Opinion: The Jones Library Question No One Asks

There is one question that seems to have been swept under the rug amidst the clamor surrounding the divisive Jones Library demolition-renovation-expansion project.  Namely, to what extent should Amherst property tax revenues be directed toward The Jones Library, Inc.?

In the early 1920s, Amherst’s community library was very much a private affair.  The Jones Library was incorporated in 1919 after Samuel Minot Jones left $661,747.08 in his will to the Town of Amherst to create a “free public library.”  The Board of Trustees hired architect Allen H. Cox to design a building after a comfortable Connecticut Valley home symbolizing in the words of Trustee John Tyler, “Mother Amherst welcoming her children to the hearth.”

The attractive downtown landmark was completed in 1928 and thrived for the next 25 years absent any demand on town funds.  In 1954, reports Frank Prentice Rand in The Jones Library of Amherst, 1919-1969, Town Meeting was persuaded to contribute a modest annual appropriation of $6500 toward library operations.  This arrangement continued until 1967 when a building project launched to recoup space from the library’s underutilized auditorium ran $45,000 over budget.  The trustees determined that withdrawing this amount from their endowment would reduce annual draws by $9000, so the Town agreed to bump up its annual contribution to $11,500.

Historian Rand, who served as a library trustee for thirteen years, decried this shifting of financial responsibility from private donors to the local taxpayers.  “Freedom from fees, the kind the founder had in mind,” he wrote, “already no longer exists except as the book borrower happens to be exempt from local taxation.”

One wonders what Rand would make of the Jones Library’s thirst for public funds today.  In fiscal year 2025 the Town funneled $2.3 million into library operations.  According to Massachusetts Department of Revenue statistics, Amherst ranks #6 in the state for percentage of its general fund that it devotes to library costs.

And while the Amherst Regional School District struggles to find ways to avoid cutting 35 educators in FY 26 due to budget constraints, the Jones Library Board of Trustees has unapologetically voted to give Library Director Sharon Sharry an 11% raise, making her more highly paid than all but 13 directors in Massachusetts according to the latest Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC) salary statistics.  When students who have their own academic libraries are excluded, Amherst’s estimated library population of 17,000 is 119^th in the state.

However, this expenditure of property tax revenues pales in comparison to what the trustees seek for their controversial demolition-renovation-expansion project.  Yielding to aggressive lobbying by the library’s Capital Campaign and its closely aligned political action committee Amherst Forward, the Amherst Town Council has committed $15.8 million to fund the building project which is now $10 million over original cost projections, and its design has seen close to $5 million worth of design features eliminated to reduce costs.

When the estimated $9 million in interest payments is added to the town’s financial commitment, the price tag to taxpayers comes to about $25 million.  Averaged over Amherst’s roughly 10,000 households, this represents an outlay of $2500 per household to pay for the venture.  All this for a project that critics argue is unnecessary based on the library’s current size and attendance statistics, that destroys the building’s historic character, and for which the public who are footing the bill were never invited to set the scope of the Trustees’ ambitious designs.

So much for a free public library.

Jeff Lee is a career computer programmer and regular observer of local government. He has lived in Amherst since 1994 and in the Pioneer Valley since 1973 when he began grad work in mathematics at UMass. He formerly served on the Amherst Redevelopment Authority and as a member of Town Meeting. He is chair of the Amherst Historic Preservation Coalition. He is a frequent contributor to the Amherst Indy.