 And work with a recording. Amherst media is here. Okay, great. Good evening. This is our first of two public forums. Specifically for the purpose of discussing the proposed Jones library options. I'm going to start by calling the meeting to order taking role. And then I'll lay out how we're going to approach the evening. So I'm seeing that there is a quorum of the council. I'm calling the meeting to order at 601. I'm now going to ask counselors to just let me know that I can hear you and you can hear us. And so I will start with. The ones I can see. Lynn Griesper is present Mandy, Joe Hanneke. Present. Steve Schreiber. Steve just confirm you can hear me. Present. There we go. Evan Ross. Kathy Shane. Andy Steinberg. Sarah Schwartz. George Ryan. Who have I missed. Evan Ross. I got him. Okay. There may be others joining us, but we do have a quorum. I'm going to ask Austin Soret to do the same thing with the library trustees. Thank you, Lynn. I'd like to call the library trustees to order. I'm going to call your name. Please respond. Lee Edwards. Present. Tammy Eley. Present. Alex. Present. Bob. Present. Chris Hoffman. And I'm Austin, Sarah. Lynn, we're all here. Thank you. Governor Baker's March 12th order allows us to hold meetings like this virtually. And we have already called the meeting to order and so forth. And as you know, we are joined this evening by the library trustees. In addition to that various consultants joined us. Jim Alexander and Tony. Thank you. From fine-gloved Alexander. I can only say a lean. I know I said that wrong too. Kearney from Q and riddle. Then guy at who is the OPM. Owners project manager. And Doug Kelleher is a consultant for historic tax credits. In addition to that. We are joined by Sean. From the town. He is the finance director. Are there any others that we want to make sure people know. Are there any other questions? And are there other. People. Okay. Before people start raising their hands. I would like. To lay out the plan for the evening. There will be no presentation. We've already provided you with the link to the presentation that the trustees have made. As well as the documents that they have provided to the council. All of that was recorded. On the 22nd. On the 23rd. On the 22nd. On the 23rd. On the 23rd. So in addition, however, we are going to split the evening's questions. And comments into two parts. The first part is really going to be taking advantage of the opportunity. Having the various consultants here as well as the trustees. To ask questions. It's a little bit different than how we normally do forums. Mostly just looking for comments, to ask questions. And we will do that by having you raise your hands. To ask a question. Only after we're done with clarifying questions. To the extent they can be answered. Will we then move on to. People just stating their public opinion. About the project and so forth. Is there any question from anybody about that? That's in the panelists group. Then I want to acknowledge the presence of Sarah Draper. Also. Here to answer questions about sustainability. Thank you, Sarah. We're pleased to have you. Anybody, anything else that we want to clarify before we go in. Okay. Then I'm going to go. I'm asking questions. I'm asking for people to raise your hand. If you have a question. That you would like to specifically ask about the proposals, the three different proposals. And use this opportunity to. Tap into the various consultants who are with us. So Phyllis W. We ask you to enter the room. We ask you to state your name and where you live. And then state your question. Athena, are you having trouble? No, we just have several callers. So I wanted to make sure they know they can dial star nine to raise their hands. Okay. And so. Callers, if you want to raise question. You have to do star nine on your phone and that that shows your hand and we can bring you in just as if you were attending the zoom meeting. I might also mention that this has been shown as we speak on Amherst media. So can you bring Phyllis into the room? She's here. Okay. Phyllis, please state your name, where you live. And your question. Phyllis, you need to unmute. I think you have. Phyllis, can you hear us? Athena. I'm going to suggest that. Phyllis, can you unmute and state your question? Okay. It seems that Phyllis is having a problem. We're going to put her back into the audience. Phyllis, you don't lose her and as soon as we can iron that out, we will bring her in. Hank Allen, please enter state your name and where you live. Hello, my name is Hank Allen. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes. Thank you. I'm an employee of the Jones library. We need to make sure you mute. Okay. Hank, please proceed. As I said, I'm a employee of the Jones Jones library and also a resident of the town of Amherst 31 deepwoods drive. I'm an IT specialist and also known in the community as computer Dr. Hank, because I helped many residents of Amherst and seniors, especially solve their technology ailments through a library program called Dr. Hank. I'm going to speak about my experience of 20 plus years working in the Jones library building. Several times over the years, I've worked with vendors on installing new wiring in the building for networking and power. Each time I meet with the vendors and we plan the route for the new wiring, it becomes clear that the work will involve running the wires through a circuitous path through bathrooms, janitor's closets, even left exposed on walls. In order to circumvent blocks in the 1928 rock ceilings, et cetera. It becomes pretty clear quickly that work just the work just adds to the already hodge podge run of wiring. It is really only a temporary fix until we can finally do it right like every other modern building in our community. When we receive the quote for the work, it is usually in the thousands of dollars for just a few connections in the wall. It costs considerably more than it would if it were done in new modernized construction. And this extra cost is of course, worn by the town. A major building wiring upgrade was done in 2005, but it's still inadequate. Not all areas of the building were upgraded to the new wiring code then and we've since outgrown the number of new connections that were added. So we cannot easily offer additional technology to the public, nor to our staff. Further, the upgrade in 2005 is now out of date and unable to serve the library's needs into the future. New technology such as wireless access points require the latest wiring code and power over ethernet wiring. One major problem is that the new wiring is considerably larger in diameter. And that means it is not likely to fit into the existing pipes or chases, which currently carry the wires through the building's walls. Thus, it may be necessary to run all new pipes throughout the building if we were to renovate. This would probably be very costly, especially in the original older portions of the building. A newly expanded building would obviously eliminate the need for such a costly retrofit. Additionally, the newer wiring carries greater current through the wires and thus would dissipate additional heat within the pipes. Even if the new wiring did fit within some of the pipes, it may not be possible to run due to fire safety concerns. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your comment and for sharing that background with us Hank. Phyllis, you have your hand up. Let's bring you in and try again. Okay. Please unmute and check your microphone. The speaker on your computer, in other words, you don't seem to be successful. Phyllis, can you check your speaker on your computer? Athena, do you have any other suggestions of anything we should do with, we should do an assist Phyllis? She can try calling in on her telephone. Okay. If you use the call in number Phyllis and then hit star nine, you can also raise your hand. And maybe that will work better for speaking, speaking purposes. Okay. So I'm going to go on to Lacey. Please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Athena, is she in the room? I don't see her. She's using an, oh, here she is. Great. Lacey, welcome. Please unmute. Name where you live. My name is Lacey Stokes. I live here in Amherst at three Charles Lane. And I'm here tonight to talk also a little bit about my role. I began working at the library in 1996, which wasn't too long after the completed renovation of last time. And I work in the circulation department, but my specialty is interlibrary loan. Interlibrary loan or ILL is a blanket term that describes getting materials from local libraries to all kinds of Massachusetts libraries to nationally. We have different ways of doing it, but it all basically is. Athena, we seem to have some instability. In her connection. Lacey, can you still hear us? A week now sees it between 10 and 15. This is better with a visual. Very large bins a day of five days a week. All delivered into a small. Drafty. Poorly situated room. Delivery drivers haul these bins up at the little staircase into this small room where I unpack everything. So this means rolling cart after cart of books throughout the first floor to all the different departments. And right through the line of people checking out a lot of days. It's not that good. So a new space would mean we have room to do all this. And it would also mean that it was more economic. And more convenient. For those of us who work here and for the people who are in the building. And there's a lot of people that are on the floor. I mean, he interrupted by me. And. Oh, gosh, I lost my book. Just wrap it up and say thank you for listening and good night. Thank you for joining us. Ken Rosenthal. You please enter the room, state your name, where you live and your question. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Ken Rosenthal. I live on Sunset Avenue. and two for the repairs. And then the sources of funds for the large project, there was a $6 million figure for money to be raised, including a million dollars from CPAC. In the two figures that were given for repairs of about 15 or $16 million, there was no mention of that $6 million fund raising effort. Now I know it's always much easier to raise money for large new projects and for repairs, but surely the CPAC money would still be available whichever solution was chosen. And I would imagine there would be a fund raising effort made in any case to assist in getting the project done, whichever choice was made. So I wonder if I was reading that right, if the $6 million was omitted intentionally or by mistake, if so, could you please explain why it might have been omitted? That's the $6 million that would be raised from the public by a fund raising effort that my good friend Kent Ferber. So, Kent, I'm gonna have you answer the question broadly about fundraising with regard to the renovation expansion versus the repair. And then if need be, I'll talk particularly about CPAC, okay? Sure, thank you very much. All of the people working with me on the fund raising now are interested in supporting the renovation and expansion. And all of the pledges we have received are specifically contingent upon the town's approval there. I can't imagine any of them being interested in working on fundraising for a repair. I think, in fact, they would be deeply disappointed. Who might raise money for a repair? I have a hard time imagining. Perhaps you'd like to run that campaign, Kent. I know you've been very successful doing that thing. That's unfair. I mean, obviously I have no idea, but it is unimaginable to me that we would be able to mobilize the kind of support for a repair that is behind this renovation and expansion. In a not completely dissimilar fashion, the application for CPAC money was submitted by the library to the CPAC funds. Those funds at this point have been recommended by CPAC to the town council, but they are also contingent upon the approval of the full project. Should the full project not be approved, it is absolutely likely and possible that the library would come back and request some level of CPAC funding for some part of renovation, but it would have to be directly related to the historic part of the building. Kent, anything else while we have you? Lynn, may I just say one other thing? Please. This $6 million figure did not come out of nowhere. So we did a feasibility study to determine our ability to raise funds. And the feasibility study that we did was geared to our ability to raise funds for a specific project. That project was not to go forward. There's no one in the library who could tell you what we could raise if anything for repair option. I think fundraising is likely to be more successful when there's a vision for improvement and serving the community, much more successful than when the fundraising is for the replacement of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems in an existing building. But I just want to be clear. We've ascertained what we think we're able to raise for a particular project. We just don't know what it would be if we were to be trying to raise funds for a very different project. Kent, is there any other questions while you're here? I just want to thank you very much for answering my question and thanks to all of you for taking the time tonight to have this public forum for the citizens of Amherst. We appreciate it, I'm sure. Thank you. Absolutely. We're still in a period of asking questions of clarification. Sean Burke, please enter the room and state your name, where you live, and your question. You need to unmute Sean. Hi, I'm sorry, Sean stepped out of the room. I think his question had to do with the first two speakers. I'm Rita Burke. I live with Sean, we're married at 50 Henry Street. And I think his question was that the first two speakers didn't have questions and was wondering when the questions might actually start to happen. So he's not here at the moment. I'm sorry, and I will go back to mute. And if he returns and has an actual question, then please have him raise his hand. Certainly, we're just both hoping that there are some more questions. Thank you. Certainly. Hilda Greenabong, please enter the room, state your name and where you live, and your question. She lowered her hand. Oh, okay. David Lithgal, please enter