Letter: It’s Time to Embrace an Alternative to the Increasingly Unaffordable Jones Library Expansion

The following letter was sent to the Amherst Town Council, Amherst Town Manager and Jones Library Trustees on April 8, 2025.

The time has come to admit that Amherst cannot afford to sign the contract with Fontaine Brothers, Inc. for the renovation of our library.  There are two reasons.

First, the price for the original design, plus changes known and unknown since the project was bid, will significantly exceed the estimated cost once the final design is fully priced.  

Second, the available funds will be far less than required, forcing the town to spend much more of our taxpayers’ money than it had planned.  And the newer high price will mean even more money to be borrowed, raising the cost of interest the town must pay.

The evolution of information collection, storage and retrieval have already meant that the Jones has fewer in-person visits, more online users. That’s reason enough to reconsider the original plans.  More than that, however, is the Library’s plan to be things it need not be, adding space it does not need and costs it cannot afford.  Here’s just one example.

In 1893 the Grand Army of the Republic gave the town eight large granite tablets inscribed with the names of the 300+ Amherst men, White and Black, who fought for the North in the Civil War.  Though they have never been in the Jones before, it wants to display those large tablets in an expensive basement room to be newly built for that purpose.  The recent Presidents Day holiday weekend helped to show us why that’s a bad ideal.The library was closed for the Sunday and Monday holiday, just two of the approximately 31 days it is closed throughout the year. Visitors on Memorial Day, Thanksgiving Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, other holidays and summer Sundays who might hope to see their ancestors’ names on those tablets would find the library’s door locked.  There are better places in the center of Amherst for those tablets, where they can be protected from the weather at minimal cost and always available to visitors.

It’s not just that the library’s costs have outgrown the original plan. The funds expected to be contributed simply will not be available, not from private sources and, probably soon, not from public sources as well considering the radical reduction of federal library contributions. While the Jones says it will dip into its endowment to make up any shortfall in private donations, the recent collapse in the stock market has probably reduced the value of that endowment, already rather small.  Meanwhile, operating costs for everything from energy to payrolls are sure to rise beyond what we expected.

There is a better way, and the Jones leadership knows it.  The plans for repairs of the building on its present footprint have long been in the director’s file.  It is very likely that those plans, when brought up to date, can be paid for by the $17.8 Million committed by the Town Council, the town’s CPA Committee, and Amherst College, plus other funds already raised and to be raised from private donors.  A beautiful renewed Jones Library is within sight, if only the leadership of the town and the library will accept what so many Amherst residents already see

Ken Rosenthal

Ken Rosenthal lives on Sunset Avenue in Amherst.  He was Chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals and of the former Development and Industrial Commission, and was a member of the Select Committee on Goals for Amherst. He was a founder of Hampshire College and its first Chief Financial Officer.