BAY HEAD – Officials of Ocean County aren’t ready to close the book on the Bay Head Reading Room just yet, but this chapter is coming to an end. It might find a new location after it closes its doors within the next year.
The Reading Room located at 136 Meadow Avenue was leased to the Ocean County Library system through the borough and the school district which had an agreement dating back to 1985 but now the school district wants to use that space for a pre-school facility.
Bay Head Mayor William Curtis spoke with Micromedia Publications and noted the issue came up during a Borough Council meeting in July.
“The school gave it (the property) to the municipality, way back when. Now they’d like to have it back because they are interested in starting a pre-school and we certainly don’t have any need for it at this point – meaning we take care of it for the library side and the other side. We have to do all the repairs and things and we’d like to get from under that,” the mayor explained.
“We’d be able to give it back (to the school district) and this has been talked about for a number of years now. This isn’t something that just came up and it hasn’t happened yet,” he said.
The mayor said a site visit occurred on August 11 that included OCL Director Susan Quinn, Ocean County Administrator Carl Block and Deputy Ocean County Deputy Administrator Mike Fiure among other officials.
“We offered to take them around to look around so that they might be able to get a storefront somewhere and to look at our reading room that is at the public works department (on Park Avenue). We built that ourselves before Superstorm Sandy and we utilized it a lot after Sandy for people who needed food and a place to rest because it was a little higher ground out there,” the mayor added.
“The issue with that is that it has no heat or bathroom facilities. It does have space that is as big as what the library has now (at the Bay Head Reading Room). It would be closed off unless they added another entrance at 3:30 p.m. every day so people couldn’t get in. Parking would be a big issue,” he said.
“We have people bring all their recycling to the recycling center. We don’t pick it up and we don’t have a hauler to pick it up so there are people that go in and out of there all day long,” Curtis said.
He said there was no time frame for the transition. “If they could get out by January 1 that would be fine, ideally the school would like to have use of it for September of the next school year. Sometime between now and a year from now.
“We want to give the library a chance to look around and find a spot in Bay Head. It is only one of two locations that the Ocean County Library doesn’t own. The lease is probably a dollar or not very big. They could get something else around here and there are a couple of other alternatives,” the mayor said.
Mayor Curtis noted he’d favor “106 Bridge Avenue which was our temporary Borough office after Superstorm Sandy but the issue there is that it isn’t handicapped accessible so they would have to do something about that but it has plenty of parking and is not that far away from the western end of town. It would be a little closer to town by two blocks to the current library location.”
The borough Reading Room is one of two reading rooms within the 21-location library system. The other is the Whiting Reading Room in Manchester Township. Other locations are designated as branches as they feature a meeting room area where programs and meetings can be held which reading rooms do not have.
OCL spokesperson Sherri Taliercio told Micromedia Publications that the Bay Head Council made a decision to discontinue the agreement with the Ocean County Library Commission that allowed Bay Head Reading Center to operate at its current location.
“The Reading Room has been at the location since January 1991. No staff will be in jeopardy of losing their jobs. The possibility of an alternative Bay Head Reading Center location is being explored. The Library Commission has a year’s notice to exit the premises,” Taliercio added.
The Bay Head School District serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade and as of the 2017–18 school year, it had an enrollment of 129 students.
Micromedia Publications reached out to the School District for further comment but at press time had not received a response.
The Bay Head Reading Room Center can be reached by calling 732-892-0662. The OCL website can be accessed at theoceancountylibrary.org.
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