the room. Yes, hello, David Lithgal here. I live in North Amherst, and the full disclosure, I'm a strong supporter of the renovation project. I'll try to get to my question very quickly. I just want to thank first the town council for the remarkable job the council has done and their governance of our town. And the remarkable job the council has done over the years in managing the town's finances. I've been here since the summer of 1977. I moved here with my wife to raise a family of three boys who have all grown up to become remarkable adults, one of them with physical handicaps. And I can't help but think that in large part, that's due to the fact that they grew up here in Amherst. I really believe Hillary Clinton was right. It takes a village. And it took Amherst to produce the boys I have. So I also just thank the community generally for being the community it is, for raising my boys. Particularly important since I was gone 60% of the time while they were growing up being an international airline pilot. So I feel strongly about this project, but this is still as a preamble to my question. I feel strongly enough that I have pledged $25,000 myself to the renovation project and just to be clear, that's for the renovation, not for repair. So here's my question. I watched the presentation to the council the other night by the board and I've gone to the website and reviewed the February financial plan from the finance committee, which certainly seems viable. And given all that, I guess here's my question. Would it not really be irresponsible on the part of the council to turn down the $13.8 million of taxpayer money that is available to us if we go forward with the renovation program, given that that money goes to another town if we don't use it, that's my question. David, thank you for your question. I think at this point the council is still in a listening mode and therefore we're not individually or as a group prepared to make our final vote. We will be doing that in April and we'll be doing that with the consideration of everything we've heard and received in emails and other comments as well. So thank you for your comments. Hilda, you mentioned that you had trouble unmuting so let's try you again. Okay, the icon to click on mute never came up before. So I have two questions on two different subjects. One, I'm really not happy with the way the gambrel roof of the new building on the west side looks next to the gambrel of the old building. And I was wondering if that is cast in stone given the mass historical and the local historical have not yet had a chance to make their opinions known publicly anyway. So that's the first question is that design of the contemporary gambrel with the different angles from the old one cast in stone or can it be redesigned after more public comment? The second question is looking at Mr. Mangano's proposal of how the money was going to be allocated among the projects that only the school was going to be subject to an override. And I for one happened to think that the school was probably the most important thing we need to do of everything on the list. And I think it would be only fair if all the projects were put on the override so that you could hear from the public opinion what the public wants to raise their taxes. So those are my two things. Is the design cast in stone and is the decision to only put the school on the override also cast in stone? I'm going to direct the first question to Austin and to the architects. Thank you, Lynn. Tony, would you like to first respond please? Sure, thank you for the question. With respect to the design we have done quite a careful analysis and this of course is an evolution of many options that we studied. It is our belief that the particular approach is sympathetic to the existing building. And while the gambrel ends do recall of portions of the existing historic it is clearly not intended to simply be a mimicry and it is a new addition. But however, the cues from the scale of the library itself inform that massing of that breakdown. As to the ability to refine and examine further evolution of design we are only at the schematic phase of the project and there will be a much further evolution as we get further, the project moves forward into the next phases including design development and so on and so forth where a lot more details and a lot more refinement will occur. But we do believe that this approach is sensitive and it is the place where we have arrived today after much careful consideration and much, much review. Thank you, Doni. Phillip, in regard to your larger question there's a very serious difference between a seeking public opinion and going out for a debt exclusion override. A debt exclusion override means we're asking people to pay beyond their existing taxes. And for the three of these projects we do not feel that we need to ask people to pay beyond the existing taxes. And part of the reason that is is because we've been saving for these projects. The other part of the reason is that we also have very little debt in the town and very small amounts of debt. And so we have a debt ceiling that can handle that level of debt. But if we actually looked at everything including the schools and I think all of us have our own priorities when you certainly respect that we would probably find that regardless we were going to have to go out for the schools and in order to do that and any other project. So the issue of whether or not we seek public opinion in fact, that's part of what we're doing tonight. I wanna mention we have 83 people attending in addition to the 27 panelists. And in addition to that we have received numerous emails and lots and lots of other public comment. And that's just what I know from the perspective of the council. That's not what I know from the perspective of the trustees and the library director. So and in addition to that we have also held our listening sessions back the year ago. Oh my God, it was a year about a year and three months ago. But it is a decision of the council at some point as to whether or not they wanna go out for a debt exclusion override on any one of these projects and that decision has not been made at this point. I'm going to now go on to Michael Chernoff. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, we can Michael, thank you. Okay, thank you. My name is Michael Chernoff. I live at 97 Gray Street. I'm calling, I'm calling. I wanted to make sure that the council I believe the library or no library trustees but I just wanted to make sure that the council is aware that in addition to the lending of books and other materials, audio, visual, et cetera that the library is home to a number of programs that are really badly served at the moment in terms of ESL instruction that basically takes place on, I've done it and you basically have to just move a chair somewhere in the stacks where you think you can find a little space to sit down for a while. And which is just, it's really it's just not fair to the people who are receiving that service. The other thing is that I'm on the board of the literacy project which has a program center in Amherst currently at the Jewish community of Amherst. But I know that our executive director Judith Roberts spoke to the, I believe it was to the town council a while ago indicating that we would love to be in a library. I mean, we can't think of a place where would you wanna be in an adult literacy program if not in a library? So, and we see that obviously many details would have to be worked out, et cetera. But from, I just wanna make sure that the town council is aware that the library serves a number of functions. And in fact, one of the things that excites me most about this project is that the ability really to create a town center for the library to be the heart of the town and to house all kinds of activities. But including ones that serve new Americans, people learning English, people trying to work towards their high school equivalency exam. So I would just hope that you would keep that in mind. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Are there any questions, Michael, before you leave since we're actually in a question period at this point? No, I know I sort of finessed that. I'm sorry, I didn't wanna get that point in, sorry. Thank you. I just wanna remind the audience, we have various consultants here from the library on behalf of the library. And so we're using this first part of our meeting as an opportunity to ask questions. And then we will go on to additional public comments as well. Elisa. Hi, did this do it? Can you hear me? We can, thank you. Thank you. Yes, my name's Elisa Campbell. I live in Pine Grove in Amherst, Massachusetts. And I have a question for the trustees. Someone has, I'm active with the Burnett Gallery, which is in the Jones Library. And someone has been telling us that the new design does not include a space for the Burnett. And I think that's not true, but I'd like one of the trustees to reply please. Austin, you wanna take a question? Thank you for that question. There will be a space for the Burnett Gallery in the renovated and expanded Jones Library. You can rest assured of that. Tony, do you wanna say a word about the Burnett Gallery? Yes, there is definitely a space allocated in the presentation we made. It is on the ground level and it is located behind the large meeting room. It may not have been labeled on the floor plans, but that has absolutely dedicated for the Burnett Gallery. Thank you. And it's directly adjacent to the Special Collections Department itself. Thanks. Elisa, thank you for your comments and questions. Sarah McGee, please enter the room, state your name, where you live and your question. Thank you. Am I unmuted? You are, Sarah. Thank you. I would like, I'm very interested to hear you say, oh, I should say I live at Chadwick Court in Echo Hill and I'm a former library trustee and trustee president. I was very interested to hear you say that no decision has been made on what projects would be put out for debt exclusion override. Did I understand that correctly? Yes, you did. When does the council plan to make such a decision and what factors will it be considering in doing so, please? The decision, the first decision, first of all, let me just clarify. What has been presented to the council is a recommendation. Basically, it's a way of saying, this is how you could do it. It's not the final, this is how you're going to do it. And that was developed by Sean Mangano, working very closely with the town manager and with the financial advisors for the town so that we completely understand the whole issue of cashflow and debt. Second of all, we will, the library, at this point, the plan is to bring forward to the council sometime in April, the library question as to whether or not we will accept the grant from the MBLC or not. And at that point, if there are other issues that will be brought up such as a debt exclusion or and or which column the CPA grant will, money will go into, it will be during that period. Thank you. And as for the factors that go into that, I think a lot of it's what we're hearing from people. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other questions, Sarah? Yes, I'm troubled that there is a plan B. There would be a plan B for the library. And I've not seen cost comparisons of, that are apples to apples comparisons as between the demolition and expansion proposal and what one might call plan B proposal. Though I understand there are two possible plan Bs. When will there be an apples to apples cost comparison available? So let me just go back and say, back last fall, I believe, Austin, maybe you remember the date, the trustees presented to the council working with Cune Riddle, a quote option A or option B, which is the option for repair. And the option for repair that was developed by Cune Riddle includes all of the issues that would be triggered for the disability act because of just the level of repair that would need to be done. And, but it only includes the cost of repair, but it also does include cost of relocating the library for the period during the repair, the cost of demolition, et cetera. Aileen, you might be wanting to speak to that and also cite where that study can be found. And I can also make sure, Sarah, that we send you the link for that particular town council presentation as well as the documents. That's very kind. Thank you very much. Certainly. I believe that the links to the study are on the library website and that maybe a chat message could be put out with those links to the participants. I don't have that readily available, but I'm sure that somebody does. In terms of the apples to apples comparison, I think that that's a misconception. This really isn't an apples to apples comparison. The study that we did was to look at what is the bare minimum work that needs to be done to the library so that it can function as it is currently. There's no design improvements. This is just what would the town need to do to invest into this building? So that you can continue to use it safely in terms of HVAC or heating and cooling, electrical systems, the envelope windows and the skylight, things like that and accessibility. So it's definitely not an apples to apples comparison. It's what's the bare minimum that you have to do to continue to use this building as it is versus a new renovation addition project that gives you greater use of a building. I hope that answers the question. Thank you. I do wanna clarify one, a couple of issues and that is my understanding that in both estimates for the repair, the cost of relocating the library the cost of demolition are all included. And that is correct. Yes. Thank you. That is apples to apples. Thank you. All right, Sarah. Anything else at this point? No, thank you. Do I do something to mute myself or you do it? Okay. We take care of that for you. Thank you so much. Tom Davies, please enter the room and state your name and where you live. Hi, hopefully you can hear me. My name is Tom Davies. I am at 15 Cortland Drive in Amherst for the last 21 years, heavily. I have actually two questions if I can. The first is, it's great timing by the way because what I've been sitting here talking, kind of going through