City selects new library director

By Eric Maddy
The SCORE

Bill Cicola is not the kind of guy who likes to sit around.

“I’m very visible. I like to walk around all he time and be with the public and the staff,” Rio Rancho’s new director of library services said Thursday. “I came from the hustle and the bustle of the East Coast and the 9/11 threat, and just decided it was time to slow down.

“I retired after 33 years and spent 1 1/2 years decompressing and having a house built, which is like having a root canal. But part of me still missed that hubbub, and most of me still missed working in a library. So when I saw the announcement for this job, I just decided to go for it.”

Cicola served as director of three libraries in the New York City suburbs before retiring to Moriarty, N.M., in December 2006.  His appointment is scheduled for a confirmation vote at Wednesday’s meeting of the city council, but he’s already nose-deep into briefing binders and meetings.

Cicola, who obtained a Masters of Library Sciences Degree from the Palmer Library School in 1974, replaces Toni Beatty, Rio Rancho’s first and only library director. She retired at the end of January.

Prior to and after retiring in December 2006, Cicola said he and his wife Mary pent three years looking for a new place to live.

Prior to retiring, “we spent three years looking for a place. We did a Texas loop and an Arizona-Nevada-Utah loop, and on our last trip we took a drive, and the drive ended up coming out to New Mexico. We looked around and really liked it, and came back again bought a place right away.

But why Moriarty, 30-plus miles east of Albuquerque (and probably 50 driving miles from Rio Rancho)?

“I saw peace and quiet, a small town,” he said. “I absolutely love it here. My wife and I are just in seventh heaven.”

Cicola said he’s added to his appreciation by traveling statewide since settling in New Mexico about 18 months ago.” His wife is an artist and was attracted by the art community, especially in Santa Fe and Taos.

“We’ve traveled the four corners of the state, and ever corner is amazing,” he said.

He hasn’t been able to convince his daughter, who is beginning work on a master’s degree in education, about the state’s charm yet.

“I keep telling her she’s stupid to stay back there, that this is much better way of life and pace of life,” he said. “But she’s got a boyfriend and she’s not ready yet.”

For now, Cicola plans to live in an extended stay motel and go home on weekends.

Cicola started college at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., in September 1968. He transferred after two years to C.W. Post College, where he received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in October 1972. He began work on his graduate degree two months later and took on his first library job as a young adult librarian in North Bellmore, N.J., in July 1974. He added duties as assistant director in October 1978 and stayed at North Bellmore until June 1983, when he moved on to become director of the West Babylon (N.Y.) Public Library.

At West Babylon, Cicola (pronounced See-cola) was responsible for establishing a new library serving a community of 26,000 residents, planning and supervising the renovations of an existing structure and obtaining state grants in addition to normal administrative duties. He moved on to the Copiague (N.Y.) Memorial Public Library in October 1989, where he served for almost 10 years until June 1999.

While at Copiague, Cicola finished a building program for a new 25,000 square foot facility that was a year behind schedule when he took over. He supervised the move of library materials and staff to the new facility and later represented the library’s board of trustees in collective bargaining negotiations with the local union.

Cicola’s last job before retiring to New Mexico was as director of the Mastic-Moriches-Shirley Community Library, where he managed a budget of $7.5 million and supervised a staff of 190.

All three of the New York libraries come under the Suffolk Cooperative Library System.  Bob Gadue, who as business manager for the SCLS worked with Cicola for 20 years, said he was not surprised that Cicola came out of retirement.

“He’s an energetic guy,” Gadue said. “I just can’t see him sitting with a pina colada doing nothing. That’s not him.

“He was pretty much what you could use for other people in the county to emulate. I always found him to be a no-nonsense, get-to-the-point guy who was very conscious of his patrons and what was necessary to satisfy them.

“I always had a great relationship with him, and he was held in very high esteem by his fellow directors.  I can’t think of anybody who didn’t like Bill Cicola.”

As an example of being constituent conscious, Gadue said Cicola would keep fishing rods behind the circulation desk.

