SAUGUS — The Library Board of Trustees reviewed the strategic plan from the last five years , the grants received from the Saugus Cultural Council, and the FY27 budget, which has been submitted to the town.
“The library has received the following monies from the Saugus Cultural Council for programs in 2026, giving us a total of $6,125,” Director Alan Thibeault said.
This will help pay for seven programs, including Art on Wing, Tiny Gardens, a presentation by Kelly Slater on Mixed Media, the Classical Music Series, the Concerts at the Iron Works, Pop-Up Art School, and a visit by author John Patrick Green to the Belmonte STEAM Academy.
“The Cultural Council is very generous to us, and they do a lot of good work for the town,” Thibeault said.
Thibeault then went over what the library has accomplished in the last five years with the original strategic plan that ended in 2025 to make way for the new one.
“Under goal number one of provide an excellent facility we installed noise dampening measures back in 2023. We installed additional lighting in the Community Room in 2025, painted the Brooks and Community Rooms in 2024, and we painted ceilings on the second floor and main stairwell in 2024 including much needed repair work and repainting of the area around the skylight,” he said.
In the category of safety of exterior spaces the library installed safety bollards in the parking lot.
“To meet diverse, evolving, operational, and user facility needs we did a space utilization consult with Andrea Bunker from Mass Board of Library Commissions back in 2023 and we’ve identified some possible study space enhancements,” he said.
In goal number two, provide easy access to library resources and services, he noted that the library has done quite a bit of this including: a benchmark study of staffing in 2023, added additional positions and increased staff hours in 2023 and 2024, added the 1,000 books before kindergarten program, continued a collaborative relationship with the schools, libraries, and curriculum staff, and more.
“We want to grow and maintain diverse and current collections. We revised the collection development policy and procedures were trained in 2021. We’re sustaining that going forward. We added quite a bit to the collection,” Thibeault said.
The Board then reviewed the FY27 budget.
“It’s really not much change to the narrative from previous years. Just updated a bit,” Thibeault said.
He noted that key elements to understand is that the Commonwealth via the Mass Board of Library Commissions mandates that the appropriation each year from the town meet a calculation known as a Municipal Appropriation Requirement.
“This is a figure representing at least the average of the previous three years and then slightly increased by in fact 2.5% at least in order to be certified,” he said.
The MAR for FY27 is $864,214 and the budget presented satisfies the requirement.
The Commonwealth also mandates that the library spends a specified amount of funds on materials.
“The only things that we do not level fund are salaries because those have to be increased as a result of the collective bargaining agreement,” he said.
The proposed budget for FY27 is $942,575 which is an increase of 5.91% from the previous year.
“Roughly 78% of that budget is salaries and wages,” Thibeault said.
A motion was made to approve the budget and it was a unanimous yes from the Board.