in my head is that this is not apples to apples. And that my quite simple question is that really if you do a comprehensive comparison, there are two fundamental things. One is, what is the value of the facility post-project? Option A versus option B, a repair option versus a completely, essentially, completely new state-of-the-art facility that's larger. And those are, my question is, has that been done? Can the town see at the end of the day, forget about what the dollars are that we're putting into it, but what's the value of the facility at the end of the day, right? Something that is new state-of-the-art versus something that is partly new and partly not, right? The repair option doesn't repair everything. It repairs what needs to be repaired. And 10 years later, some other things need to be repaired as opposed to the expanded renovated, which you have a honeymoon period of 25 years before you're really getting into any capital renewals associated with it. So that's one part of it. The other part is looking at the operational costs for these two options going forward, right? And obviously, those are extremely different as well because you have an EUI for a new facility that is half of the energy use intensity that is half of what the energy use intensity would be for the repaired building. Therefore, just the energy cost alone for the repaired option is double on an annual basis. So if you were just to look at, say, the first 15 years of operation of the new building, whether it's scenario one or scenario two, what is the cumulative operational costs, which are town taxpayer dollars largely for A versus B? And it's not just energy. It's everything else. It's painting things. It's maintenance. It's the efficiency of the staff being able to work in a new state of the art thing versus a repaired thing. So I'm just wondering if there is some way to put that all together into a nice little package so that the folks in the town, and of course the counselors making decisions can see what the long-term truly kind of directly comparative numbers would be, for not just the capital costs, but the operational costs associated with it over X years. That's my first question. I don't think that exists. And I'm wondering if it can exist. Austin, is in anything that the library has done in preparation for this? Have they done any value comparisons? I don't think, I think the answer to the question, the first part of Tom's question is no, but I would ask the architect, Tony, whether or not he can offer a view of that as to the cost of operation, Lynn, I think we've done a pretty good job in our answers to the town council question to lay out what the cost of operation would be and what the savings would be. And on that, I'd also ask our treasurer Bob Pam if he would like to say anything about what the cost savings might be. But on the value question, Tony, is there some way of answering Tom's question? Sure, I'll try and that's, I appreciate that question. I think anecdotally, but we've experienced when we've worked on library projects in communities, is that after library undergo renovation expansion, not dissimilar to what we're proposing here, there's a definite very positive bounce that occurs in the community. Immediately, what happens is the number of library patients increase dramatically. In some cases, we've seen two, three fold increase in the number of patrons who suddenly feel they can actually use the library, who may not have gone to the library in the past due to conditions or whatever. And suddenly they see a new library emerge and they're very excited. So that is one very positive output. Indirectly, there also benefits to communities as well because when a library is one of the civic institutions in towns and they're very important institutions, their people take a certain pride in that and they also feel that it spurs other things. So people not only come into use of libraries, they also engage in other neighboring businesses, other activities around the library. And that has also been a dramatic thing that we've seen at witness in community. So there's definitely positive outcomes that occur and they continue to remain because I think patients generally feel that they have a library they really can enjoy being and using. And that's something that you, it's hard to assign a value other than it's in the way that people and it's in the numbers that show up. And I guess that's the proof of the value. May I just add Lynn that the library did a chat. We invited library directors from several libraries that had been recently renovated. And what Tony said is what they testified to as well that the spillover effects in their communities were quite substantial. So on the basis of the anecdotal evidence, we have reason to believe that that same thing would occur with a renovated and expanded Jones library. They also indicated, as Tony said, that a renovated expanded library has the potential to draw many new people into it and will serve as a kind of community center for our town as it has in places like Aft Hall and South Hadley and West Springfield. We've been told, though I haven't seen it, that there was a kind of economic impact study done with the renovation of the Holyoke library in which estimates were made of the economic benefit to Holyoke from the renovation of their library. I haven't seen that study, but we were told again that they were quite substantial. Thank you, Nelson. I'll just add one other thing. I think communities also when they come into the new library they discover things that they could do that they never imagined they could do before. So it goes beyond even just the programming and things like community activation, community use, it dramatically increases because the library patron has suddenly realizes they have a real resource here which they did not have before. And so they discover any ways that the library also can be used that they're not even anticipated. I think that's as far as we'll get on that one. And then the other question is really around operational costs. And Austin, I think you indicated that you wanted Bob to answer on that. Yeah, I just want to indicate again that we provided a pretty good view about the operational cost differences in the responses that we've given to the town council. But I think Bob can give us a little more information, Bob. Okay, first the tax contributions are mostly around personnel, which is largely funded by the town and on capital work. The costs of things like energy as well as buying books and dealing with all of the other things that an ongoing organization must do, those are paid for by the library and by our fundraising, either now or in the past. The amount that would be saved in terms of operational costs is really hard to determine the amount that we were talking about in the presentation was an 8% reduction in energy costs versus the existing building. That is not going to make an enormous difference in the way we operate. The bigger difference has to do with what happens 20 years down the line. If we are right about the need for a larger and better building, and you look at 20 years from now as this building having newer systems but nothing else changed, the question then becomes, are we then looking at a major expansion at that point or a major change in the way the building operates? That is where the big cost differences would be, not an immediate change in the operating costs. Can I, I'm going to use an opportunity to take some questions that we've received from others that are specifically in this category. And can I ask, can I have a point of order before? Certainly, Steve. I want to clarification on Tom's first question because I think his question had less to do with the value to the community but more to the value to the building itself. So, and if I misunderstood that, I think Tom is still on the line, but I want to make sure that that part of this question had been answered. So you're saying if we actually, if the value on the building, what would happen? Yeah, like in other words, if we put $15 million into repair in the building, what would be the appraised value of the property versus if we put, do the renovation expansion, what's the appraised value? That's how I understood that question to be. And I guess, Austin, do you want to go to Tony for that? Go to Tony, but the question of what the appraised value would be, it seems to me would be for the town to appraise it. But Tony, do you, can you give us any sense of what the likely appraised value would be for a new building in Amherst? You know what I'm going to do, I'm going to actually bring in my colleague, Jim Alexander. I think there's a lot of experience here as well. We've worked together on most of the libraries in our firm. It is a hard question to answer. We're talking about a major investment in town, I think the appraised value of the library now is what, around $9 million or so. So when you're investing this large sum of 36, although that's not all hard costs, I mean, it's bound to increase your value and the excess value. But I don't know, Tom, exactly. We haven't done that study. I think it could be done, but it would involve, you know, the town appraiser system and all of that to come up with a real value. And I think it's hard to discount the spin-off value. I mean, this is a, and it's like anything else, you know, you build a new theater or you build a civic center or any project, the spin-off value of a major town investment is substantial. That's not a great answer, but I think we don't know what the appraised value would be. And it's really a matter of who would want to buy it. Thanks, Steve. I'm not saying somebody wouldn't, but I'm just saying something's only as valuable as what somebody is willing to pay. Lynn, can I add one thing out of my hand up that I know there's so many people out there? Sure, Alex, please. So I just, I think that Tom's question is a good one. And I would say that I think we have elements in different places. So for example, if you look at the building program, which forms the basis of our design, you see side by side the difference in our programming. So what do we offer today in terms of number of computers, right? 3,000 people without internet in our town, we can see, you know, today we have X computers and when we're finished with this building we'll have Y computers. So I think we do, that document exists for the building program to see the net result of this building for the community. We also have a whole building lifecycle analysis which allows us to look at, you know, the difference between today's building versus the future building and what is that gonna do for us in terms of energy efficiency and costs? Our OPM also put together, you know, the costs in terms of the utility costs, et cetera, which is part of what we put in the budget for the operating budget. And then the last piece which just floated right out of my brain was the last piece. Yep, gone. So anyway, my point is more that I think we have different elements. I don't know that we have any one document that exists that sort of lays out everything side by side. And the last one was the building itself. So the getting the repair estimate from Western builders, the nexus of that originated back in 2016 when we applied for the grant. And the question was what if we don't get the grant, right? If we don't get the grant, what is absolutely needed for public safety and for building integrity? So what was put together is simply that. So I think to Tom's point is we're facing what's immediately in front of us for public safety and building integrity and nothing beyond that. So do we know what the next thing is to fail? We don't that I assume would require a different study. So maybe there's a possibility we could pull everything into a nice clean document but I just wanted to add those pieces. Thank you, Alex. So one of the things that has come through on various questions that we've received from the public and counselors is the question of what would it cost to renovate, not renovate, excuse me, repair the building and existing building and move it more to net zero? Is that even doable? Elon, do you want to speak to that, please? Sure, I guess what I can say is that that was not part of our study. So it's hard to comment on that because that would require a more significant renovation than what is the bare minimum required for building integrity, as Alex said. It would be expensive to get to a net zero situation with an existing building of that age and it would probably have an impact on some of the historic character of the building in ways that we may not be able to maintain. So it's hard to say without doing a study, I guess is the long way to say I don't have an answer. I'll just maybe add a little to that. I think what we did when we got to our EUI 29, we took advantage of a lot of things between the old and the new. So if we were isolating just the renovation, I think generally it would be a very large amount of work to make that come together, really would. And I'm not sure you could achieve it with the solar panels and all the things that we're doing with the building without really ripping apart the existing building to do different kinds of insulation and treatment of the walls and the attic. So I think it's a little bit unlikely, but Alex, do you want to comment? Me? No. I don't know, Sarah, I don't know, Sarah, if you have Draper, I don't know if you have any comments or thoughts. My only thought on this, and this was a question, Lynn, that I heard from other folks as well as well, could we, the plan for the town with the town's carbon reduction goals would be, we might want to electrify the library sooner rather than later, that is shift from the current heating and cooling systems that the library has that are fossil fuel-based to electric systems. And the question was kind of, well, if we would be doing that anyway, why invest in this other, in this full project? And my knee-jerk response to that was along the lines of what Jim and Aileen have said that that's not something that we could just do. We can't just switch the library as it stands or with minor repairs to a carbon neutral heating and cooling system. The way I assume, Jim, you can correct me if I'm wrong, that the heating and cooling systems in this new library or the renovation in addition would work are really based on the energy efficiency of that new building. And those are systems that won't work as effectively or possibly at all effectively in a building that hasn't had really good energy efficiency retrofit repairs. So that's also a really long-winded way of saying that isn't what either study looked at. And I'm not sure that it would be feasible without, as Jim was saying, yes, a lot of other work. Either way, if you wanted to make the operation of the library more energy efficient or carbon neutral, that's a heck of a project. So in my view, it's really, what do you get for that project? Do you get like additional program and other uses for the library or do you just get the energy efficiency? And that's kind of the, I imagine the calculation that you kind of have to weigh in your head. And at this point, the word heck of a lot translates into a lot of dollars. And disruption, yeah. Yeah, got it. Okay, Kitty Axelson-Berry, please enter the room, state your name, where you live and your question. Am I here with you? You are. All right. So I have a couple of questions. Some of them are kind of philosophical. And I do see that you're doing a great sales job of selling this. