This is to advise that I will be running for another term as a member of the Plainview-Old Bethpage Public Library Board of Trustees, and to enlist the support of the Plainview-Old Bethpage community for my candidacy.

I have served as a trustee of our public library since 1972. Over that 31-year period, have been a leader of virtually every effort to improve the service that our library provides to the residents of our community, and to promote an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect among the library management, the library staff, and the Plainview-Old Bethpage public that we all serve.

We take Sunday library service for granted now, but when I was first elected to the board it was a very controversial subject indeed, and I took the lead in assuring that our library would be among the Long Island pioneers in providing Sunday service. At my urging, we were also a pioneer in establishing the kind of information and Referral Service that is a major service that our library and its Reference Department provide to the community. I was a leader in the effort to expand our library a decade ago to include the additional stack space provided at the south side of the library facility, and I take special pride in my efforts with regard to the major expansion project that we will be formally breaking ground on at the end of this month.

While I pride myself on my capacity for fostering creative ideas for our library, I also believe that I have been a voice of reason and sound judgment in every aspect of library policy, and have helped cool passions and tempered what otherwise might have been ill advised actions in times of controversy and stress.

I have served the Plainview-Old Bethpage community and its public library for more than three decades, but neither my energies nor my enthusiasm for the library have lessened over those decades, and I look forward to another five year term as a library trustee with the same anticipation that I had in 1972. I hope that I will have your support.

Michael Polansky