SAXTONS RIVER — On Nov. 13, in a joint meeting, the Rockingham Selectboard and the Rockingham Free Public Library Board of Trustees discussed the costs incurred in renovating the library, a project which has just been completed.
First, let me say that by common consensus the town now has a beautiful library building, one of four Carnegie-endowed libraries in Vermont. It is a library the whole community can be very proud of.
Of course, this comes at a price to the taxpayers. We have had some huffing and puffing from some taxpayers, notably the chair of the library Board of Trustees, about project cost overruns. But what are the facts?
As I understand it, the original project cost was estimated at very close to $3 million. To pay for it, a bond, also close to $3 million, was issued by the town.
What has been the financial outcome? The cost of the project as of mid-November amounted to $3,042,245.15, to be precise. This leaves an estimated cost overrun of around $153,000. While there are some additional bills to come in, these are unlikely to exceed about $10,000, and there will likely be some miscellaneous offsetting revenue.
Of the $153,000 projected overrun, about $65,000 is for new shelving for the library, which was never included in the original project scope, since it had been hoped that the old shelving could have been retained. In the end, this proved to be not possible.
Also, there are some additional costs attributable to the renovation project, arising from some “free” services provided by the town's Highway Department. These costs should not exceed about $10,000, which, of course, has ultimately to be paid by the taxpayers.
Thus, the bottom-line “true” deficit will likely be around $110,000 at most. This represents about a 3.6-percent cost overrun.
Taking into account the bankruptcy of the main contractor when the project was only halfway through and all the ensuing negotiations with unpaid subcontractors, it is to me quite astounding that the final cost overrun is so small.
No thanks are due, I might add, to the Library Board of Trustees, some of whom still carp about cost overruns and whose meddling throughout the project only made matters worse.
Our thanks go, first and foremost, to “Chip” Stearns, the municipal manager, who has made superhuman (I rarely if ever use this term) efforts to bring this project to a successful conclusion. He was strongly supported by the Selectboard -in particular, its chairperson, Tom MacPhee - as well as the library staff and many volunteers.
Throughout the many months of renovation, an extremely stressful period, the staff were ably led by its library director, Célina Houlné. While successfully managing the unnecessary and costly temporary transfer of library services to another location, insisted upon by some trustees during the period of renovation, she also succeeded in achieving an operating surplus in the library's finances.
Her reward? She got fired by the trustees.