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that 25% of towns do reject the money that's offered the grants. And along with that, that surveys about the Jones have concluded that people really like the Jones. They love the Jones and what they want is not a different library, not a flagship library, but more computers, more hours, more free parking. So here's my first question. A library for 51,000 patrons is a huge increase from what we currently have with a population of 18,000 year-round residents and about 19,000 library card holders, including those from outlying towns and people who have moved away without counseling their cards. So that's, so like, okay. So Tony said that, oh well, a lot of times when you build a big new library, people say, wow, this is great, and they flock to it. But is that really something, is that where the 51,000 comes from? That theoretically people will prefer a new library to the Jones? So that's question one. Question two is related, and this is, I don't know. I'm wondering whether what's actually happened happening is that a group of people, possibly the trustees, possibly people on the town council, some people, wondering whether you want this to be a city instead of a town, no, a city that's known as a town, really a town of 18,000 year-round people. Because it seems like that's what a flag, you know, I think I'm just wondering whether that's what you actually want with a flagship library. When we have the UMass library, we have the Amherst College library. We don't have mobile library services. We don't have much money going towards the branches, even though we're supposedly trying to strengthen the village centers. We're not doing anything for the village centers in terms of library services, supporting them more than we have been. So I'd love to have an honest discussion about whether the goal here is really to make Amherst some kind of a urban metropolis as odd as it seems to me. My other question, which, you know, is being asked by a lot of people, is this what you really wanna spend other people's money on? Not more affordable living, not more sustainability, a big sustainability project for Amherst, not quality of more diversity here. I mean, we could be saving money in order to be nimble in these uncertain times. We could be supporting small businesses that are already here, rather than just like going into more debt and then saying, well, we need more apartment buildings in order to cover the debt that we have just incurred. And my third question is, I've heard it said many times that this is just a schematic and I still don't understand exactly what that means in a practical way. That's it. Thank you, Kitty. So let me suggest that the first question how do you get to 51 is a question that I'm gonna direct back to the trustees. The second two questions are really not something that we're going to debate here tonight. I understand. We want it to be a city or the trade-offs. But the last question I would then also like to ask both Austin with the architects and also the OPM to talk a little bit about the process of getting from your building ideas to schematic design to your construction documents to your bids. So let's go back on the 51 patrons. Let's actually let's do it a slightly different way. Tony, could you talk about what schematics mean, the process going forward? What is the difference between schematic design and design development? What is involved in design development? How, if at all, the schematics are likely to change as we go through design development? Let's try to get that process as clear as we can. Sure. So schematic design is essentially taking a building program which has been vetted through and confirming it and developing a scheme. After viewing various options and then there it comes eventually in a scheme that essentially fulfills the programmatic goals and is also at a point where some preliminary cost estimating is done in order to ascertain where the project is. It is developed far enough in terms of the architectural drawings in order to make a reasonably informed process of program test design, what the building starts to look like and of course a basic schematic budget. What happens after that phase is that when you move into the next series of phases essentially what architects do is they flesh out more and more information about a project. So design development really starts to develop a lot more information, not only in terms of design but the structural information, the MEP systems, life safety issues, all the things that go into a materiality specific approaches to much more detail starts to emerge at the design development stage and it begins to really take it to another level of information which then gets further refined in terms of estimating. And it's a constant back and forth between confirming the programming, the goals of the project, fulfilling the original vision and then essentially in the design it is supporting those approaches and the details start to emerge more full scale. And then after that phase, and again, there's another series of estimates done at that phase confirmed, then you move into the construction document phase and these are essentially for what late people might think of as the blueprints for the project. They are the series of drawings that are created which the builder uses to build the project. And those are at that point, everything is really laid out. And so it becomes a technical set of drawings that the builders then use to actually construct. And so in simplistic terms, that is what the phases of the project are in terms of schematic design, design development, construction documents, and then there's usually a bidding phase and then the construction itself. So I think if that sort of outlines in sort of broad terms what actually happens in a project and how architects and the consulting teams work, this is essentially the nature of a project. Can I ask a little question in response to that, Lynn? I'm sorry, who asked that? Oh, Cat, Kitty. Yes, sure. Can I ask a little follow up? Yes? Yes, please. Okay. Tony, so if the current designs show walls torn down, right? Staircases removed, whatever, right? Does that mean that the plan could be changed so that those walls, those old walls are not torn down? So I think specific questions like that, Kitty, I think gets into an evaluation of design reproach. So yes, usually what happens at the next level is that you really do look at, okay, where are areas that are really being impacted in design when you detail it, how are you trying to preserve it, what's involved to do that? And if the decision is made between schematic phase and design development phases that say, well, there's some things we still wanna test further and we wanna revisit, then yes, that can be done. But at every stage of a project, the further we get into the drawings, the more challenging it becomes to change things later because of course there's a lot more time, a lot more energy, a lot more consults and input invested and then literally the drawings get more and more and more detailed. So when you start to transition further along the phases from schematic and then into DD, so DD still permits ongoing development and refinements along the lines of, that's something like you just asked about and then eventually when we get into the CD phase, a lot of things can really get locked down. Ken, I'm going to again reflect on many other questions. At what point do you go out to bid? How does that bid process work and how do you ensure that you don't have cost overruns? So I don't know if we wanna bring Ken or Jim into this conversation. I think they're, I think we're gonna let others. That's why we have the experts here. Let's get Ken. Ken? Sure, thank you. That's a great question, Lynn. Obviously, one of the things that Tony mentioned as we're going through the various design phases that each end of the design, we're doing another cost estimate and a reconciliation, which means we have two cost estimates, one by the design team, one by the owner's team, and we reconcile those. We have a clear picture before we work into the next phase of what the cost of the project is gonna be. And we don't move into that next phase unless we are sure that we are on budget. At the end of the construction document phase that Tony mentioned, that's when we're gonna start looking at going out to bid. Now there's a whole pre-qualification process that has to happen for general bids in the Commonwealth that the OPM is gonna have a lot of input on along with the town and the procurement agent within the town. That's gonna be happening in concert with the final phase of the construction documents. So this project is gonna go out on the street and we're gonna make sure that we have cost certainty. And what that means is at the end of the CD phase, we're gonna do that estimate. If there is concern based on the estimators looking at the market and where things are at right now and that we're trending right on that line of the budget, take a look at doing things as add alternates or deduct alternates to ensure that at bid day we're going to have cost certainty and we're gonna have a real project that's going to be able to happen. We're also gonna make sure that we have a lot of competition for the project by actively soliciting contractors to take a look at this project. It's worked well for us in the past, no matter where the project's located whether it's remotely on Cape Cod or up in North Adams we actively pursue these contractors and get a lot of competition for the bid. That will also help us with cost certainty for the project. We did wanna go back to the issue of the 51,000 patrons. Well, it's not 51,000 patrons. Alex has her hand up and I think she might have another comment that she wanted to make. Nope, I didn't, I was just offering myself up if Austin wanted me. So Austin, please go ahead. Okay, Alex or other trustees can add. The library was not designed in a kind of mechanical let's count up a service population, do a square footage and come up to a building program. That is not the way it's done. 225, 227,000 people use our library every year. That's a very large service population, if you will. It is one of the busiest libraries in the state. It is a regional library. It serves the region. It brings people into Amherst from all over. They go to Amherst coffee, they go to the bookstores, they go to restaurants. The library design emerged from a very careful analysis of the way the building was being used and what the program needed to be looking out for 25 or 30 years. We don't have a team space in the library. We think that we should have a team space in the library. The special collections is inadequate to the point where our special collections librarian has to think twice about new acquisitions. The children's room, the children's room, that's a misnomer. Our children's services exist on at least three levels of the library. Patrons tell us often they come to children's programs and they can't get in. We have an English as a second language program that doesn't have the facilities it needs to do its job adequately. And the only other thing I would say is that our building program was very carefully reviewed by a peer review panel of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. Their standards are to ensure that what we're proposing are reasonable to what it is that we need and produce a building which is going to be efficient. So those are the factors that came together which led us to propose what we have currently proposed. I'm not an architect, but program is what was at the center of the building design. That's what we started with. And that program is responsive to what we understood to be the needs of the community. And the we is the staff of the library and the trustees of the library. And yes, what we heard from many patrons of the library. Thank you. I'm gonna go on to the next person, but I also wanted to mention that Representative Mindy Dom has joined us in the audience just based on her ongoing interest about this project. Amy W, please state your name, where you live. You need to unmute. Amy, can you unmute and so we can hear you? Tina, is there anything you can do to help her unmute? Center request to unmute. Okay. All right, we seem to be having problems. Let me skip to Nancy Campbell. State your name, where you live. Nancy Campbell from South Amherst, Massachusetts. And I think my question is really for the architects. And it has to do with the quality of the proposed construction for the renovation expansion plan, which I'm completely behind and completely support. But the 1928 building when it opened, the town, the trustees were extremely proud of the solid foundation, the stone construction, as well as the incredible amount of planning that went into the development of that building. And since then there have been multiple renovation expansion projects. The last