“When I told him that seemed a little strange, he said, ‘Not really. The majority of my patrons love to surf fish. So if I can assist them by having on a rental basis surf casting rods, I will do that.’

“That’s a simple little story but I think it points out the mind of Bill Cicola – very community oriented.”

Said Cicola: “We were a beach community, and they (library patrons) were big on fishing. It was a middle income, lower-middle income community, and a lot of them couldn’t afford it. I used to kid them at the desk and say ‘If you catch anything, I get half of what you take in.’ And on occasion I would have people bring in some blue fish.”

Gadue said Cicola “was very successful at getting senior citizen involvement in the library, having programs (for them), driving them. I think they showed movies once or twice a week. They may not have been 2008 movies, but they certainly were from 2007.”

“From the children to the seniors, and in between, there’s such a wealth of programs and information that can be used to educate, entertain and (even) be nostalgic,” Cicola said.”We were in the center of the community, and we were more like a community center. We had USO dances for the senior citizens and I was strong advocate for the Literacy Volunteers of America. We were a substation for them, so we had lots of cultural programs in the library.”

Because individual libraries have their own independent taxing districts that are often tied into school districts, Gadue said all libraries in the area had strong children’s programs and received strong financial support from taxpayers.  He described Cicola as “always on the cutting edge of the latest technology. He didn’t jump into things randomly, but when he saw something that he felt (was needed), he had pretty good judgment of what would benefit his patrons. He was one of the first of the county to bring it in.”

Any culture shot Cicola might have by coming to Rio Rancho might be mitigated by the surroundings from whence he came. Gadue said Cicola worked successfully with a “substantial” Hispanic population in his last jobs.

“He seemed to always service communities that were not well-to-do,” Gadue said. “Copiague is a nice community on the south shore of Long Island, but (has) a lot of blue collar people. the Mastic-Moriches-Shirley, same thing. Bill was very keyed in on that.

“I think he’d be a credit no matter where he went.”

Though he’s just learning the job and the people around it, Cicola is impressed by what he’s seen so far, starting with the Loma Colorado Library.

“It’s an extraordinary library. It is an extraordinary facility with a remarkable staff who is excellent in customer service. The collection is well-rounded. It absolutely should be the envy of everybody else, and I think they are the envy of many others in the state. “

As for the recently remodeled Esther Bone Memorial Library, “it looked to me like a brand new library. It was an extraordinary job. I told the staff when I met them also he’d gone incognito to observe public reaction and staff interaction and they are outstanding, just outstanding. It’s amazing the level of service provided by the staff, the functionality and aesthetics of the buildings.

“I told the (library) board that the image may be that the East Coast and West Coast has all the facilities and provides he best service, but that’s not the case. This library proves it completely. This library is as good, if not better, than many libraries that I’ve been in.”

While libraries in the East generally receive more financial support through property taxes and/or special tax districts, Cicola said he is not worried about having to battle for money.

“In the grand scheme of things it’s not really different because even back East I was competing with the school district and the county and the police taxes and fire taxes,” he said. “We did have extraordinary support from the community. We were center of the community, a community center in many respects with a facility of 45,000 square feet.

“There are always limited resources. You just have to make the case that resources are found in the budget to provide the services that the community expects.”

Cicola said libraries in his area received strong support because he tried to be an “Integral part of the community. I didn’t live in community, but I believe a library director has to be a face and a name in the community. So I was involved in the Rotary and the Chamber of Commerce and he Kiwanis Club, whatever groups I could. That in itself built up a great reputation for the library and great support for the library, because I was always promoting it.”

Cicola also used other methods to involve the public and raise money.

“We had a very active newsletter we mailed out to the entire community. We had a Friends of the Arts committee and a Friends of the Library committee, separate corporations that did fundraising, and a Gift to the Library donations from state, local and town politicians, some substantial. And people who would just come in and bequest things in their will or (say) because your service here is extraordinary, here’s a gift. It always helped to balance out that budget.”

Cicola said it was too early to see if those methods can be incorporated into the Rio Rancho system. For now, he just wants to live up to his own philosophy: “Learn the community, find out what they need and what they want, and provide it for them."