Residents ask boro to keep library open

Tarantolo: A committee will conduct a study on the public library

BY DANIEL HOWLEY Staff Writer

EATONTOWN – Residents have begun circulating petitions throughout the borough in order to garner public support for the continued operation of the Eatontown Public Library.

In response to concerned residents, Mayor Gerald Tarantolo has called for a committee to be appointed to perform a study of the library, which could determine whether or not the building remains open to the community.

The committee will be tasked with discussing and reviewing how useful the library is to the borough, as well as finding what effects closing the library would have on residents.

“We have got to get some data here upon which to make a firm decision,” Tarantolo said at the May 7 council meeting. “So what I’m suggesting is that we create this committee.

“Let’s sit around a table and let’s talk about these issues and come back to the council with some recommendations.”

Councilwoman Victoria Rau has put a proposal on the table that calls for closing the library in March as a means to create additional space for employees at borough hall.

Borough residents opposed to the idea are pleading with the council to keep the library open.

“The library is sort of the heart and soul for a lot of people of this community,” said Frank Kijak, of Grant Avenue.

Kijak has started to circulate a petition in the borough, polling residents to see if they would like to see the library remain open and operational.

According to Kijak, each borough resident he has spoken to wants to see the library remain open.

Anthony Dudick, who is Rau’s son, said that he wants to see borough officials reach a compromise with the concerned residents in order to resolve the issue.

“I never used [the library], so to me it’s useless,” Dudick said. “To some people it serves a use and I think if you’ve got people running around getting petitions signed and things like that; that means you are striking a cord somewhere.

“You guys are the bosses. You guys can figure something out and come up with a compromise and that’s that,” Dudick said.

Councilman John Schiels proposed a plan to condense the library, allowing the borough to use a portion of the building, while keeping the library open.

Schiels explained that the borough would use approximately 700 square feet of the library’s 5,700 square feet.

Treasurer for the library’s board of trustees, Carolyn Newcomb, said that the board is willing to work with the council in order to alleviate the overcrowding issues in borough hall.

“If you need some help, we are willing to look at that with you and see what we can do,” Newcomb said. “You guys need to come to us and let us know specifically what exactly you want, what you need and we will work with you to the best of our ability.”

Rau had suggested using the library to house borough employees as a cost-saving measure for borough taxpayers.

Moving employees into the library building would be more cost-effective than constructing an addition to borough hall, according to Rau.

She supported her proposal by citing the number of Eatontown residents registered at the borough library and comparing it with the number of residents registered at the Shrewsbury branch of the Monmouth County Library.

According to Eatontown Business Administrator George Jackson, approximately 2,400 residents are registered at the borough’s library, and roughly 4,800 residents are registered at the county library.

The county library is located approximately one mile from the borough library, according to Rau, who said the close proximity creates a dual system.

Rau explained that because the library is “underused” she believes that opening it up to borough employees will help alleviate the current crowded conditions at borough hall.

Tarantolo said that he does not believe the overcrowding in borough hall has reached a “critical mass.”

“It depends on who you talk to in borough hall,” Jackson said. “It’s a judgment call. One person’s crisis is not another person’s crisis.”

Rau explained that she originally proposed to close the library because she was led to believe that there was an overcrowding problem in borough hall.

Rau made her proposal after a plan to increase space for the borough’s police department was put on hold.

That plan called for combining the council meeting room and the borough’s courtroom into a dual-purpose facility. Under the plan, municipal court would have been held in the council meeting room, allowing the police department to expand into the space currently occupied by the court.

The expansion plan was put on hold after bids for the project came in higher than borough officials had budgeted for the project.

In addition to overcrowding at the police department, Jackson explained that the borough’s planning and zoning office is “not a safe situation.”

“There are safety issues in there,” Jackson said. “We have boxes and boxes of materials and we don’t know where to put them.

“Our conference room is no longer a conference room. It is a storage room for documents,” Jackson said.

The borough library, located adjacent to borough hall on Broad Street, was founded as a literary society in 1908 and was incorporated later in the century.

Originally located in what is now the borough’s recreation department in borough hall, the library was moved to the site of the former borough post office in the 1980s.