Jones Trustees President Questions if Library Is Being Shortchanged by Town

Sarat Asks for Information on Town’s Reimbursement over the Past 10 Years

Library Director Sharon Sharry reported on the status of the library budget for FY2027 at the meeting of the Jones Library Trustees on December 22. As requested by the Finance Committee, she said that she is preparing a budget for level services that includes the three positions that the library has been unable to afford to fill for the past five or six years. She noted that the town pays about 75% of the salaries for library staff, and thought that percentage had been relatively stable over the past 10 years. However, she foresaw problems on the horizon when the renovated and expanded Jones Library opens in February of 2027 and has to repay the loan that the town has taken out for the project. She expected that the library would need to take any shortfall in the capital campaign out of the endowment, which will affect the rate of draw on the endowment that will be needed for other expenses, such as salaries and programming. 

Nevertheless, Sharry did not advise the library to request a larger budget increase than the 3.5% offered to the town departments and the schools. “Speaking on my behalf,” she said, “I do not expect the town to be giving us more than any of the other entities. I wouldn’t recommend that we ask for more. I would expect that whatever above and beyond funding that we need to run the library would come from the library.”

But Trustees President Austin Sarat was not willing to give up on collecting more money for the library from the town. He said, “Here’s the question I’m trying to ask. Every year health insurance goes up by more than we get from the town in the way of an increase. So, this year if they give us a 3.5% increase, and our health insurance costs go up 18%, that’s not dollar for dollar, because 3.5% increase over the budget and 18% increase just for the insurance, the town’s contribution may be reduced by the increase in expenses over that amount. It used to be that the town appropriation covered the health insurance increase, and it doesn’t even touch it anymore. So, one thing that I think the library needs to do is to be in conversation with the town about the town’s financing of the library, because over time I’m under the impression that the town’s contributions have not kept up with increases in costs.”

He continued, “We have a very conservative draw rate [from the endowment] of 4%, and over time we have dramatically reduced the draw rate to preserve the value of its principle over time, but we may need to increase that draw rate in a way that would still put us within the range of what is responsible in endowment management.

“But  there’s like been a hidden tax on the library. It’s true for other town departments that expenses have gone up more year in and year out than they get from the town. And that means for us that we are plugging it in through other sources, fundraising, the endowment, state aid. But I think it would be really good for the [library] budget committee to look at 10 years ago what the town gave us covered in percentage [compared to] today. Part of the reason I say that is in certain places in the town, the gap is visible. Meaning, if you try to run schools and you have to have teachers. In the library, because of the endowment, it’s been less visible. We just go and pull from the endowment to keep doing what we’re doing. But for example, with respect to filling positions, how would we want to finance that? Let’s just we’ll pull it out of the endowment. If that is what is done, it wil increase the gap between the amount that we get from the town and the amount that we need to spend. And I’d like to make it less invisible.

“Now, I think the Budget Coordinating Group is a great group and I think we’re all working in the interest of the town, not just we’re the library and therefore all we want to think about is the library. There’s the schools, there’s the town departments, and a lot of that is visible–the roads don’t get repaired or they don’t have enough fire people. But in our case it’s just not [visible], because we run the library, we go to the endowment. And I just think it would be good for the [library’s] budget committee look at this and inform the [Trustees] so that we can be as clear as we can be in our conversations with the town.

“Now, that doesn’t mean that I expect that the town is going to say, ‘Oh, you’re right, and here’s money to make it up to you.’ But I do think that greater visibility [is needed], so. that the town and the residents of Amherst will know in a way that they do not know now.

“So maybe for our next meeting we could have that conversation. The budget committee could do whatever the budget committee is going to need to do, and we could we could have that [information] in front of us.”