A referendum is being held Tuesday in Saratoga County on a $4.4 million library expansion plan.
Voters will determine the fate of an ambitious proposal that would take a former factory that was converted into apartments and re-imagining the building as a new Stillwater Public Library. Library Director Sara Kipp says the current configuration doesn't have the space a modern library needs. The Stillwater Fiber Mill is a stone's throw from the current library, which occupies a nearly 150-year old former church.
"The current building is a church that was built in 1874. It's a beautiful, quaint little place. But there are stairs that go into the children's and teen sections. And so the former fiber mill would actually allow us to be fully handicap accessible. And it would give us space for a community room that people could gather. And because it's an older factory that's still in town, we don't have to give up our character. We still get to stay in a, I wouldn't say quaint, probably, but a historical space that everyone is used to seeing. It's not going to be a bright, shiny new building. And because we can renovate it would be able to save costs for the taxpayers and hopefully hit all of our goals," said Kipp.
Stillwater Mayor Judy Wood-Shaw says the new library would come with a school tax increase of about $35 a year per $100,000 of assessed property value over a 20-year term.
"It's also going to cost the school taxpayers, you know, more money every year. And that's not counting in the increase of school taxes, you know, generalized," said Wood-Shaw.
Wood-Shaw says she wants what's best for the villagers, and who better to decide than they, themselves. Kipp says the library has taken steps to lower the burden to taxpayers.
"We did just win a grant from the Department of Library Development, $337,500 towards this project. And so although the referendum amount does not include taking that amount off, because of the way the legal ad and the ballot printing works, we do look forward to just consistently over the next two years continuing to reduce our costs," Kipp said.
Kipp says the plan calls for the existing library to stay open until the new facility is ready for occupancy, and the mayor says village officials are keen on converting the former church into village offices.
“We did write a letter of interest, you know, to possibly inherit the library," Wood-Shaw said Monday. "If the vote passes yes, tomorrow night. We have not done any financials yet to put our village offices down there, because right now we're in the fire department, our boardroom and our clerk's office. Which needs a lot of updating.”
The referendum runs from noon to 9 p.m. at Stillwater Central School.
