Video Description:
Library Advisory Board – May 2023
Read along below:
Speaker 1 0:00
Well, so I can see him. But otherwise, we have enough here. So let’s go ahead and call for meeting to order at 701. And first item would be to approve previous month’s minutes. I move to prove I see no added seated. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 0:23
well, let’s take a vote.
Speaker 1 0:27
So we all true public invited to be heard I don’t believe you have any members on Zoom. So move straight into new business where we have the children and teen librarian presentation.
Speaker 2 0:39
Yeah. So let me introduce this is Claire, a department head for children and teen services. If you haven’t met Claire, now you have. And so Claire runs one of the most important departments of this library really. And so I have some slides that she’s going to present a little bit about children and teen what they do, and all that and what we need to keep an eye on. Catherine joining Sara,
Unknown Speaker 1:12
thank you for giving
Unknown Speaker 1:13
me the time to visit with you today.
Speaker 3 1:15
Some familiar faces some new faces to me. So adopt that. I’m Claire Stockholm. I’m the head of the children’s and teens department. I’ve been with the library for nine and a half years now which just flew by having lots of fun. I’ve been the head of the department for four and a half years now I started as a teen services librarian. And yeah, I’m here to talk about generally what we do. And preview some of our upcoming things mostly summer reading. Summers, our busiest time of the year, we often reach pre COVID We reached almost 3500. kiddos birth through 18 In our Summer Reading Challenge, and we’ve been steadily growing since COVID. Last year, we reached about 1500 hits. So we’re hoping to see to get back to those 3000 numbers. So you don’t mind going to the next slide on that would be great. Um, so this is most of our team here. We have a vibrant team of five librarians, to library technicians and several part time library technicians, three who kind of are on our regular shifts and one who subs in mostly in the summer. But this is Kate in the upper left hand corner there. She’s our bilingual children’s librarian. She’s been here for about a year. Next to her to the right is Fatima. She’s one of our library techs, and Kate and Fatima are our two dedicated bilingual staff on our team and really focus on serving our Spanish speaking community, offering lots of different cultural events. Facciamo runs our monthly wealth rehab event. Kate does our bilingual weekly storytime, lots of fun things. And then Stephanie is on the far right there and it’s a 30 hour library for us she selects for our junior fiction does our family storytimes is a great program or she runs our d&d or team Dungeons and Dragons group, which is probably our most popular teen group, just like she’s not a d&d like dungeon master, but she totally has become one over the years. And then in the next row is Rebecca or Becca. She’s our newest team member. We were very fortunate that in this new budget of 2023, we were able to add an additional 40 hour librarian to our team, and she is now our full time dedicated team librarian. She’s also going to be doing I’m really excited. One of the goals of getting this new position was so we could add even more short term storage schedule and a weekend storytime because that’s something we’ve heard from the community, particularly working parents and working folks wanting more storytimes in the beds on Saturday and Sunday, so she will start in June 3 be doing our weekly we’re gonna call it weekend family storytime. So really excited about that. Kathleen has been at the library for over 30 years. She selects for our junior nonfiction and is this baby storytime expert. She’s been doing her baby storytime for probably about 30 years, and is also like our Lego library and she runs our very popular Lego club which gets between 100 and 150 folks each time so yes. And then Juno is next to Kathleen Juneau is a library tech. Her expertise is also a lot didn t programming. She runs our team volunteer program, which is a robust program we average 20 teens per day. Session, and we’re just about to open up a new session. For summer volunteers we see a lot of need in the community for teens meeting service hours, whether it’s for school community service, that kind of thing. And Juna runs that first very well she also runs our teen gaming club, which is on our switch. That’s okay. The next picture is just a week you can see me my hair, sometimes you just colors, but I guess it’s kind of the same color. My classes students colors for now. And then in the center is Oliver. He is one of our library tech subs. He came to us in January, and is very talented probably overqualified for the position he’s in. He has his MLS and is published poet and came to us with a lot of experience in teaching poetry to teens and college students. And so he ran a whole series of April, Poetry Month programs for us, including teen writers poetry workshop, our poetry packs, which was a passive program where kids and teens could submit poems to our library kept. And I want to actually read one of those poems to you, because it’s actually by one of our team volunteers. And it’s very heartwarming, it’s called the library, a soft place, a safe place, a quiet place, a warm place, the water that quenches that thirst for knowledge, the hearse that feels that ache for community, from two to 102, no matter who you are, this place is for you. And that was just so sweet that that came from one of our team volunteers, and just so heartfelt. And so we have all these poems, we’ve got almost 150 poems over the whole month, we have them displayed in our section in our window. If you if you get a chance, we’re going to keep them up until mid May. But it’s really beautiful to see all the poems that were created through that. And then Carly is on the far right. She’s been with us for almost two years now is also a sub library tech that works for us quite a bit. And she has a background in Youth Services. She used to be what you call truancy officer for the Spring Valley School District attendance office. And she’s also the Longmont high, high school girls swim coach. And she’s lovely, and helps us on the desk a lot as well. So that’s the T and we also have Kiersten who doesn’t have a photo, here’s it is another step for us. And some of you might have known any fun to know, she was our bilingual children’s librarian previous to, I guess, two librarians ago. And she’s also attempt for us occasionally subs in as well. That’s our team. Um, as you all probably know, we’re so much more than books actually increadibly serve birth through 18. And they’re grown ups. And I kind of just, as a general overview, split it into how we sorted through our spaces, our collections and our programming. So I’m partial, but I really think children and new services and teen services are the backbone of every library. Often you see people, you know, they experienced libraries as children and teen and then you kind of don’t see them again, until maybe they have kids again. And then kids kind of bring them into library again. And they become library users. Again, hopefully that gap doesn’t necessarily happen all the time. But we find that a lot of caretakers and parents come in being like, Oh, the last time I was in the library was when I was a kid. So it’s an exciting place to be. We have a I’m sure most of you have hopefully visited and seen our space. During COVID. We took over that of what was formerly known as the adult computer lab and is now just a teen space, which is really lovely. We have our four team computers we have a separate services desk in there. With staffing levels, we haven’t been able to staff it but with Becca, our team library and she’s spending a lot of her off desk time in there and kind of getting to know the teams see when it’s busy or not when we might be able to staff it over summer. And it’s just been wonderful. We’ve been able to have our teen programming in there and teams actually feel like they have a space I was working yesterday there’s a regular the regular meet every Sunday, this group of teens to study and they’re in yesterday and they’re here like every Sunday hanging out in that space. It’s just so great to see. We have like a couch tables, outlets, that kind of stuff. And we tried to do a lot of passive activities like we had a posted art wall activity with colored pencils out. Different book displays that kind of thing in there. And then our general children’s area we have the four iPads that are downloaded with educational and early literacy games on Are there computers, interactive spaces that we try to focus for sort of social emotional development, and community gathering, I really feel like the library is, you know, the community’s living room. And I feel like our space really feels like that. We also have an outdoor reading garden, which we lost the tree that was out there when they did the Foundation project, and that was a bummer. But we’ve tried to spruce it up with fake artificial grass rugs that are actually very comfortable. We put toys out there pretty much every day as the weather allows. And then every summer, we’ve been doing a sensory garden. And Stephanie is going to do that again for us. So we have just various buckets with the five we do for five senses. And we did that last year was really fun for kids to expect to experience that. We have various collections, obviously, we have a large workbook toddler collection, an early reader section that I’m pretty proud of. It’s really kind of the only leveled area in our section. But it’s a really popular section for kids that are just learning to read and have a level one, level two, level three.
Speaker 3 11:13
You area like we have the Bob books. Early Literacy kits are like things we get a lot of questions from people saying, Oh, my kid, how do I teach my kid to read or my kid is behind in reading? Or where do I start with my child and I want to teach them to read. And so we have this section kind of laid out for for different levels, and it’s a really nice browsing area. We have various kinds of specials and those are called Pocket collections are Lego books are very popular. Our Disney and friends are very popular. That includes like all books that are based on TV shows and movies. And it’s a really nice browsing section where kids can just kind of find those very popular books. You know, superhero section. Graphic Novels are huge, particularly manga. Manga if you Does anyone know what manga is? Japanese graphic novels. They are getting popular more and more popular with younger and younger folks that we see on elementary school students are reading manga. And we have a huge one go section in our teen area. And also some junior manga as well. Mon was becoming very popular, it’s Korean graphic novel format. And we have a few of those series as well. Um, we have our junior fiction, nonfiction. And Kate our bilingual library has really been sprucing up our bilingual and Spanish section, we now have reversed starting to build a collection of Spanish ya young adult novels, and more junior fiction and graphic novels. And she’s really merchandise this the section very well with the South displays. She got with the generous contributions of our friends group, she got new picture book bins. So it’s a really inviting space that’s browsable and looks more like the rest of our library rather than separate our various teen collections. Why is super popular, not just with teens, we see a lot of adults that are interested as well. So it’s a well circulating collection of fiction nonfiction, the manga and graphic novels and then never experienced that is similar to adult experience bags. We have first experience bags which are like your first sleepover and it includes stuffed animals Arthur in his pajamas, and then books about sleepovers and sleeping and that’s lullaby a lullaby CD. Then we have Jr experience bags. Things like antiracism experience bag, indigenous authors experience bag, the great outdoors experience bag. So lots of different kits and things and we have teen ones as well. We also have launch pads and play aways. The play always kind of used to be considered like old school a little bit. They used to be libraries a fair a fair amount of time ago and then they kind of disappeared and other coming back. It’s a very popular collection that’s basically since so many people don’t have CD players anymore. Play aways are audiobooks just on a self contained player and you I don’t know if you’ve checked out any for your kids or your kid you look super familiar to that intersection before. But you just plug in headphones and it plays the whole book for you so you don’t need like Libby is great overdrive for audiobooks but you need a device, a tablet or a phone. And often you know parents don’t want to give their kids the whole tablet just so they can listen to an audiobook so they just give them the play away and it’s literally literally literally you hit play pause forward, backward I’m in a volume button. So we’ve been building that collection up quite a bit. We have launch pads, which are, they look like iPads. And they’re quite a bit focused on early literacy. But they’re preloaded, they don’t connect to the internet. Each has a different theme and a different age target range for either they’ll read a book to you, the math game science games, that kind of thing. Grownups like to check them out when they’re traveling or going on road trips or plane trips, because they can get give it to their child and not worry about them, you know, didn’t have the internet or that kind of thing. It’s just, they’re sort of our collections. Please pause me if you have any questions. I’m kind of fast. I still don’t know how much time I have.
