Port Washington Library: 29,230 Square feet. Population: 44,000
Great Neck Library (4 locations): 59,552 square feet. Population: 9,989
(Statistics obtained from each library 2010 census)
Before you vote on Oct. 25, please educate yourselves about the facts and think carefully about whether you personally believe that the main library needs an over $20 million expansion with a minimum of a two-year closure.
I suggest that you review the results of the ad-hoc committee, the Great Neck Library Community Survey (run by the library) and the “Visioning,” which was sponsored by the Town of North Hempstead. Analyzing the results of all three will convince you to vote against the bond.
In addition, now that newspapers, encyclopedias, newspapers and other reference material are online, there is plenty of room in the existing building to relocate and enlarge the children’s area as well as the audio-visual collection.
Free downloads onto Kindle, Nook, Sony eReader and iPad are now available from the library. The use of these devices and other electronic innovations will only increase as their costs continually lower.
The existing building certainly requires upgrading, which could be done piecemeal in order to have a short closure or no closure at all at a cost of about $8 million.
Instead of sharing resources with the schools and the parks, the library board is considering a sloped floor community room, while there are three available sloped floor auditoriums in close proximity to the main library.
A no vote on Oct. 25 will say renovate and restore the Main Branch.
Shirley J. Samansky
Great Neck