one in 1993 is only 27 years ago. At the dedication of the 1928 building, one of the trustees talked about IG, I wonder what the people of Amherst in the year 2028 are going to think about our plan for this building. And I think there are a lot of people in town who really wonder, why is it that a renovation that took place in 1993, 28 years ago, has to have major parts torn down? Why is it that those beautiful skylights supposedly started leaking almost the minute they were put up? What about the flexibility of the decision that went into the planning for that building? So I'm asking the architects now about the flexibility of the proposed renovation of the Jones. So I wouldn't ask you to talk about 100 years from now. Let's just say 50 years. Only 50 years from now. Could you talk about the quality of the construction and what the people in Amherst in 50 years are gonna think about the decisions that are being made with this plan today? Oh, I guess that's Jim or Tony. Jim, you wanna handle this one? Why don't I start just a few observations? Just the planning of the 1928 building is very exciting. It was designed to resemble a large country house. And in that aspect, as a major front entrance way, it's almost a city hall, center hall plan, a really traditional American plan. And the architect was aiming for that. There's also something called the big house, a little house, a big addition idea. So if you look at the existing building, there were additions on the side which got bigger as it went back. So it was almost like a house with an L and a barn on the back. So it was very, very exciting. When the addition was made, I think in the 90s, some of the issues that we are most concerned about, like accessibility, wayfinding, flexibility, weren't as critical, I think, in that planning as they are now. The flexibility of the space, the ups and downs of stairs, the ending and dead ends and things like that, it's not something that we can really stand behind today. So some of the reasons for removing that addition in addition to, well, for removing that are to help clarify with the new addition the issues that are problematic with the 1990s addition. So I think that's one aspect. I think the other thing that's been great in working with the town is the sustainability goals that you've established. We're currently planning, thanks to the committee, Wood Timber addition, which would be a low carbon. We have lots of other aspects of this that are important. So that's something that the 1992 addition really can't meet without an extraordinary amount of money being spent. So also the expansion we looked at originally to put the program on the building would take four or five stories if you stayed within that existing footprint including the 92 addition. So this is not something that makes any sense for public library building. So those I think are a few of the reasons that really led us into this. And I think, frankly, that in 50 years and you don't wanna look ahead, but I think by building this kind of flexibility using quality materials, using a sustainable program for the energy consumption which allows us to eventually get to a hopefully net zero. These are all things I think the town's gonna celebrate when the building is finished. Let alone this civic aspect, the library kind of reflects the aspirations of a town. And we talked about whether we have a city whether we have a town center. Well, this is part of that town center and the aspirations of a town are really reflected in its public buildings. So I guess, obviously a little prejudice toward what we're doing, but I think we can celebrate this building in the next 50 years. Just one other thing, the word flexibility comes up in this current horrible state of the pandemic. You know, what we've tried to do is make this library program work even if there had to be an element of this social distancing and things like that. It's flexible space in many ways. It can be reconfigured. Things can be moved apart, put together. So it allows us to think about the future in different ways. Anyway, I've said too much, but whatever that's said. Tony, do you wanna add to that? No, and I think the thing that none of us frankly can predict, if I could predict 50 years from now, I would be a seer. So I think all of us can only, but I think what we all can do, however, is we can maybe imagine for ourselves, maybe not 50 years, but what we would like to see. And I think that's embedded in the vision and trying to really look forward in these programming is definitely looking forward, you know, quite a bit into the future. And I think that's very exciting. And I just add, I think my question really has to do with the quality of the new foundation. Is that new foundation? Is that meant to last for 50 years? Are those roof trusts designed to last for a long time? Yes. Those are the kind of questions I'm really asking. I completely believe in everything that you say, but I'm really looking for long-term. Yes, I mean, we're designing a building which should have a life more than 50 years. It should have the life of the 1928 building. I mean, we should be able to look at this building and hopefully a hundred years. I mean, many things will be changed, but the foundations, the structure, the wood structure, the steel that goes into the base, these things will be there. Well, I hope that's the case because that wasn't the case with 1993 construction if it's being torn down today. So I'm really happy to hear you say that today. We know a lot more today, also than we did 25 years ago. And construction has come a ways, long ways. Great. And I just want to say these architects can't say, I think what I'm about to say, we went through a rigorous architect selection, a rigorous competition. We did our homework. We looked carefully at what it is that the architects, not only what they were proposing, but what they had done, what they had done in other buildings, precisely because Nancy Campbell, we wanted to make sure that the architects that we chose would do something that would stand the town in good stead for generations. Fine Goal Alexander has the reputation. I invite anybody to look at their work, things that they've done in the past, not just things that they've done recently. Fine Goal Alexander has the reputation for being the kind of architectural firm whose work stands the test of time. So that was one of the standards that was brought to bear in the architect selection. And we think we got the right architects. We think we've gotten the right design to ensure that 20, 30, 40 years, 50 years from now, rather than to the amateurs, they're gonna say this building does the town proud. By the way, Tony and Jim, I charge for that endorsement, so. I see, we're getting to the fee negotiation part, right? I wanna be mindful of the time and make sure that if we can get a few more questions answered, but I also wanna remind people that we are meeting again on Saturday. We're meeting at two o'clock. I'm not clear that we have the level of consultants tonight that will be able to join us on Saturday. And so we wanna make sure we get that. Phyllis, can we try you one more time? Phyllis W, please enter the room. Unmute, state your name and where you live. Phyllis, you need to go to the microphone icon and unmute. There we go. No, Athena, there's another way to unmute and it's pressing down on what bar? The space bar, I just brought her in as a panel. Let's just see if she could, sometimes with an older version of Zoom, that the controls don't work as well. So I'm gonna try this way. Thank you. Phyllis, can you unmute, please? You can either do that with the icon or pressing down on the space bar on your computer. I've sent a request to unmute, but it's just not working. I don't think it's going to work. Sean Burke, is this the real Sean Burke? It's going to join us this time. Okay, he is actually here now, but I raised his hand for me. I am on Sean's device and I am still Rita Burke and I still live at 50 Henry Street. And just as an explanation or an aid in understanding how we're invested in all of this, we've been here since the late 60s. We also raised three sons in town as did Mr. Lithgow. And unlike some, we couldn't afford to buy or build in Amherst, so we actually took apart in eight-foot sections of derelict house downtown that was going to be demolished for commercial building. And over the course of 18 months, we were able to resurrect it on a piece of property in Cushman where most people didn't want to live at the time. So I also worked for the town until I retired. I'm a strong proponent of a residency clause, especially for those who are leaders of the town with department heads, but that's an aside. The first thing I want to say is that Kitty touched on the question that prompted me to raise Sean's hand. And I will end with two questions. One, regarding the impact of the Jones Library, renovation, demolition, renovation, whatever you want to call it, on some extrapolated expenses. And the other is why places all over this country and since Sean's an immigrant and we're very familiar with old, old buildings and other places across the ocean, why we have to keep tearing down to build up? We've both been in plenty of buildings that, well, I was in one last year that was built in 1300 and it was outfitted completely and very nicely with all kinds of connectivity and everything else. My first point, I'm sorry, because it is about questions, is that I do have a question regarding Mr. Sarrett's statement about the number of people that the Jones currently serves because I can't imagine how you, and please explain if you can, how you arrived at the number, 227,000, whatever, because there's no clicker at the door, there's no way to tell if a person coming in on Monday was also there on Friday. So is that representative, how many people come through the door or how many actual patrons you have? The other thing is something that I think the man named Tom said, who is our audience? I mean, who are we building or rebuilding or enhancing the building for? Are we addressing the needs of the town slash taxpayers or the people you reference may come into town to make use of it? And if that's the case, have you extrapolated beyond the cost to build, enhance, rehab, to how that's gonna impact the costs to the town people, the taxpayers for additional parking needs, for additional public safety needs, and so on. Something that Tom said really struck me, he used theater, building a theater as one example as far as I know, and I don't pretend to know all that much, but taxpayers don't build theaters. They don't build entertainment organizations to bring people into town. I was under the impression that the Jones Library was here because of and for the people who already live here, not as some showpiece to bring others in. So to boil it down, I'd like to know if you've considered the impact as far as costs go to the taxpayers for the things that will be an offshoot of this plan, if indeed it brings a lot of people in. And also, why can't we retrofit? They do that all over the world, including in buildings, like I said, that were created in the 1300s. Thank you. I appreciate you taking my questions. Thank you for your questions. So let's go on the impact cost payers, the taxpayers. There's several ways to look at that. One is the impact of on your taxes and except when we do a debt exclusion override, there is no increase in taxes except for the standard 2.5% that is allowed. But if you're talking about bringing revenue into town because people come into town and they spend money elsewhere in restaurants that pay taxes, et cetera, so that there's also those kinds of taxes but those are revenues. I mean, the issue of this gets back to the discussion early on and that is can you assess the value and the cost to the town unless somebody else would like to take that one on in a way that we have not already spoken to it. I don't know what else we can say. Okay, I'm not seeing any takers. The issue of retrofitting, I think we're gonna have to go to the, either to Cune Riddle or to the architects. So let me just say a word about retrofitting and then Tony or Elon can speak about it. When I joined the board of trustees but the then trustees were already considering a renovation of the Jones library. They already recognized that the space in the Jones library was inadequate and that the building was in need of repair. We've gotten to the plan that we've gotten to because we believe that the space in the library is inadequate to serve the needs of the town of Amherst. We did a study, we looked at what would happen if we reconfigured the spaces in the library and added no new space. We asked the architects, let's say we didn't want to move beyond the existing footprint but we wanted to accommodate the program, the needs that we had identified and I think Tony referenced this or Jim referenced this earlier. They said you'd have to go out several stories in the existing facility. So we're convinced that the town needs a library which is bigger than the one that we have. People speak with a kind of reverence of the 1993 edition. It was driven by the same recognition that the space in the library was inadequate to the needs. People speak in reverence of the 1993 edition and they talk about in this edition we're going to take down walls. Well, remember the 1993 edition took down the back wall of the Jones Library. So I'll leave it to Tony and Ilan to talk about retrofitting. But I think the thing that we believe is that the existing space in the Jones Library is inadequate to meet the needs of the town and will be inadequate to meet the needs of the town going forward. Tony and Ilan, do you want to talk about retrofitting? So I think to follow what you said, Austin, that is absolutely right. And again, the program that was established was on the town side in the library staff review and frankly the states when LBLC reviews one of the reasons they actually securing the grant for this project is because the state is also evaluating very carefully the needs and the state would not have granted this money had they not foreseen the significant need. And as Austin said, your library is the second like busiest library in the Commonwealth. And