Speaker 2 15:48
Okay. We’ll let you go. And then if there’s questions, okay,
Speaker 3 15:51
cool, sounds good. And then programs, our weekly storytimes, which are sort of our, you know, every library has to have storytimes sort of ICT storytimes as a backbone of libraries to with really kind of community connection and also early literacy, school preparedness, social skills. So we have our weekly storytimes, which are baby family and our Spanish English bilingual storytime. We have a great partnership with Boulder County, mental health partners, they have a program called kids connect in the neighborhood. They’ve been coming in weekly to offer social emotional circle hours, we’re calling that preschool baby connections that are similar to story time, but really also address social emotional skills and parenting skills and caregiving skills with adults in the room as well. They’ll often do sensory motor skills, movement stuff, craft activities, and it’s all for free to the library to because it’s part of their outreach programs. So that’s been a really great partnership, and it’s led by mental health care, early childhood mental health care workers. They’ve also been doing parenting classes for us as well. I talked about the mission on a Saturday family storytime we’re excited about we
Unknown Speaker 17:12
have a various kids and
Speaker 3 17:13
tweens programming. We have a weekly tween Club, which averages about 10 to 15 kids and that’s been really fun to see far too much paper on that. And it’s definitely friendships have been formed and connections have been formed amongst the kids and we have a lot of return visitors for that we have a science at six program that has been in judo run like STEMI stem experiments, the volcanoes once they’re making paper for the next one to get crystals. We have movement classes with a community partner named anima arts. She is a body movement dance instructor that specializes in early childhood. And her classes are very cool. We have author visits our local area craft programs, we still do a fair amount of take home craft kits that were really popular when we were more closed down due to COVID stuff. But we still put those out often in our area. Deer is also very popular stands for dogs enjoy afternoon reading, where train therapy dogs come in kids read with them. And then our various team programming Dungeons and Dragons or gaming club, which happens on our Nintendo Switch. Our volunteer program writing workshops or club author visits, we had a great author visit with Stacey Lee, who is a historical primarily historical fiction white author, Chinese American who writes a lot about the Chinese American experience. Throughout history, she’s written about the Titanic. Her book that the downstairs girl is one of my favorite books of hers, but she came in also funded by the friends as well. And did a teen Writers Workshop and conversation with us and she was really great connected with a lot of folks.
Unknown Speaker 19:06
And then the big
Speaker 3 19:08
thing is our summer reading program is happening very soon. I wanted to pass this around. It hasn’t been officially released yet. But there’s a special sneak preview. It’s our Summer Reading Challenge, which is a summer reading bingo, which we’ve been doing an iteration of this for the past like three or four years. We found in years past our program was a little bit too complicated and threw up a lot of barriers for folks. You had to register you had to check in like two or three times over the summer. So this you don’t even have to register. You just have to pick up your board, turning your board by July 31. And then you get a free book prize. If you do the holding award. You get entered into a grand prize drawing versus special, larger item prizes. We also tried to make it so it’s not just reading. Kids can choose if they want to do reading for each square each circle But they’re also different challenges and activities like read outside or tell a friend about summer reading. So we can, you know, have people advertise the library through the program. So it’s kind of fun to come up with those different activities there. And that starts on Tuesday, May 25. And the last day of school, we’re having a pool party at sunset pool was you?
Speaker 4 20:29
Yeah, I’m like somebody was asking about that day. Yeah, yeah. He was like, I think there’s a pool happening.
Speaker 3 20:39
From 530 to 730. Oh, yes. So we’ll be there. Librarians will be there. But we won’t necessarily be swimming at about. But we will. That’s where we’re releasing the bingo boards for folks. And our June and July calendar. All of our June and July events. We have a ton of over the summer, are currently on our website, too. So if you want to check those out, but paper counsel will be out in May. Yeah. So that’s kind of who we are and sort of what we do in a nutshell.
Unknown Speaker 21:13
Yeah, yeah. That was great. So out of all that any questions?
Speaker 4 21:21
Yeah. Because the the theme for the summary of this year? Yeah. So the
Speaker 3 21:27
CSLP, which I think is like something summer learning program, like the Colorado summer learning program, and there’s a national one does come up with a theme every year. The theme this year is all together now. We don’t we used to really closely follow the theme with helping decide what programming to offer, we would sort of brand it on our challenge. But several years ago, I decided for us to not be beholden to the theme. So we kind of like you have it in the back of our minds. And a lot of the performers that kind of are on the library circuit, tailor their stuff to that theme. But we I thought it would be better to like have the library kind of front and center on it. Because some people don’t understand like, Oh, why do you have this random peek. And I was like, it’s just Library’s ever reading. So we don’t really play on the theme that much. But we still get free resources. Like I have some posters and bookmarks that I can hand out with that seen with the summer reading national group, still, and I still go to some of their meetups where you can get ideas for programming and stuff. We just don’t really brand the theme. But yeah, that’s
Unknown Speaker 22:41
something. And yeah, please, please, even
Speaker 5 22:45
just I had a question as it kind of struck me as you’re going through your colleagues, or your colleagues. And then one of the things that the feasibility study talked about was the current library qualifications and comparing them against the qualifications of the people that work at the library compared to other libraries? And do you all have a program when you ask people to volunteer or or hire them all? Is to what the minimum qualifications are not? Are you? Is there a process where that gets upgraded? Or are you comfortable with the present qualification criteria for the people that you’re putting children and teens, for instance?
Speaker 2 23:40
I mean, we we go through a vetting process, like background and stuff like that. I don’t know what you mean, beyond that. But the because the volunteers at least in cats, like Sorry, we call children’s cats service?
Speaker 5 23:59
Probably not, not correctly phrase for volunteers, but volunteers, volunteers, but right, you know, I mean, for staff and in future management, or whatever, for the library. The concern was expressed as well, key, you know, maybe our library compared to other libraries doesn’t have as many people with advanced degrees,
Speaker 3 24:23
like, like the Masters in library science, right. Like,
Speaker 5 24:26
so. I don’t know how many of those people you highlighted volunteers or people that work for you, those those were all staff. Okay, so are those staff so when you go through and look for new staff, people now? Do you have criteria that you’re trying to target for new entrants into the management tool, so to speak?
Speaker 2 24:51
I mean, it depends where we’re hiring for. I mean, if we’re talking specifically in children and team at I mean, it gets down into specifics of the position. So we just hired the team librarian. So they had to have an extensive background collection management, Team ya collections, as well as team programming. And for me just being able to deal with teams in general, you know, so I mean, but that those skill sets can come with being a degree librarian or not. But they’re absolutely necessary. When it gets into storytime you have if you can learn storytime and MLA s program, but you can be trained on it as well. But no one’s going to be put into a storytime without the proper training. It’s not, it’s a skill set that is learned. You can’t just go in there and filter by I love kids, I would love to read a story. There’s actually a whole skill set behind delivering a storytime. So I’m not sure if I’m answering your question. Well,
Speaker 5 25:55
I’m not sure exactly what I’m shooting for here. Because, you know, I recognize that there’s experience levels, and there’s, there’s quality of interaction and engagement between human beings and children, teams and stuff like that, that transcend education. But I just recognize that when the feasibility study was put together, somebody must have thought that that was important that those higher educational and discipline disciplinary criteria were important to the future in the organization. So as you go through this, yeah, this, does that get disregarded? Or is that somehow filtered in
Speaker 2 26:43
some place? It is filtered in, and it’s definitely considered and so so the feasibility is, part of that is looking at Longmont our population and comparing ourselves to other libraries and the number of basically, in that sense degree librarians are on staff versus not. And those lines are getting a little blurred these days. To be up to be frank about it, because you can be a degree librarian, but it doesn’t mean you can do storytime. Right. Right. So so it’s, it’s it’s kind of a blend of both. But when we think about the study, and the the number of degree librarians or otherwise, comparatively qualified to do the same job, were at a lower percentile compared to other libraries that serve a population of 100,000 people.
Speaker 5 27:38
So I agree, I agree that that’s what the study says. So is it is it your all opinion that that’s probably an area where the study pointed to that’s probably over emphasized, or that something that’s important and still needs to be thought about?
Speaker 2 27:56
I think it’s important needs to be thought about. But if I think about the study as a whole, I think there’s other aspects in there that to me are higher priority, primarily. Were in Longmont. We provide library services. I mean, we have one location and the city’s expanded well out, and there’s so many people that don’t get library services, because they’re not coming here. So to me that it is an aspect, but I don’t know, when I think about staffing levels, I think it’ll come together. I mean, if we have a new location, then we’re going to consider what that study shows. And when we’re hired when we think about staffing and your location, what’s the makeup of that location? And how many people should we be bringing in our professional librarians and as opposed to support staff?
Speaker 5 28:47
Okay. I mean, I just you’re ever recall, as we were standing up there talking to counsel from time to time, and we had our laundry list of things that we said, the feasibility study has identified that we need to create funding to change. Yeah, that was one of the things that was on the laundry list is that you’re not tricking people well enough when they’re not getting in.
Speaker 3 29:16
So it might be more that professional level, like our level of professional librarians, like that position is much for
Speaker 5 29:22
some reason or another has not flourished. It’s the prison. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 29:26
like it was really your library. Is
Unknown Speaker 29:30
that Is that still true and
Speaker 2 29:32
is yes, sort of the grand plan to grow? It is in general. That’s, that’s accurate. And if we I mean, we’re understaffed at the moment but we’re out spaced, we can’t bring in more staff. No, I understand. So that’s not so yeah. So it’s, it’s yes, seems like the answer.
Speaker 1 29:50
This is just following up on Mark I guess question that curious now. So your librarian position so tense your current MLS and sometimes but not as I understand that correctly, he So which actually, by the way, I’m very much in favor of speaking,
Speaker 3 30:05
I don’t know if I want to give my perspective of what has changed or not no, go ahead. Yeah. So it’s interesting because this is also wider debate that’s going on in the library world. And when I first started working here nine years ago, they were very strict in you had to have an MLA is to be considered for a library one, like we have a librarian one, which is non manager, librarians. And then I’m like a librarian too, because I’m the head of the department. But to be like, qualify for library, one position, you had to have that minimum degree and X amount of years of service. And then it’s become, and I actually was an advocate for that to become a little less strict for various reasons. So I’m also part of the city wide equity team, and is actually a huge equity issue and barrier requiring all these higher education degrees for even our internal staff to be able to move up. So someone that’s been in the library for 20 years and can do the job has the experience level, even more so than someone that may just got their mis and has no actual experience in the library couldn’t apply for a librarian position. So they max out all kinds of things. And there’s also, you know, getting diverse candidates and Spanish speaking candidates into a librarian position is a lot harder because the degree is not as accessible, accessible to folks. So there’s a lot of equity issues within like, who has access to the degree or not. And so there’s obviously still, I still believe in degree, I have my MIS, most of our librarians have their MIS, some of them don’t. But to me, it’s really about experience as well. So it’s like huge debate right now. But I’ve seen the city overall, is endeavoring to become actually a little bit more flexible with having those hard requirements on minimum degrees. And the library has been a part of that now we have, at least for the positions that I’ve hired for professional level, it’s an MLS degree is preferred. But not required, but there’s a level of X amount of years of experience is required.
