Executive Speeches

Remarks of Eugene W. Zeltmann, President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York Power Authority, at the Queens Library Dinner, Flushing, New York.

September 29, 2005

Good evening. I would like to begin by thanking the Queens Library Foundation for honoring me by way of recognizing the Power Authority for providing low-cost electricity to the far flung Queens library system and for our work in improving electric efficiency in the borough, which I’m told saves Queens taxpayers in excess of $9 million a year on electric bills.

I find it particularly satisfying to be honored for helping an organization where the honor rightly belongs. As a poor kid growing up on Chicago’s south side, the library was my first glimpse on a larger world. My early heroes were Pasteur, Madame Curie and Linus Pauling, whose acquaintances I made at the library and who inspired me to get a doctorate in Chemistry.

Recently, I heard the story about three successful brothers discussing the gifts they were able to give their elderly mother for Christmas. The first said, "I had a big house built for Mama." The second said, "I gave her a Mercedes SL600.” They then turned to the third brother, who said "You know how Mama loved to read? Well, she can’t see very well these days so I got her a parrot that used to belong to a librarian. This bird can recite all of the great books of the Western World. All you have to do is name the title and chapter and the bird recites the book.

After the holidays, their mother sent out her thank you notes to her sons. "Milton,” she wrote, “the house you built is so huge. I live in only one room, but I have to clean the whole house. Thanks anyway. "Marvin, I am too old to travel and I can’t see well enough to drive. In fact, I even have my groceries delivered, so I never use the Mercedes, beautiful as it is. Thanks.

And then she wrote to her third son. "Dearest Melvin, you were the only son to have the good sense to put a little thought in to your gift. Thanks so much. The chicken was delicious.”

I guess you’d call that little tale “Food for thought.” Anyway, I can hardly imagine any parrot capable of reciting all that the Queens Library has to offer. I don’t exaggerate. The Queens Library has the distinction of having the highest circulation of any library system in the United States. Last year, some  17 million books, video tapes, magazines—not to mention talking books—were circulated. At last count, some 825,000 Queens residents have in their possession library cards granting them access to collections either at the Central Library in Jamaica or at any of the branch libraries which are located within one mile of every home in the borough. What a resource!

From a colleague at the Power Authority, whose wife is Chinese, I learned that the Queens Library speaks almost as many languages as the UN. Whole sections of the central library and a number of the branches are devoted to Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Korean, Bengali, Hindi and Urdu—nearly 70 languages in all. They serve as libraries within the library. I came in here not long ago looking information on air pollution in China. And there in a Chinese magazine was an entire article singularly devoted to the subject. Someone translated it for me and I daresay, I don’t think I would have found such a piece anywhere else, and with plenty of photographs to look at as well. It is just one of 10 million books and periodicals on the shelves to serve people with odd interests like me while serving the diverse multilingual community of Queens  as well.

I rather like Thomas Jefferson definition of a library book. He referred to it not as an article of consumption, but rather of capital and wrote “in the case of professional men setting out in life, a library book is often their only capital.” If that’s true then the Queens Library might be said to be a development agency like the World Bank. For there are books aplenty on starting businesses, preparing for critical examinations and a whole section housing college catalogs.

One of the library’s capital ideas, I recently learned, was its oversight of one of nation’s largest programs of English as a second language, with  8,000 students. That’s more students than at Harvard College.

The Queens library burnishes that capital idea with a variety of divisions that encourage specialized research.

I myself am particularly fond of the Long Island Division of the Queens Library whose historical collection is worthy of a great museum. There, I discovered that over a century ago, the ancestors of  former Power Authority Chairman Clarence Rappleyea, a close friend of mine, had once owned a large tract of land in Astoria where the Power Authority recently built a combined-cycle plant. In fact, that same tract of land contains the site of our existing Poletti Power Plant that provides the electricity for the library system. You may have heard of the expression “not in my backyard.” Well, we built those plants in what was once the Rappleyea’s back yard. But I never would known that had I not stumbled on it at the Library’s Long Island division.

In fact, earlier this year, I sent a member of my staff to gather some facts on the history of Staten Island for a conference I was attending. And trawling through the Social Sciences division my colleague learned that the first European settlers were not Dutchmen at all, but a group of French-speaking Walloons that included Rappleyea’s ancestors.

Rapp and I oversaw much of the energy efficiency work that was performed at this library.  That energy efficiency project has resulted in cumulative savings of nearly $650 thousand dollars—money that the library would have had to pay for electricity costs. These savings have helped shore up the library’s finances during this critical period when the library experienced deep budget cuts in the wake of the attacks on 9/11.

No community can afford to have its library budget cut. It’s simply too vital a resource, and that’s especially true here. Apart from its on-going business of acquiring books and other materials, the Queens Library is engaged in preserving, expanding and re-examining ideas and knowledge, always strengthening the relations between the individual and the community. And it is this library—and all libraries—that habitually seek to bring the light of reason to the understanding and conduct of human affairs. From that perspective you are as much in the illumination business as the Power Authority.

Old-fashioned in some ways, but thoroughly modern in others, the Queens Library has a remarkable capacity to endure and remain relevant. Like the river boat in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, this library is always pushing perilously into unknown regions and—while making the journey—is always preparing for another. I have no doubt that a decade from now, the Queens Library will be carrying on the same line of work in a number of different ways. It is and shall always be the storehouse of this civilization. And in that sense, we all have the key to the city—our library cards.

Thank you.