Opinion: Burden Is On Trustees to Prove Jones Expansion Is Fiscally Responsible

By Art and Maura Keene

Here’s the (multi) million dollar question: can the Jones Library renovation and expansion be completed for $15.8 million total cost to the Town? If the answer is yes, and they have the receipts to prove it, it makes sense to move forward. But it will likely cost much more than that. And given that the Trustees’ financial reporting to date has been rife with omissions, distortions, and ambiguities, there is, unfortunately, little reason to have much faith in their assurances.  

If the library folk want the Town to commit to funding the project, they must be forthright with the financial details. A decision like this has effects that ripple out and impact other Town needs, so it behooves elected representatives and Town employees to check the numbers thoroughly before making a decision. If the numbers withstand scrutiny, and there is certainty that the Town will not be on the hook for more than $15.8 million, then let’s approve this plan and move on to the school and the firehouse. But that vetting has not yet happened.

With a Library-Trustee-imposed deadline just six weeks away, the Town is once again thrust into full campaign mode. The local Political Action Committee, Amherst Forward, has been feverishly emailing their list of followers, urging them to lobby the Town Council to vote yes to fund the library’s expansion plan. As the good marketeers that they are, they draw parallels to the divisive school vote of a few years ago in a blatant attempt to raise the temperature and instill an angry response from their supporters. What they omit in the retelling is that the new school plan will be far better than the old one in every aspect, perhaps even costing the Town the same amount of money, even when accounting for escalation in construction costs and the premium for meeting the Net Zero Energy Bylaw. (Recall that the old plan incorporated the use of fossil fuels to power the overly-large school.)

Rather than debate the facts, Amherst Forward simply labels those who disagree with their approach, “naysayers.” But their claims that a renovation of the Jones would cost the same as the expansion — and take eight to ten years — do not hold up to scrutiny. In fact, when compared side-by-side using similar assumptions, a repair/renovation could cost the Town millions less than the expansion project and be completed in the same timeframe.

Amherst Forward’s slogan is “Connect the Dots,” but in a recent email to their private listserv, they simultaneously urged the Jones expansion project to be funded and school budget cuts be reversed. They failed to connect that the funding for both come primarily from the same pot (property taxes) and operating budget cuts for all Town departments are due in part to the pursuit of the very building projects that the PAC wants, since the projects would require that more funds be funneled away from the operating budget to the capital budget to afford the future debt. (see here and here).

One thing missing from the debate to date is an assessment of the impact of timing on all of the building projects and an assessment of how residents would prioritize them, given the choice. With the library vote coming first, there is no doubt about it: it puts the school project at risk. While the new-improved school plan is expected to be significantly more popular than the previous plan, it is by no means a sure thing that a tax override (property tax increase) will pass, especially in this era of increasing economic uncertainty driven by the pandemic. If the override were to fail to secure 51 percent support in a town wide vote, the dollars that the Jones’ Trustees and Amherst Forward want the Council to commit now to the library expansion would be needed to pay the debt on the school. And if the school has to be paid for out of the capital budget rather than by a tax override, what would that leave for a fire station or public works facility?

Making a decision on the library before the school is not without risk, but if the library expansion project truly can be completed for $15.8 million total cost to the Town, without risking the future operations of the Jones and the branch libraries, and the other capital projects, then one could argue that it is the fiscally-responsible decision. If not, then it may be more prudent to pivot to a repair/renovation plan within that budget cap, with further reductions in costs to the Town possible through the application of Community Preservation Act funds and Historic Tax Credits, bringing the cost closer to $11 to $12 million out of the capital budget.  And while chief fundraiser for the Friends of the Library Kent Faerber stated at a public forum on Wednesday (3/3) that he knows of no donors who would be willing to contribute to a repair, the Trustees should be willing to fundraise for both options as they own the building and the land. 

And if asking for details on the costs before signing on the dotted line makes one a “naysayer,” then let us wear that badge with pride.

Coming Up
Next week, we’ll provide a list of the many fiscal questions concerning the library and the three other capital projects that remain unanswered following the three public forums on capital projects.

Art Keene is Managing Editor of The Amherst Indy and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at UMass.

Maura Keene is a physician at Bay State Health Systems and the mother of four graduates of the Amherst Public Schools.