Speaker 3 32:24
But it’s definitely like it’s a balance. It’s something I think about a lot, particularly in hiring. Yeah. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 32:34
Great. Thanks. Thanks. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 32:37
Well, the same question, but on another note, I saw your hunch, I love this little touches in the children’s area. Like the little area where they’d like the zipper rushes like, I just love those small touches. I think they’ll do that. So well. Yeah,
Speaker 3 32:52
thank you, trying to make it a space that like kids can kind of be interested in stuff because people do like coming in with their kids and having their kids being able to do something and hang out for a bit. So having those sensory things is nice.
Speaker 2 33:06
It’s also the only children’s library I’ve ever been in that has a low writer.
Unknown Speaker 33:12
Yes. Which my daughter loves.
Unknown Speaker 33:16
Yeah, and the train is a whole nother can of worms that we love, but the train breaks down.
Speaker 3 33:24
We love it. It just got fixed yesterday, back up and running. But feel free to reach out to me. I love talking about libraries.
Speaker 2 33:34
Claire, Claire said her email in the slide, but I can get the slides to you or close contact. And if you ever want to follow
Speaker 3 33:42
questions, big or little questions, I love chatting. You’re talking about libraries all night. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, thanks. Yeah. Thank you for all that you all do. With your time on the board. We really appreciate it. Today’s you can imagine you probably need to do you know to help? Close down? Where? Yeah, thank you. Thanks. Because it’s, it’s private. not released yet. Thank you
Speaker 1 34:26
for arranging this stuff. Oh, yeah. So useful for us to learn what you’re doing. And of course, just so impressive. When especially when I think about the budgetary constraints that departments been under for so long. Okay, next trigger. Any other comments or questions like flitters left. Any other comments? All right. Let’s move on to the next order of business is board member interviews. So we are going to have technically we’re going up two positions, actually open. Katherine and has encountered please feel free to jump in Catherine’s is. There is a confusion with Katherine’s though it’s actually set to expire in June. But there was a surprise to learn that but I think we were able to work you were able to work out next steps for you at least. Which means all that to say is that we’re going to have interviews that we’re going to need at least one board member to attend. And my understanding is your last meeting is June. That is correct. So really what that puts us on is the three of us. And sit down. I’m not sure if you have this information. I don’t know if we come up with a date that would work for one of us or if the city gives us a few or do you have a time frame? So
Speaker 2 35:52
the so the board would come up with a date to schedule interviews with the one, I guess two candidates I know sorry, Katherine. I mean, it’s no one in this room. Arranged it this way. Anyway. So the board would come up with that within hopefully within the next couple of weeks or so to choose a date to do these interviews. There is one new new member that applied. I mean, in addition to Katherine, so and then once that’s done that, then the board then recommends that to council that they do their own interviewing, the way I understand it, so you can come up with your own date. I just, I think the city council does theirs I have that day. I feel like it’s later this month, it might be later this month, so you probably add to the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 1 36:48
And then do you know if they need to be in person or can they be remote? For us?
Unknown Speaker 36:53
I think it can be really either.
Speaker 1 36:55
And then do you know if they need to be during working hours? Or if they could be in the evenings?
Speaker 2 36:59
I don’t think there’s any there’s no rule about that. Oh, the only restriction is they do need to report it. Okay. Yeah. So if we do it on, like remote zoom or whatever, we’ll just make sure to record it. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1 37:11
I so I am out of town. I guess talking to y’all here. I’m basically out of town from tomorrow through the 19. I’m here, the 15th. But that’s a really tight day for me, I couldn’t make that day work if need be. Otherwise, I’m very open the week of the 22nd. I could do an in person one anytime during the day, Tuesday or Friday that week. Otherwise, I could zoom. I mean, we’re done with this semester. So I’m very flexible. And I’m not sure I think we just need at least one person. I think it’d be great if we could have more. So I don’t know if any time that we would work for one or both of you all
Speaker 6 37:54
among them. I will state for most of that week, but I can afford it.
Speaker 1 37:57
Or third Thursday to Friday. The 26th.
Unknown Speaker 38:01
Yes.
Speaker 4 38:05
I’m wide open on the 26th. I can be pretty flexible. On the other days as well. I’ve got some things going. It’s the pool party. Oh, I can’t miss that. But there are kind of slots everyday.
Speaker 1 38:20
Okay, well, let’s I 26 would be ideal. Wait, hold on. I’m out of town that day. I could do the afternoon of the 26th. I’ll be by Internet by the afternoon.
Speaker 2 38:34
Don’t do the 26th. Right. Because then Canberra can interview. very technically, that has to help.
Speaker 7 38:41
Oh, okay, let’s, let’s then look at the job. That’s true.
Speaker 2 38:45
We could do. Okay, sorry. I’m reading her chat. So, I mean, it could be on two different days. That’s true.
Speaker 1 38:51
I mean, how does what’s your availability on the 25th? On that Thursday? I’m,
Speaker 8 38:58
this is why it was a challenging situation for me, because I’m just very, very booked up through Memorial Day,
Unknown Speaker 39:05
right?
Speaker 8 39:07
I come back from a trip late on Memorial Day. So the 30th and 31st
Unknown Speaker 39:14
would be
Speaker 8 39:17
otherwise, I could try and do it at school. If we do it at zoom. Before I leave on my trip.
Speaker 1 39:27
I would like to the 30. The 31st would work well for me as well. And I feel like you have been this has not been the easiest for your convenience, this process. So I’d like to try for this 31st. And then, you know if counsel needs this earlier, then we can speed that up.
Speaker 2 39:47
But that’s the only unknown. I’m not sure. You don’t know offhand. Tracy.
Unknown Speaker 39:52
I’m looking it up. I
Speaker 8 39:53
remember seeing something about June and I don’t know if that’s like the deadline or if that’s when they need to have them. So
Unknown Speaker 39:59
right Real quick, but I don’t remember that I
Speaker 8 40:01
was going back and forth with I believe it was Tracy about this whole thing. I think she said that I wouldn’t have to worry about being interviewed until June, which is why I was like, Fine, I’ll do it. Because I’m pretty, like I said, Really booked up through the end of bank.
Speaker 5 40:19
You know, we’ve been closest to say the last time around Jeff was organizing the available dates based on what he was getting from council. So council said they needed to make a decision.
Unknown Speaker 40:34
Right, that’s what he would back that
Speaker 5 40:37
up. And yeah, propose slots to bring people in. Which is, I think, probably the message that came back. How did you hear it? Was it through the city clerk? Or was it through the day?
Unknown Speaker 40:53
No, your interview day? Do you remember I got an
Speaker 4 40:56
email that said, here’s the date. Be there. Be there be square. Okay. I know at least at least one of them was virtual.
Unknown Speaker 41:08
Because he was there you were you were there.
Speaker 2 41:11
To ours was in person. That
Speaker 5 41:15
part of us, Jeff was part of it. Yeah. Scott was part of that part of
Unknown Speaker 41:19
it. But then that council maybe was virtual
Speaker 4 41:21
council was spiritual. And then there was another it might have been like a screaming like a creator. I don’t know. There was some there was something where it was just Jeff and Scott. But that might have been after the fact. Not Scott, Jeff and one other person. Anybody after the fact of what it might have been after the interview, okay, that was just more like an onboarding. That
Speaker 2 41:53
was just you. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That was that was that when it was done? Just to have like, a welcome to the board. This is. Yeah, that was? Yeah, that doesn’t count. Okay. In this in this?
Unknown Speaker 42:08
I apologize. No, but yeah, I
Speaker 5 42:10
mean, we can obviously do it the way you want to do it. But the last time it occurred, that’s what came
Speaker 9 42:16
down. I got an email from Tracy with it with an interview slot in November. So that’s
Speaker 1 42:23
for sure. Let’s let’s did it sounds like we couldn’t really put forth these dates, I guess to Jeff, and then it doesn’t seem that correctly. Just put it to Tracy Tracy. So
Speaker 8 42:36
I’m seeing the MO. It’s dated June 2, I’m assuming that the memo needs to be sent to council by that date. Oh, I think we have a couple days. So that’s fine.
Speaker 1 42:45
Right. So then that would work on the 31st for reference, and even if that’s just me, I think that that’s important.
Unknown Speaker 42:56
And then it sounds like to see the other
Speaker 1 42:58
date that may work for myself and some others is the 25th I am free every a completely flexible day except for 130. So I don’t know if there are certain time slots that would work best on that day for y’all. We fit that Thursday,
Unknown Speaker 43:18
probably the four or five
Speaker 6 43:21
somewhere in the neighborhood better, but I could always like if it’s teams, I can train them and if I can’t, okay,
Speaker 2 43:28
but if you have before, anytime before five. I mean, you have to
Speaker 1 43:33
Yeah, yeah. Which would be which would be great.
Speaker 2 43:37
I’m available. Because I want to be there
Speaker 1 43:44
from what I understand Yeah, I would like to be able to go back to the candidate like multiple like I think that’s a lot to ask for a specific timeframe during a workday for a volunteer position. So if we could just offer them during like that nine to five that day. Actually we could say nine to one or two to five that day that we can maybe work something out from there
Speaker 5 44:11
yeah the other particular from from the previous is the city provided the questions so they gave us a format here are the questions you’re supposed to ask every candidate they were identical or almost identical most recent stuff up but and then you know we go around the table and same person I just throw that out as backdrop. You do it the way you want. Yeah,
Speaker 1 44:43
that would be great. If we could get that this preset of questions from the city and it’s fine with me. I mean, I think we could easily come up with some that would work but I don’t see why not to use theirs if they have them. Does that sound like a good plan? Everyone knows Before I get on that will shoot for the 25th. And then for the 31st, as well. Note
Unknown Speaker 45:12
Do you know who the other candidate is?
Unknown Speaker 45:16
Yes. But I just don’t know you’re asking me to look for that, but I did my assumptive to Cynthia though.
Speaker 1 45:29
Yeah, I wasn’t sure if that was like public information where we could share name right now, or maybe just but we do have one. And it looked like a really great resume and enthusiasm,
Speaker 2 45:39
I think. I think the board can see. They’re interviewing I mean, I don’t know technically. Yeah. So we’re trying to hear from the sponsor, but I don’t
Unknown Speaker 45:49
disagree on the other interview. Yeah.
Speaker 1 45:52
Cuz it was it was Mark and Scott, were able to and you and I were not for like the last cycle, I remember. Yeah. All right,
Speaker 2 46:02
then you can see their application resume, I don’t think there’s an issue with that.