so it's a testament to some ways the success of your library notwithstanding the conditions you actually operate within. So the issue of retrofit I think is some ways it's a term it can be misconstrued because we are renovating the existing library and we're adding to it. So it is sort of building on sort of the history that the library itself has witnessed over time. But I think that's a big part of it and when you look at a building we absolutely evaluate what is it capable of? Where is it deficient? And what is it missing in order to address critical needs? And if you want to spark on the building itself from the existing standpoint. Sure, I guess you know, as an architect one of the reasons I'm in this profession is because I love buildings and especially I love old buildings and working on old buildings and certain different countries have had different approaches to how they build and the materials and the longevity of what they're proposing to build. Some, you know you mentioned a building from the 1300s and you can go to European countries and see buildings that have been around for thousands of years. And you can walk around this country and see buildings that were really only intended to be to survive for 25 or 50 years. And I'm not saying that's what the Jones Library is. I think the 1928 original building was built to last 100 years or more. And the 1996 edition, I can't say I haven't really studied that but I do know that in the 60s, 70s and 80s the mentality towards building was more short term. It wasn't thought about as a 50 year or a 100 year building. And now our collective views of how we build are towards longevity. And I do believe that the fine gold Alexander design is about a building that is meant to last for the next 50, if not 100 years. And so I don't think there's a concern that the proposal is a short term proposal. It's a long-term proposal. And as Tony mentioned, they are saving the historical original piece that was well constructed and meant to last for 100 years or more. And I guess the last thing I'll say is that we've changed quite a bit in the last 100 years plus and how we use buildings and the technology that we have requires us to bring older buildings into today's technology. All right. We have two more people with hands up that I'm assuming questions but I wanna make sure that if others want to make public comment not expecting a response to a question that they have an opportunity to do so. So really. I'm sorry, Lynn, may I just interrupt you? Yes. So there's one other issue that was raised in the question and I wanna come back to it and we'll get to the exact precise way in which that is calculated. The library director is not, just wait one second, Alex. Library director is not here to do it but we'll get to the exact way it's calculated, Alex can speak to that. But there was an interesting everybody who walks through the door of the Jones library is a patron. That's why a public library is so important in a town. There isn't a distinction between people walk through the door and then another class of library users called patrons. The library serves the community in many, many ways. It serves the community when people don't have, as the Alex said earlier, access to the internet. They can come into the library and use computers. People can come in the library and sit and read. People can come into the library as some of our homeless population does to have shelter and warmth. And the thing that has driven our thought about this library from the beginning is the idea that the library is one of the most democratic spaces in the community. It's a space that's open to all, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, people who speak English as their native language and people who are learning it. So anyone who comes through the door and our wonderful staff, again, doesn't differentiate between people who come in and then this other group called patrons. Alex. Yeah, I don't know, do we want to take up time for me to explain the number? I can, if that's how... Why don't you explain the number? Okay, sure. So the number that gets referenced, the 51,000. So that's a figure that was referred to in the MVLC application. And that is what we had to quantify what was called a current service population. So because we serve an extensive geographical area beyond Amherst, our circulation figures, which are, as someone said earlier, the eighth largest in the state, include people that beyond our population. So at the time, and everybody knows population in Amherst is a moving target, we have to use a census as a state document. So at the time the current population was 37,819. When you look at our circulation, 35% of our circulation is for people who are non-residents. So you take 35% of our population and then you add that back to our population which gives you a service population of 51,000. In that same application, they request a projected service population. So for the projected, our numbers in Amherst are actually projected to go down to 34,675. And so if you take 35% of that, add it on, that's 47,000 is the number we were using for our projected population. And just to give people, I wanna remind people that we have the five colleges in our area. So many employees of UMass and Amherst College are not Amherst residents, but they certainly come to the library before or after work or on the weekends. And so, you know, the sort of other concept of people who aren't Amherst people, I just wanna remind people, the number of people that do come to our community because they live here, but also because they work here. And just to give an idea, so I'm sure people know that Hadley just completed their library. So Hadley has a town population of 5,000 residents. The annual attendance in their building is 19,000 people. So to give you a sense of what that means, because we talk about this 227,000 people that come into our doors. The Munson Memorial Library has 22,587 people that walk through their door. The North Amherst Library has 21,527 people that walk through their door. So again, that's comparing to 19,000 in Hadley who just spent, you know, what is it, 8.1 million on an 11,000 square foot brand new building. So just hopefully that gives people a little bit better sense of the numbers. And again, as Austin said, you know, it's a 500 page application and it's one question on the application. It's not the totality of how decisions are made. Decisions are made by the program, the building program and the usage. Thank you. I'm gonna ask Rudy Perkins to enter the room, state your name, where you live and your question. Sure, thank you. Can you hear me now? We can, Rudy. Thank you. The mute controls haven't appeared through this, but... Well, first I wanna commend the trustees and the staff and the sustainability committee for a number of important elements in the proposed renovation. First of all, the elimination of all fossil fuels and the total electrification of the building's energy system. That is huge. Dramatically lower planned EUI, assuming the projections are correct. And I'd really want those tested because I think that's probably kind of early to tell. And then inclusion of rooftop photovoltaics in the baseline building plan. So I think we have to... These all point to the direction we have to go with our public buildings, whether they're inside the net zero bylaw or not, in the next eight years, to tip the balance in the climate. This is critical and I commend you all for including that approach. However, I think that all of those things or at least the last two could be pushed more from what I'm looking at. And I had some questions while the architects are here and I have some other comments I'll make offline. But I'm looking primarily at the energy conservation measures, that table there. And I just went through and looked at the payback times to see sort of what's the low hanging fruit. And when I did so, I was kind of shocked at some extremely large payback numbers on some things that in my experience, like triple glazing, have usually not come in with, I think on that one it was a 392 year payback. So I wondered, for example, on triple glazing, that number comes out to $185 a square foot. And let me just say, I raise these numbers because they're gonna help us determine what to include in the project and what not to. And if we have a mistaken assumption about the energy efficiency we can get for a dollar or that we can produce on the rooftop for a dollar, we're gonna make mistaken construction decision or design development decisions and then that's gonna lock us into misdirection. So on that, for example, on the triple glazing, just as an example, that comes out to $185 a square foot of glass. And that number just seems, I haven't bet it, but the GSA did a study a few years ago and came out with like a $32.40 a square foot for installed triple glazing. So is that, for example, including netting out your baseline glazing costs or did those accidentally get double counted? As one example, I just think we need to scrub these numbers really carefully because like the wall insulation, the ad insulation, those all come out with really low savings that make it look like those aren't good things and yet they could have a big EUI consequence. So anyway, just that is one. And then skylights, have we studied whether we get more energy from skylights in terms of energy savings, then we lose in terms of heat and reduced PV on the roof. Like I wonder if that, if we need to downsize the skylights and reconfigure the factory skylight roof projections, the overhang so that we get more PV volume. That a $50,000 installation on PV is a noble first step, but that's like a big residential system. And it seems to me we should be designing our roof to get the maximum PV even though I know net zero energy is probably not at all plausible on this site with this program. So if you could comment on at least the glazing and the PV and whether we could change some configurations to maximize the PV if we indeed build a new addition. And Austin, that's going to be... Tony, I think Tony would be useful to hear from him and Sarah Draper, I know has a lot to say about this. You wanna start with Tony or Sarah? Tony? Actually, I think in terms of the energy report that has been handled by the energy modeling consultants who really did a more deep dive into the project. And I will also again remind folks that the level of information at this page is still on a schematic design. So I think to get into and appreciate the depth of those questions that you've done your homework and have read quite carefully. And then I think that's great. But there are assumptions that are built in as well at this stage of the project in terms of those things. And in terms of the verification of the EUI energy savings, the net zero and all of those elements to get done those will be ongoing evaluations as the project moves forward and much more technical information gets imported because we haven't even really begun to get into the weeds as it were. All of the highly detailed things that I think you're asking about in rightfully so. But I think in terms of the energy report itself, I think on the engineering side, I think they can at least answer some of those technical questions to the extent that they can. Mr. Eric. One before Sarah goes, could I just add one? Go ahead. I think you're right. One of the things the committee did ask for, which was unusual and I congratulate the town and the committee was to do an energy model based on the schematic design. That's a little bit unusual, often skip, that doesn't happen until the design development phase. So we jumped in. So, and I think you're right. Things like the cost of the triple glazing, which is something that the committee wants us to keep on the table during the DD phase as we look at the actual cost of that and redo the energy model. So I think the evolution of this, as Tony said, is going to happen and we will be checking on all those things because the committee wants us to keep them on the table. Sarah? Yeah. So Jim, that's similar to what I was going to say. The way that we developed or not we, the way that architects developed these energy conservation measures in response to the recommendations of the sustainability committee, we were able to kind of break them into categories of, wow, this seems like an easy and really cost-effective thing to do and we should definitely recommend that goes in the project. So things like lighting controls and photovoltaics that you mentioned, another category of this really doesn't seem like it's ever going to be cost-effective. Something like the geothermal heating and cooling system, which would require us to drill a bunch of geothermal wells into center of Amherst. And then there was these things that ended up in the middle of more information is needed. So stuff like the triple-pane glazing. Because we also thought, hey, that looks really high for something that doesn't seem to be, you know, triple-pane glazing is no longer cutting edge. Why is that so expensive? So that's the kind of category of thing that we kept in to hopefully, as Tony said, be developed in the next phase to really put a pinpoint on how much triple-pane glazing might be cost-effective. Maybe we only do it on the north side of the building where it's colder and kind of get a better cost-effectiveness that way. I don't know if that helps to answer that question. I'll just I'll do a little bit of anecdotal thing. We have recently designed it's completely different projects, but we had recently completed the Lowell Justice Center. And at that time, it was asked to be one of the three demonstrations, Z&E, projects in the Commonwealth. And this was 15 years ago. And in the process of evolving that design, of course, things evolved. And a lot of things changed because of the exact things Sarah's mentioned. Technologies improved. Energy modeling definitely improved. And we were able to advance the design. And we started out with certain assumptions at that time. But as the project evolved and began to get really much more developed, then we continued to refine. And I think the questions that you're asking are exactly the kind of questions we would be