The Great Neck Library Board’s vote on Aug. 9 to adopt the language and date for a referendum, to be held Oct. 25, to raise the money to rebuild the Main Library, was indeed historic, especially considering it was 15 years in coming.
The referendum will ask voter approval to issue bonds in an amount not to exceed $20.8 million, based on total project cost of $21,300,000. The bond amount is less because nearly $500,000 is being spent from the Main Building and Special Services Fund on a chilling tower to replace the failed system in time for next summer. Then the equipment will be re-used in the new building.
The chilling tower is symptomatic of what is happening to the Main Building, an aging relic built in the mid 1960s – before the Internet, even before personal computers – that may have had some sprucing over the years, but whose operating systems are simply dying.
Two engineering studies, in 2000 and 2009 – themselves almost historic by this point – said that the library’s systems were reaching the end of their useful life.
The referendum also will authorize the library “to levy a tax payable in annual installment, not to exceed $1,760,000/year, in addition to tax presently collected, over a maximum period of 20 years for the payment of all principal, interest, redemption premiums and expenses relating to the financing of the cost and improvements and alternations.” This amount is based on an interest rate of 5.75 percent, even though interest rates now are at historic lows, around 3.5 percent.
That does not mean that the library will issue bonds at the higher rate, but since rates may rise and it is not known where rates will be when the library goes to the bond market in 2012, more flexible language is necessary to give the library cushion.
As the bond counsel, Noah H. Nadelson, assistant vice president of Munistat, told the board, “If you cut yourself short – if you choose too low – you would have to set aside the project or wait for rates to come down.”
Think about that for a moment: If the library board adopted language for the referendum that was too tight – say they asked for authorization $1,527,116, representing the tax levy based on 4 percent interest rate – then if the rates went to 4.5 percent, the library could not go for bonding, and all the hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of work and all the effort to get the zoning variances from the North Hempstead BZA and the site plan approval from the town Council, all of that would have gone to waste. The library would have to wait for rates to fall again – not likely.
At $20.8 million in bonding, even at 5.5 percent interest, that would add $94.46 a year to a home assessed at $1 million; at 4.0 percent (the more likely rate the bonds will go for), the annual cost would be $79.72.
Similarly, if the library’s professionals – Park East and Dattner Architects, which hired an independent estimator – did not estimate costs correctly, and the bids come in higher, or the costs come in higher than the $20.8 million, the library would have to scale back the project in order to build what they could afford, based on what voters said they would allow.
So for $15 difference in tax, the project would be lost.
And that would be a shame because timing is everything: the building is literally falling apart, having reached the end of the 40-year lifespan years ago for just about all its systems.
This whole thing has dragged out in a mind-boggling fashion – a “Picket Fences”-sized manufactured crisis to the national debt-ceiling crisis, hopefully not with the same result.
In fact, the vote by the board was 5-1, with a surprising ‘no’ vote from Josie Pizer, who later explained that while she was 100 percent in favor of the Main renovation project, she objected to using the “not to exceed” interest rate of 5.75 percent to calculate the maximum tax levy.
“I absolutely support the project, but did not support a referendum which authorizes a tax levy that would be as high as 5.75 percent because that is not accurate,” she said.
Marietta DiCamillo, who had abstained on the each of the add-alternates and voted no on an amendment, voted no on the actual referendum resolution (we asked for a comment as to why, but DiCamillo said she was unavailable to reply).
But with all the dickering and dockering, the building is literally falling apart, the systems are failing one by one.
Years ago, a piece of falling facade barely missed Bobbie Zeller as she left a late-night library meeting; two weeks ago, two more pieces fell.
Just the other week, two sections of the parking lot wall and had to be replaced; the railing that overlooks where the cooling tower is, had to be cemented because it rotted and separated from the concrete upper patio.
The air-conditioning system that for the past several years has broken down and forced the library to shut down on some days during summer, utterly failed this summer, requiring the library to rent a cooling tower in order to stay open this summer, at a cost of about $8,000 a month.
We’ve had to replace the elevator, patch the roof, rebuild the front door.
We waste a fortune on electricity and fuel, with lighting systems, heating and air-conditioning systems that are archaic, and inefficient windows. This is not just a waste of money, but criminal these days when carbon-footprint is also a concern to the community and the planet.
At points during the planning process, there was discussion about incorporating green-building systems to make the new Library LEED-certified, but all but the most minor ones were held aside, to keep the bond as low as possible (if construction costs come in lower than budgeted, they may be revisited).
And now it is coming to the end of 2011, and no prospect to even start construction on a new building at all for at least one more year.
There are still those – the former Trustee Norman Rutta among them – who believe that nothing needs to be done beyond a little patching here and there to our “lovely building.”