Speaker 1 46:06
Right. Great. I can afford that then as well. If y’all are. that’s of interest. Okay. Any other comments on that? Jinda item? Oh, you move on. Okay, thank you for helping us. Okay, next, we’re gonna move into old business. And it’s so exciting. I have copies of the bylaws. Sorry, Katherine, I can send you this electronically. It’s very, very exciting. I wanted to we talked about this a couple of months ago, I wanted to pick this back up, I was reading through them. And I don’t think that we need to like group edit as we did the last time because I only see a very few number of changes. So my thought was to share the changes I see. And then if you all would like another month, I don’t see this this time sensitive, Someone, please correct me if I’m wrong. But if you all have other changes, maybe take a look at this over the next month, and then we can send that off. Next month, I’ll tell you the three changes that I see that I think need to be made this to cross off section three duties of the secretary. And I think that we can either update it to say, and I’m so sorry to see you forgetting your position, title, administrative assistant, we could update it to administrative assistant, or we could probably take it all out. Because section four does say the board reserves the right to appoint members to other specialized roles as it deems fit. So I, my preference would be to I guess, take it out in case we do need to change that later, we wouldn’t have to do another update of the bylaws. And then two other smaller ones, I’d like to change the wording of chairman to chair if that works for y’all. And then Article Three, section three, I’m wondering if we want to say that A quorum is majority instead of three members. And that is because I’m I’m thinking at the time where there was a huge happen and I for a month on the board for two months. And if you know if we ever are missing one or two members, if that gives us more flexibility to change that to the majority. Those are the changes I propose. I don’t think we need to vote on that right now. But I’m just curious if there’s feedback on that. There are other changes y’all can see. And then if so, just to restate, I guess my thought is that I will bring a draft for those changes next time. And if there’s nothing else that anyone sees in the meantime, we can send that off.
Speaker 5 48:50
Of course, city. Okay. I was wondering about that for
Unknown Speaker 48:57
I think part of our charter.
Unknown Speaker 48:59
Okay, that makes sense.
Unknown Speaker 49:02
Catherine, I think the electronic
Speaker 9 49:03
versions of these went out with the Enrolled email from Tracy so you could probably pull it up there.
Unknown Speaker 49:09
Yeah, I was trying to find it.
Speaker 2 49:15
Have the bylaws. That’s I said it was sent out
Unknown Speaker 49:18
last month. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 49:19
I’ll send it to Okay.
Speaker 1 49:21
Okay. But yeah, I also was going to make the change to the chairman. So all right, that sounds good to me. And then do they just taking out section three sounds like the best way to do it, or should we is there a reason to just change that language to say administrative assistant like the secretary?
Unknown Speaker 49:48
I think it’d be better just
Unknown Speaker 49:49
to strike it. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 49:57
Any other comments right now on this
Speaker 1 50:04
I’ll take a copy next time with those changes made. And then that way, if somebody comes up with something in the next month, we can update from there.
Speaker 8 50:17
And I don’t see it in what Tracy sent with the agenda, but I could be missing it. So people
Speaker 2 50:25
I think she is trying to find it to just send it to Yeah, well, I’ll send it to you, Catherine.
Speaker 1 50:29
I’m, it’s not from this last, like, email to everyone. It’s from at least a month ago.
Unknown Speaker 50:36
It might have been the last board meeting, packet. Okay,
Speaker 1 50:43
any other comments or questions before I move on to the next agenda items? Ah, the cultural and recreation initiative. First of all, thank you so much, Mark. And Jamie for being at the city council meeting last month, I got sick that morning and was not able to make it obviously. So I want to be transparent, I actually have not watched the recording, I’ve been really slammed at work. So I’ve not had a chance to watch the recording of that meeting. My understanding from reading newspaper articles is that a board sort of branch will be moving forward on the November ballot. But Susie, I’m wondering if this is this issue is something that you could share any updates on from council if there are any. So
Speaker 10 51:29
I think the only one that really shifted as far as you know, our original plan was the museum and the museum. So I also sit on that board by chance. And you know, I’m wearing my mask, because I was at our Teacher Appreciation dinner a couple of weeks ago, and it was like a major super spreader. So I’m for it for you all. But um, anyway. So they’ve decided to move with the capital improvements, initiative on their own, to fundraise that those dollars for their expansion of the Children’s Museum. We have supported the idea of having the branch library everything that the library would need. That was on the original presentation. We have, we want to move forward with that. So So I think really now it’s just the messaging, getting the exact dollars finding out what the community is most anxious about, and trying to allay those fears are working on that. So and then I don’t know if you have anything more CAD or
Speaker 2 52:44
No, I mean, that was basically my take away from what I heard, all of you saying was that was library absolute? Absolutely. Yes. The Arts Entertainment. And then the way I share it with staff is some form of recreation because the YMCA came in with this whole thing.
Speaker 10 53:03
Yes, we did all thank you for bringing that out. Yeah. So there, there was an opportunity. The one of the things when we were looking at that dome, idea, so how everything kind of came together, it just kind of mesh and I think other entities, it sparked ideas for them, as we were discussing, you know what to do with the stadium dollars. These ideas came in of, oh, we could do this. And you know, so we’re looking at the idea of a land swap between where Centennial polis Centennial Park, and where the YMCA. So if we did this land swap, that the YMCA could actually fund a recreation or a recreational type facility with adjacent homes, apartments on top, that they might be able to fund any with help reduce the cost as far as any kind of Centennial pool upgrade, and he would still give the community what they need. What we need.
Speaker 1 54:09
That sounds I’m so glad to hear about the library. Yes. You know, that mean, that sounds good.
Speaker 10 54:16
And I think even through the survey that was the most popular as far as what what the community felt is the necessity.
Speaker 2 54:25
Yeah, and the one the other thing I’ll add to which I was pleased to hear, because after Mark shared when you all row, but a couple or so councilmembers echoed the whole preferred level of service. Yeah, which is which is really, I think with the board and and frankly, what I’m getting at what we’re all getting at which is a branch is great, but we need to function at this preferred surfer level of surf and so to hear that kind of spoken back I thought was encouraging.
Speaker 10 54:56
And I mean as far as for me and my vocabulary and what I can Back to the rest of the council, I always use preferred level. And I have meetings with the mayor, and explaining what that means, what that looks like, and what the board is really wanting to wanting to see happen in our community. So, you know, so even if, you know, not just on council, but on the sidebar conversations as well,
Speaker 5 55:20
my takeaway was the direction from council to the city was to combat numbers at the preferred level. So that should be the values to get baked in. Right, once the language and all that is put together, which, which I think is great.
Speaker 10 55:39
And I think a lot of that stemmed from concerns from the community. And I think just not knowing how much of they would have to pay to see this through. So we wanted to have that clarity to ensure that it passes.
Speaker 1 55:57
Well, I personally find this all very encouraging, and great to hear. But I’d like to open up the discussion a little bit if anyone else on the board has comments or questions on this right now.
Unknown Speaker 56:12
I’m just glad that it’s moving forward.
Speaker 8 56:17
I’d be really excited to see how it all comes together. And I’m just curious how, what role the board can play in that process? Or if we can openly go out and advocate and canvass and put up signs for all this or what, what are the boundaries we can have for us?
Speaker 10 56:34
I mean, I would think so that like not necessarily as representing a board, but as residential. Anybody on here can, you know, you can’t collectively say we’re doing this as the library board. But you know, we are advocating for this to come through. And here are the reasons why. So really, you know, and it’s something that I’ve asked us the city is to bring you back some, you know, some talking points messaging that would allow people to go out there. You know, I’m union vice president. So it’s all about organizing and messaging and setting up those campaigns to get things passed.
Speaker 4 57:13
So yes. What about the friends? of Friends of the life friends? Yeah.
Speaker 2 57:21
Yeah, the friends are a 50123.
Speaker 4 57:25
So I have a question about that now, because I’ve found conflicting information in different places. Yeah. I don’t think there are see three, or that is I haven’t seen that anywhere. I think there are a different organization, potentially a C six. You remember us talking about it at the last? Yes.
Speaker 2 57:46
Yeah. And in someone who looked up the phrase bylaws, but it just said you can’t campaign for individuals the way I understood it.
Unknown Speaker 57:56
Yeah, no, they can’t the park politically endorsed
Speaker 4 57:59
candidate, a candidate campaign, my understanding of what that designation was,
Unknown Speaker 58:04
yeah, the IRS? Uh huh.
Speaker 4 58:06
And they could, you could campaign for causes and initiatives that are congruent with your mission. Okay. Which this sort of sets seem to fit that bill?
Speaker 5 58:19
Uh huh. Definitely, you know, even if the friends organization management wouldn’t didn’t want to do that. They have lists of members. Absolutely. That would probably be receptive to receiving information on what’s going on and would. Yeah, I mean, they can still be the platform, even if the Leadership isn’t on board.
Speaker 2 58:52
Katherine, you just wrote 501 C six, is that what the friends is? For you? Just, I wasn’t sure.
Speaker 8 59:01
That’s what they have on their website. I just looked it up. So it was listed as a business League, under the IRS. So it is slightly different, but it’s still a nonprofit. It’s a variation on the nonprofit. Okay. So yeah,
Speaker 2 59:20
so far my like, very high level general understanding and some of which has even come from the city attorney is that the friends organizations certainly can. campaign, but boards and commissions couldn’t at least not as a board member. And I understand
Speaker 1 59:35
campaign to be we cannot use this time to to like organize anything or organize ourselves. Yeah, right. Cannot campaign right wearing any sort of, like wearing the metaphorical hat of a library board member? Yeah. Is Am I missing something with that?
Unknown Speaker 59:52
No, that sounds right. Okay.
Speaker 8 59:56
When we as a board say that we’re in favor of this tax though. I mean, We are. I don’t see, we all we’ve been advocating for for the past two
Speaker 1 1:00:04
years. I. So my guess is kind of and I could be completely off on this is that that was that’s been in our role as an advisory board. So that we have been sharing our advice with counsel, then this level of funding is necessary. And here are the ways we support doing so. But now that it’s
Unknown Speaker 1:00:26
valid. Changes are canceled.
Speaker 5 1:00:29
Yeah, that you couldn’t knock on the door and say, is part of your argument? Oh, by the way, the long one advisory board unanimously supported this initiative.
Speaker 1 1:00:42
I think you definitely could. I don’t think I could say, though, as a member of the board, I think,
Speaker 5 1:00:48
oral by the way, I happen to be a member, but I’m here as a private citizen. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:53
I mean, that’s just sharing public record information.
Speaker 8 1:00:57
We can’t, for example, write an op ed saying, as a board we recommend Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:04
Yeah. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:05
So she said can.
Speaker 2 1:01:09
So I got, Katherine, else, I’ll email this to you. But this is this came from the city attorney, because I was asking him is very proud of what can and this is written from kind of sort of, toward city employees. But he said it’s applicable to boards and commissions. And I haven’t read through it all, because I just got it. But it’s something that maybe can be discussed next month, just because there’s a lot here, but I think would be an opportunity. And I’ll email to Katherine, what you said so that you can see it, and particularly with you good to have some other legal allies on to, but just it seems to me that overall. And what some of you are saying here is like you can just like what Katherine said, like, you can’t write a piece as a board member to say, like, vote yes, on six or whatever, you know, as a citizen, you can for sure, but
Unknown Speaker 1:02:16
write it and give it to your spouse or significant
Speaker 2 1:02:19
other. Yeah, yeah. But you can’t be so there’s there there seem to be some limitations in that sense, which are very much the limitations I have. So I cannot do anything on work time. On not on work time. I can deal with that a little bit differently. But I still have an extra copy of that. You can have this. Sorry.
