Goshen Public Library & Historical Society | 203 Main St Goshen, NY 10924 | Phone: 845.294.6606 | Fax: 845.294.7158 | RCLS Member
How much will the proposed new library cost?
By plnkh | February 7, 2008
The proposed new library will be funded through the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY). The total project cost (the maximum debt to be incurred) being put before the voters is $19,675,000. This figure includes the land, site development, construction, professional services (architecture, engineering, construction management, legal), furniture and equipment, moving, in 2009 (the year in which construction is projected to begin) dollars as well as the bonding costs. Anticipated cost escalation of 8 % per year is also included. The budget for the project was developed by Wolf and Company - Construction Cost and Management Consultants.
The Library, which has no legal authority either to collect it’s own taxes, or to sell it’s own bonds, has chosen to work through the Dormitory Authority (a state agency established to oversee construction projects for colleges, and not-for-profits) because it allows for bonding over 30 years at interest rates comparable to those available to the school district; interest on proceeds of the bond sale invested prior to payout will be payable to the library project; and the school district, coping with it’s own growth issues, is absolved of any involvement in the library project.
The debt service will be spread over 30 years. The maximum annual tax levy for the debt service (principal and interest) being put before the voters is $1,350,000. This translates into a maximum tax payment of approximately $194 per year for a homeowner in the Goshen Central School District whose house has a fair market value of $400,000. This cost for the debt service will be added to the current tax levy, so this same home owner, now paying a library tax of $164, would pay a hypothetical total library tax of $358 per year. A projected operating budget for the new building is in development and will be made available shortly.
The Library Board realizes that this is a big commitment on the part of the community. This once in a century opportunity to invest in Goshen’s future will enable the Library to fulfill its commitment to provide comprhensive library services in an energy-efficient, cost effective, ADA compliant, safe facility.
The Library is also currently engaged in a capital campaign to help reduce the amount of debt to be incurred for the project. Private donors and grant sources are being identified and contacted . Funds in hand before the sale of the bonds will be used to reduce the amount of the debt, unless specifically earmarked for enhancements to the project. Funds received when the building is complete can be used to reduce the tax levy for the debt service if not specifically earmarked for enhancements to the project.
For the most current information on the library project visit the Library’s website goshenpubliclibrary.org.
Topics: Building | No Comments »
The home stretch
By plnkh | January 31, 2008
We are heading into the home stretch regarding the vote on funding for the new building. Last week we began making public presentations to community groups. There is a wealth of information we can communicate, paring it down to a 15 - 20 minute presentation is a real challenge. We also have had requests for information that is not yet available. At present we are working on the estimated tax levy for the projected first year operating budget, and waiting for a few answers from DASNY regarding opportunities to pay down the debt service. New information will be made available on the web site once it is complete.
The downturn in the economy is actually a positive for public projects. Interest rates are at record lows, making it a good time to bond, and construction employment opportunities are welcome to many area employers. The maximum cost to the taxpayers for debt service on the new library, is still a small amount of money. A house in the school district, with a fair market value of $400,000 pays now pays a tax of $164 a year for library operations. Add to that $194 for debt service, and you have a tax levy of $358. Compare that to your total tax bill. In the village of Goshen that current $164 is about 2% of the total taxes. And the library provides a variety of services to benefit every man, woman and child who lives in the district.
If personal income is shrinking, the Library is a good investment because it offers a smorgasbord of educational, cultural, and recreational opportunities for all ages. (One resident was thrilled to discover that museum passes - good for a family of up to four-are now available, at no cost, at the Library. “It costs $25 to get into the Met!”)
So if you have to cut back on your Netflix subscription, or purchases from amazon.com, or attendance at movies, plays and concerts, the Library has something on offer to fill the gap. You pay your library tax once a year and you may use its services as heavily as you choose at no additional cost. Everyone gains when you share resources and the Library is your gateway to sharing the resources of other libraries in the region. As Anne Herbert stated in The Next Whole Earth Catalog, “Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries. ..”
