VOORHEESVILLE — Trustees and the director of the Voorheesville Public Library are excited about the chance to expand.

They are hoping to buy, for $100,000, the 5.6 acres adjacent to the library property on Prospect Street, just behind the library, which faces School Road.

The land is owned by the Sickles and Ulion families.

The library has reached its capacity, said Director Gail Sacco and Robert Kent, vice president and treasurer for the library’s board of trustees.
"For every new book we buy, she has to take one off the shelf," Kent said, gesturing to Sacco.

He spoke to The Enterprise Monday night after asking the school board to put a library proposition on the ballot for Sept. 19, at the same time the district is holding a vote on a $5.8 million building project. (See related story.)

Kent listed some of the many community groups that use the library and named a variety of library-sponsored activities, ranging from children’s story times to family concerts. He also pointed out the heavy use of library computers.
"We’re maxed in terms of what we can do," said Kent.

When the library was built in 1988, it housed 35,000 items; now it has 125,000 items, Sacco told The Enterprise last year.

She also said that last year the library was visited 73,000 times, based on a door count, and 8,200 people attended 447 programs.
Sacco said Monday night that the land purchase "will give us options."

A building committee is being formed, she said, to assess the community’s needs.
"We’ll go out for community forums as well as hold them in the library," she said.
"We can do what the community wants," she concluded.

"Everything came together"
Kent called the purchase price for the property "unbelievably good" in a popular school district, ripe for development.
Trustee Dick Ramsey said that Eugene Sickles, who is now in his eighties, used to be in charge of maintenance for the library. "They sold us the original land," he said of the Sickles family.

Eugene Sickles’s wife told The Enterprise Tuesday that they lived just two houses from the library; they use the library, she said, but added, "Probably not as much as we should."
While her husband had been in charge of maintenance at the library for over 10 years, she said, they had both worked before that for the Voorheesville School District. "I was a bus driver, and he was a mechanic," she said.

She referred further questions to Terry Ulion, who has been working with a lawyer on negotiations. The property has been in the Sickles and Ulion families for decades, according to Ulion.
"The land goes back to my grandfather and grandmother, Eugene and Marie Sickles," he told The Enterprise on Tuesday. "The land was a farmstead."

Ulion said the farmstead had once included the land where the library now stands as well as the land across the street, where Atlas Copco is located.
"Little by little, the land has been sold off," he said. Two of his grandparents’ children, Eugene Sickles and Ruth Sickles Ulion, live in houses that were built on the original farmstead, he said.
The family talked about the remaining land, Ulion said. "We didn’t want it divided up into small building lots...We didn’t want a factory or commercial interest in there...We wanted something user-friendly to the two families still there," he said. "It was the right time. It was almost like The Perfect Storm, everything came together."
He concluded, "Both Gene and Ruth felt this was a way they could do something for the entire community and they wanted to protect the quiet of the area."

Getting on the ballot
Kent asked the school board Monday to put a $150,000 proposition for the library on the ballot for Sept. 19. He said $100,000 would pay for the property and $50,000 would be used "to engage in public dialogue" in planning for the library’s future.
"We’re not at a point where we have any grand design," Kent told the board.

Public libraries in New York State are governed by their own boards of trustees and have taxing powers. The library follows school-district boundaries.

School board President David Gibson told Kent that the district’s lawyer needs to review the matter. Gibson said the school district had just gotten the paperwork at 5 p.m. that day.

Sacco responded that she had had conversations with the district office for several weeks and she said the library’s resolution was prepared by a lawyer familiar with municipal law and education law.

After some discussion, the board agreed it would hold a special meeting soon to vote on including the library’s proposition on the Sept. 19 ballot.

Kent said the library could hold its own vote but preferred to save money by holding the two votes at once.
Board Vice President C. James Coffin said of the library’s proposed land purchase, "It’s the right thing to do, an investment for the future."