Speaker 5 1:02:43
So Susie, when when this kind of came up at counsel, there seems to be an impression amongst counsel, my interpretation, that that the Advisory Board says not us. But the other advisory boards could be vehicles to help advocate their perspective interests somehow to the community. I mean, that that was my perception of the consul’s perception, maybe that’s incorrect. But how did you interpret all that? Or do you remember that being kicked around?
Speaker 10 1:03:21
I? I don’t recall, I apologize. I didn’t, that didn’t stand out to me as that necessarily being a couple that they were trying to highlight, I
Speaker 5 1:03:37
can couple we’re thinking well, you know, can’t just be us, now can’t just be counsel, we need to get like the community involved.
Speaker 10 1:03:49
You know, think about your own networks, think about the people that you are in contact with. So it’s, you know, the four of you, five of you, then you’re sending it out to your networks. And then from there, you know, then sending out to their networks, I that was my impression. It was like really just, you know, knowing, you know, the, the, you know, the precise information and being involved in the feasibility study, and the other presentations and all the information that we received from city staff, you are all aware of this information. So it’s, you know, being able to disseminate you all being able to disseminate your knowledge out to to your networks and ensure that because I think something that happened with the 2019 initiative and why it failed, was that there was there was a lot of misconception. And I think, really, I probably would have voted no for it had I not been reading that year, and actually sitting in the city council meetings and hearing what it what it was what was really involved in that So I think just helping kind of debunk myths. Yes. So that’s I think I thought that that’s what the, the message was. No, I could have misinterpreted that.
Speaker 4 1:05:13
She raised an excellent point, Susie, because I think if there’s any ambiguity about whether you should or shouldn’t be doing something, you know, there’s a difference between Riley’s I’m distinguishing between building awareness, educating, informing the community, just the objective facts that can be verified in any number of places, and advocacy, telling somebody what they should do or how they should vote. Right. So if that feels a little murky, there’s absolutely a need in this community for more education, communication. And just awareness building in information about, Hey, did you know, you know, some of the stuff that went into, you know, that came up with the feasibilities. Now, like, I come to this library several times a week and have since I moved here, and it’s like this sparkly Shangri La for me and my family. Yeah. And that council meeting where the results of the feasibility study were shared. That was like the first time that I was really seeing facts about the challenges and the struggles. Yeah, I mean, it’s a new resident. Yeah, I know, some of these things have been going on for a while. But so and that was because I happened to be there. So how you could just take little chunks of that and find ways of getting that word out. And then I don’t think that you’re really compromised, regardless of what your role is on the board or here just, I’m just sharing facts. Yeah, look up.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:48
And debunking myths and debunking myths.
Speaker 4 1:06:51
And hey, oh, and I’m going to end the conversation by saying there was an initiative on the ballot. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:06:56
you should check it out. Yeah, you should read it. Yeah. And I think that doesn’t cross that line.
Speaker 4 1:07:04
But it’s still really, it doesn’t feel like going soft, either, because it’s still a real need.
Speaker 1 1:07:13
So it sounds like the American thing, or JSA, like, but we’re all what I’m hearing. This is pretty consistent from all of us right now. And I’m hoping that I’m reading this. Thank you, John, will provide further clarity and in any other questions. I’m wondering, and we can talk a little bit about this, if you want under Reports. But I’m wondering if you as the frenzies on would be willing to keep us this group up to date on any initiatives that friends are taking? Since they have more opportunity, or less constraints?
Speaker 4 1:07:52
I will I think that I sensed some real interest when I brought it up at the last meeting. But I do not think that there is a uniformity of opinion. That’s okay.
Speaker 5 1:08:08
I think it was great that you were able to bring some of the members of the council meeting, because there were a number of interest groups there. And they had their own advocates in the in the audience and that, and to be able to indicate that, hey, you know, it’s not just one person, we’ve got a group here, we’re interested. And I don’t know whether to change people’s opinions or not. But I think it probably made it easier to embrace the pin, if you have.
Speaker 4 1:08:37
Thank you for saying that. Because I felt like I really botched
Speaker 7 1:08:43
that was know that I was well, I mean people
Unknown Speaker 1:08:47
have lives to live.
Speaker 4 1:08:49
No, no. It’s extremely grateful to the folks who showed up. And I know how passionate and dedicated they are. They didn’t realize they had to sign up to speak.
Speaker 5 1:09:02
Although they didn’t have to sign up. They didn’t have to speak over yet to be was there. Okay. All they have to be if there was more of a month ahead of you stand up but yeah. But the people from Parks and Rec said probably 20 people there. So I didn’t want to see competition. Well, they’ve got more so they did. They’re more deserving. So.
Speaker 4 1:09:28
I did feel really good that we had a
Speaker 5 1:09:33
great event. It was great. The show was great. Thanks.
Speaker 10 1:09:41
It is hard to get people to show up. Yeah, I do union organizing. We have our Cinco de Mayo booth. And um, you know, of our 1400 members. I was like lucky to get 10 And I was like, damn, what’s that? Do
Unknown Speaker 1:09:56
you have anyone to help you break down?
Speaker 10 1:09:59
Oh, yeah, just I just wanted to make sure at the beginning, yeah, I could sit there all day long, right? Just help me. Because a lot of stuff, but it is challenging. So you know, being able to turn off a few. That’s great.
Speaker 1 1:10:13
It sounds like some positive steps right now, on this and that. Yeah, hopefully well, we’ll have more clarity in terms of what we can or cannot do after reading this.
Speaker 5 1:10:26
It seems to me that the library is a natural issue for the teachers organization to advocate for. So I’m just
Speaker 10 1:10:38
can say that sacred valley Education Association, did endorse the performing arts. You know, being on the ballot. So you all want to come present? Somebody?
Speaker 1 1:10:52
Yeah. I mean, it’s an individual. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 10 1:10:56
I know, I think we had Elliot Moore, who was he came in and spoke to that, and the importance of getting that off the ballot. I can just, I should just say
Speaker 4 1:11:14
listening to some of the personal stories, shared, I mean, like, that’s one of the most powerful things you can have. And I’m not putting this on any thing or anyone. But you know, I found myself sitting there and listening to these different testimonies and thinking, you know, this is all wonderful stuff. This is great. You know, this sounds like a wonderful thing for one month. I was feeling like, it’s not an either or situation. Oh, no, that’s right. So when I felt my own emotions going toward, like, feeling competitive, feel like, oh, they brought 20 people and I brought three people in counselors gonna listen to them more than, you know, it wasn’t a either either or situations. So
Speaker 10 1:12:03
yeah. And I think it’s less about swaying counsel. And it’s more about disengaging the community. Yeah. And getting them on board to realize it. Because I listen to people and I was like, Well, I enjoy the library. It’s all right. I’m like, Well, really, I mean, let’s let’s look at these these pieces and what we could have and look at the growth, look at the needs. Are we meeting those those needs? And are we really bringing this library into the 21st century?
Speaker 4 1:12:32
Just saying maybe that should be part of the messaging. Yeah. This to remind folks like, yeah, you want to pay for it. You can have all these things.
Speaker 1 1:12:42
Just here for Claire just presents us Oh. All right. Well, any any other?
Unknown Speaker 1:13:19
On this that, I hope that if any questions come up for reading
Speaker 8 1:13:26
this I just have a timeline question. And, Susie, I don’t know if you actually know this. But when will when will the actual wording be hammered out? Do you know?
Unknown Speaker 1:13:35
I do not. I can ask.
Speaker 6 1:13:40
Jeff might know better. But yes, it made an agenda. Yeah.
Speaker 10 1:13:43
I you know what I use? I typically get the agenda. Unless there’s something big that you know, we’ll let I’m I feel like with that particular one, Harold, let us know, a few weeks in advance. But typically, we’ll get the agenda on Thursday. And then I know what’s, what we’ll be discussing on on Tuesday.
Speaker 5 1:14:08
Yeah, because just as a last comment, for me, one of the things that as a group we’ve tried to emphasize from time to time is the importance of linking the funding to the library. And I am personally interested in seeing how the language comes up. Because it’s the taxes dedicated for the library. I think that’s a good thing. If it’s just an increase in the general fund that smart is excited. Yeah, ladder.
Speaker 8 1:14:42
Yeah, thank you for setting. That’s exactly where my mind was going was again, are we going to actually see a certain percentage of excise tax dedicated to the library’s permanent funding?
Speaker 10 1:14:55
So typically, that would come back to us in a general business item. On this upcoming Tuesday, we’re not discussing that. We’re discussing the fair campaign practices.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:08
Is that something you feel like you can advocate for Susie? I don’t know.
Speaker 10 1:15:14
I’m sorry to advocate for the type of funding.
Speaker 8 1:15:19
Yeah, probably fixed percentage of the tax being allocated for the library in order to meet the preferred level of service.
Speaker 10 1:15:26
I mean, I think I, you know, I can definitely, and I’ve had conversations with Jim Goldin and Harold. But really, it’s up to, you know, it’s, it’s determined by them, what it what is sustainable. What is feasible. But, um, and given the the results of the survey, I think, with the library being the highest favorable. Mark, you know, I had my one of the conversations I had with Harold was, you know, that, that it’d be, you know, most of the communities supporting the library, we need to ensure that that our ballot measure reflects that. So
Speaker 8 1:16:09
I’m sorry, but do you think it just put a follow up again, to zero about that? If we think that yes, the moment writing that language like, Yeah, might be this, to reemphasize that if possible,
Speaker 5 1:16:19
yeah. Yeah, of course. So that point, because in the build up to discussion, there were numbers calculated did represented sales tax increases in property taxes? Looking at it from afar, my assumption was, okay, well, somebody in their mind is linking that cost to this initiative. And, yeah, in the weeds in the background, but that information, I think, needs to make it to the ballot, so that an individual looking at support for the library, yes, and say, Gee, okay, my sales tax is gonna go up by X amount X amount, my property tax is gonna go up by a couple mils. And when I pay my taxes, I know that that is targeted for the lack of
Unknown Speaker 1:17:10
Yes. Generally. Yeah, I understand what you’re getting.
Speaker 8 1:17:16
And I think the other piece was that when we went and spoke to council the first time this fall, I guess, or wait winter. We said we were in favor of a progressive tax, but not a regressive tax. And has this is their statement on what type of taxation this is going to be? Not?
Speaker 5 1:17:35
A combination of both? Yeah. It’s a feasibility thing is what they thought the My interpretation is the witness, the city thought that they could achieve a combination of property.
Speaker 10 1:17:49
But are you asking about how much of that collective would be going to the library? Is that what your question was?
Speaker 8 1:17:56
My first question was that yes, was can we count on a dedicated percentage of whatever is collected? And that might sound? Right, it sounds like both of it undetermined. My second question is, is this going to be written as a progressive or regressive? It sounds like Mark is saying is going to be written as a hybrid?
Speaker 5 1:18:16
Yes, that’s well, that’s my, the information I have today him as of today in the state
Unknown Speaker 1:18:25
tax.
