Trustees Downplay Library Payment Shortfall
Photo: https://www.joneslibrary.org/
Overdue Jones Library Remittance to Town at Least $900K Short
Trustee and Capital Campaign Co-Chair Lee Edwards reported at the February 12 Jones Library Board of Trustees meeting that January payments to the town for the trustees’ share of the $46.1 million renovation-expansion project totaled $300,000 coming mostly from existing library bequests. Edwards announced that the Capital Campaign’s “largest institutional donor” is soon expected to cut a check for $800,000 to be transferred to the town. This would bring 2024 repayments from Jones Library, Inc. to $1.1 million, or $900,000 shy of the $2 million reimbursement that was due on January 31 and is documented in a cash flow analysis presented to the Town Council prior to their approval of an additional $10 million in borrowing for the project.
The cash flow analysis was developed at a private November 27 meeting of Edwards, Capital Campaign leaders Kent Faerber and Ginny Hamilton, Trustee Treasurer Bob Pam, Town Councilors Lynn Griesemer and Cathy Schoen and Town Manager Paul Bockelman.
See related Town Leaders Silent as Library Misses First Payment of $2M
The unidentified institutional donor is most likely Amherst College who pledged to gift $1 million to the library project last October. Edwards offered no explanation of why the actual $800,000 transfer might differ from an original pledge of $1 million. The cash flow spreadsheet indicates that the Capital Campaign expects to incur $250,000 in fundraising expenses in the first half of 2024.
See related Library Project Fundraisers To Pay Themselves $1 Million Through 2027
Treasurer Pam suggested at the February 13 Library Budget Committee meeting that the Library’s failure to remit the full $2 million by January 31 is not a cause for concern.
“Until there’s actually an award of a contract […] the only real costs to the town now being expended are the costs for having whatever work is being done by the architect and by the OPM, and so those costs are not yet requiring any new funds from the town,” he said.
Design and project management fees incurred by the town since fall of 2022 have totaled nearly $2 million. Pam may not appreciate that Amherst taxpayers who are bearing the burden of these costs are assessed a 1% per month interest charge if they are late in paying their property taxes and may have a lien placed on their property. This penalty is imposed despite late tax payments representing “no real cost to the town.”
No Agreement Yet on Strong House Easement
Trustee President Austin Sarat reported that the trustees and the Amherst Historical Society (AHS) which owns the abutting Simeon Strong House have not yet reached an agreement on a 20-foot-wide easement on AHS property to allow use by construction vehicles. The easement is depicted in schematics contained in construction documents that the town has put out to bid. Records show that a 10-foot-wide temporary easement was sufficient for the building of the 1993 library addition that is slated to be torn down.
Sarat reported that the parties were close and that an emergency meeting of the trustees might be necessary to review an agreement before the next board meeting in March.
“We’ve got a couple of things that we need to fix,” said Sarat, “but the conversations were quite constructive in terms of everybody’s desire to reach an agreement.”
See related History Museum Seeks Protections and Concessions from Library Project
Trustee Robert Pam Foresees Stepping Down
Longtime treasurer Bob Pam told the Board of Trustees that he and his wife, former two-term District 3 Town Councilor Dorothy Pam, are considering moving to Washington, DC to be near their son who is expecting a baby. While not definite, Pam said that if it happens the move would probably occur before the end of the year.
Pam has played a major role in determining how the Jones Library might realistically fulfill its financial obligation to the town should Capital Campaign fundraising prove insufficient.
In addition to providing financial skills, Pam has also been a frequent voice of independence and respect for the public interest during the trustees’ pursuit of the costly library project. He has been on the losing end of several 5-1 Board of Trustees votes.
President Austin Sarat responded, “If your plan comes to fruition, it would be an enormous loss for the Board of Trustees. You’ve done amazing work for us in all ways, Bob. We are incredibly grateful for the work that you do and grateful that you gave us a heads up.”
This is infuriating in so many ways – failure to pay what was promised/expected; rationalizing that there is no real present cost to the Town that needs to be repaid; and most of all, the “institutional donor” providing funds for what is essentially a vanity project that is over twice the amount that the school system desperately needs to fund our children’s education. Absolutely maddening.
Bob Pam is and has been an exemplary Treasurer of the Jones Library Board of Trustees. Careful, detail-oriented, courageous, and with quiet wit, Bob has been a voice for fiscal sanity that the Trustees have long needed. All too often, his has been the only such voice. Whether he and former Town Councilor Dorothy Pam stay or move elsewhere to be near family, Trustees and Town owe him a debt of gratitude.
The library misses contractual deadlines and tells us that it is no big deal?
They scoff at their legal obligations. When people ignore the rules, think the rules don’t apply to them, they are admitting that they can’t be trusted to follow the rules.
They are telling you who they are, Believe them, and never trust them again.
The library reneged on its commitments and, instead of an explanation, we are told to stop fretting because eventually they may be only $900,000 short?
We don’t need lectures about financial worries from the very same people responsible for our financial worries.
Unlike former presidents of the United States who may believe they’re immune from criminal and civil liability, clearly such immunity doesn’t extend to Library Trustees (or their agents). The 3-year clock
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIII/TitleV/Chapter260/Section4
is ticking, but it re-starts each time “the cause of action accrues.”
Normally, when a deadline to pay promised financial obligations is missed, certain things happen — especially when those obligations run into substantial amounts: The party who owes shows contrition, offers some sort of explanation about why the obligation has not been met, and indicates that they will correct the situation at some time certain in the very near future.
The Jones Library has done quite otherwise. A payment of $300,000 — just 15% of the promised total, and mostly of money already in hand prior to fundraising efforts — has been made, along with a cheerful “Yay!” and comments on the miracles of technology, which certainly look like a pathetic attempt to avoid answering the embarrassing question of “Where’s the rest of what you said you would pay?”
No explanation for the shortfall has been given. We are assured that more money will be coming soon, but that still puts the amount paid at a little over 50% of the amount that was owed on 31 January. And as to contrition? Not a drop. In fact, we are told that this is just not a big deal, because it’s not really costing the town anything.
Responsible adults want to know: If the library has raised — and secured — the $9 million that they claim, then why have they failed to make even their first payment? This is not time for delulu thinking; it’s time for an outside party to take apart and analyze the convoluted financial muddle we’ve been shown to see just how much of it is really fiscal fantasy.