The recent guest column “Not a penny more” [Gazette, Oct. 30] objecting to a Community Preservation Act grant for the Jones Library represents both a misunderstanding of town finances, and the same old strategy of relitigating every decision, over and over again, in order to stop the building project.
The town decided this issue four years ago with the first CPA grant. That grant was in addition to and simultaneous with the $15.8 million in town general revenues committed to the project. It was not considered “a penny more” then, and an additional CPA grant should not be considered so now.
The reason was clear. The town did not want to allocate any more general revenues (i.e. it did not want to increase the town’s taxes any more) than is required to fund the $15.8 million.
CPA funds come from a completely different source — a surcharge levied in addition to general tax revenues. Some state matching monies are added to these funds and they go into a separate, competitive grantmaking fund. The amount of the surcharge (and, therefore, the amount granted) is fixed and not affected by the identity of the recipients of CPA grants. Rejecting a CPA grant to the library does not lower the surcharge or anyone’s taxes.
CPA funds are restricted specifically to support and encourage the most compelling affordable housing, open space, recreation and historic preservation projects for which applications are made. Declining a CPA grant to the library does not free up more funds for the schools, roads, the DPW or Fire Station, or any projects for which an application has not been made or is not eligible.
The allocation of CPA funds is by competitive process. If the town wishes to encourage historic preservation, as intended by the Community Preservation Act, the only criteria should be how the library project competes with the other historic preservation grant applications to advance that goal.
Our application makes a compelling case for the use of CPA funds to preserve some of the most valuable historic assets in one of the most visible locations in the town. During the extraordinary scrutiny of the library project over a 10-year period, the intensive lobbying for the preservation of the woodwork and windows of the 1928 building (for which our CPA application is requesting support) was an overwhelming confirmation of its importance. A design decision to replace the windows in kind rather than try to repair them, at an additional cost, was made specifically at the request of the Amherst Historical Commission and the Massachusetts Historical Commission. Few historic preservation projects for which applications are made receive this kind of public attention.
The library continues to honor the $15.8 million cap on the town’s general revenue support despite the burdens of making up the difference imposed by the extraordinary inflation of the last few years, and the arbitrary action of the Trump administration’s DOGE in canceling our $1 million NEH grant. As we undertake to fulfill our part of the funding arrangement, we hope the CPA Committee and Town Council will, once again, see beyond the “not a penny more” bumper sticker sloganeering, and evaluate our application on the correct criteria.
Lastly, the CPA grant application for the Civil War Tablets was not from the library, but rather from the town itself, and covers, as we understand, the safe moving of the Tablets from their current location at the Bangs Center to the library once renovation is complete. The library is thrilled to have the opportunity to provide a home for the Tablets, but this grant, if approved, will not go towards the library’s ongoing Capital Campaign.
Kent W. Faerber and Lee Edwards are co-chairs of the Jones Library Capital Campaign.