Garnering nearly half the number of voters as the school district budget vote and trustee election, the Island Trees Library budget vote and trustee election, held last Thursday, witnessed the largest voter turnout the library has ever seen.

Voters were asked to vote on the library's $514,050 budget and to select either incumbent Marc Zirogiannis or challenger Paul Shapiro for the one available library trustee seat. The budget passed 250 to 86 and Zirogiannis, who for the past two years has served as library board president, was re-elected with 247 votes to Shapiro's 135 votes.

Much more attention was brought to this vote because of the two people running for the open board seat. Both candidates have spent the last couple of months campaigning and making residents of Island Trees aware of what issues are currently facing the library.

With Dennis King, who served as the director of the library for 31 years, retiring this past May, many saw this as a time of change for the library, because whoever was selected as trustee would play a major role in selecting the new director. The former director was there as the library moved from one temporary home to another before ending up at the Gallow School on Farmedge Road and Zirogiannis hopes that whoever is chosen as the new director will help the library find a permanent home. "We need to find someone who can take us into the new millennium, lead us, and someone who can help us find a permanent home for the library, and someone who can help us manage our budget and manage our finances," said Zirogiannis.

A lifelong resident of Island Trees, Zirogiannis has served on the library board for the last seven years, completing the term of a former trustee who passed away and then being re-elected to his own five year term. Zirogiannis, a real estate attorney, will now serve on the board for another five years. He and his wife Mary, also a lifelong Island Trees resident, have two children, 10-year-old Daniel and 20-month-old Demetrios.

Zirogiannis noted that he has a "vision for the library that we'll continue to improve services and continue to offer more to the public, but I don't have a revolutionary vision for what's going on with the library and I happen to think we provide a lot of services at a very low budget."

It is his love for the library that has driven Zirogiannis to serve on the board. "I have really enjoyed the opportunity to interact with the public in such a positive way. The school district is wonderful, but school issues are geared toward people who have school-aged children," said Zirogiannis. "The issues that relate to the library, span the entire community and I get an opportunity to deal with people that aren't yet in school and an opportunity to deal with our seniors, really a whole cross-segment of the community." He added that he finds that the people who use the library and are fanatical about the library are those who have a true love for books and love for knowledge and are generally very upbeat.

Noting that he was "amazingly touched" by the interaction he had when he was campaigning, with people commenting that they knew his family, Zirogiannis said he was very pleased with the number of people who came out to vote in the library election. According to Zirogiannis, he and his opponent had discussed the fact that the most positive thing that would come out of their campaigning was that the community would become more involved and take more of an interest in what's going on with their public library. "We'd like to see a continuation of that," said Zirogiannis. "In a time that voter turnout for most local elections, library elections and even school district is pretty low, I was pleased to see that people got involved and came out and voted in such record numbers."