And Goshen’s present 90 year old library does not meet state standards for public libraries, is not ADA compliant, does not conform to current building codes, and is just plain too small, so the community is being asked to invest in a building to serve it for the 21st century. I hope you will become informed about the need. Read the background and details of the project provided on the web site. Look for the district wide mailing of a special edition of Reference Point devoted to the building in February. Then vote on March 12 at the Library.
Topics: Building | No Comments »
Quality of life
By plnkh | November 26, 2007
I grew up on Staten Island, the forgotten borough of NYC, the one that still had a couple of working farms in the early 1960s (can you believe it?) In NYC you don’t get to vote on schools, libraries, firehouses, sewers - they are all covered in the tax bill along with a lot of other things that make communities great - playgrounds, parks, pools, museums, public transportation, garbage collection. In a city it is understood that the government is going to provide a wealth of services to be shared by the residents because it makes sense, and there isn’t enough room (or money) for everyone to provide everything for themselves, and a lot of folks can’t.
Lots of city transplants, like me, are mystified when they move up to the suburbs of Orange County. You may find yourself in a town that has no school district (like Wallkill) or library (Minisink), or your school district may belong to a neighboring town even though your town has one (Sugar Loaf/Warwick); your mail may come from another town’s post office, and you are empowered to vote on a host of things covered by law that you don’t understand.
Most of us transplants moved here for a better quality of life for ourselves and our children: a slower pace, unpaved and undeveloped open space; a safe community; good schools with a lower pupil/teacher ratio; a library to support self education and leisure time activity. That quality of life brings with it its own burden of responsibility. You can either trust the elected officials who run your municipality, schools and library; or you have to educate yourselves on all of the issues so you are an informed voter.
In March you will be asked to vote on a tax levy for a new library building. The building project has been evolving for 14 years, and the Board is unanimous in its belief that it represents the best plan to meet the community’s needs for the foreseeable future. It will be a minimum of 3 years after a positive vote before the building will be open to the public. The building will be paid for over 30 years, so that new families and businesses moving into the school district in that time span will share the cost of the tax levy (which will be redistributed annually based on the school district’s ratables). If construction is deferred, the cost of the proposed building will escalate at an anticipated 8% annually.
Growth is inexorable. In 1994 construction costs were $85 per sq. ft. In 2007 they are projected at over $400. In the past 10 years the student population of the school district has grown 30%. In the past 6 years the population of Orange County has grown more than 10%. Those of us who live on “country” roads are painfully aware of the houses that have sprung up in the past several years and the increased traffic whizzing by our homes. We shoulder the cost of schools, libraries, fire houses and sewer plants for the same reason that we came here - they improve the quality of our community.
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And now it’s November
By plnkh | November 13, 2007
They tell me that when you keep a blog you need to update it regularly. That’s not so easy to do when you pause for a breath and notice that suddenly it’s November! Since July, when we presented a conceptual drawing for the new building we have been working steadily towards presenting a referendum in March 2008. I keep hoping that our patrons will jump into the conversation and that will keep me on track.
In later July we learned that the governor had signed the bill enabling us to be funded through the Dormitory Authority. This state agency provides funding for construction at state colleges, not-for-profit health institutions, museums, libraries and schools. It enables us to spread the bond repayment over 30 years rather than 20, reducing the annual cost to the taxpayers. It also keeps the library project completely separate from the school district’s project so it will be clear to you on your school tax bill where your tax dollars are going.
Over the summer we completed the Environmental Assessment Form required for the project. The report is out for review, but there are no major areas of concern. We also retained a construction cost consultant, D.W. Wolfe to provide us a preliminary construction budget (the “hard” costs); and have been working with owner’s representative Nick Michailescu to develop the the “soft” costs. And we have been working throughout with Communication Services to develop materials which will make the proposed project clear to you.
Throughout it has been a learning experience for all of us. The first step wass to understand just how much we didn’t know; the second was to seek the expertise we lack; the third is to continually evaluate our understanding and our relationships with the experts we have hired.