asking as well. And we want to make sure that we're scrubbing it carefully. And we're not missing things. And if something doesn't prove to bear out, then we didn't know that. And be honest about that. So we're not trying to polyanitish. As you well know, it's a complicated, designing especially buildings that involve not only new additions, but existing buildings. So these are all really critical questions. I think we're very excited that I think that the library and the community is really looking to do this. And for all the reasons that you cited at the beginning in terms of environment impact, carbon footprint, reduction of energy demand, and fossil fuel reduction in reliance. So these are all things that we are striving for to get to the highest level that we believe we can within the constraints we have. Rudy, I would just also go ahead. Thank you. We had the sustainability committee had the same question. Should we have a roof that has more PV or more solar panels on the roof versus having these skylights for extra daylighting? So that is a question that we posed to the design team and based on both energy efficiency of having natural daylighting in the middle of the day so that we can reduce reliance on lights around electric lights and from just an ambiance perspective of being in the building. Because as you mentioned, we're never going to get to enough solar panels on the roof of the Jones library to completely cover our energy needs. We're always going to need to pull from hopefully some other solar panels elsewhere in Amherst. It's not necessarily worth compromising the experience of having more natural daylighting in the building to get those few extra solar panels. So that was the line that we drew. Thank you for that. But I also just want to recognize that Rudy was one of the architects of our zero energy bylaw. And so, and he knows his business. He does. He does. He really does. I appreciate your questions. Jeff Lee, please end of the room. State your name and where you live. Hi, I'm actually using my husband's computer. This is Carol Gray. And I live at 815 Southeast Street. I'm very concerned that the cart is before the horse here. I think there should be a wide public survey to find out whether the public really wants this project to go forward. Because I would guess that if you pull most people in this town during this era of COVID and during the time when we really need new schools and you ask them, what does the town need the most? Almost no one would say to tear down a good chunk of the Jones and rebuild. I was the chair of the long range planning committee of the Jones library. I was a former trustee. And the 2006 to 2010 long range plan had extensive surveying of the public done. We had listening sessions throughout town. We had an electronic survey, a handwritten survey. No one said that we needed to renovate the Jones. There was a lot of support for expanding the North Amherst library. Particularly since the North Amherst library project is actually starting to get off the ground. That's what we should focus on. Not this huge project that from what I see everyday people don't want. By the way, on the issue of the North Amherst library when you do that renovation back when I was a library trustee I had a geothermal estimate done. And for only $19,000 they were willing to sync one geothermal well which would heat the whole building which is currently on oil. So when you do the expansion hopefully that happens you should just go geothermal. Anyway, I also am very concerned that this project would be destroying the Woodbury room at least the configuration that I first learned about which was I think at least $25,000 and it was a donation. It was a bequest. I don't think that we should take large sums of money from the public and then build a room that we tear down with less than 10 years later. I'm also very concerned that this is not sustainable in the sense that the 1996 edition was only recently paid off. To be tearing that down when you just got finished paying it off is the opposite of sustainability. And whether you're triple glazing windows I think this is really you need to find out if the public wants this. And it's my understanding that you might be considering doing an override for the school which of course there's huge public support for but to take money to not pull the public about something that's very controversial because you don't wanna find out the answer and to not do an override for the library because you think it'll fail that's not the way to handle our money responsibly. If there's an extra 20 million around the override for the school should be less. You wanna raise taxes as little as possible particularly now during COVID when many people are without jobs and we're pricing people out of town with our taxes. We absolutely don't wanna take on a huge capital project that has other than the board of trustees and a few people and the architects and the consultants from what I hear it doesn't have much support and there's got actually a huge amount of opposition. I'd also say that we should be looking at how we're going to pull the public on what they prefer for capital projects. There are the schools, there's the DPW at one point there's a fire station and the library the library seems to be the least critical of any of these things and the one with perhaps the greatest opposition. I don't understand why you're talking about triple glazing windows without first finding out does the public even want this? Because, and I just don't think it's fair to do the override on the issue that has huge support so that then you can take out of savings for the thing that has little support that just doesn't seem fair to the public. And I urge you to step back and to really assess whether there's public demand for this and whether it's sustainable and that we did an extensive survey for the long range planning committee less than a decade ago and there was no support. Nobody even talked about wanting this. I get that in the past decade people have now said they want it at least on this committee but that wasn't what we heard from the public at all and get the North Amherst library rebuilt that's a great project. They have no community room in North Amherst no public restroom. They really need to have that addition. That's where you should focus because the survey we did back for the long range plan said that there was overwhelming support for the North Amherst library expansion but you're presumably representing the interests of the public but I haven't heard that those interests have been properly surveyed. And I think if you did do a proper survey you'd find there's overwhelming opposition and this is the worst time to do a $20 million take from the town's coffers. It's the worst time. So I hope that you step back and vote no on this. Thank you for your comments. And in that I did not particularly your question. So we're moving on to just general public comment if there continues to be a question or two here we may be able to handle that. Judith Ludy, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Am I muted? You are Judith. Okay, yes. It's Judith Ludy and I live at 36 Pelham Road in Amherst. I'm a relative newcomer. I've only been here about 43 years now but my former husband was one of the old and original citizens of the town having been born and brought up on Northeast Street and went to the Northeast Street School. But I have some questions, if I may. These are really for the council. It's very interesting to see both the presentation that was available and also to have all these folks here tonight to answer questions about this project. And my question to the council is will we also have an opportunity to see a presentation about what is going to be proposed for a new elementary school and the way that's going to be put forward we're gonna have the same kind of background and an overview to ask questions and discuss. That's my question when I'll just get my questions and then let you answer them. The second is has the council, and this sort of picks up I guess on what Carol was saying made a recommendation or a general sort of, or is maybe, let me put it a little differently. The way the four major projects are listed in order it looks as though library is sort of at the top of the list but I'm wondering is that the council's priority or is this a matter of timing because of a grant possibility or something of that sort? And then my third question is concerning the tax override which seems to put the school project sort of in the bullseye of that. Is there a way to reorganize the finances at this point so that the school could be put into some, if the council and the public approve position to get started as a priority and not have to go through an override so that maybe other parts of the four step major expense could be in that category rather than the schools? Make sure I understand the last question but let me start with the first two, okay? This is the first capital project with this level of detail that has come before this council or any other body since we built a police station. So whether or not we bring other projects forward with the same level of detail the same level of seeking public comment, et cetera is up to future councils. None of those projects, other projects at this point are ready to bring forward. So I wanna say that I believe the trustees have worked hard to bring this forward and at the council and the town have worked with them to get to these level of presentations. And it was the decision of the council to have these kinds of public forums and the ongoing question and answers that you can get both on the town website and on the library website. So that's one way of saying it's yet to be seen how the future projects are handled and they will not come up at this level of detail during this council's tenure. The second question is the order of the four major projects. We really have no control over this particular one. It has been in the making for a number of years and happens to be coming up first. As you know, there was an opportunity to go forward with a school a couple of years ago and the town at that point chose not to go forward. And so the school got kind of kicked backwards. The school like this project also is subject to and the availability of a state grant. Both the library has a state grant option. Two counselors who are here with us tonight, Kathy Shane and Steve Schreiber are on the school committee, elementary school building committee, along with a variety of other people. And they report regularly on the updates of where the school is. But the school will not even be ready with a sense of how much will it cost or what will the design look like for a couple of years. They're just getting now around to not around, but they're working very hard and they are getting ready to put out the RFP for an owner's project manager, such as you've seen here tonight with Ken and who is the owner's project manager for the library. And the whole project from beginning to end for a new school working with these mass school building authority takes a lot of time to do that. The mass school building authority takes approximately six to seven years. And then the DPW and the fire, unfortunately at this point, there is no public money available except for what the town has. And the real issue for DPW and fire has been to build the fire station in the best location south of town is to build it where the present DPW is. The present DPW building is not exactly a gem either. It's a hundred years old and it's falling apart. So the issue now is finding a place to move DPW to are finding an alternative option on a temporary basis and the town manager has been charged by the town council to do just exactly that. And so we're waiting for a report for him to come back on that project. But the order of the projects that we are faced with right now is presently dictated pretty much by the fact that there are two sizable grants from the state, one for the library and one for the schools that we are in queue for and we're working hard to find out what the public thinks. So I think that's the, and the council by the way has made no final decisions on any of them. And so I think that answered your questions but I wanna make sure, Judas. Yes, just to some extent, I do have more commentary that I will share with the council at another time but that you've answered the question. Thank you. Please do and you are always welcome as is anybody who send us an email with additional comment to town council at amherstma.gov. We have a few more comments. Anne Harrington, please enter the room. Where you live. