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April 2024 Newsletter

April 2024 Newsletter

HPL Newsletter Apr 24

April 01, 2024

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What’s new at the library?

Cooking with Caleigh

Upcoming Programs

Calendar of Events

Art Exhibit

New Artist coming soon!

New art will be going up later in the month of April, so be sure to keep an eye out..

If you haven’t had a chance to see Lee Ingraham’s photography display you still have a little time.

Fantasy reads for April

Squire by Nadia Shammas and Sara Alfageeh
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal
The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole
Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Recommend a Book

Read a really good book recently that you think other people should read as well? Let us know and we’ll share it in a future newsletter!

Request a Recommendation

Want a personalized recommendation? Fill out the form to let us know what kind of book you’re looking for!

Suggest an Item for purchase

Want to read, watch, or listen to something the library doesn’t own? Let us know and we will consider purchasing it for our collection.

New Books

From the Director

It’s been about a year and a half of these monthly newsletters, and this month I’m reminded just how cyclical my contributions are becoming. Today I wanted to share a reminder about our upcoming budget vote, and to ensure I worded everything properly (as the School District wants me to say things just so), I pulled up last year’s column.

So save for a few updates to numbers, I can confidently say that last year’s column holds up! There’s very little I need to change, and since I’m the rights-holder I definitely give myself permission to repost the same column, but is that the right thing to do? On the one hand, yes, it’s lazy. On the other hand, why change something that has already attained this level of perfection? The real question is, without my preface, would you have even noticed that it was reprinted from the year before? We may never know!

With that ethical dilemma aside, I present to you:

Library Budget Vote Reminder Column 2.0 - Now with New Numbers!

It’s that time of year again! No, not spring, it’s Library budget vote season!

While we can’t tell you what boxes to check, we can tell you a bit about our budget and where to go to cast your ballot!

Our budget is, in a word, complex. We receive funding from a variety of sources, including the Village of Hamilton (of which we are a department), the towns of Hamilton, Brookfield, Lebanon, and Madison, individual donations, the State of NY, Madison County, and much more.

While some of those revenues are in the hundreds of dollars, some are much more, and about half of our funding comes from a proposition to the ballot at the school’s annual election, which is where you come in! The vote for the library’s tax levy increase (as well as the school district’s budget and school board elections) will be held on Tuesday, May 21, in the bus garage at the Hamilton Central School from noon to 8 p.m.

Keep in mind that our budget is completely separate from the School District’s, we are simply able to use their vote so we do not have to ask residents to come vote on two separate days. Unfortunately, I cannot provide any answers to questions you may have regarding the school district’s budget, but if you have any questions about the library budget, please let me know! Our total operating expenses are about $331,000, and you can see the previous year’s budget on our website, which will be updated again after the vote.

This year we are asking for an increase of just 4% from this Tax Levy, bringing the total cost from $156,828 to $163,101. While this is still an increase, the percentage increase went down a percentage point between this year and last year. The Finance Committee of the Library Board of Trustees created a budget that not only cut back on an increase in taxes, but also did not cut deeply into our already existing programs and services. One thing that helped us balance our budget was the Friends of the Library committing to support our programs directly with an annual donation of $5,000 for the second consecutive year. Thanks, Friends!

Thank you for reading and subscribing to our newsletter, and for your support with your patronage and votes.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me directly at [email protected].

2024 Travis here again: While I’m on the subject of budgets and supporting libraries, please consider clicking the link below to share your support of library funding to your State representatives before they approve this year’s budget. It only takes a moment to fill out the form and can make a world of difference in your community.

https://oneclickpolitics.global.ssl.fastly.net/messages/edit?promo_id=22249