AMHERST — Leaders of a capital campaign for the Jones Library renovation and expansion say they are way ahead of schedule in their fundraising efforts, raising nearly half of a $6.6 million goal nine months ahead of target.
At the same time, however, campaign officials know they will have to raise even more money now that inflationary pressures have pushed the overall costs of the project at 43 Amity St. up from $36.3 million to between $43 million and $50 million.
“We’ve known we’d need to raise more than $6.6 million,” said campaign Co-Chairman Kent Faerber.
Ginny Hamilton, who is managing the capital campaign, told the Jones Library Building Committee last week that organizers had hoped to reach half of the goal by next May, but are already close to that.
The campaign has brought in $1.3 million of the $3.3 million goal from institutions, and $1.79 million of the $3.3 million goal from individuals has already been pledged.
Faerber said hiring Hamilton and getting professional accounting help and a graphic designer to design materials and a website are all part of the stepped-up campaign getting underway.
“We’re putting a more robust campaign together than we had planned,” Faerber said.
In a related development, Jones Library has secured $50,000 in the state budget to pay for a portion of the design costs for a space within the library for its English Language and Citizenship Program.
The program, in place since the 1980s, helps immigrants, students and other non-English speakers in the region hone their communication skills. As the program has grown in prominence over time, though, some of this education is now done at tables scattered throughout the library, and sometimes even in a quiet corner of the building or a stairwell.
Those are reasons that Lynne Weintraub, coordinator of the ESL program, has supported a renovated and expanded library that will offer better space for those learners, who annually receive more than 16,000 hours in conversation and language instruction, including assistance to gain U.S. citizenship.
“What we don’t have here now, and I have always dreamed of, is a place where waiting students and tutors can chat together without disturbing the people studying or having to stand in the stacks,” Weintraub said in a statement.
A centralized gathering space, she said, will also help people gain more confidence in their speaking abilities, while quiet study spaces will mean volunteers can do better one-on-one tutoring in privacy.
State Rep. Mindy Domb, D-Amherst, and state Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, helped secure the money in the state budget.
The $50,000 from the state also supplements a $1 million commitment from the town’s Community Preservation Act account going for the special collections room, $200,000 from the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund, $46,000 from the Beveridge Foundation, and at least $1.6 million in Massachusetts historic tax credits that will come when the project is complete.
The fundraising efforts have included being in regular contact with the federal legislative delegation as well, Faerber said. U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern has helped by putting a $1.1 million earmark in the House budget after getting a tour of the existing library, and a draft application for an infrastructure challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities has been completed.
Amherst is also joining other area communities in making an appeal to the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and state officials for more state funding for their library projects.
Meanwhile, Faerber said he appreciates that library officials have avoided a pause in groundwork for the overall expansion project or interruptions that would disrupt the capital campaign.
Actions that have occurred in the last two weeks have been positive, with the elected trustees committing to keeping the project on track by pledging to use the Jones Inc. endowment to help pay for it, followed by the building committee voting 5-1 that the project continue toward completion of the design phase and eventual bid documents.
Both Town Manager Paul Bockelman and Finance Director Sean Mangano abstained from the building committee’s vote, while committee member Zander Lopez voted against proceeding out of worry about pressing ahead with cost estimates ballooning. Lopez said his concern is whether the town has sufficient money, noting that teachers have not been able to reach a new contract with the School Committee.
But trustee Alex Lefebvre said her concern is that it would be fiscally irresponsible to not continue; and Austin Sarat, president of the trustees, said at the lowest end of estimates, and with the funding plan in place, there would be no increased cost to the town.
Bockelman said how the project proceeds is a conversation between the trustees and the Town Council, with his responsibility to make sure that the library expansion and renovation is done along with building a new elementary school, a Department of Public Works headquarters and South Amherst fire station.
“We have a lot of uncertainty at this moment,” Bockelman said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.