Library Board - Special Meeting

I'd like to call this meeting of the special meeting of the library board to order at 06:31. Roll call, please. Robin Mark. Here. Judy Borey. Here. Barbara Fitzgerald. Here. Catherine Nathan. Here. Mela Perkins. Here. Vera Walters. Here. And Alexander Whitewater. Here. Thank you. I need a motion for the agenda. So moved. Do I have a second?

I'll second that.

Do have a motion and a second? Roll call, please. Robin Harper? Yes. Judy Morgan? Yes. Barbara Fitzgerald? Yes. Gavin Mead? Yes. Pamela Bergens? Yes. Walter? Yes. Alexander Whiteville?

Yes. Motion passes.

Thank you. I'd like a motion for acceptance of the minutes of January 15, please. So moved. Second. Thank you. I have a motion and a second. Roll call, please. Robin? Yes. Judy Borey? Yes. Barbara Fitzgerald. Yeah. Gavin Meade. Yes. Mela Burgans. Yes. Sarah Walters. Yes. And Alexander.

Texas. Thank you. Well, this is the first time I've had the opportunity to read this particular portion. Thank you, public. Arizona Open Meeting Law allows individuals to address jurisdiction of the library board.

The library board may not answer your questions or discuss your comments at this time. However, at the conclusion of call to the public, the library board may do any of the following. One, respond to criticism made by any individual who addresses the board. Two, ask staff to review a matter. Or three, ask staff to place the matter on a future agenda.

The library of boards shall not discuss or vote on matters raised at called of the public unless the matters have been properly noticed for discussion. Please state your name and address after being called to speak. There is a three minute time limit per speaker. Call to the public. Would anyone like to address the library board? Oh, come on. Somebody come talk to us. All the CLI people attending. Would you go to private community? Yes, please.

It's okay. We don't budge. Honest. Thank you. Yes, please.

Elsie Westcott. 840 North Idaho Road.

Can you speak up? Because our microphones are not working.

Elsie Westcott. 840 North Idaho Road. Thank you. And, actually, this is for Pam, miss Pam Harrison in charge of library cards. I had the opportunity to go to the library, is fantastic. Married to one of your employees named Lisa, and I just wanted to comment on how professional and courteous and knowledgeable and patient she was. So I want to know I really appreciate the work.

Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? Good. You very much. I'll close the call to the public then. Do we have any communication? I guess we can discuss anything we need to from there. That's one of the three options. We were not criticized, so we won't touch that option. We don't need a review on the matter. Staff has already commented, and we don't need it on a future agenda. So I'll close that. Call the public, and we will move on. Correspondence and communications, Pam?

I know there's a a there's one person with the obviously, they got some the citizen leadership institute. There might be more, but I do

Oh, that's good. Good job. You're a great job.

Yes. Coming to to witness one of our library board meetings. Unfortunately, we have no microphones, and I have a pool. But

We're doing well. Yes. Yes. Thank you very much for attending, and thank you also for being a part of the leadership. That is very important to the city to have folks go through that, understand what's going on in the city and how it happens and who makes it happen. So thank you. Yeah. I took that class three years ago, and now look at me. You too. How many boards are you on? Four. Four. Through the city.

Yeah. She's a little excessive. Yeah. Well Thank you, Catherine, for all of your I

heard great things about the flutes. Always wonderful. I couldn't other things came up I couldn't make, and I had planned to.

It's in my.

We can talk about it when you talk about it. So moving on to the library report. Speaking of

Okay. I'm Harrison, library director, and from our library as well as visitors and then all of our programming staff, are always phenomenal. January was a little bit more January had less visitors than February, but January had more circulation. So one of those odd things that happens. Off-site program attendance was incredible, especially in February.

Some of that was due to the fact that we attended the rodeo during Lost Dutchman Days where we sang the 300 people. But as always, our local library and our outreach team, are just doing a fantastic job by reaching out to all parts of the community, visiting our bee resorts, going to some of the living facilities, going to schools. We're even at the Arizona Renaissance Festival. So, you know, no place is off balance for us. And another big event that somebody attended is the Heart of the AJ, which was an art show that was put out, I guess, by the Dunstan Unified School District.

So we were missing that, and obviously, they had it turned out to them, which results in a 120 people visiting our library people. So, yeah, great great programs going on. And, of course, now we're starting to gear up for summer reading because it's gonna be here before you know it. Degree. What it will be here before you.