Aside from all this building stuff, we have successfully concluded another summer reading club; we have added two new services - museum passes and disk cleaning; we have upgraded all of our public computers; we are developing a homework help program to pair students willing to volunteer their time to help other students succeed. Teen librarian Jenni Sweeney was a discussion leader at the regional Fall Into Books conference and I presented a program on library campaigns with Libby Post of Communication Services at the New York Library Association conference.
Topics: Building, General | No Comments »
Newsletter feedback
By plnkh | July 13, 2007
Our long-delayed summer newsletter began appearing in mailboxes on Wednesday. Since then the phone has been ringing and emails arriving. The library Board has consistently urged you to contact them with your questions, comments, concerns. As you review the insert with the proposed building we anticipate that you will do so with an eye for detail, and an understanding that this is still a work-in-progress. We urge you to share your thoughts - positive and negative - with the library directly. You can call me (294-6606, ext.11) or email me through the contact us links on this website. I will forward your comments to the full library Board. Your comments will help shape the further development of the plans for the building.
I know that if the population is 17,000 there may be 10,000 different opinions about what our priorities should be and that many of those opinions will be contradictory. Our challenge is to find the common ground and develop a welcoming, accessible, appropriate, expandable building to serve the library needs of the Goshen school district’s present and future residents.
Topics: Building | 1 Comment »
“Angels”
By plnkh | June 29, 2007
Getting ready for a week of R & R I find it hard to believe that it is now summer. The six months since the acquisition of land for a new building have passed in a blur. A dedicated core of volunteers has joined members of the library board (also volunteers - even though elected) in a frenzy of planning. Years ago, Jeanne Jonas, a community minded woman who was a dominant force in the Arden Hill Hospital campaign, told me that if we wanted to build a new library we were going to have to find an “angel”. I believe she sent us an angel who has been working quietly behind the scenes to help us along. I also believe that angel may have helped us find a couple of others to assist with different parts of the process.
I would like to thank George Sewitt, a resident and Planning Board member of the Town of Woodbury, who served as the go-between for the Library and Dr. David Cohen of Long Island. George and board president Patty Garnett worked together to close the deal on the last five acres of the former Salesian School campus.
I would also like to thank Nick Michailescu, a resident of Monticello and project manager of Bethel Woods, sent to us by a member of our own town planning board, who is helping us formulate a project timetable so that we know every step we have to take on the long road to moving your new library building from a vision to a reality. Nick is a knowledgable construction professional who is working with architect Peter Hoffmann to define tasks, areas of responsibility and gather missing pieces of information so that we can bring the project to the voters; and that we will build the best building possible.
We have learned that angels take many forms and that it takes a community of them to build a library.
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Library Directions
By plnkh | June 28, 2007
The April 18 vote on our 2007-8 budget was an historic occasion. 831 voters turned out to re-elect Laura Engle as trustee and approve the tax levy of $1,139,981 for our operation by a nearly 2-1 margin. We appreciate your support, and the validation that the voting results provide.
New for this summer is a reading club for adults. A generation of Goshen’s youth have grown up with a summer reading club. It’s about time that the adults were given an opportunity to share in the fun. We hope the club will be well received and you will demonstrate to the skeptics that books are eternal. “Literature is news that stays news” according to poet Ezra Pound. [The club is limited to 100 registrants, and all places were filled in five days!]
The hot topic in the library is the new building. Since we acquired the land, we have been moving forward to develop a project to present for a vote next spring. We have a site plan and a building design. We are now interviewing construction management firms to develop a detailed project budget. Since 1994 you have been asking “Where will it be located?” “What will it look like?” and “How much will it cost me?” It will be located adjacent to the Salesian Park. Renderings and floor plans are included in the insert to the summer newsletter which provides details of the building plan. The answer to your third question is pending.
While we are waiting for hard numbers there is not a lot more to report. A lot of the planning is bureaucratic drudgery. Because a new building is a once-a-century opportunity for many communities, only the largest libraries have facilities planning staff. We must hire outside professionals to provide those services.We are also developing a corps of volunteers who have been helping us every step of the way. We have negotiated with the village and town to allow a temporary easement across our land for traffic to the park’s lot; a later step will be the permanent access road to serve the library and the park.
