Oceanside, Island Park libraries offer budgets

When residents go to the polls next week to vote for Board of Education trustees and their school district budgets, they will also have the opportunity to vote on the budgets for their local libraries.

Both the Oceanside and Island Park libraries are increasing their spending only marginally this year, staying within the limits of the state’s 2 percent tax levy cap. “Everything that we did with the budget was predicated on our desire to adhere to the 2 percent cap,” said Oceanside Library Director Evelyn Rothschild. “So that was an overriding concern in the formulation of the budget.”

The Island Park Library is seeing a nominal tax levy increase of 1.7 percent to cover its budget of $1.3 million. Island Park is spending less on reference books, opting instead for online resources. The library is also budgeting less for media, shifting about $2,000 to purchasing more downloadable e-books and audio books, according to its new director, Michelle Young.

The facility is allocating about $5,000 to provide more programming, which is one of the biggest cost increases in its spending plan. “Programming [was] increased in response to the needs and enthusiasm of the community by creating a more user-friendly community center at the library,” Young wrote in an email. She added that adult program attendance was up 22 percent from last year, children’s program attendance had increased by 17 percent and teen/tween program attendance was up 5 percent.

Island Park is also offering new services and databases. “The library is offering additional databases in response to the needs of the community,” Young said, “including learning a new language with the new Transparent Language database as well as obtaining continuing education credits for adult learners utilizing the Universal Classes database.”