GRAY – Gray voters will be asked Tuesday, Nov. 6, to support a $1.5 million expansion of the Gray Public Library on Hancock Street.

The Gray Town Council approved the referendum in September and backs the project, as does the library’s board of trustees and the Gray Public Library Association.

The bond, which would allow up to $1.5 million from Gray taxpayers to design and construct building improvements, would fund a 3,000-square-foot addition to the library. Among the improvements are the creation of two meeting rooms, increased space between book stacks and improving staff work and personal areas.

The money would also pay for doubling the size of the children’s area, installing Americans with Disability Act-compliant bathrooms, upgrading the heating system, introducing energy-efficient lighting, replacing windows where needed and installing insulation.

If approved, the project would be funded by both public and private dollars. Private funding would come from the fundraising efforts of the Gray Public Library Association. President Ray Clark says the library would aim to raise at least $250,000 to offset the taxpayers’ contribution.

“The newly expanded Gray Public Library will be more energy-efficient, more user-friendly, safer, easier to get around in, a more useful public building – a true center of our community,” Clark said. “And with the financial support of the Gray Public Library Association, which has pledged to raise at least $250,000 toward the cost of the project, Gray will get all this at a very reasonable cost.”

Clark said there’s now little room for staff and patrons in the library.

“A library needs space for much more than books. In fact, the purpose of the proposed expansion of the Gray Public Library is not at all to provide more room for books, but more room for people. Our popular children’s area overflows with kids during story hours and events,” Clark said. “Book stacks in the adult area are too close together … We have just one meeting room now, which was created by the Gray Public Library two years ago, and it’s also the reference library and the ‘office’ of the reference librarian. Library staff doesn’t have nearly enough space to do their jobs efficiently.”

Saying a good local library needs 1 square foot per town resident (Gray has about 7,500 residents and a 4,000-square-foot library), Clark said the bond would allow the library to grow into the role of a community center as well as library.

“Not so long ago, a library was a place where you went to get a book, or to return one. Times have changed. Today a library is a community center, where people go to get a book or a CD or a movie; where they discuss the books they’ve read; learn to deal with Medicare; learn a language; figure out how to work the Kindle they got for Christmas – in short, a library is far more than a book repository,” Clark said. “Adding more room will allow the library to offer more programs that will entertain, enlighten and enchant the people who live in our town. The trustees of the Gray Public Library are eager to give people more reasons to visit the library.”