Sources said that school-board trustees requested that the library board take title of the library building in 2005. The North Merrick School District currently holds the title.
The proposal would have to go before the public in a referendum, which the library board said it would allow if the recent library bond passed, according to the sources. However, since the bond didn't pass, the deal was called off, and the title will remain with the school district.
Photo: Rebecca Lopatin/Herald
Photo #: 70965
N. Merrick rejects library bond
By Laura Lane
Residents voted down the North Merrick Library's bond referendum last week. Two hundred ninety-four people cast their ballots, with 173 voting against the bond and 121 for it, a 59-to-41 percent margin. If passed, the bond would have financed long-overdue repairs, library officials said.
Resident Gina Arcabascio voted against the bond. "I felt strongly that the increase we had this year in taxes made it so we couldn't afford another tax increase," she said. "People can't afford to live in North Merrick anymore. And the library bond was more than the library needed."
Arcabascio said she doesn't usually vote on library budgets, but she thought she had to turn out for the bond proposal. "It's a different world since Sept. 11," she said. "People in our community have lost their jobs or are working with reduced salaries. Families like me with children are struggling."
Margaret Cincotta, the North Merrick Library director, was surprised that the bond didn't pass. The per-household tax increase associated with the bond would have been $53 a year, or $4.40 a month. Cincotta believes there were a few critical factors that led to the referendum's defeat.
On the day before the vote, Cincotta said, a library patron brought her an unsigned notice he found in his mailbox. "He was a senior citizen and said he had gotten this notice titled 'Enough,' and was going to throw it in the garbage because it wasn't signed," said Cincotta. "I went through the scurrilous notice line by line with him. The information wasn't true."
The notice, dated Dec. 12, two days before the vote, urged residents to go to the polls and cast a bond referendum vote. The letter alleged that the library has $600,000 in taxpayer money in a reserve account. "We have approximately $387,000 in reserve, which is for emergency expenditures that might come up during the year," Cincotta said. "And also $71,000 for repairs and renovations."
The library also has a restricted piano fund. When a local resident died a few years ago, the family donated a piano, along with $10,000 for upkeep and tuning of the instrument.
The letter also alleged that the library would buy $335 leather swivel chairs for employees, which Cincotta said was a lie. "What we had planned to purchase if the bond passed were wooden swivel chairs for our new reference department and children's department desks," she said.
The director believes that many people may have voted against the bond after reading the letter. And she was disappointed by their choice. "We hold public meetings," Cincotta said. "At one, we had an architect, attorney and library board members to explain the bond, but if the public chooses not to go to that meeting [and] to believe a piece of unsigned paper put into their mailboxes, this is the result."
She also believes the North Merrick Board of Education's Sept. 14 decision not to allow the bond proposal to go to a vote may have confused residents. At the time, library attorney Michael Ingham said the board's vote was illegal. Under state law, the bond referendum had to be presented to the public, he said. At the Board of Education's October meeting, trustees unanimously reversed their decision and permitted the library's bond referendum to move forward.
Cincotta also believes that another local newspaper's coverage of the last Board of Education meeting may have hurt the library's chances of passing the bond. "The other newspaper gave misinformation quoting the school board, instead of talking about it with us," Cincotta said. "The architect was here after that meeting, at our meeting, to answer any questions, and no one came from that paper."
Catherine Romanelli, president of the North Merrick Library Board, was saddened but not surprised that the bond didn't pass. "I live in this community, and I know there's concern over taxes," Romanelli said. "But this is such a petty amount for most people. Yes, the taxes are high, but this amounts to 15 cents a day."
The library board is considering decreasing the amount of the bond proposal and putting it up for a vote again.
Comments about this story? LLane@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 236.
