Legislature passes creation of library district subject to referendum
The following was submitted as a press release by Brockport Mayor, Margay Blackman.
On June 17, 2015 the New York State Assembly and Senate passed legislation creating the Seymour Library District. That legislation now awaits the Governor’s signature. If signed into law, its creation will still require a referendum of the voters of the district. That referendum will also include approval of a budget and the election of 9 at large library board members.
Following its passage in the New York State Legislature the Village of Brockport Board of Trustees unanimously supported the creation of the library district in a resolution passed on July 20, 2015 and submitted, with the following statement, to the NYS Office of the Budget.
Although none of the board members were favorably disposed to another taxing district, they believe that the current tri-municipal system of financing and operating the library is broken, for the following reasons.
The tri-municipal agreement (1990), giving control and financing of the library to the Village of Brockport, Clarkson, and Sweden is ineffective and had not been adhered to.
Because the tri-municipal agreement does not specify agreement among the municipalities in respect to funding, the library director and board members have been forced to make multiple budget appearance requests before town and village boards as the municipal boards prepare and adjust their annual budgets. These efforts are further complicated by the different budget calendars/fiscal years of the village and towns. Attempts on the part of the village mayor to get the two supervisors to minimally agree to not exceed the tax cap in their allocations to the library have not succeeded.
The agreement specified that library allocations were to be based on population and adjusted, at minimum, at every federal census. The municipalities have continued to operate off the census at the time the tri-municipal agreement was created (1990) to the point that according to the 2010 census, in 2014-15 Clarkson underfunded the library by $12,006, Sweden overfunded by $10,730, and Brockport overfunded by $1276.
Municipal sharing of services. The tri-municipal agreement stipulated that certain services for the library were to be shared and rotated among the three municipalities. Snow plowing, for example, is rotated, but lawn mowing proved too time consuming and has been contracted out. Until only a few years ago the Village handled the library banking and accounts payable. The library now handles this with some oversight by the Town of Clarkson. More importantly, library employee payroll, civil service, retirement, employee benefits, and workers compensation have been handled by the Village only because of the impracticality of periodically rotating these functions. Nonetheless, the presumed equal sharing of services is and has been unbalanced with the burden falling on the village.
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