Library Board to Add Two Trustees

Two more chairs will be needed in the  Board of Trustees meeting room when the panel meets again.

By a unanimous vote, the agreed during Monday night's regular meeting to add two new members to the current seven-member board. The two newest members, to be appointed by the committee at a later date, will each serve five-year terms.

Though a few residents questioned the committee's intentions in allowing two more members on the board, Mayor Anthony Fiore views the new additions as a means of heightening community participation on the board and gathering new ideas.

Because the two new members will serve five years each, the board will also see more consistency and less turnover in its composition, Fiore added. Two trustees, the mayoral designee and the township superintendent of schools designee, serve only one-year terms now.

Neither the township or library budget will be impacted by the addition of two board members, Fiore said in reply to questions posed by residents during the public hearing on the ordinance.

"This won't have any bearing on the township," Fiore said. "We're not looking at this increase in membership as anything that will increase the budget. It's to increase participation and input."

By state law, municipalities are permitted to place up to nine members on boards such as that overseeing the local library, the mayor noted. 

Melanie Elmiger, of Greentree Terrace in the Lincroft section asked Fiore if the appointments would be based upon political connections or if the committee was ultimately seeking to place the library board under its auspices.

"I would like you to choose people who truly have embraced the library, who are familiar with it," Elmiger told the committee during the public hearing.

Other speakers, such as Linda Baum of May Court in the River Plaza section, speculated that the reconfigured board might be likely to allow library funds to be handed over to the township for its municipal budget as happened in March.

At that time, the library board saw its approximately when property values in the township went up after a reassessment, Fiore said.

The library budget is dictated to the township by state statute. With the higher reassessment value of properties, the state directed additional funds of nearly $500,000 to the trustees, resulting in a surplus for the library.

When the township hit dire straits financially, a majority of the trustees then voted to direct to the township coffers for property tax relief.

"The majority of people in this township think that we have a wonderful library," Baum said. "[The library board] is charged with doing what is in the best interest of the library. The concern is that the committee is going to free up reserves to go back to the township."

The transfer of library funds from its unanticipated surplus back to the township budget was a one-time event sanctioned by a majority of the trustees and will not happen again, Fiore replied.

Under an agreement hammered out by both the board and the committee, the township is now carrying the debt service on the library's parking lot which recently underwent extensive repairs, the mayor added.

The nearly 40-year-old main branch of the library on New Monmouth Road recently also underwent a major capital improvements to its interior and exterior.