Speaker 8 1:18:29
I guess that’s something the board should consider to them. Because our initial statement was that we favored a progressive tax, you know, I guess, maybe just for next time, something to think about, do we support any version of this? You know, or are we committed to that piece, in addition to making sure that the funding level is secure? So pushing out the
Speaker 1 1:18:52
process, then you all receive that information, that language from the city, from city staff? And then Is there discussion on it at that point, or do you just receive pretty much the final version? No. So
Speaker 10 1:19:05
will will receive it? I imagine that it will be coming back to us and the general session. I know, right? Okay. That’s basically how that comes back to us. And that lends itself to more of a back and forth conversation. We’re asking questions, we’re providing input. It’s not like what we’re really doing first reading and second reading. So we haven’t even gotten to that word like it’s zero. Right. I think we’re before zero.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:31
Okay, I know you had mentioned that
Speaker 1 1:19:33
earlier. Just making sure you’re standing. By other comments on this one, it seems like we need to remind your CME read through what John has shared, make sure that we don’t have questions about it and then hopefully, we’ll be able to hear from you or from Jeff and the next time what the timing will be like when that was when that for So I’ll be added to the agenda.
Speaker 5 1:20:03
To you. This is just another stray thought, do you think it would be possible for Jeff to get someone from liberal or the appropriate person from the city to come in and speak to the sport of what their roles and obligations would be?
Speaker 2 1:20:22
Yeah. Well, I mean, we, you know, we can ask, yeah, in terms
Speaker 5 1:20:27
of further guidance, along with this, this document takings?
Speaker 1 1:20:45
couldn’t really be helpful, especially if somebody could just come for the very beginnings part? Okay, other thoughts before moving on? Okay, great. So next action. next agenda item, the action plan. Really, John, this is if there any updates from you, or any comments from the board on what was shared last month,
Speaker 2 1:21:08
I don’t have anything new. I had a, just some minor revisions from some staff input on it, which doesn’t really change what I shared last month. So really, to me, unless Unless anyone read, I don’t remember, if I sent it out on the packet or just shared it here. Now that I think about it now. If there was any direct feedback on it, but otherwise, my my intention would be to kind of format that a little bit differently so that in the coming months, we can look through it and I can share in a given month? What in the action plan we might have accomplished. Yeah, and you mentioned the dashboard. And I think I have a good method to do for that that’s a little more visual, then it’d be easier to see like, what’s the process? What, what we’re working on what’s done, kind of thing. So that’s not hard to put together, which I can help me. So I handed it out.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:21
Any other comments right now? Actually? He’s very excited. Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:22:28
I really appreciate it. sharing that with us. And I look forward to updates as you work through it as well. Okay, let’s move on. It’s gonna nourish your friends. So that can’t last time. We print out two copies of this marker, but it probably I believe on you a little bit. Wanted to hand this to you, John. Well, this year, I can’t remember. And then sorry, no, I’m just passing this. So in, I went back to the board minutes. And then January of 2021, we as a board moved to put together subcommittee to consider more flexible means of use of the monies in these funds. And so that document was the updated results of that set piece effort. And then in June in December of 21. The last time I saw mentioned of this, and I might not look fully was that we’ve sent this information to the city attorney’s office, and we’re waiting for an update. I don’t know if that update ever came mark, same thing that I’m missing that,
Speaker 5 1:23:43
you know, I think you’re right on the it was recommended in one of our discussions with maybe we needed legal the way and so that caused the document to go to local but they just kind of sat there. So rather than continue to grind away at the city and the way they treat the library and libraries needs, we just says well, as a group, this is what we agreed to, until we get clarification from the city, we’ll just follow this policy and go from there. So that’s where we’re at.
Speaker 1 1:24:23
Right? Um, say that would it be worth it? Do you think at this time to check back end with the goal or just to continue on until we hear otherwise that we have sent this off as we should you don’t have an opinion on that.
Speaker 5 1:24:43
To me, it’s just another indication of the city’s regard for the library and the fact that they carry this stuff and they don’t get the attention they deserve. So the having said that, it’s up to you guys. I mean, not
Speaker 1 1:24:58
long ago. Jamie All right, so Well, in January 21. Wait, sorry, December 21. The last time it was mentioned, said it’s been sent off, and they’re waiting. So I’m assuming somebody is not definitely.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:15
It was last month. Yeah.
Speaker 5 1:25:17
Well, we hear we have some hard words with the previous director. Regarding the city’s response, and encouraging, you know, whatever initiative, whatever fire can be put under the initiative, with interest never went. So. So my my thought was, is the city wasn’t interested in seeing.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:44
And we’ve done our due diligence this
Speaker 5 1:25:50
year, but to the board, the members of the board at that time, there was a lot of money in these funds. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t a credible approach that we were using prior to putting this policy in places as to how to manage this in a responsible fashion. So that’s why we slipped in, can it be changed? Absolutely. But it does recognize, I think, this group’s attempt to try and create some fiduciary duty to manage their fiduciary responsibility in association, but a lot of
Speaker 1 1:26:30
points, especially if you’re there, because of the stipulations, just had it been used. But it’s, I’m so glad you’re going ahead and using those funds.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:46
So I, I’m kind of at a loss,
Speaker 1 1:26:48
if we want to make any motion not. That’s the wrong word. If we want to make any movement with this at this point. Or if we want to just hear proposals and ideas from John as they come up, and updates like you normally would. I’m curious if anyone else has opinions on this?
Speaker 8 1:27:21
I mean, I am frustrated that nothing has happened in two years. But I also feel like, we really need them to focus on this tax initiative. I don’t know if pressing them on this right now is the right timing, at least until we see what they come up with, you know, in case we need to go to that over that. I guess I feel like that’s a bigger, more pressing issue right now, unfortunately. But I agree that it’s important that eventually we get this settled,
Speaker 1 1:27:48
I’m happy to just kind of sit on this for a little longer, and then just, you know, send this back out to the city at some point. And maybe at that point, with any director, we might want to readdress this proposed policy as well. Do you think it might
Unknown Speaker 1:28:07
be prudent to figure out just how much is in there?
Unknown Speaker 1:28:10
I think, you know, you have that information, right? Yeah,
Speaker 2 1:28:13
I mean, that the Epson font is small. It’s like 5000 or so dollars, it’s not huge, are maybe I’m mixing that up with another one, because I am still learning, but that one has, you know, it’s continued to be spent on and it’s typically gone towards some of our print reference collections, from what I’ve looked at and some history, the Moser fund is really the the bigger out there that that’s a trust that endowment that was set up that we can spend on the interest and so little has been spent since it was put there that we can spend close to $600,000. And there’s really no parameters, it’s just to go towards library programs, which is very broad,
Unknown Speaker 1:29:01
and beautiful.
Speaker 2 1:29:03
Because that’s like, everything is a library program. So so that’s the one I’ve been more or less exploring and happy to do before I realized anything like this existed, I already made some moves to use it for sound like all 500,000 But the library for a long time is one and a West Side exterior book drop on the planet. So it’s like nominal coming out of the spine, but it helps because I don’t really have an oil supply. But I
Speaker 5 1:29:38
can I make a recommendation we get an accurate account of where we’re at. Yeah, because I think there’s more than five though. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 1:29:45
there is more.
Unknown Speaker 1:29:46
It’s no no, we needed the other funds.
Speaker 2 1:29:48
The other one probably is more. I think I probably shouldn’t have said that amount that’s theirs. I think that’s a different library fund. There’s another there’s a couple other funds there that are dedicated library finds like a rattle. Yeah. Well, you know, it’s just like, absent is different through your take charge attitude. It’s not anywhere near the most fun. That was the the new one to me then I learned about which I feel well, it was a wasn’t pleasant surprise. But you know, I just there there are some things that I think that can really benefit the library that we don’t have that that can we should use it and that’s what it’s there for. So I can gather this by next meeting and give a rundown of the different funds and what the the current Yeah.
Speaker 5 1:30:46
Although I believe that I killed him probably knows the exact No,
Speaker 2 1:30:51
and I have I mean, I have I get I have reports and I can find the information.
Speaker 1 1:30:56
So that’d be great if you don’t mind providing that information. And then sounds like the backdrop if you wouldn’t also mind sharing some of the other ideas or movements that
Speaker 2 1:31:08
you’re basically to write that I had identified the other that one is kind of sort of in process in the sense that because it’s considered capital, in some sense, it’ll end up in councils hands to approve spending. And it’s about $5,000. It’s not like, but I did the work of, of talking with the city project manager in parks, because parks is responsible for the grounds to make sure we could like physically install a book drop on the concrete. So that’s sort of in the works. And then the other bigger item I had in mind with this, which I will actually put into the budget process, but I will tag it to come to this fun, which would be to buy the library, its own outreach van.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:58
Okay, so
Unknown Speaker 1:31:59
that’s, that’s a bigger ticket.
Speaker 5 1:32:01
Neither none of what I’m about to say, is a showstopper. But one, understanding, I guess, regardless of what this group says, it’s still what our approval still needs to go to the mayor for the mayor to sign in check. So the city has the ultimate, get approval on all this. And then, I guess, secondly, if I can just remember what just jumped on my head.
Speaker 5 1:32:38
The, this this topic of using the fund versus the city adequately funding the library through the budgetary process was a big bugaboo with the group, because we thought not all of us, but there’s a certain rainy day characteristic to the funds, you just don’t want to squander them. And there was a concern that if the if they were the go to source of funding, kind of like the friends, then the city never steps up and adequately budgets, the library. So there was a reluctance to just grab the money out here. You know, right. You on. So that was, that was the concern, and that’s another reason for putting the policy together was to make sure that it just didn’t go away.
Speaker 2 1:33:45
Yeah, I get that. And so far, these two things I booked up, I could argue out of a general fund purchase, and that could probably be done but the van is a different thing to me. To me, in the sense that I don’t think spending out of that fund again, a vehicle to support outreach says anything about support from the library from the city standpoint. it in my mind it’s not a normal purchase.
Speaker 5 1:34:16
Well, I think that’s to me, that’s that’s a city of obligation. But even if you argued that wasn’t a city obligation, is I think I previously mentioned the last time this thing came up the friends were willing to pony up half in the city city then had to pony up half and but that was the way it was looked at it and none but that doesn’t mean that that’s the only way of looking at it. But the friends were willing to do that and they had the money to do that. And then then it got into like operating issues and how do we staff it? Yeah, Do we? What do we put in it? And you know, what are the collections like? And do we have the electronics to do this intelligent? Yeah.
Speaker 2 1:35:07
Well, that’s that’s where I think there’s all. But I think that’s what you need a mix. It’s one thing to use the fun to acquire the thing. But it’s the ongoing support. I wouldn’t expect to draw that from the fund every year.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:25
For the, for the friends, I guess, yeah,
Speaker 2 1:35:28
no, no, that has to be, in my mind supported through our own budget.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:37
Other comments or questions? Listen tonight. Thanks for me this little more info about this information? Yeah. All right. information items.
