From TA report 11/11

WHERE DOES THIS PROJECT STAND?
The state grant award of $2,100,000 from the Mass Library Board of Commissioner (MBLC) currently must be accepted or declined by the town by January 31, 2012. The town must approve funding of $1,400,000 to accept the grant. Another town has already secured a waiver with the MBLC beyond the January 31, 2012 deadline for acceptance. The waiver grants them until their annual town meeting to secure funding.
If the $1,400,000 funding is not approved at some point the town looses the $2,100,000 state grant funding and this project is dead. Overhauling the project size is not an option for this grant round. If the project was overhauled, shrunk down for a new grant round, it could be 5 to 10 years from now. There is no guarantee a new application would be selected in the competitive process. Only 8 out of 33 projects were awarded in this grant round. The full process starting over with the program development, meetings, public forums, and writing of the grant application could take 5 to 10 years to get to the point we are today. And that is dependent on the state funding another grant round.
Tuesday’s vote was the vote to fund the $1,400,00 for this library project with a debt exclusion, a temporary addition to the tax rate of the declining bond payments. The vote on October 25th was to appropriate $1,400,000 for this library project. The special town meeting vote on October 25th passed with a 2/3 majority. A 2/3 majority was required to pass it. The debt exclusion election on November 8, 2011 failed 423 to 382. A 50% majority was required to pass it.
The four-year span of open forums and requests for input from the public came to an end when the application was submitted last January, 2010. There will be no financial assistance in building an overhauled, shrunk down new library from the state for a minimum of 5 to 10 years, and that would be dependent on a new application being approved by Mass Library Board of Commissioners (MBLC).