Opinion: How Would We Know if the Jones Expansion Project is Fiscally Viable?

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Art Keene

The following column appeared originally in the Indy as a comment on on Jeff Lee’s article ” With Uncertain Fundraising Prospects, Library Project Taps Woodbury Fund“.

On May 24, 2024, outgoing Jones Trustees Treasurer Bob Pam warned that he saw no possibility that the Library Capital Campaign would be able to raise the funds that they had promised to the town. He declared that the project was no longer fiscally viable and cautioned that moving forward with it posed significant fiscal danger to the future of the library and the town and he reiterated what he reported on May 17, 2024, that these risks were no longer acceptable.

Pam was not afforded the opportunity to elaborate on his concerns at trustees’ meetings, building committee meetings, or Town Council meetings, and neither the Jones Trustees nor the Town Council ever engaged in a discussion of Pam’s warnings, which seems astonishing, given that Pam was by far the most fiscally knowledgeable person of anyone involved with the library. Given the gravity of his warnings and their dire implications, one might have expected that someone in town government would have wanted to know if there was anything to them and we might have expected someone to ask, why would Bob Pam, a passionate supporter of the library and someone who until then had unequivocally supported the expansion, say such a thing? But no one asked and Pam was denied the opportunity to elaborate on his concerns at subsequent Jones meetings.

The AI analysis that Ira Bryck has offered us, is far more substantive than anything that transpired as a result of Pam’s warnings.

For what it’s worth, in the month following Pam’s warnings, the Town Council did narrowly defeat a motion (by a vote of 7-6) to kill the expansion project but even that vote lacked an exploration of the substance of Pam’s fiscal warnings.

In the last eight months, the fiscal situation surrounding the expansion project has only grown more precarious as construction costs are expected to soar under Trump’s deportation and tariff policies and as the Capital Campaign fails to meet its most basic fundraising goals or to meet its payment schedule to the town.

Just as it was irresponsible of the council and the trustees to push the project forward without a meaningful exploration of the warnings coming from the library’s own treasurer, it is now all the more irresponsible to sign a construction contract without an objective analysis of whether the project is fiscally viable. The viability of the project has not been examined in over a year and proponents continue to cite numbers that are either out-of-date or simply untrue (such as their assertion that the town’s liability is limited to $15M and that the library is responsible for all other costs). The town is responsible for the upfront TOTAL COST of borrowing, that is, $46M+ plus debt service as well as for any shortfall in fundraising by the capital campaign. And the library director has made clear that she intends to come back to the town to ask for additional funds to pay for expenses not covered in the latest construction budget (like furniture and landscaping and a book sorting machine and a larger annual operating budget).

Right now, it seems even more doubtful than when Pam offered his warning last May that the Capital Campaign will be able to fulfill their promises to the town. How would the additional burden of a Captial Campaign shortfall impact future town budgets? We need more than the trustees’ assertion that they are good for the money, before we take on an obligation that could cripple the town for a generation.

Art Keene is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at UMass Amherst.  He was co-founder and co-director of two social justice-based civic leadership programs at UMass – The UMass Alliance For Community Transformation (UACT) and The Community Scholars Program. He is Managing Editor of the Amherst Indy.

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