Having been promised $60,000 from the Town of Montgomery, representatives of the Montgomery Free Library returned to the village board last week, hoping for a similar result.

Jane Hoeffner President of the Montgomery Free Library, requests the Board to consider increasing their funding contribution from the current $27,500 to $60,000 in order to enable them to return to pre-Covid operations and begin to schedule children learn activities.

Hoeffner said the library served more than 5,000 patrons in 2021, despite limited hours caused by the pandemic.

“We are the lowest-funded library in the Ramapo Catskill Library System, Hoeffner said.

Mayor Steve Brescia offered empathy, but repeated what he had said last month - an additional $33,000 in the village budget was “a big ask.”

The mayor said that he would look at the numbers, but has no intention of exceeding the state’s tax cap when preparing the 2023-24 village budget. He warned that the village was also looking at raises for employees because the previous treasurer didn’t take out the deductions for medical benefits.

Later, after also fielding a request from the Montgomery Senior Center for additional funding, he offered additional thoughts.

“Just for perspective, we have a $5 million budget,” Brescia said. “We had two asks here tonight, from the library and the senior center for almost $50,000. For me to try to plug 50 grand into our village budget, it’s got going to be tough. Most of the budget is personal services. You know we have to take care of our employees, You know they take care of the village as well as anybody….. Let’s try to put it into perspective…this are big asks tonight.”