Letter: Town Needs Accurate Accounting of Jones Library Project Financials
Photo: istock
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,Ā .
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.
While I was overseeing capital projects for a nearby city it never occurred to me treat state or federal agencies that had jurisdiction over some aspect of a project like they were stupid. Just never occurred to me as a winning strategy.
I am profoundly glad I did not use that approach because that “THWOP!” sound we just heard was the “photo gallery of old things we decided to destroy” idea being swatted like a bug. The crunch , crunch crunch of hobnail boots approaching heralds a looonnnggg discussion of every possible way to make the Jones Library look just the way it does now.
That’s my guess. Best of luck to us all.
If the MHC (Massachusetts Historical Commission) does not approve/accept the requested “alternative analysis” from Amherst for the 106 review does the current “expansion plan” end? Who has the authority to end the current plan?
If the MHC does not approve of the library’s plan to eliminate, minimize or mitigate the identified adverse effects of the construction/demolition to the historic character of the property, the town will lose roughly $2.1 million in federal grants that have been provisionally awarded. In order to stop the project, the town council must rescind its previous borrowing authorizations.
Anyone who listened to the Nov. 18 public forum on the FY2026 budget heard the litany of pleas for adequate funding of our schools. We are entering a period of national crisis and the threats to our public education system are real. We must increase our school funding as our highest priority, We cannot afford to give the library project even one dollar more than the Council’s original commitment to make up for the Library Trustees mismanagement!