G.N. library to remove additional asbestos from main branch

Adam Lidgett

The Great Neck Library Board of Trustees voted at their meeting Monday to spend an additional $70,500 on asbestos removal at the library’s Main Branch after construction workers found more asbestos than originally thought within the past month.

Library Business Manager Neil Zitofsky said $286,864 was originally allotted for asbestos removal.

Once construction workers opened up the walls at Main, they found pipe elbows covered in asbestos. He also said asbestos was found beneath the floor.

Library Interim Director Chris Johnson said VRD Contracting, the Holbrook, N.Y., contractor hired for the renovation of the Main Branch, estimated the additional asbestos abatement can be done for about $200,000.

Zitofsky said the will be taken from a $455,000 contingency fund included in the $10.4 million bond approved by voters in the Great Neck library system to fund Main Branch’s renovation. He said this is the first time the library is drawing from that fund.

“When they were moving the floor they found three layers of asbestos tiling and the original flooring beneath that was also covered in asbestos,” Zitofsky said. “We knew going into this project that we were not going to know what was behind the walls and beneath the floors. We knew there would be additional money spent. We just did not know how much.”

Johnson said in her report to the board the areas the new asbestos was found were not exposed during the original asbestos survey of the Main Library.

About five years ago, home inspectors from Insight Environmental Inc. did the original asbestos survey, but did not tear up the floors or the walls to find asbestos, Zitofsky said.

He said the removal will only take days and will not disrupt the renovation schedule.

The Main Branch, located at 159 Bayview Ave., will be closed for a year so repairs can be made to the building.

To allow for a new construction contract for asbestos removal, the board also voted to eliminate the $10,000 limit in the library policy – voted on in May – that enables the board to accept construction contracts with a vote of four trustees.

In doing so, the board raised the minimum number of trustees needed to approve contracts to five.

Some board members said they were concerned about lifting the $10,000 cap on contracts.  

Zitofsky said he would not make a recommendation to accept a contract if the amount is more than the he knows the board could afford.

Francine Krupski, board vice-president and chair of the library’s Director Search Committee, also said at the meeting the first candidate for library director will be interviewed this Thursday.

She said the committee is putting together a list of about 20 questions to ask the candidate, who was proposed by Pro Libra Associates, a library service company out of Summit, N.J., that the board hired in December to search for a new library director.

A second candidate will be interviewed on March 30, Krupski said.

Chris Johnson was appointed the interim library director in December, replacing Laura Weir, who had served as interim director since January 2013. Weir joined the library system in 2002 as assistant director.

Weir was named interim director after former director Jane Marino resigned on Dec. 28, 2012. Marino’s resignation followed the defeat of a $20.8 million bond referendum to renovate the Main Branch.

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