I expected our summer newsletter to be mailed the week of June 18. We changed the format and added an insert on the building plans which our printer could not handle. In the process of making alternate arrangements we lost two weeks. The newsletter is now being printed and it should be mailed next week. I apologize for the inconvenience caused by past dates for program registrations. It seems there is always something.
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What have we been up to lately?
By plnkh | April 6, 2007
In February we hired Communication Services of Albany, NY to help us get our capital campaign and public information program on track. Libby Post and her staff have gotten our engine started and the train is nearly ready to leave the station.
The need for us to hire a consultant has been questioned by a resident with the belief that voters tell us everything we need to know. Voter turnout, even for the controversial 2003 tax levy votes, has been very low (371 people voted that year, in a near record turnout).In fact, we have regularly been criticized for doing a poor job of advertising our vote. Since 1998 the Library has reached out to the community for input in a variety of ways (focus groups, community meetings, strategic planning sessions, surveys, one-on-one conversation) to learn what you are thinking about the library.
On February 22 we conducted 3 focus groups for about 30 members of the community, most (but not all) of whom are library users. Our objective was to learn their impressions of the library, its services, place in the community and needs. We learned that we haven’t done a very good job of getting information out to the community (we agree), that those of you who use our services are pleased with what we are able to do with the resources available to us, and that we need a new building (though there is concern about the cost).
Our first step towards improving communications thereafter has been a question and answer mailing that was distributed via local newspapers and direct mail. We have received very positive feedback on this and we already at work gathering the next round of questions.
We are working with our architect to develop a building plan and realistic project costs. We expect to be ready to present these plans in the late spring.
The tax levy for Our FY2007-8 operating budget will be voted on April 18. The budget issue of our newsletter, Reference Point, is at the mailing house and should be in your mailboxes next week. We have taken care to have the budget information available on our web site and to send out budget/trustee press releases earlier than usual to promote higher voter turnout.
Once the vote and trustee election are behind us, we will be back to work on putting together the referendum package you will be asked to vote on next year.
Topics: Announcements | No Comments »
Letter from a Board member
By plnkh | April 6, 2007
There have been a number of inaccurate statements made in the paper regarding The Goshen Public Library and Historical Society. First and foremost is the inaccurate statement that the voters of the school district voted down a proposal to build a library back in 2003.
The vote in 2003 was a proposition to impose a one time tax levy of $450,000 to create a fund to be utilized in the future to purchase an as of yet unspecified piece of land. This proposition was, in my opinion, justifiably defeated as it would have placed a very heavy one time burden on the tax payers, for a benefit that would not be enjoyed by those taxpayers, but rather by tax payers in an indefinable period in the future. Any capital expense should be financed by a bond referendum which would amortize those costs over a long period of time, so that the cost would be borne by those taxpayers that would benefit from the expense. In other words the cost for a new library should be borne by those who would be utilizing the new building. But more important is that the vote was not a referendum to build a library, nor was it a vote to purchase land. It was a vote to raise $450,000 dollars.
While some of those voters who voted no to that referendum may have been opposed to any new building, a number who voted no did so because of the inequitable structure of the proposed financing, not because they were opposed to a new library. This was made known to the board by a number of voters. In fact the vast majority of the comments made to the Board after this vote expressed this opinion.
It was this feed back that motivated the Board to come up with a more creative and equitable method of financing the present purchase of land. The Board thought the best way to finance the purchase would be to acquire the land with a minimum financial impact on the tax payers, by leveraging the use of existing assets of the Library. By mortgaging our existing property we could facilitate the purchase with an interest only loan that would have an annual expense of only $50,000 per year to the tax payers. This item was clearly identified by a separate line item entitled “New Building Expense” that was in the budget voted on by the voters in the last budget vote. This budget is posted on the Library’s web site for all voters to see.