Mhmm. One of the programs that we had in February February 9, to be exact, was called Let's Talk Constitutional. The presenter was Shane Browser, and I hope I'm saying that right. Shane is from Gilbert. And on his website, he states that his primary goal is ensuring that America's best days are a hit.

And he's been held by many as the best instructor of the constitution and the principles of liberty in the country. So he goes all over the country to talk about the constitution. And from what I understand, there was quite a lively discussion. There were 53 people in attendance, which is great for this type of a program. This goes well with our America two fifty initiative, which I believe I spoke to in the past.

We have received a grant from the Arizona State Library, an express grant to fund some of these special American two fifty activities for me. And there's the flu festival. Yes. It was this past Saturday. I received a report that over 1,100 were in attendance.

Unfortunately, our gate count counter was down that day, but from the count they could do from the numerous performances, and there were and there were lectures. That was the number that they believe was pretty accurate on on terms of how many people visited. There were food trucks there that I heard were very pleased with the turnout. So did anybody here get to attend?

Did it was one

of those? Did you Oh, really? Did you attend the whole day? Because it was I know.

I I came in the afternoon, and I one of the ones that really impressed me. I mean, the flutes were wonderful. The sound is is with the background of the desert is perfect, but the the way they have the sound instruments, One sounded like thunder. One sounded really marvelous. Good evening, Joel.

Madam chair, may I interrupt the meeting?

Certainly. I have some

candles for you.

I think we should point out, Robin, that this is Native American style foods. Absolutely. Your, you know, your.

And and it was varying degrees of of experience. So you you got to hear some that were extraordinarily professional and others that were getting there. And and to watch their abilities growing and their willingness to perform in front of this audience was absolutely amazing. I was inspired literally. I thought

that it was wonderful. Say it just like the best variety.

Yes. I almost fell asleep. The lady with the the instruments that made sound. She walked around the entire audience. And like I said, one was kind of thunder. Another was like a sound machine, just a steady wind blowing. I mean, it was just it was neat.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm always surprised how many people out there play this instrument and know about it. Yes. So we do have a Native American flute workshop every week at the library. I believe it's on Thursday. Thursday nights. Yeah. Going out right now. So if anyone's interested, we do have flutes you can check out.

So and that's for each. Another activity we had this year, which was just darling, was lost days after lost days, of course. So this is a project of some people that do our programs in the adult services department. They've had this idea for a while. So this was the inaugural year where they had 82 ducks around the city, and they each had little laminated tabs on them with poems and information.

They were hit at the library, the multigenerational center, at the parks, and multiple local businesses also agreed to participate. Clues to the ducks locations were posted on social media with some and people of all ages, so the ducks were turned into the library for prizes. And some of the great prizes were to take us to the rodeo, take us to the Superposition Mountain Museum, and $50 gift card to a local restaurant that we all know about. So 62 out of the 82 ducks were returned. That's an important one. Good return.

Oh, really?

And I did find one when I left it. Because I got the last one ruined it. Because there were some hidden in the library. Oh, And I saw

Look in the library. Why did I not look in the library?

So I know there's a couple of kinks in the program, but that they're gonna address next year. Like, yeah.

This is

super cute program. Mhmm. And we hope that's great. You know, more people will.

And I really, really like the fact that some of the businesses participated. I think that the more businesses we can get involved with the city in general and the library, it it the better off we are as a community.

We did post on Facebook either earlier this week or last week saying thank you to people that participated. We did have at least two local businesses write back and say, remind us next year because we wanna participate. So it's really awesome. We're going to show you the whole page of our new website. We're really happy with the way it turned out.

We love the the colors of it, the way that everything is kind of upfront and accessible from the homepage, and meets all the ABA requirements that have come down over the past year. So we're still working out some of the little kinks with our website developer. For the most part, it is running really well. Oh, I I see a and this is a. There is a right there. Robin, do you see

it? Can you? Okay.

All make a mistake. Right? But I love one thing we did add recently was the upcoming events that we gave would give the names of the programs, but not always, like, what ages they're appropriate for. So we're starting to make sure that now we put ages on those so that people can tell right away without having to click on them. So, yeah, this will be, you know, ever changing, but we're really pleased with the way it came out.

And, knock on, we've received a lot of good feedback from it so far. If you've been to the library since March 2, you may have noticed some big fence on the east side of the library outside the Mountain Dew Road, and that is our construction crew that is getting our library reading garden created. So far, they have just. They were doing earthwork this week in grading. In the next couple weeks, they'll be working on irrigation, underground electrical, development of seat wall foundations for the amphitheater, and some sidewalks to finish out the month of March.

