay four cents per $1,000 of property assessment if they pass Voorheesville $962,000 library budget. On May 20.  Most of the increase is to pay the debt service on the land the library purchased last year.

The spending plan is up from last year’s $930,000, for an increase of 4.4 percent.  That includes the 3.4 percent increase for debt service on the property purchased for the new expansion; last year voters agreed to buy the land for $100,000, plus an additional $50,000 to start exploring possibilities for the expansion, including architectural costs and the community survey, financed over a five-year period for $30,000 annually. The operating budget increased by only 1 percent, well under the predicted cost-of-living increase.

 “One of the messages that is very important to the board, is that we are very careful with how we spend our money,” said library director Gail Alter Sacco.  “I want to make it clear that we only increased our operating budget by the 1 percent; the rest of the increase is to cover the debt service for the land we bought for the expansion.”

This year’s operating budget is $931,700, which is an increase of $33,000.  The largest part of the budget goes to staff expenses, which total $675,500 including salaries and benefits.  Although estimated costs for postage increase by $200, the library anticipates spending $500 less on travel and conference costs this year.

The tax rate for FY 2007-08 was $1.06 per every $1,000 assessed; the tax rate for this year’s proposed budget is $1.10.

Plans to expand

Sacco said that the library’s addition project was still in the works, and that, although she and the library board had met with an architect and visited libraries he had constructed, they did not yet have a finalized design.

“Right now, we’re taking the survey and trying to determine where the new library would fit with the old library, and with the land we’ve purchased,” said Sacco.

The property where the expansion will be constructed is behind the existing library.  Sacco said that plans for the expansion included more space for children and family activities.  more community space, and more space for reading areas. 

The library also plans to devote more space to electronic media such as DVDs and “e-books,” literature that is downloadable to iPods and other mobile devices.  Sacco said that, with an increasing demand for such media, the library would continue to provide and expand both the selection and amount of space for electronic media, however, that provision shall not preclude the library’s collection of books.

“We’ve added around 4,600 items this year,” said Sacco.  “And most of them were books.”

Parking was also something that needs to be addressed, according to Sacco, who said that parking was occasionally tight, especially during the summer concerts.

Many programs

The library, which offers many programs such as poetry readings and an astronomy program, also features monthly book discussions, which librarian Suzanne Fisher said are taken quite seriously by the 30 or so people who sign up for them each month.

“It’s a social thing, certainly, but the people who come are very serious about what they read and they come to discuss it,” said Fisher, who was feted as an outstanding librarian by The New York Times several years ago. “They are serious about the books; they want to talk about the books; they want to be introduced to new books; and they want to read the classics they never got to.”

“It’s a very vibrant group,” she concluded.

Fisher plans to take a group of 20 to France, following the travels of American novelist and expatriate, Edith Wharton, who spent the last 26 years of her life in France.  The trip is the culmination of The Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in which an entire community reads the same book simultaneously; this year’s selection was Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. 

While e-books and other electronic media are increasing in popularity, both Sacco and Fisher said that the community can rest assured that the library’s attention to books is not waning.  Of the 46,000 items in the library’s collection, most are books; this year the library spent $86,000 on 4,600 new items, most of which were books.

Sacco also said that the library is a sound investment when the economy is down.

“When you have a hard year, the number of people who visit go up, and people take advantage of the services that we offer here,” said Sacco.  “Every library I’ve talked to, all talk about increased services; in general, it is going up now.”

Sacco said that 8,300 people attended programs at the Voorheesville library last year, and that the library was visited 71,000 times.  The library is intended to service the residents of the Voorheesville School District, of which the total number of residents is 7,300. By law, it follows the boundaries of the school district, although it is governed by its own board.  As a public library, it has taxing power.