Libraries need to be fully funded

MILLBROOK — Library advocates — library directors, staff, trustees, friends groups, volunteers and patrons — are asking legislators to lift libraries up from the flat funding proposal Governor Andrew Cuomo recently put forth in his 2015-16 budget. As libraries are educational institutions chartered by the NYS Board of Regents, administered by the state’s Education Department and, like schools, receive both state and local funds to serve the educational needs of their communities, library advocates are asking for an increase to library aid that matches other state education funding — coming in at around 5 percent.Stephanie Harrison, director of Millbrook Free Library, voiced her support for fully funding library aid by sending a letter to legislators. She has made it easy for other library supporters to do so as well during the New York budget negotiation season, before April 1. Go to the library’s website, www.millbrooklibrary.org and follow the link to the New York Library Association’s Online Advocacy Center.On Feb. 25, Library Advocacy Day, 50 area library advocates from the Mid Hudson Library System, of which Millbrook library is a part, marched through the halls of the Legislative Office building and Capitol, delivering the message to legislators that libraries are education and need to be fully funded.“I’m a huge advocate of libraries,” said Marge Weizmann, library assistant in the Millbrook library. “I’ve worked for over 12 years in the library; my job has become more and more complicated during that time and what the library provides and does as a community center has expanded, but funding has not increased along with all the additional services libraries offer now,” said Weizmann.Currently, Library Aid is nearly 20 percent less than what is legally required by education law and is at 1997 funding levels.