Library Board Candidates Pitch Their Platforms

Three months after he was appointed a trustee of the Long Beach Library, Alan Greenberg is running in the May 21 election to retain his seat on the board. While his challenger, Diane Parr, said she wants to be a voice for the entire city, the fates of the library branch in her neighborhood, the West End, inspired her first-time candidacy.

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Both Greenberg and Parr were each given five minutes, before a candidates forum for the Long Beach Board of Education at the main library last week, to pitch their platforms.

A third-generation Long Beach resident and a financial advisor, Greenberg, 59, said the library is changing dramatically, having become a town and cultural center for everything from jazz and blues festivals, to a places where language classes and Kiwanis Club meetings are held. His focus, though, is on technology, noting that most of the computers at the main branch, at 111 W. Park Ave., are eight years old.

“They do not have, as of yet, an iPad, a Kindle, a Nook, and yet we have a digital library which we want to hook into,” said Greenberg, who indicated the library has budgeted for all these items as well as a laptop because it “needs to go to the next level.”

He said the branch in Point Lookout, at 26B Lido Blvd., has an old computer and VHS tapes that need to be replaced with new technologies, and needs Wi-Fi so that patrons can hook into the Internet and the digital library. He indicated that the library wants to budget for training patrons to use the Kindle, Nook and digital library.

In March, the library board voted to adopt a proposed $3.4 million 2013-14 budget, which would cover the $21,600 annual lease for the West End branch, at 810 W. Beech St., until February 2014, but it does not include $64,000 to restore and restock the facility after it sustained heavy damages in Hurricane Sandy.

Greenberg called the decision to close the West End branch as a library “very difficult,” but cited as a reason the decline in annual circulation, from 8,000 items to 6,000 and lower prior to the storm.  

“To make a comparison to Point Lookout, we pay around $2,070 [and month in rent for that branch] and we have approximately 17,000 in circulation,” said Greenberg, who lived in the West End for 10 years.

The board wants to convert the branch into a new use, possibly a meeting room for local non-profit organizations as a way to help the community, or as a technology center equipped with a new computer, printer, Wi-Fi and other devices.

When Parr offered her platform, she agreed with Greenberg that the West End branch could become a technology center, but she also believes it could also still operate as a library. She said that after Sandy the building was remediated months before the main branch, and the post-storm community would have greatly benefited if it were reopened with a computer, fax machine and scanner.  

“As it was, for those months we were paying rent and we were not using it,” said Parr, who highlighted this particular issue as the spark that pushed her to run for the library board.

Parr, 72, was a vice president at JPMorgan Chase, where she managed a technology team before her retirement. During the 1960s she bought a bungalow in the West End and resided there each summer. Two years ago, she moved to Long Beach permanently from the Bronx. Like Greenberg, she has always frequented libraries.

While she acknowledged that circulation has fallen at the West End branch, Parr suggested other reasons why patrons may have stopped going there. “If you ever tried to use the computer there, it was pitiful,” she said. “It was slower than the first dial-up computer I ever had.”

She also believes that building should remain a library because of its location. “You will still have a need for books and you need to address the community wherever they are, whether they are in the West [End] or in Point Lookout, and however they feel comfortable,” she said.

Although her top issue is the West End branch, Parr tried to assure the audience at the May 6 forum that she was running as a candidate for the city at large. Parr called on the community to offer more input on what they need and want at the library, and she said she believes she has much to offer the main branch.   “I have skills that can be available for everybody,” she said.

Greenberg was appointed after President Paula Freund resigned.  

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