The actions that were taken by the board were clearly discussed at our meetings that are open to the public. We were specifically asked why we did this by the Board of Education at joint meetings and we clearly explained our intentions and reasons. We also clearly stated that all of our actions were examined by our legal council to ensure that every thing we did was legal under the laws governing School district libraries.
I find it disconcerting that certain individuals present at those meetings continue to make misrepresentations of these actions in print.
There is another issue that needs to be clarified and that is the Library’s practice of obtaining Tax Anticipation Notes, or TANS, to facilitate our financing. The library’s budget runs from July 1 to June 30. However we do not receive the majority of our tax revenue until October. In order to provide for the short term cash short fall in August and September we usually borrow those funds. On average this financing costs the tax payers less than $1,000 per year. Our alternative would be to increase the taxes in one year by about $150,000 so that we would have enough cash on hand to meet this structural short fall. As a Board we feel that this would be an unnecessary burden on the tax payers. However some members of the community, who should have some rudimentary knowledge of public finance, have purposely misled the public to represent the obtaining of the TANS as overspending our budget. I would like to clearly state that the library has not overspent its budget in any year that I have been on the Board, years in which we have obtained TANS.
The use of TANS is not only acceptable governmental accounting practices it is a market that exceeds billions of dollars. The reason that the Library obtains the tans from the School District is that under New York State Law, School District Libraries must obtain TAN’s through the School district.
Finally I would like to address the misrepresentation in the press of the Library Board personnel. I have been on the Board for the past 3 years. My initial motivation for obtaining the position was to make sure not one penny of my tax dollars was wasted by a group of bibliophilic spendthrifts. However what I have found in my time on the Board is a group of citizens whose concern for the community is tremendous. They work countless hours attending workshops throughout the state, holding community outreach sessions and investigating other libraries for best practices. The work of the Board members is much greater than that of other municipal boards in that the library staff, aside from those providing service to the public, is miniscule. Most research and staff work is done by the board members since the business and administration staff consists of two people. This is done by these individuals for no compensation other than the satisfaction of serving their community. Individuals like Patty Garnett, Laura Engle, Mark Garguilo, Janet Markiewicz and Jasper Fields have worked for years for this community and deserve more respect than certain individuals have deemed to bestow.
I want to make clear that I do not consider myself in the same category as these individuals. I admit that my contribution is mostly as the fly in the ointment. However I at least have the decency to show up at the meetings and investigate the facts before I vent my opinions.
In conclusion, I would hope the people of the Goshen School District would make the effort to inform themselves of the facts concerning the Library’s actions rather then depend on the mis-information of a few individuals, whose tactics speak volumes of their character. Further more, I implore all voters to get out and support Laura Engle in the vote for Trustee.. Laura is a smart, prudent and passionate individual who, in my opinion, is the most valuable member of the Board of Trustees. She has more than earned your vote through years of hard work and I hope the community will show their thanks by returning her to office.
Sincerely
Eugene B. Degan Jr.
Trustee of the Goshen Public Library and Historical Society
Topics: Announcements | No Comments »
Who uses the library?
By plnkh | March 1, 2007
I recently finished our annual report for the state, detailing library use for our fiscal year July 2005 to June 2006. The numbers tell the story of how busy to bursting our library is.
141,535 items: books, audiobooks, videos, DVDs and music CDs were checked out. We borrowed 21,824 items from other libraries for our patrons, and lent 11,054 from our collections to patrons of other libraries. 20,728 people used our public computers to, among other things, edit photos, write resumes, research school papers, check and send email (”my computer died and I have to email this file to a business contact”), and print out documents (”I don’t have a printer at home and I need to print this report for class”). Over the course of the year 6613 came to the 397 programs we sponsored. We also assisted with 10,353 reference inquiries.
These numbers clearly tell the story that our library is a valued community resource.
To those of you who have visited the library or accessed us online, thank you. The input of our patrons is necessary and welcome. To those of you who haven’t been here in a while, or who think the library has nothing to offer, I invite to to visit and check us out.
Topics: General | No Comments »
