Surprise! all funds for library expansion are on hand

That realization came to pass Oct. 18 when city officials and the library board’s construction committee met.

“They had partial knowledge of the funds we have,” explained city manager Clarence Bryant following the city council’s work session last Thursday. “The best numbers say we’re right at it (the $583,000 match requirement) or about $10,000 over it.”

“It was a matter of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing,” said Alan Harkness, director of the Piedmont Regional Library. “It became clear we were doing pretty well.”

The money is in several different accounts, said accounting manager James Wascher. For example, the city has a money market account of about $30,000 holding funds for the project. It has $106,600 in Jackson County special purpose local option sales tax money as well, and projects that when the current SPLOST runs out June 30 (the next round, approved by voters Nov. 3, begins July 1) that total will be $123,000-$124,000. Another account holding SPLOST money from Commerce amounts to $27,500. In addition, the city has about $5,200 in donations from city utility customers made donations while paying their utility bills.

“The Commerce Library Foundation had $30,000 I was unaware of,” Harkness noted.

Meanwhile, the library holds other donations and pledges from its fund-raising efforts. That includes a pledge of $150,000 from Dr. Narasimhulu Neelagaru and a pledge of $50,000 from the Hardman family.

“We’ve got a meeting coming up next week to discuss the money again, to make sure everybody is aware of where it is, what accounts there are, to get us into construction,” Bryant said. “We’ve got to have all that money in the construction account by the end of the year. Everything has got to be in there before we receive a dime.”

The state sold the bonds for its $1.5 million part of the project in mid-October, Harkness said. They became available for use at the end of the month.

Once all the money is in the construction account, the next major step is to get the design finalized.
Bryant said he expects the project to take at least 18 months. One of the obstacles is that the library will remain open during the construction process.

“That’s going to slow it down, because we can’t close it and relocate it,” Bryant told the city council. “We’ve got to work around it. It’s more costly too.”