Speaker 2 1:35:53
Director report. Okay. So why, first of all, what I won’t have this month is programming highlights just the timing of this meeting coming up. I didn’t give my staff enough time to give me their stuff. So I’ll kind of combine that next month. But that’s hopefully Okay. The other item I wanted to talk about in my report was actually budget related because we’re in the budget process now. So I wanted to, you know, share with the board, what kind of high level like, well, maybe detail level, but what what I am intending to put, I have a lot of budget requests for the library. I shouldn’t share this for counseling. Hang on a second.
Unknown Speaker 1:36:40
I have a lot of tabs.
Unknown Speaker 1:36:44
Oh, yeah, no, you can’t be me.
Speaker 1 1:36:50
Just looking at like my free browsers,
Unknown Speaker 1:36:56
little folders in
Speaker 2 1:37:00
the I mean, I’m kind of sharing you just notes I’ve taken here, but it’ll give you an idea of what I think is essential in our budget request, my highest priority is additional outreach now.
Speaker 2 1:37:20
You can see Catherine. So you know, currently we have Lillian sometime you’ll meet her here. She’s certainly someone I’ll bring in here to share about outreach. But she was hired just about a year ago and has done amazing work. But this, this has grown into where we really need a department and she needs staff to really function. I mean, it’s almost pointless to have a vehicle that no one has time to go drive. Right. So it all kind of comes together for me. And it’s an it’s a really critical service to be out there. It doesn’t matter if we build one, two or three libraries, we still need outreach, we still need to get out there. It’s just such an important service for libraries. So. So that’s one of it. With Lillian being the outreach, I feel like if she has staff, she needs to be at a manager level in order to do that. And then I’ll kind of move down here and you can certainly ask questions. We operate as many departments here with sort of this temp wages like it’s like a bucket, I can I just call it a bucket of money that a lot of staff get paid from. Now we as the library will hire people who say like, we know you’re working 20 hours a week, or whatever it is, but it comes out of this temp wages bucket. But it’s so precise that we have very little flexibility if we need staff to work, maybe a few extra hours to go to Cincotta miles for example, which is a great example of just the Saturday where I was there and it was packed. Yeah, yeah. Or other events, just things where they can actually work extra hours and we can afford to pay him to do it. Or to have on call subs. It’s like we’ve we’re big enough now we’re gonna do this and this is where this will come from. So I want this to be not so precise. It may not get spent down over a year but we need to have that capacity in my opinion. So that’ll that’ll be going in there. We have a computer lab coordinator that’s three quarter time, she really should just be full time. Collections is a is a big thing for me. So one of the things we we are introducing is pre processing and we’ve talked about that but we’re in transition now where a lot of our materials this is the first time I’ve ever been that doesn’t do this where when we order from our book vendors, they the materials come in shelf ready. Right, they come in and all you have to do is scan the barcode it goes on the shelf at Longmont. They come in and we have to put on the jacket covers and put all the labeling on and we Get backlogs of stuff. So we’re changing that. But there’s a cost to it. So we need to account for that. And we estimated about an additional 60,000, just to cover that progressive and so worth it. It also will relieve time from staff that are doing this to do other things I outreach. But also down the road over time, we can transition them into other roles in the library where they’re not needed in this role. So no one loses jobs. But what are we what are our new priorities basically, is the way I see that so. But we also just need a budget increase. This gets into feasibility study, when you go into prefer level of service, we don’t buy enough collections for a library that serves a population besides. And that’s true for electronic collections to way underneath. What we spend per capita is near the bottom of a library that serves 100,000 people in the state. And I don’t know that the city really wants to be in that category, which is what I will write in my publisher. It’s like that that logic, like children
Speaker 2 1:41:14
anyway, professional development I’m an advocate for and we have a real minimal budget for this, we have no opportunity to send staff to conferences and for ongoing professional development. It’s very, very low. This is car nominal. But uniforms. I’m real big advocate for this, I went ahead and just spent some money this year to get T shirts. So that we look like we’re unified organization where knowledge. In fact, volunteers have some now. So you’re welcome. But you know, I but that should be ongoing. You come in, you got hired in you get your onboarding, and this is what you do. And also here, you can have a T shirt, a polo password. And yeah, and sorry. You have one, Catherine. Yeah, next time you’re we see you, we’ll get you your T shirt. Oh, you see, how’s it sitting right in front of her?
Speaker 2 1:42:26
Where am I at so that Library app, this is something I would like to introduce this would be an ongoing cost but something that a lot of libraries have. And we introduced this in my last job that I was at, which is it’s an app that does common things, or it’s just a nice interface to search the catalog of, but there’s add on features like self checkout, and things that I think are real add on things for for for patrons that they’ve come to expect from other industries like retail. So why not us and the technology is there. It’s just whether we can pay for it.
Unknown Speaker 1:43:05
I think one that you really like,
Speaker 2 1:43:06
there’s a few I like there’s one that truly will work that I don’t like as much as others, if that makes sense with the chat. I don’t not crazy about the interface of it. But the functionality works because it integrates really well with our iOS. So it doesn’t fail, or you fail upgrading to iOS. We there’s there’s no plans to change it and if that’s what you need, but we go through standard upgrades when there’s repercussions
Speaker 1 1:43:35
and legends. Yeah, with it with also text created with reference or readers advisory, the text readers advisory with that also be able to go through the after with that continue.
Speaker 2 1:43:46
We have textual library already Oh, like without would integrate with this? That’s a good question. That sounds great. In fact, that’s a really good question. Because the inner app integration is huge. I mean, one of the great things about an app that a mobile site won’t quite do, right, is things like, well, the location based services, right? There’s a lot of things you could do if the technology is there. So like someone’s nearby, and you could send a push notification, like, oh, there’s a program at the library happening near you. I mean, think about the stuff that you might get it depends on sign up for an odd or, you know, there’s privacy issues around that with libraries. But if it’s opt in, then you’re pretty clear. Programming budget this I mean, this isn’t necessarily in priority order, but if it was, this would be right under outreach staff. This is where we we rely 100% on the friends which we are forever grateful for. There is no reason why a library to size should function and not be able to support our own programming. What the friendship support is big events. Right? There’s the it’s not that that takes away The need for friends support, that’s where you use that kind of generosity to bring in big authors and really get community events going for the library. And so but but day to day programming, or whether it’s buying crafts or a storytime or you know, or other things, we need to have our budget, including bringing in presenters not a grant author level scale, but other other guest speakers or things that can come speak that would, and some of them are very nominal fees. But, you know, we need to be able to support that. So
Speaker 10 1:45:35
it’s nice that you’re not asking staff, like, teachers we have,
Speaker 5 1:45:39
yeah, oh, my God. It’s a corollary to that the friends ended up being asked to write the contracts. On the author’s in which
Speaker 2 1:45:53
I’m sure you’re aware of it, yeah, I’m in it, because it makes it easier.
Speaker 5 1:45:57
Because of the red tape with shitty. Yeah.
Speaker 2 1:46:02
Yeah, because they have the city center. And that would probably change that if we were to hire them ourselves and not through the friends, but we could probably still find a way to do it, even if the library’s funding it. But I don’t know. I mean, that’s getting ahead of ourselves. But in general, we should be able to support that. That’s, to me standard library operating. I put storefront library here, because whether there’s the ballot initiative or not, this is still a separate item to one branch is great, but we still need something else. So I don’t want to. And part of this, for me putting it in the budget is to just not lose sight of the fact that we need an additional space, whether it comes through the voter approved initiative or not.
Speaker 5 1:46:47
This is another one watch stray thoughts. But when we sat through the presentation to counsel about the YMCA, in their complex, it seemed like they had some sort of library feature.
Speaker 10 1:46:59
Yeah, I know. Yeah, no. lightwind. So I think there was a space that would possibly be a daycare or in library. The other one and I don’t know if you know about this job. The hover, you know, near hovercraft, I do. Yeah. Okay. So where that this LED for portable housing affordable housing project, there is a section that we could possibly use, we’ll use some space in there for a storefront library. I like that idea. One is in my ward. So I’m all for it. It’s a much needed area. It’s in a much needed area in north west side of town where there isn’t a whole lot.
Speaker 2 1:47:49
Yeah, and that is, and I’ve been in some conversations about that. And I haven’t heard anything. I just don’t know where that stands. But I would love for that to come through because that’s they very much that group is very much advocated for library now. It’d be like a retail storefront type of thing. Yes. In fact, they’ve asked on top and as much as what I thought that could look like. I’m like, well, it could be a staff library. It could be self service. There’s a lot of options out there.
Speaker 4 1:48:15
But yeah, I’m thinking of what the North boulder grass used to look like. Yeah. mixed use. Yep. It was. Yeah. Really, yeah.
Speaker 2 1:48:29
The vision of this project is that a library but then like a youth, a child house, or, like next door,
Speaker 10 1:48:36
and I think there was, my understanding is because of how the funds would be allocated to to build that sport, that that that daycare center would really be for the residents.
Unknown Speaker 1:48:52
Correct. That’s the way I understand it. However, if we did
Speaker 10 1:48:55
something that is a storefront library, and it sounded like there was room for both, but built storefront library would be open, it would be a public facility. So it would be open for any of
Speaker 2 1:49:12
the band’s on here again, but that that’ll be put in? I wanted it is the part of the budget process because it gets vetted through fleet and then you know, everyone has, well, this is one of the costs, it’ll get costed out appropriately, so that i know but i will indicate this is coming from that motor fund in my budget request, because I don’t want it denied. Well, that’s not really the reason partially, I mean, it’s gonna be a big cost. So I don’t want I don’t want that to overweight other things in here, to be honest, that I can’t pay through the vulture fund, but this I can. That’s my logic. BT cat is it’s a cataloguing tool that I guess has been explored here before I was here and it would streamline a lot He kind of goes along with pre processing, in a sense, as far as our library database and accuracy of records and making that much easier to work with, and better and faster as far as having materials ready, and better searchable. So it’s probably worth the cost. And then this is another staff person that is on here. And I have some other staffing to consider that are not on here that I may want to put in here. But this is a person that it’s it’s sort of a special category almost won’t cost anything to do. But it needs to be in the process. So. But that’s kind of the long and short of it. I mean, I have a few other things to work through. But I’m starting to create that now. I would say the biggest things are the staffing for outreach, programming budget. Yeah, I mean, it’s, of course, it’s everything. And then probably collections.
Speaker 5 1:50:58
So there you have one item in there, which I think is just professional development training. At this the city offer a program to its employees where if they want to go to get a degree, get an advanced degree or whatever they can meet those criteria through the city and the city pays for that
Speaker 2 1:51:23
there is there is some form of a tuition reimbursement program. There is as much as I know, and
Unknown Speaker 1:51:30
covers every everything,
Speaker 2 1:51:33
not everything. But if it’s Yeah, but like I don’t know, a lot of details, but I have an employee here that’s currently in a library science program. And I just signed some papers to get some tuition reimbursement. Right. So there’s there’s a little bit there from the city in that sense of support.
