Letter: Port Jervis Library Board Rouses Outrage

People who love the recently hired library director resist spending $30,000 to fire him and hire someone new amid other unexplained expenditures.

I’m trying to shed more light on what's unfolding at the Port Jervis Library. I love the library, and people who work there do their best to make it an amazing resource for the community. We've recently come into a new library director, who came to us around October. He's been great and looking to make real improvements in a library that's been stagnant for a while. The patrons love him and the library staff love him. Recently we found out the board wants to fire him and spend 30k to find a replacement. They won't tell us why and have faced large opposition.

The last few board meetings have been filled with people supporting him and also questioning the upcoming budget. The board is pushing a budget that they haven't discussed with the director or anyone else at the library . They refuse to answer questions about the budget. One increase to the budget is "Professional Services," which they're looking to increase by 51k to 131k. Our professional services budget is multiple times larger than at other local larger libraries. They refuse to explain what that money is going to.

On top of that, we spend 68k on a bookkeeper which they won't explain further. We have a board that doesn't use the library. Only one of them actually has a library card, and yet they are making huge decisions for the library and spending taxpayer money without explaining what they're spending it on. There's a budget meeting on the 22nd of May that is anticipated to be well attended to once again try to ask questions about the budget and our director.

We appreciate any support you can provide.

Thank you,

Daniel Schaaf

Port Jervis

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