East Meadow Library To Stop Mailing Newsletters

The board has decided to stop mailing out library newsletters as of July in an effort to offset costs of new taxes.

The new initiative was taken at the December board meeting in response to the two new taxes that were put on the library. First, there was the , which library officials estimate will cost them $12,000 per year. The other tax is the water use fee, the cost for which will be approximately $8,000 per year.

"When you raise taxes for your school districts and libraries, it has to show up somewhere else and it shows up in our budget," Jude Schanzer, the library's director of public relations and programming said. "In order to keep our taxpayers from paying more taxes to cover libraries, we are doing this with the newsletter to save them the money."

The library will be moving to a new email system, while the members of the Friends of the East Meadow Public Library will be the only people receiving mailed out versions of the newsletter.

Currently, the library is printing up about 19,000 copies of the newsletter, and between printing, postage and mailing, the newsletter costs about $30,000 per year.

"We expect some flack," Assistant Library Director Rocco Cassano said. "We’re at the point where it doesn’t make much sense to send out all the paper for that money."

When the new initiative takes effect in July, the library will continue to have newsletters available. Schanzer says that the library will print up a few thousand copies that will be available in the library for patrons, and they are working on a way to deliver copies to retirement homes, senior centers and assisted living communities.

"Also, if a patient is home-bound, we do have a librarian that visits them," Schanzer said. "This program has been going on for years. We bring them CDs, DVDs or whatever they need. They will get a copy of the newsletter as well."

Another reason for this initiative, Schanzer says, is the fact that it is an environmentally conscious decision.

"Think of all the paper that we will be saving," Schanzer said. "This is definitely a green solution."