The Willie Morris Library is open after being closed off and on for a week and a half because of air conditioning problems.
Jeanne Williams, executive director of the Jackson Hinds Library System, said on July 3 that the city of Jackson had responded, repairs had been made and those repairs are “so far working well.”
In late June, the library at 4912 Old Canton Road experienced major issues that caused the temperature in the building to be consistently in the high 80s and low 90s during the day, she said.
The building is equipped with a boiler/chiller system and one of the chillers had a transducer that wasn’t working and there was also a bad compressor, she said, and at that time, the system was running about 25 percent.
“The transducer was installed but the compressor is still in process,” she said. “The chillers are functioning well enough that we should be able to keep the building comfortable.”
On the job as executive director of the library system for about three weeks, Williams said her priority is to get the Willie Morris Library open consistently so community members can access the services they depend on.
While the library was closed, employees would enter the building in the morning, empty the book drop, call patrons with books on hold and send books to other libraries for pick up and provide curbside service for as long as they could before the temperature got too hot and they went to work at other branches, Williams said.
Last week, the library system received funds from the city of Jackson to establish a $1.5 million endowment to use for capital improvements. In April, the Jackson City Council approved providing the funds from the city’s $10.3 million settlement with Zurich American Insurance since the city’s libraries were hit hard by the 2013 hailstorm that the settlement stems from.
“We only received the funds for this endowment late last week, so we are just now at the point where we can set up the endowment fund with the Community Foundation of Jackson,” Williams said. “The Jackson Hinds Library System Board Committee will have to make decisions on how the funds are invested and how the income is used to help with maintenance.
Because that process is just beginning, the funds are not set up to help in this case.”
Under Mississippi Code Section 39-3-3, public libraries may not use their own funds for capital projects such as land acquisition, building construction or major infrastructure replacements. Those costs must be paid entirely from the general funds of the county or municipality.
“While libraries cannot directly fund large capital improvements like HVAC or roof replacements, we anticipate that endowment income—once received—may help cover minor repairs, provided they fall below a certain cost threshold,” she said. “I will be working with an auditor to clarify those thresholds and ensure compliance with financial and legal guidelines.”
The city’s libraries, like many of its other buildings, have needed major maintenance in recent years.
Jackson once had seven libraries but two of them, the Eudora Welty Library and the Richard Wright Library, closed in recent years.
The city deeded the Welty Library in downtown Jackson, which had fallen into disrepair, to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and it is in the process of being torn down so the site can be transformed into a public green space.
The Willie Morris Library has required repairs because about two-thirds of the building flooded after a pipe burst in January 2023.
