Money Arrives For Town’s Library

     George Comeau, chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, had high praise for the Falmouth Public Library renovation project at the board of commissioner’s meeting yesterday, held in Falmouth.
     “This is absolutely a textbook project that will influence all others to come,” he said to a crowd gathered in the library’s new Hermann Foundation Meeting Room. The commissioners then voted to award $95 million in grants to 31 communities, including Falmouth, toward library construction projects.
     Falmouth received $3 million toward its project, which was completed this spring.
     Falmouth Assistant Town Manager Heather B. Harper said the money comes just in the nick of time, because the town had bonded the entire $11 million cost of the library project but was hoping the state grant would cover a portion of it.
     If the money did not come this year, Falmouth taxpayers would have started to pay the state share through taxes, Ms. Harper said, but now that will be averted.
     “This keeps us whole,” she said.
     Besides the $3 million grant from the state, library renovation funds also came from $1.8 million raised privately from the newly organized Falmouth Library Foundation, and $200,000 from Community Preservation Act funds. Of the rest, more than $6 million came from a property tax override, a capital exclusion, approved by Town Meeting and voters at large in May 2006.
     Mr. Comeau praised Falmouth’s “leap of faith” for going ahead with the construction project with the assumption that state funds would be forthcoming even while the town was “just a name on a waiting list.”
     He recalled that Marilyn G. Zacks, chairman of the Falmouth Board of Library Trustees at the time, told him someone commented at Falmouth Town Meeting, “good luck getting that money from the state.” But he noted that the library commissioners came through with the promised funds.
     Leslie A. Morrissey, library director, praised members of the library staff, the library foundation and the Friends of Falmouth Public Library, as well as the architects, contractor, town administration, members of the Falmouth Building Committee, and state legislators.
     She pointed out that the foundation had a goal of raising $1.5 million and ended up raising $1.8 million “and it’s still coming in.” The money will be used for an endowment and for future capital projects at the library branches in North Falmouth and East Falmouth.
     The renovated library opened on March 17 with a major expansion that was the third for the library. It was originally constructed in 1901 as a memorial to Civil War soldiers and sailors. The addition in 1968 added rooms on either side of the building, and the addition in 1978 added a wing to the east side. The latest addition adds 8,000 square feet to the structure, brining the entire building to 40,000 square feet.
     But one of the main goals of the renovation, Ms. Morrissey explained, was to make the library more efficient by moving all the staff work spaces closer together, expanding the children’s rooms, and adding more community space in the form of meeting rooms. What resulted is a building “that is really the centerpiece of the town of Falmouth,” Ms. Morrissey said.
     Another big adjustment for the library was reopening and restoring the front entrance on the Main Street side of the building, which meant renovating the historic dome and entryway and reorienting the library’s spaces toward Main Street. “We are now 300 Main Street, not 123 Katharine Lee Bates Road,” Ms. Morrissey said proudly.
     Falmouth’s project and all the others on the list were granted an additional 15 percent of state funding to account for inflation that has occurred in the almost two years the projects have been waiting for the grants.
     Recognizing the financial difficulties many communities are having in tough economic times, the library commissioners announced that they will give the towns additional time to have their library projects approved by their citizens, giving them 17 months instead of six months to generate local funding for the projects through overrides or other means.
     The library commissioners also announced that following initiatives promoted by the governor, they will set aside additional money for communities that get their library buildings LEED certified as “green” buildings, using the national standard that has to do with elements like low-voltage lighting, air quality improvements, low-flow toilets, and other environmentally friendly elements.
     Other Upper Cape libraries that received grants were Mashpee, which received $382,000, on top of a $2.5 million grant the town has already received toward its library project. The Jonathan Bourne Public Library in Bourne received $2.8 million.
     Besides a large contingent from Falmouth, there were representatives attending yesterday’s meeting from the communities of Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, Cohasset, Plymouth and Brockton, whose libraries are all on the funding list.