Letter: Town Needs Accurate Accounting of Jones Library Project Financials

The following letter was sent to the Amherst Town Council on November 18, 2024.

The November 17, 2024 letter to you from Mickey Rathbun lays out why you urgently need, from your Executive Branch, a full, complete, and current accounting of the financing (and lack thereof) for the Jones Library’s proposed demolition/expansion project.

You know that the town’s and the Jones Library Trustees’ failure to have their project comply with the historic preservation law has already cost the town $2,000,000 in Massachusetts Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credits.

As Attorney Rathbun states, for that reason this project is in danger also of costing the town $2,100,000 in HUD and National Endowment for the Humanities grants. If so, the town would forfeit not only the money. It would gravely damage Amherst’s credibility with Congressman Jim McGovern and his staff. They worked hard to advocate for those grants.

As you know, the town has twice sent this project out to bid with construction documents that fail to pass muster under historic preservation law. At the Jones Library Building Committee meeting on September 17, 2024, the Jones Library Trustee President said that design modifications to accommodate historic preservation concerns would be by “change order.”

One of those express concerns is “the size, scale, and massing of the proposed addition.” (November 1, 2024, letter to Special Capital Projects Coordinator Bob Pereint from Brona Simon, State Historic Preservation Officer and Executive Director, Massachusetts Historical Commission, .

True, on October 31, one of the general contractor bids came in under budget. But a change order as to “the size, scale, and massing of the proposed addition” would re-design the majority of the project. And just what is the trustee president’s anticipated budget for this re-design and, doubtless, re-bid? Unicorns? Rainbows?

As a past President of the Jones Library Trustees, I urge you town councilors to bring this project back down to earth. Get its current financials. And see whether a different way to update the historic Jones Library building makes more sense.

Sarah McKee

Sarah McKee was an Amherst resident for more than 20 years. She is a former president of the Jones Library Trustees and is a member of the D.C. Bar.