Landfill revenue helps enable new library

Revenue generated by Granby’s landfill is helping the town move forward with plans for a new $4.7 million library without borrowing money or raising taxes.

In late October, Town Meeting appropriated roughly $861,000 from Granby’s Building Stabilization Fund, which is financed by fees that residents from neighboring communities pay to dump trash at the town landfill. The money from the town, about 18 percent of the library project’s cost, was a condition of receiving a $2.6 million grant from the Massachusetts Public Library Construction Program, according to Town Administrator Christopher Martin.

A former Granby resident made a donation of nearly $900,000 to the project, and other fund-raising brought the community close to its goal.

The landfill itself – which also provides revenue for the town’s large equipment and vehicle needs – is slated to close in early 2013.

Had the money from the landfill not been available, the town likely would have sought to raise the $861,000 through a Proposition 2½ debt exclusion, according to Martin. A much-larger debt exclusion for a proposed junior-senior high school in Granby was defeated in 2010.

The new library, expected to open in the fall of 2013, will be far larger than the current one, which was built in 1917. At that time, Granby had fewer than 1,000 residents, less than one-sixth its current population.

Efforts to build a new library date back to 1973, according to Virginia Snopek, chair of the Granby Library Board of Trustees.