Meeting held to gauge public response to new building
By John Tredrea, Special Writer
Concern about tax impact was the dominant theme of public comment Monday night during a Hopewell Borough meeting on a proposal to buy a building for a new library in town.
”My property taxes have gone up 65 percent in 10 years,” said borough resident Beverly Kidder at the meeting, held by the library’s board of trustees at Hopewell Elementary School.
”We’ve just built a new city hall. Libraries are going to be gone with the wind. They’re technological roadkill,” she said. “Hopewell has 778 households. I’ll bet every one of them has at least one computer. You can research anything at home.”
The Hopewell Borough Council has said it wants to know how townspeople feel about the idea before moving ahead with the borough library trustees’ proposal that the borough purchase the Amy Karyn building, at 64 E. Broad St., for a new library.
The Amy Karyn building has its own parking lot. The current borough library, in the heart of the downtown, has no parking area. The Karyn building’s listed sale price is $999,999. Negotiations could change that figure.
In an effort to gauge public sentiment on the issue, and to give residents the chance to ask questions and make comments, the library’s board of trustees scheduled Monday night’s meeting.
About 60 people attended and about 20 of them made comments on the proposal, under which the library trustees say they would undertake a fundraising campaign to garner $1.2 million, the estimated cost of renovating and refurbishing the Karyn building sufficiently to turn it into a library.
The borough would cover the cost of buying the building by borrowing the money under a bond ordinance.
Anne Zeman, library director, has said: “The Karyn site is a great opportunity to keep the library on Broad Street and to meet the current and future needs of the community.
”Unlike the library we have now, a library there would have its own parking and be handicapped-accessible. It would provide adequate space for storage and operations. It would be consistent with the community’s size and anticipated future demands.”
Most of the residents who spoke Monday night were opposed to the proposal.
”I don’t think we need this right now,” said West Broad Street resident, Warren C. Lewis. “I’m 81 years old and I’ve lived here for 77 years. The taxes on my 44-foot lot are $11,000 a year now. We just opened a new borough hall. You can’t just pick these things off trees.”
”This is a lot of money you’re talking about,” a borough woman said. “Our taxes are too high now. We do have the train station in town for community projects. We don’t want to drive seniors out of town with taxes”
A number of other residents made similar comments.
The minority of speakers Monday night were supporters of the plan to move the library to the Karyn building.
One of the supporters of the proposal, Heidi Wilenius, said: “I’ve spoken to many people who don’t use our current library because it’s too hard to get a place to park there.
”I would rather have my children go out into the community than be in a room with a Kindle. We want to energize people to get out of their houses and go out into the community.”
”The library we have now is crowded. It’s hard to get around,” another woman said. “But maybe there are other, less expensive options to solve this problem.”
Members of the board of trustees noted that, if their proposal goes through, the borough could sell the current library, thus driving down the cost of buying the Karyn building.
On another side of that issue, several residents noted that, if the Karyn building were turned into a library, the borough would lose the property taxes it now receives from the owner of the Karyn building.

