Missed due date doesn’t hurt Madison library

Listen to this article

By Adam Wise

Close, apparently, is close enough for the Madison Public Library in its attempt to raise $4 million for the reconstruction of its main branch downtown.

Madison Mayor Paul Soglin in spring set a Sept. 5 deadline for the Madison Public Library Foundation to raise half of its expected contribution to the project. As of Tuesday, the foundation was $800,000 short.

Soglin said $3.2 million was enough to keep the Central Library project on schedule.

“When we said, ‘You had to have that money by early September,'” he said, “we immediately put the screws to them.”

The foundation felt the pressure but does not intend to remain short of its goal, said Jennifer Collins, the foundation’s executive director. There is more than $2.5 million in pending donation requests to potential donors.

“I know of several hundred thousand in gifts I have received verbal commitments on,” she said. “We are very conservative about what we count as a gift, so we only count things where we have written documentation.”

Construction, which will include fixing the building’s leaky roof and crumbling exterior, is scheduled to start Jan. 30, and Alderman Larry Palm, who serves on the Public Library Board, said he expected that schedule to work.

“The people who will truly weigh in have not really weighed in it,” he said. “This, in a way, is the literary civic duty of the decade. This is a new Central Library for the largest city in the region. I can’t imagine foundations would not take our request seriously.”

Donors are aware of the libraryís need to raise money, Collins said, but she didn’t use Soglin’s Labor Day deadline to push for money now.

“I would say fundraising is more of an art than a science,” she said. “You have to be very respectful of the process donors go through to make major philanthropic decisions, and I think that’s something the mayor’s office also understands.”

The foundation originally was scheduled to contribute $8 million toward the $29.5 million project, with the city paying $17 million in general obligation bonds. The remaining $4.5 million would be covered in federal new market tax credits.

But that formula likely will change.

Madison’s engineering division was scheduled to introduce a resolution Tuesday night to the Common Council that would increase the city’s contribution to $21 million because Madison did not get the tax credits.

If the city approves the change — a vote is expected Sept. 20 — the foundation’s contribution would increase to $8.5 million to cover the difference, said Bryan Cooper, a city architect.

The uncertainty surrounding money for the project has delayed the city’s publishing a request for bids, Cooper said. Madison was scheduled to request bids in August for work involving hazardous materials. That has not happened

If the council approves the resolution to increase borrowing, Cooper said, the hazardous materials bid will go out Sept. 30. The project’s general construction bid date would be delayed by two weeks until Oct. 7.

“You don’t want to send people through the bidding process and then find out that the project is going to be delayed,” Cooper said. “It’s kind of difficult. There’s a lot of plates spinning.”

Soglin acknowledged he likely made some heads spin at the foundation with his deadline, but, he said, the organization rose to the challenge.

“We weren’t trying to make life miserable,” Soglin said, “but we forced them to raise money quicker than they had planned.”