Still well short of their goal to raise $4 million from private contributions to expand and renovate the Edgartown Public Library, town library trustees turned to the selectmen for help this week, asking them to place an article on the annual town meeting warrant for the money.
The trustees need to raise $4 million by next June in order to receive a matching grant from the Massachusetts board of library commissioners. To date trustees have raised just under $750,000.
Edgartown Public Library children’s librarian Deborah MacInnis counts herself as an astronomy fan. On her desk is a color photograph of Comet Hale Bopp which she shot herself years ago. And she has fond memories of getting the late Edgartown resident Maxamina Mello up before dawn to see Halley’s Comet in 1986, knowing that the 85-year-old woman had seen it as a youngster 70 years before.
But it took much more than enthusiasm for Mrs. MacInnis to become the NASA-certified guardian of some bona fide moon rocks.
Edgartown Library is raffling off a basket of Valentine treats on Friday, Feb. 13 at 4 p.m. Tickets are $3 each, two tickets for $5, or ten tickets for $20. The tickets make nice Valentine’s Day gifts themselves, and sales will support the library expansion program.
On the strength of four entries, the Edgartown library won five state awards for excellence last month from the Massachusetts Library Association.
At the association’s annual convention in Springfield, the library won awards in every category it had entered, plus a special statewide honor as well.
The annual contest involves academic, public, school and special libraries across the state. Small communities like Edgartown compete against much larger urban facilities like those of Newton and Cambridge.
At a meeting Monday, the Edgartown Library building committee discussed three early-stage construction options for a new town library: renovating the Carnegie building and adjacent Warren House; renovating the old Edgartown School, and renovating only the Carnegie building with a small addition on the back. The last two options would include the sale of the Warren House.
The Edgartown Library building committee hit yet another bump in the road this week when the town historic district commission said it will not allow the Warren House to be torn down.
The building committee’s latest plan calls for razing the historic colonial-era house and replacing it with a parking lot for the expanded and renovated library at the Carnegie building on North Water street
But after meeting on Tuesday with the historic district commission, that plan, like others before it, now must be scrapped.
The Edgartown Library building committee voted yesterday to abandon plans for a new North Water street site in favor of demolishing the old Edgartown School and starting anew.
An unexpected spike in project costs for the Edgartown Public Library expansion project left library trustees scrambling for a solution this week, as a plan to ask town voters for $4 million was scrapped when it was discovered that the actual need would be significantly higher.
At a Wednesday meeting of the Edgartown financial advisory committee, library trustees said that they would need closer to $5.4 million from the town by this coming June to secure a $4.6 million grant from the Massachusetts board of library commissioners.
Felicia Cheney, director of the Edgartown Free Public Library, will resign from her position at the top of the stacks, she announced at a Monday library trustees meeting.
“It was the right time for me to do it,” Ms. Cheney said when reached by phone Tuesday. The time frame for her last day on the job will be discussed at the Dec. 19 trustees meeting, she said.