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, we can. My name is Anne Harrington. We live on Van Meter Drive and my spouse and I have lived in Amherst since 1990 and we are regular patrons at the Jones Library. We are supportive of the library project. I look at support for the library the same as I look at support for our schools. While we have no children, I'm happy to have my tax dollars support both as both are vital for the present and future for all Amherst residents. I certainly know that there are a number of expensive capital projects facing the town. And as I understand it, the library at the minimum will have to put out funds for needed repairs. And as do all Amherst residents, I want our tax dollars to be well spent and borrowing decisions to be prudent. Spending money only on the needed repairs for the Jones Library is not a wise expenditure when a comparable amount of money, we could have a renovated and expanded library that meets the needs of all residents today and in the future. And it seems to me that it's a library that's in scale with what the town needs. If only the repairs are done, the library would still not be fully accessible, would still not be energy efficient, would still have a dysfunctional layout both for users and staff and would still have insufficient space for children and teenagers, special collections, public gatherings and ESL and citizenship classes. I do not agree with those who say that being able to host all of these functions is unnecessary. A library should be a central civic space, particularly for a range of literacy functions that serve, excuse me, all residents, encouraging and making possible free access to books, other media and even the English language and offering means of communicating via the internet. Still, even if we felt that this range of services were not important, which I do, the repair option would still leave the town with an energy inefficient and dysfunctional building that is not even large enough for current uses. The trustees and the Jones library staff had done due diligence over a decade in assessing needs, having the library's infrastructure and functions thoroughly evaluated, developing a sound and exciting renovation and expansion plan and certainly involving the public and inviting us in all along and devising a prudent funding plan that not only requires from the town an amount comparable to what repairs would cost as it capitalizes on a substantial state grant endowment and donor contributions. That I think is a wise way to spend town dollars with a renovation and expansion. We would have a library that honors historic aspects of the present building, is environmentally sound and energy efficient and that has a space and infrastructure to serve all citizens now and into the future. So for those reasons, I strongly urge the town council to support this plan. Thank you. And thanks for your comments. We're going to invite Claire Cook into the room and please state your name and where you live. Hi, my name is Claire Cook. I live at Kendrick Place in Amherst, but I'm speaking tonight in my role as the use services coordinator at the Jones library. I'd like to share just a few of the ways in an expanded library would benefit my ability to fully serve our community. First, I'd like to talk about just how hard it is to keep an eye on the kids room at any given time. The biggest issue I face is the fact that the youth services department is currently located on three different floors. And when I'm sitting at the youth services circulation desk, I am not able to see any of the rooms because the desk currently faces a wall. I do not have sight lines into the picture book room where kids play or into the chapter book room where the kids public computers are located. It only takes a second for a little kid to run out of the kids area through one of the four different exits on our main level of the kids space. I can't even begin to count the number of times a caregiver has realized a kid is missing and the kids room staff rushes in all directions looking for them. We have found little kids lost in the adult non-fiction stacks in the basement, upstairs in the Burnett gallery, riding one of the elevators or wandering right out the front door which gives us all a really big scare. Having a more open and contained children's room with sight lines and one entrance and exit that we can see would be an immense relief helping to ensure the safety of our youngest patrons. One of our most popular circulation services in the kids room is that of our themed displays. We work hard to provide a curated selection of titles for patrons to grab when they're looking for suggestions or if they're short on time or busy keeping an eye on little ones. We stick these displays wherever we can. However, this too has been a struggle. Because there is no place to park strollers, they often end up in front of the limited display space making it inaccessible. We try to stick books on top of shelves that are often too high for children to reach and obscure sight lines even more. We face this issue throughout the youth collection. Although we do provide steps tools, the bookshelves in our non-fiction and middle grade sections are so high that most kids cannot reach the books on the top shelves. Also it is important to note that many sections are not wheelchair accessible. Having space to park strollers, space for popular displays and space to accommodate shelving that our patrons can reach and move through easily is absolutely necessary. Thank you so much for your time everyone. Thank you Claire. Mia Cabana, please enter the room. State your name and where you live. Lynn, may I just ask a procedural question before Mia speaks? Sure. We have experts, consultants who generously agreed to join the meeting and I wonder whether we're at the point at which we could release them if they wanted to part? Are we beyond the point where we need to have them here to answer questions? We also clearly have the opportunity to collect questions if they would like to leave at this point. And we can then forward those questions through the library to them. OK, well again to Sarah and Tony and Jim and Ken if you want to hang in and listen, we're grateful. And if you want to depart, we would understand. So thank you, Lynn. Great. OK, Mia Cabana. Thank you. My name is Mia Cabana. I am speaking in my capacity as head of youth services at the Jones Library. I am not a resident of Amherst. I'd like to speak briefly about technology and programming in the youth services department and the ways in which our current building is preventing us from serving our community. The infrastructure of our building was not designed for modern computer use. There are inadequate computers in the kids section with only four computers. Groups often elect to go to the adults section. Even if just a few of those computers are in use and a couple other kids come in, we might be short of how many would serve a group of students just working on a homework project. As Claire just mentioned, computers are out of sight of our cirque desk and other sections of the kids room. It's harder for us as staff to offer help. It's also hard for a caregiver to keep an eye on multiple kids if one is using a computer and another needs to use another part of the collection. Computers are required to be blocked off during storytime programs because the room with computers R is the same space that we use for storytime programming. We can't have a storytime or kids working over the noise of computer use or storytime. It's just a real conflict of use in that space. There are inadequate outlets for laptops in the whole kids section, which is a challenge for caregivers who are trying to use their laptops while also watching kids. It's made even more difficult by the other security challenges, which Claire just references. Site lines and seating options become even more limited when they are restricted to our outlets. This also applies to phone charging and anecdotally, my office is a little nook in the back of the kids section. I often find people back there because that's a place where outlets are. It's just a real struggle to meet the needs of families using that section in particular, the kids section for technology. I also wanted to mention the limitations of our Wi-Fi, which Hank alluded to earlier in the meeting. The rooms where we offer kids programs are some of the trickiest in the building for reception, the craft room in the basement, the second floor, the teen nook. And they are the most remote corners of the building. They've been retrofitted with many routers and signal boosters, but it's hard to plan the kind of technology-infused programming that we strive to offer in a 21st century library when we can't feel confident that there will be a strong enough internet signal to deliver the resources we've prepared for kids. That segues into thinking about programming. Our only designated kids programming space is in the basement down a steep set of stairs hard for little ones to navigate, impossible if you have a stroller. It's so tucked away that staff often leave our circulation desk to help patrons navigate as it is not visible or even pointable from our desk. It's a small capacity room. It doubles as our storage room for kids projects and our staff workroom. And despite of our best efforts to make the craft room a brighter, more inviting space, it is still a rather gloomy, charmless basement. Staff can't be in a program space and be helpful in any other capacity. The places where we have programs are so far away from our desk and our other collection spaces that you can't serve as backup if it gets busy at our desk because the program spaces require you to be decentralized. Some of the alternatives that we've tried are using the chapter book room for story time. That, as I mentioned, makes our computers in that part of the collection inaccessible while a program is happening. The Woodbury room, and I'm sure some of my colleagues will speak to the competition for this space. It's our best bet for technology usage, but it's also the only space accessible after hours. It's hard to host a mid-sized program that falls between the 15 people who have it comfortably in the craft room and the Woodbury room capacity, which is closer to 100. So much staff time is dedicated to setting up and breaking down programs no matter what space we use. Our lack of designated programming space for kids and teens also limits our ability to partner with other groups in our community who would like to meet at the library. I have so much respect for the way our community uses the library and for the work that all of my colleagues do to, in fact, overcome some of these obstacles in our building. I really look forward to a vision of a library that showcases our efforts rather than providing the challenges that we just spoke about overcoming. Thanks for your time. Thank you very much. I'm going to ask Celia, Cindy, don't do anything yet. Janet, John, and Lisa, who I understand our staff as well, to please submit your written comments to us so that we maintain the opportunity for the public to speak. We are definitely interested in hearing your comments, but we'd really like to keep this as a public forum. So are there other people from the residents of Amherst and the public that would like to speak at this time? Lisa, if you are a staff member at the library, I'm going to ask that you raise your, take your hand down. But if you are not, please leave it up. OK, Lisa, please come into the room. State your name and where you live. I am a staff member, so. OK, and I will ask. Make sure that we, first of all, respect the hour and also make sure that you submit your comments to us. We are very interested in how staff use or find challenging to use the existing library space. It's educational for all of us, but we want to make sure that this is, in fact, a public forum for the residents of the town that are not library. Are there other comments from the town? Yes, Marcy Sala, please enter the room. State your name and where you live. Hi, I'm Marcy Sala. I live in Pine Street in Amherst. I just want to thank everyone for all the work they've done on this project. I began a little skeptical years ago when it started to get talked about. I then spent a year in Boulder, Colorado, working on my graduate degree. And there was a beautiful library there that I spent so much time in and felt so inspired by. And the pictures that I saw in your presentation really reminded me of that. And it was a place where every constituent of the area spent time in. I actually got a little teary the last time I dropped my books off there and left. It was just a really inspiring space. And I think the library trustees and staff have done a really awesome job of driving home the programmatic needs of the library and the need for this renovation and expansion. And I'm really interested in what was referred to as the spin-off effect. And an earlier speaker said, this is not the time to be considering this. I think it's exactly the time to be considering this. I think our downtown is really suffering, as we all know. Somebody mentioned, do we want to be a city or a town? There's all kinds of towns that have a meandering wonderful aspect to them. I'm from the Berkshires, Lenox, Great Barrington Stockbridge. Our town is not a meandering kind of town. People talk about the lovely shops. And I go to those lovely shops, but I'll go to the Hanyan and then I'll get in my car and I'll go elsewhere. I don't meander from one place to another. And I think during this time that we're talking about downtown revitalization with the North Common Project, the Kendrick Park Project, there's a real opportunity to use the Jones and the spin-off effect as a real catalyst for that revitalization. And I can imagine people coming to the Jones and then going out, let's hope Go Berry comes back, going down to Kendrick Park to the playground, stopping at a restaurant. Who knows what other kinds of shops might pop up in our town because of the Jones being a driver of economic vitality. So I really encourage counselors to think about these projects in connection to each other. And if it seems financially viable, I trust our finance department and our finance committee to really give a careful look of that. If it's financial viable, then I am a really huge supporter and thank everyone for their efforts. Thank you for your comments, Marcy, and welcome back to Amherst. Thanks for other comments public at this time. While we're waiting to see that I want to mention two events and they're both on Saturday, one event is actually being conducted by Sean McGonough and it's to demonstrate the use of the financial model for the capital projects. And that is at nine o'clock and you can find the link for that event on the community calendar on the town website. And then the other one is another public forum on the library. We will have some of the consultants that have been able to join us tonight but not all of them and the trustees that have been able to join us tonight as well. And that is at two o'clock and the link to that is also in the town's website and is available on the meetings calendar, if you will. Are there any other public comments at this time? OK, then I'm going to suggest, Austin, that you adjourn your group. I don't think you need to take roll to do that. OK, I think the library trustees, we might adjourn. We have nods and smiles, nods and smiles all around. So the library trustees are adjourned. Thank you, Lynn. Absolutely. I don't ask for nods and smiles. They usually just clap when I say we're up. We're a far more civilized group. Thank you for all of you in the audience that have joined us today and thank you for the counselors who have taken out yet another evening. We are adjourned.