By Elizabeth Wulfhorst
TINTON FALLS – An unassuming, one-story building with a welcoming front porch sits in the grassy cutout created by the Tinton Falls Middle School driveway on Tinton Avenue. For over 40 years it has housed the Tinton Falls Public Library. And while the shelves and books remain, not a single library patron has stepped inside to browse or borrow for the past five years.
In August 2017, after the library director began experiencing intermittent illness and found what was thought to be mold in her office, the county Department of Public Works was called in to examine the building, according to Rosemary Kochman, Tinton Falls Public Library Association president. An air quality assessment found a “dangerous type of mold that can cause sickness with spores,” she said. The borough, which owns the building and the land, “im- mediately shut the library down.”
The Tinton Falls Public Library is a private library run by the association, which leases the building from the borough. The association was founded in 1961. Any resident of Tinton Falls may get a library card at no cost and borrow materials and participate in programs for free. When open, the library is supported by the association which runs small fundraisers, a yearly book sale and has some investments. It also receives “an annual municipal budget appropriation of $143,000 per year for operating expenses,” said Thomas P. Fallon, the chief financial officer, director of audit accounts and control, and acting borough administrator for the Borough of Tinton Falls. Those monies cover payroll and other expenses like electricity, telephones and costs associated with running the library, Kochman said.
Additionally, according to Fallon, the borough pays county library taxes – in the amount of $662,031 for 2021 – for the library to be a member of the Monmouth County Library System (MCLS); this allows Tinton Falls residents to obtain a county library card for free and borrow items from branches of the MCLS.
Kochman said being a member library benefits Tinton Falls residents and the library in many other ways. When the library is open, the county supplies it with computers for accessing the internet and the entire MCLS catalog, gives it a budget from which the association purchases books, provides a children’s librarian who runs programs and storytime, and covers printing services, among other help.
“They have been incredible,” Kochman said.
Kochman, who has lived in the borough since 1973, began volunteering at the library in 1976 and became an association board member in 1978. She said she has held the office of president a number of times over the years, most recently for the past seven or eight years, including during the closure. “This is probably the worst thing I’ve ever been through,” she said.
The issues stem from a used trailer provided by the borough and placed behind the building in 2015 “to give us extra room for the library because we were basically outgrowing it,” Kochman said. Over the years there have been plans to move or expand the library – most recently as part of the new borough hall when it was built on Tinton Avenue – but none have come to fruition due to lack of funds. “It’s not a borough library and, as a result, I think that the borough, as good as they have been to us over the years, nobody wants to put that kind of burden of building a building like that in this day and age, and putting that burden on the taxpayers,” Kochman said.
So, through a Monmouth County Community Development Block Grant, the association made improvements to the original building and the trailer, connecting the two with a small walkway and completing ADA upgrades including accessible restrooms and an interior access ramp. Prior to the closing, the borough also replaced the siding, roof and windows, said Brain Perry, vice president of the Tinton Falls Library Association.
But, after the mold was discovered and the borough and association made the decision to shut the doors, the borough engineer, Thomas Neff, performed a study to determine the cost for remediation. He found additional issues in the building, including HVAC and electrical problems.
According to Perry, the total project cost stands at $435,000 which includes “removing the existing trailer, removing the existing surface mold in the rest of the building, upgrading the HVAC and electrical systems, and completing various structural improvements as recommended by the borough engineer.” He estimates it will take nine months to complete the work.
To pay for the project, the association applied for a New Jersey Library Construction Bond Act matching grant of $217,500. “The Borough of Tinton Falls has budgeted $150,000 toward the repairs and the library association will fund the remaining $67,500 for the project” if they receive the grant, Perry said. This is their second time applying for the grant; the application was denied during the first round of funding.
As Kochman noted, once the repairs are made, the matters of outfitting and staffing the library remain. “We would probably have to get rid of everything in there” currently, she said.
“But thanks to Heidi (Amici, MCLS assistant library director) and the county library, when we open, they will provide us with books to start,” said Kochman.
After five years, library staff has moved on and, Kochman noted, while some may decide to return, there won’t be a director and the library will initially open on a limited basis “to get ourselves back up and running.”
And, she said, the association has decided to go ahead with repairs, whether or not they receive the grant.
“It upsets me, the fact that new people are moving into the borough and they’ve never had a library, since 2017. They’ve moved in and they don’t know anything about it,” Kochman said.
Without the grant, the association will have to scale back repairs to accomplish the most pressing items, like the mold remediation, trailer removal and HVAC repair.
And they are still fundraising. The association hosted a day-long music festival Aug. 14 at the Sycamore Recreation Complex on Sycamore Avenue which included bands, a beer garden, concession stand, a scavenger hunt, book bingo, storytime, arts and crafts and lawn games. Kochman said they are still tallying the proceeds but she expected the total to be a nice sum.
“We’ve had a lot of help from the county. We’ve had a lot of financial help from the borough, and we’re very grateful for that,” she said, adding that the support of residents has been wonderful, too.
“Our objective is to get that library open.”
This article originally appeared in the Sept. 9 – 15, 2021, print edition of The Two River Times.
