Mazzeo re-elected to Elmont Library board

At a time when the Elmont Memorial Library prepares to grow larger and faster than ever before, Joanne Mazzeo will be there to help guide it through the process.

After already dedicating three years to serving on the library’s board of trustees, and after unanimously winning the board’s vice presidency last summer, Mazzeo was reelected on May 18 and embarked to fulfill her first full 5-year term

Among the primary tasks she looks forward to undertaking, Mazzeo will start helping shape Elmont Memorial’s five-year-goal plan, a general policy outline required from all public libraries by New York State law. The plan, still in its earliest stages, will foretell of geared-up services and intended future programs.

She said she plans on “giving the best library services for the least amount of cost to the taxpayers.”

New prospective programs will manifest in happenings like the library’s employment fairs, the first of which took place May 5 this year and drew hundreds of cash-strapped neighbors searching for a helping hand. Working in conjunction with the New York State Department of Labor, the occasion allowed job seekers to interact directly with potential employers.

It was hailed as a wild success across Long Island. Mazzeo is conferring with library director Maggie Gough in hopes of hosting another.

Mazzeo oversaw the acquisition of the library’s first official credit card and chaired meetings that brought about the implementation of an ethics and conflict-of-interest policy. The latter has to do with properly representing Elmont Memorial’s burgeoning image, and the former filled an important void for a decidedly modern institution.

“Now that we’re expanding, it is important that the library has a credit card,” she explained.

Mazzeo first assumed a position on the board of trustees in 2007, when she replaced outgoing member Brian Lynn, who had moved out of the state. Throughout her first term she wrote many a library policy and held board meetings make sure those policies were enacted. Long-lasting programs and special events transpired by her hand, demonstrating why the board thought her fit for the vice presidency after only two years.

Now, elected to her first official five-year term on the board, Elmont residents will be seeing much more of her over the next half-decade.