Wyandanch library: Katrina Crawford named president, Norman Sellers vice president as board seeks to find new director

Leaders of the beleaguered Wyandanch Public Library, which earlier this month lost both its board president and director on the same day, have chosen new officers and are addressing questions about its operations.

The board last week voted to make trustee Katrina Crawford president and trustee Norman Sellers vice president, while trustee Kisha Carter was again made secretary. Sellers has been on the board since 2018. Crawford was elected by write-in ballot in 2019, but the library board threw out half her votes due to a missing middle initial. The state education department ordered the board to give her the seat and ruled again in her favor after the board attempted to limit her term to one year instead of the standard five-years the seat carries.

The library has been troubled for a decade, including a 2014 state audit that found trustees didn't provide adequate oversight to prevent "fraud, waste and abuse."

In February, the library again was in the spotlight when longtime custodian Kwaisi McCorvey, the nephew of former longtime trustee Nancy Holliday and one of the library’s highest paid employees, was suspended with pay after his arrest on charges of raping a 16-year-old girl in 2016. Court records show McCorvey, 51, pleaded not guilty and the case remains pending.

On July 14, director Jessica Oelcher, who started in May, and board president Jordan Thomas, whom voters elected as a trustee in 2020, resigned from their positions within hours of each other. At the July 24 board meeting, officials said the library will go through Suffolk’s Civil Service department to find a new director. Either a special election will be held or someone will be appointed to fill the vacant trustee seat on the board, Crawford said.

The board last week also approved the hiring of Stuart Lang of Woodbury as auditor for the 2017 to 2023 fiscal years. The board did not say how much Lang would be paid. Libraries are required to submit a financial report to the state comptroller’s office each year, office spokesman Mark Johnson told Newsday. Wyandanch has not submitted a report since June 2016, Johnson said. There are 21 other libraries in the state that are delinquent in filing their reports, he said, with the only other one on Long Island being the Hicksville Public Library. 

“There has been a complete change in the board,” Crawford said at the July 24 meeting. “We are working on bringing the books up to date … Yes, it is going to take some time and it may cost us a little more money but we are working on that so we are a fiscally sound library.”

Library officials also addressed a Huntington Station storage unit that the library discovered after a change in board leadership earlier this year. The library has been paying $519 per month for the space, which it has had since 2013. Only recently were library officials able to gain access to the unit.

Consultant Lambert Shell said at the meeting that he found the unit “filled to capacity” and estimated that “90% of it probably could just be junked.” Among the things found in the unit were baby strollers and bed frames, he said. Officials vowed to empty out the unit before the next payment is due.

By Denise M. Bonilla

denise.bonilla@newsday.comdenisebonilla

Denise Bonilla has worked at Newsday since 2003 and covers the Town of Babylon, including the villages of Lindenhurst and Amityville.