The Highland Falls Library’s 2025 budget request to the Town Board was $290,000; up from the $270,000 they received in 24. But, by the end of last week’s Town Board meeting it appeared they would get $277,570.

The budget request from the library really only saw a jump in the salaries and insurance costs.

“We have to keep in line with New York State’s Department of Labor increase in minimum wage,” Library Director Stacy Falk told the board. When asked how much of a raise she was looking to give employees, Falk said she defers to the library’s Board of Directors for that. Three were in the audience at the meeting. “But, never higher than what the town gives,” Falk added.

Regina Kopald, on the library board, reminded the board that no library employees get any benefits, and said “I don’t believe we even pay them competitively.”

The salary lines for the library are still being tweaked, Falk added, because in 2023 the library didn’t have a director for seven months of the year.

Falk noted that their parent agency – Ramapo Catskill Library System – “didn’t force any increases on member libraries this year. Should they purchase new services from RCLS it would cost more than in 2024, she said. “And our budget for books and materials is the same as last year,” she added, “$17,000.”

She said that the library has had a busy year in 2024, with the number of programs having increased, the number of books checked out increased and the number of people in and out of the building daily increased.

“The library is a freakin’ gem,” Supervisor Bob Livsey said, “you do a tremendous job.”

However, he reminded Falk and the others that “there’s only so much we can do.”

No one in the room disagreed with the supervisor’s desire to keep the town budget tight, but Kopald made one last pitch for increased funds in 2025.

“Everyone in this room is a taxpayer,” she said. “We get it. But, while we all need certain things – like emergency services and our garbage to be picked up, and a functioning government – we also want some things, and in this case, those things are our library. We are the closest thing this town is ever going to have to a community center. The library comes more alive every day with more and more people wanting to be there.”

No one disagreed. Councilman Rich Sullivan suggested “meeting them halfway” in the 2025 request, and the board eventually arrived at that $277,750 figure.

Nothing is finalized in the budget until the board adopts it, most likely at the November 11 meeting. On November 4, a public hearing on the spending plan will take place, at 7 p.m.

Livsey again noted that “we are making a special effort to stay under the tax cap,” he said.