But here’s the irony: taxpayers will save very little by merely patching, versus having a state-of-the-art building that meets the needs of a community – the difference between doing a minimal amount, the so-called “Plan A” was projected to cost $15 million, and result in even less functional space than we have now, because of the need to meet ADA requirements and codes that have come into effect since 1965.
The difference in $5 million between a smaller, inflexible building and this extensive renovation (the actual walls of the library will stay; the interior will be gutted) with an addition of 8,000 more space, is about $9 a year in tax for a $1 million home.
But wait. There’s more. Step right down: it is 95 percent sure that the operating cost of the new building will actually go down – perhaps even making up the $9 a year.
“We won’t have to have as many mechanical repairs that we’ve had to date.. in a new building everything will be under warranty and be more efficient. We are spending a lot more in heating and cooling because of inefficiency, we spend more in lighting because the lighting out of date and windows not energy efficient…. all contribute to higher operating and maintenance costs that new building will alleviate – It won’t not solve all the problem, but certainly go a long way to spending the public’s money in a much more efficient manner,” LIbrary Director Jane Marino said.
Most importantly, as demographics and technology changes, you will have a more flexible building that can be readapted as needs change.
The actual construction cost to renovate and expand the building by 8,000 square feet is $15.850,519, which includes 10 percent in contingencies, overhead, profit and escalations, plus $6 million in “soft costs” including architecture and engineering, construction fees, legal fees, specialty consultants, moving and storing expenses and even rental of space (calculated at $250,000) during the two years of construction (expected to be less than two years), and $1 million in furniture, shelving and all the things that aren’t structural.
That seems like a bargain.
For those who say (as they have every year since 1995) that the economy is bad and this is no time to put additional tax burden on the community, the answer is that we cannot afford not to (and in fact, the community has had a tax-holiday for 15 years since the mortgage on Main was paid off). Actually the timing is fortuitous: not only are interest rates still at historic lows (S&P lowered credit rating be damned), but the economy is so rotten, contractors are fairly desperate.
“The private sector isn’t building, the public is drying up, contractors are trying to stay in business, and not making a 20 percent markup,” said James Wojcik, vice president-project manager for Park East, the construction manager. “It is so competitive, they are putting in no profit, just enough to keep the door open. As a result, in the public bidding arena, numbers come down. I don’t know about next year – with the economy…. It puts owners in very good position.”
What that means is that costs might actually come in lower, and are already about $2 million less than the December 2009 estimate. When has that ever happened, in our lifetime?
This is a window of opportunity, but it will shut at some point.
Some of questioned why the building needs to be expanded at all, especially since books may become obsolete and information can be accessed remotely, from the comfort of your own couch.
Shelly Limmer, at the North Hempstead Town Council hearing on the library’s site plan (it passed), groused that the plans essentially make the library a community center, rather than a warehouse for books.
But what is wrong with that? If more and more people can download information, it becomes more important, not less, to have places where people can discourse and share knowledge face-to-face, and that includes the various forms of knowledge and culture that is the underpinning of human civilization: music, art, films, lectures.
The added space is being allocated to create an area for story time for children (radiant floors was an add-alternate that was approved at a cost of $121,000), and places for young adults, students and groups to meet and discuss (the reference area is shrinking), which would seem all the better in this age of Information Alienation.
“If we’re a community center, good,” Marino commented. “We should be. libraries are the most democratic institutions in the country – we provide educational, cultural events, help with jobs, computers, SATs. We should be proud to call ourselves a community center.”
And if that means a building where people can gather as a community, and exchange ideas and information and knowledge and culture, perhaps inter-generationally or from one ethnic background to another, that is the essence of what a library should be.
“Lovely library?” The thing is falling down, and the interior is ragged and decrepit.
“Mismanagement?” “Runaway spending?” This is the most well thought out, studied, frugal, publicly vetted project in the history of public works. The community has spoken in every which way from here to Sunday, and the comments, thoughts, interests, needs of our community now and for decades more, have been incorporated into a marvelous plan.
DiCamillo expressed annoyance during the meeting at a passing reference to the plans to expand (for the third time) the Parkville Branch. It does bother me that since 1995, all three branches have undergone multiple renovations, while the Main Library building, the only building the community actually owns, has not been improved since it was built in the 1960s.
It is an interesting social dynamic at the library meetings, where fewer than two dozen people sitting in the audience feel they are the proxy for the 43,000 people of the Great Neck peninsula, rather than the seven elected officials, who have made a full-time job of studying, analyzing, learning all that went into project that has now been defined and quantified, and after the voter referendum on Oct. 25, will be fleshed out and ultimately grow to reality.
You can get more information about the library project and the referendum at the library’s Webs ite, www.greatnecklibrary.org, where there are drawings, plans, even minutes of all the board and building committee meetings related to the Main building project.
Then, come out and vote in favor of the library referendum, Oct. 25.