Speaker 1 1:51:53
But thanks so much, John, I am cognizant of the time right now. But I also want to ask, I really want city to know our support, if we have support for you’ve budget request. And so I’m curious if this month is the time to share any messages of support for next month, kind of like the timing views. I do think that it’s I mean, I was just highlighting what you’re seeing was the highest party stuff. And it just seems so important to me. Yeah. So I really want to make sure and thoroughly what we have behind this if if the other board members are in agreement on when what’s peer reviewed the timing of when everything happens.
Speaker 2 1:52:38
Yeah, it’s it’s right now. It’s 26. Eventually, by the time this board meets again, it will be submitted.
Speaker 1 1:52:46
Alright, so we sit in what do the other board members think about a communication to city just sharing support behind these, this list and really specifically calling out outreach support programming, budget collections and pre processing seem to be some of the ones that are most critical? I don’t know if you need a formal motion for that. But I’d be happy just to email. City council members sharing that we are in support of of these budget requests. Is that some good everyone? Yes. All right. I think I do have to make a motion for that. So I move that the board since to the council, statement of support behind the the budget requests for the 20. Grant but how we can use here at 2324. Year. I second. All in favor? Okay. I will I will send an email to
Speaker 5 1:53:48
council. Could you also include city manager? Yes. Jeff and Jeff’s. Joanie?
Speaker 2 1:53:58
Cynthia, Catherine, I’ll answer that just one second. But Cynthia, I can email you. I think it would help if I yeah, I know. I just marked on a bunch of stuff. But I think if I summarize it for you a little bit and give you some context of where I’m coming from mental health. And then Katherine is going to tailor to the current it’s it’s getting towards the preferred level. That’s the way I see it. And that’s some of how I will help some of this is that it’s a step towards in that direction. So certainly preferred level of service would include our programming budget and collections that support population of this size, you know, blah, blah, blah. So answer that.
Speaker 8 1:54:47
Yeah, thank you does and I guess, you know, again, it’s not that I don’t want to support this budget. I 100% want you to have this budget. I just don’t want them to think that we’re satisfied with this. If it’s not the preferred level that you actually they want. So I’m just putting that up there.
Speaker 2 1:55:02
Right? I agree. And I think and I will, in my justification in the budget processing, like the literal, where I write up why I need this money, it will indicate that getting towards a preferred level of service. So like this is, you know, this isn’t the the one year and the end of it, and then we’re
Unknown Speaker 1:55:21
at preferred.
Speaker 1 1:55:24
Kind of it’s a great point. And when we communicate with counselor support as well, we can also share that we’re so proud of this as a step towards the preferred level of service.
Speaker 5 1:55:35
Yep. Be nice to know what the voter initiative dollars came in at so you’re not underselling yourself. That’s possible.
Speaker 1 1:55:47
Yeah. Well, John, is there anything else you had under your directorship?
Unknown Speaker 1:55:55
Nope. Let’s move on. See how quickly we
Speaker 1 1:55:57
can do any I think next we have friends
Speaker 4 1:56:02
really quick. We had a our last meeting was in a lively one. All manner of topics that we covered, but essentially, we’re in full gear preparation for the book sale that starts on Wednesday. We have tweaked a couple of things about the sale, we think they’re they’re just laying things out differently this time, but to me, the most notable distinction is the move away from a separate Teacher Education discount. And I am anticipating that there’s going to be some freak out. Because you we didn’t get the word out. So it’s not going anywhere. However, we’re not calling it a separate teacher, education, like window of time where you show up and you fill your bag for $5. And we have that awkward conversation where you pull out your wallet, and you try and find your school ID and a submitter know, you’re really you’re good, not just gonna take my word for it. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, why would you? It’s fun. So now we’re just combining, and everyone gets to fill a bag for $5 on Saturday. And I believe it’s still window, I think it’s one to five. But we’re not asking for anybody’s credentials. We’re not, you know, sitting in judgment of whether you qualify as an educator because you do this thing or that thing versus something else. And I think it’s a good move in streamlining what we do. But gosh, I’m expecting a lot of people to ask about it. Everyone’s getting the same thing that they’ve always got no. Other counting. I’m really, with, in support of John in support of this move to gradually have the library support its own programming. I am very slowly and gently wanting to invite the friends, at least the members of the friends board to imagine what that organization would do. If they were not responsible for 100% of the library’s programming. What else would you do there? No matter how close or distant the future there may come a time will come a time where the friends may need to redefine its mission. And I love the idea of bigger events and bringing in people and building community. I have a background in development and fundraising for operations is something you want to move away from as soon as possible. So I don’t think it’s a strong position for the library to be in when we lie exclusively on a group of volunteers to provide essential services to our community. So that’s a very slow wheel that I hope will start turning but for right now it’s sales, sales sales. They’ve I’m impressed with how much we bring in SAP, but they how much they bring in with all of the different things that they do to generate revenue and I think that if we were to turn that in another direction, it could be quite powerful. Before
Unknown Speaker 2:00:08
they told me, I also told them all about the meeting.
Speaker 5 2:00:15
As you see me changing their attitude towards the foundation to enroll all on building a foundation.
Unknown Speaker 2:00:23
Is this on? Yes. Not that specifically No.
Unknown Speaker 2:00:30
Okay. They’re still thinking,
Speaker 4 2:00:33
I will say that it does not always feel like a really unified group. And I would say that to their faces, I’m still trying to figure out the dynamics in that room. Their passion for the library and supporting the library in any possible way, seems to be the glue that holds them together. But the minutiae, or the, you know, the flavors of how they should do that and what they should do. I think there is a large diversity of opinion there, you’re working.
Speaker 1 2:01:19
So that we have a dedicated liaison. So thank you for taking on that role. And I know you have volunteered as backup for that. So I’ll
Speaker 4 2:01:30
say one more thing that I would like to explore is, I’m not aware that there’s any strong connection with other friends organizations, or some of the arms of organization, organization organizations, such as ALA, that have, they exist to support boards like ours, they exist to support foundations, and friends organizations. And I think getting opening those doors and getting that fresh air in and see what other libraries, how they’re innovating, how they’re meeting, the challenges of our times now
Unknown Speaker 2:02:14
would be really beneficial for that. So that’s another thing that I would like to bring to them.
Speaker 5 2:02:22
You know, when we were looking for people to participate in a feasibility study, there was an outfit out of Minnesota. That was an adjunct of friends group that specifically just did that they will go in and support studies for libraries looking to make a case before their government was fascinating. But I mean, it was an interesting spin on a, you know, a different organizational construct. So I just thought that
Speaker 1 2:03:01
was I’m sure you might be aware this too. But I was just looking at I put it in this report. Ala does have some resources for print strip, but it looks like the current association of libraries because of trustees and friends division. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 2:03:14
Yeah, it was really good staffer.
Speaker 4 2:03:20
And I forget which but one of them puts out a lot of webinars and things on that like how to move your library forward and how to tease apart certain legislative things that may be impacting your library. And it’s difficult and or expensive to register for those things without having a membership.
Speaker 1 2:04:07
Wait, that’s just for time sake. No. Notice how long even though I think that’s an important question to consider later. What are ways that you could do that? Um, anything else?
Unknown Speaker 2:04:23
Thank you for letting me Oh, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 2:04:25
No, I’m glad you did. And now see consulting.
Speaker 10 2:04:28
So there were a few things I was going to mention the why. I was able to interject some of the updates throughout the meeting. But a couple of things. One, I’d like to inform you all about the youth summit. So he wanted to take a couple. So this is again, the stadium dollar. He was brought as it was transferred over to children’s youth and families. So their division will be hosting a youth summit. They do this every year their youth summit, but they will do be adding time for kids to attend to a team to put in their their feedback and what they would like to see that money allocated for. So it’s it would be guided by our youth to really determine how that money will be spent, since it was supposed to be money that supposed to be allocated for you. So I will be in attendance. But if you wanted to share this with your your networks, they can scan the QR code or if you wanted to take an extra one as well, to hand out to those, you know, in the area. The other one is today and actually still feel it. We were in the sugar mill today. So we did a tour with the property owner of the actual sugar mill site. And planning staff Jodie Marsh was there. Glenn helped me with his last name. Ben, what’s the last name Glenn’s last name? I can’t remember. Glen, out of our public our planning and zoning, and Nijmegen? I think yeah, we get three times today. So he was out there. And, and a couple of developers, so we were out there touring the site and looking at possibly, you know, potential for that area. And the goal is really to preserve as much of that facility for historical purpose as possible. But there’s so many opportunities, you know, using some space, you know, there’s one giant shelter, space, you know, I don’t know, if it’s that big gray building that you see, it’s huge. It’s almost like a giant warehouse, you know, possible site for a performing arts, you know, so different ways that we could tap into that space. And, you know, even having, you know, one of the space there for for a children’s library or something specific in things that we need in our community, as well, as, you know, we’re working with getting permanently affordable or attainable homes for sale in that area. And using those dollars to kind of leverage and be able to, to fund public spaces and facilities in those. So it was really exciting to see that there’s going to be movement in there. Right now. It’s just going to be a lot of abatement. And, you know, I have my mask on my heel that there was it’s very dusty, scratchy. But um, so it’s very exciting. I feel like we’re in the next few years, we’re gonna see some movement in that area. There’s a lot of potential for different museums, the library, parks to be able to tap in and use that space as well. And we’re hoping to be able to see that come to fruition.
Unknown Speaker 2:08:10
All right, well, maybe nine library board comments.
Unknown Speaker 2:08:14
Real quick for next meeting.
Unknown Speaker 2:08:16
I’m not sure if that’s June team,
Unknown Speaker 2:08:17
but if it is, we should probably maybe consider
Unknown Speaker 2:08:23
that we might just put in the chat.
Speaker 6 2:08:24
Oh, yeah. Yeah, probably thinks. What is Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 2:08:39
I’m on the 26th. We could scoot back one week, and you do well. I’m also available the 20 on if we wanted to move it a day later. I can do either.
Unknown Speaker 2:08:56
So the 20th It’s
Unknown Speaker 2:08:58
elastic city council,
Speaker 10 2:09:00
we might be I don’t know because I know we have CML they call me misbelief. So then I’d be out of town for that.
Speaker 8 2:09:09
Everything is on marks availability, because it’s his last meeting. That’s a good point. Catherine. Works like I’m
Unknown Speaker 2:09:21
very busy.
Unknown Speaker 2:09:25
Just pick a day. We’ll see what works.
Unknown Speaker 2:09:28
How does the chocolate creamer? Right now
Unknown Speaker 2:09:31
for this d&d?
Unknown Speaker 2:09:32
How about for everyone else students? Well, great.
Unknown Speaker 2:09:36
Actually makes it a month from now. Yeah,
Speaker 1 2:09:39
that’s perfect. Let’s go ahead and move that then to trial. Thanks. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:09:46
All right. Um,
Unknown Speaker 2:09:48
well, with that I’m gonna go ahead and close this meeting at 910
Transcribed by https://otter.ai