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September 14, 2008

Public library at top of city's priorities

My Central Jersey.com
For all of the bright and shiny baubles that Perth Amboy officials have helped to bring to residents in recent times — new industry, fresh housing, and a glistening public safety complex not least among them — one public service in particular remains an absolute disgrace: the city's crumbling public library.

Former Mayor Joseph Vas did a lot of talking about resurrecting the library before he was pushed out of office in May, but he never laid down any concrete plan.

A shame. And a disservice.

Now the initiative is left entirely to new chief executive Wilda Diaz, the City Council and the public library's board of trustees.

The hope here is that Diaz and her colleagues will accept no delay in taking on the project as one of the top priorities of the city.

There is reason for fast action and for optimism that can happen.

Perth Amboy's library is one of the worst in Middlesex County. Apparently structurally sound but sprouting signs of decay, the building is leaky and drafty, walls and ceilings are cracked, and the building may have mold. Underscoring those deficiencies, it is an absolute sin that buckets must be used to collect rain water that pours through the rafters of this historic piece of the city.

The aging building — put up in 1903 by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie — is more than just old. It's also too small and needs modernizing, so an addition is needed to handle the technology of today, and it would be cheaper to build from scratch than to retrofit the existing structure to accommodate all of the modern high-tech needs. As an added bonus, an adjacent parking lot offers room for expansion. So what Perth Amboy needs is a two-pronged approach: preserve the old and add some new, keeping with history while creating fresh tradition.

"We need a clean, well-lit place," Barbara Sottilaro, president of the library board of trustees, said this week. But there's more. Library chiefs say there's demand for a larger children's section, additional shelf space, quiet study areas, and community meeting rooms — the sorts of amenities routinely found in other towns. The library also must be made to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Right now, it doesn't.

But good news has arrived.

At long last, the library board reached an agreement this week to study what it would cost to renovate the library or build a whole new one. Here's to the hope a bit of both can be done.

If not, at least it is reassuring to know that something will be done, simply because something has to be done. Perth Amboy can't continue to neglect is public library or the thousands of city residents who depend upon it for its all-important services — services that are unique and available nowhere else within the city.

"The library is so important," Diaz said this week. "Nothing would make me happier in my term than to get the library done. It's a development of the mind."

Hear, hear.

Posted by tumulty at September 14, 2008 5:53 PM

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