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Date: 8/30/2022
AMHERST – The Jones Library’s Board of Trustees and the Building Committee (JLBC) met individually last week with the trustees voting 5-1 to start a discussion with the town to pledge the $8.6 million value of the endowment to help fund the project should the capital campaign committee not be able to meet the new cost, and the JLBC voting 6-1 with two abstentions to submit a recommendation to Town Manager Paul Bockelman to continue the project.
The votes come following a new estimated cost projection for the project to run up a $43 to $50 million tab from the previous $36.3 million projection.
Jones Library Trustee and JLBC member Austin Sarat said during the Aug. 23 JLBC meeting that the trustees thought pledging the endowment to backstop fundraising would provide assurance to the town on the low end of the cost projections.
“We don’t know where we’re going to end up but that was what our target was,” Sarat said. “The value of the endowment would not have covered the difference between the current budgeted and the high end.”
The single trustee to dissent during the trustee’s meeting was Bob Pam, who said it was too risky of a move for the group to make.
“I voted against it on the basis of my own analysis of what the fundraising capabilities are,” Pam said. “That is not to say anything against the abilities of the capital campaign, I think they’ve been doing a wonderful job, it is not to say anything against the folks who have been involved in this or similar committees … my concern is that as the treasurer of the library and the chairman of the Budget Committee and Investment Committee, it seemed to me that this was a risk greater than what we could accept.”
The library’s Capital Campaign Committee (JLCC) is assigned to fundraise for the project and presented the JLBC with a report on their progress and upcoming timeline. JLCC Co-Chair Kent Faerber and Campaign Manager Ginny Hamilton said they are nine months ahead of the original schedule while navigating delays and needing the project to reach certain milestones in order for the fundraising campaign to continue its own cycle. Faerber said the JLCC had anticipated needing to raise more than what was first outlined.
Hamilton said these campaigns have their own timeline, but the timing is tied to the overall project. The campaign ended the “infrastructure phase” on Aug. 31 and began the “quiet campaign” where the goal is to raise at least half of the monies before entering the public phase of the campaign.
“Ideally, when you get to the point where construction starts there’s a big public launch, there’s an event, we’re talking to some Amherst-connected celebrities to be part of that,” Hamilton said.
“Because once construction is happening, people pay attention. People pay attention differently and by having the money already raised at least half, donors have the confidence that they’re contributing to something that’s tangible, something that’s really going to happen, something that is happening as they go.”
The campaign had a goal to raise $3.3 million from both institutions and individuals for the project. The initial target was to reach half of the goal by May 2023. As of Aug. 2022, the JLCC had raised $1.3 million from institutions like CPA (Community Preservation Act) grants and a Mass. Cultural Facilities Fund, and nearly $1.8 million from individuals. Those numbers placed them nine months ahead of schedule, representing 93 percent of the May 2023 target and nearly half of the initial goal.
“For fundraising, delays like this interrupt the momentum of our proposal and it erodes confidence from donors that the project is moving forward that makes it that much harder to do the fundraising,” Hamilton said. “Of course, delays always increase costs with the work that we’re doing.”
Sarat asked if Faerber thought the 18-member campaign would be able to raise an additional $6 million.
“Yes,” Faerber replied. “Thinking I can do it certainly isn’t any kind of guarantee, but I think it’s plausible and I think with the right team and some time, yeah.”
Colliers Senior Director Ken Guyette presented possible cost savings on a “standard value measurement table.” The table displayed a list of possible interior and exterior adjustments to the design paired with their projected cost savings for the project. Some adjustments were marked as rejected by either the design team or trustees, but none are officially denied until the JLBC makes a determination at future meetings.
Some of the changes not rejected by any group thus far include using Arriscraft in lieu of cast stone and metal panel on the exterior, eliminating a window sash replacement and using a concrete sidewalk in lieu of stone and granite pavers. The total “plausible” cost reduction for the list of building modifications totaled over $1.5 million with another plausible $1.75 million in cost reductions from an escalation reduction and reducing the furniture, fixtures and equipment cost.
“I don’t consider anything rejected until we decide that,” Bockelman said. “I also look at every item we do reject as being that much more money that we have to raise … I just think we have to be super cognizant about the true costs of what these things are and we have to really start differentiating between our wants and needs. These are really hard challenges for us because we have our aspirations and then we have the sort of blunt reality of our financial situation.”
Sarat said that with the JLBC’s 6-1 vote in favor of recommending to Bockelman that work on the project continue, one of the next steps is for the Design Subcommittee to take a “very close look” at each of the possible changes.
Committee member Xander Lopez was the lone dissenter while Bockelman and Finance Director Sean Mangano abstained.
“The renovation and addition to the building, among other things, would enable the following things,” Sarat said. “We have a children’s room on three different levels of the library; it could be on one level. We don’t have a teen space; we could have a teen space. We don’t have great reading rooms in the library; we could have great reading rooms. We don’t have the technology that we need; we would have better technology. We had no plan for the Civil War Tablets, we had a hope we’d be able to display these treasures of the town we would not otherwise be able to.”
Sarat continued, “Maybe other than the public schools, the library is the most democratic space in the town. It’s the space for the old and the young, the well-off and the disadvantaged, English-language learners and native speakers of English, it’s their space.”
The JLBC will meet again on Sept. 8.