And this project is gonna be, going into the May, possibly into the June. So, yeah, pretty soon, I got the list of trees and shrubs today that we'll get to go to the nursery and pick out and all the all the fun stuff that comes on with developing such a a great resource that we're gonna have for our community to learn about gardening, to just have a beautiful spot outside where they can enjoy the outdoor air with the Superstition Mountains, learn about gardens and gardening and vegetables and sustainability. And, yep, there's a lot that's gonna be going on here. So we look forward to having it completed when it's gonna be probably winter and 15 outside.

She asked if it was gonna be things next week then.

Oh, yeah. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a good question. What type of plants that are being chosen native? Yes.

Yes. There it is. Yeah. This week started spring break for at least the Nashville Unified School District. And so, of course, we do a lot of extra programs. We have a lot of extra kids and parents in the library during these two weeks. So just gonna give you a quick rundown of some of the things that we have going on. Tomorrow is STEM Expo. Right? Sorry.

Next Friday is the studio open house. This is actually for all ages. One of our goals in our strategic plan is to increase awareness and usage of the studio, which is for recording, editing, anything to do with audio and video. And we have, our part time media specialist on the staff that can help with lighting, checking out equipment to use in that room. And so this will be an open house to show people what we have to offer and to just get the wheels turning so people think about how they might wanna use this in their own lives.

And like we said, it's for all ages, so we, you know, we do have some teens and some tweens that are interested in doing this because everybody wants to be a YouTube influencer. So I'm sure, you know, they they'll want to have some space to do that. Tomorrow is a seminar, so I'm sorry. I thought that was coming up next. This is just an event we have going on from eleven to noon where there'll be different activities and stations for kids to try out different types of science projects.

They can technology, engineering, and math. And it's just move at your own pace. Just try some things out just to get them interested in STEM activities. Morseilles mining is a special program that we'll have going on next Tuesday, St. Patrick's Day, from two to three from ages six to 12.

Reservation copper mining is having some volunteers attend this program where they're gonna read a special mining town book written by a local author, and then the volunteers will help the kids with a fun hands on activity where they'll be mining chocolate chips out of their cookies. I'm sure there'll be none of that left. So

that

has been the concept of copper extraction. So that that should be a really fun program, and we're thankful and grateful for having a resolution copper join us on it. This Saturday, it's time for LibraryCon twenty twenty six. Last year, I believe, was our ten year. So this will be twelve years, I believe, of library.

And the theme this year is going along with the America two fifty activities, and it's called stars, stripes, and superheroes. We have a fancy brochure at the library that you can can get to find out the schedule of activities. We're gonna have visits with local heroes, such as veterans, military, police, and fire. You can send questions, listen to stories they have to tell, or just say hello and thank them for their service. There'll be a living museum experience where, they're gonna bring historical figures to life.

You can chat with Jordan Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Algip Adams, and more. And then if you complete the whole experience, you will get a special prize. Some of our vendors and special guests that will be there include miss Arizona, Tiffany Ellington, and she's going to demonstrate her hidden talents, which I can't tell you, so you'll have to come see. She can get photos taken with us. Building craft activities, music bingo, which will be USA trivia,

and

will be there so you can get a cool a cool treat since it's gonna be so warm. Cosplay runway for those of you that are into the costume part of Library Cons and Comic Cons. National treasure scavenger hunts where you can follow the clues, learn about national icons, and discover a treasure. It looks like we have about 13 vendors that will be there selling their wares. So, yeah, we have gone oh, yeah. It's the thirteenth time right now. That was the year of us. So, yeah, come on join us. It's from ten to two.

What day did you say it was? Saturday. Saturday. And

here's some pictures of past. As we know, they're very popular. And that's it for the library report tonight.

Took me by surprise. Thank you. Questions, comments. I'm really excited about the garden. It's just so neat.

Yeah. You can actually see it starting to evolve. Yeah.

It seems like it it was a very long time ago that we began this project, and it's wonderful to see it up and starting. Mhmm. Period. Any comments? Hearing none? There's, like, a lot of great programs coming up. I'm sure there is. Alright. Let's move on to old business where will discuss the changes to the library programming facility and use policy, which we got. I don't know about the rest of you, but I had a difficult time comparing them.

So I ran them off, and then I didn't get back to it. So my bad. Remember from our last meeting, I had we

had a lot of changes, a lot of stuff that moved around. Once we discussed all that, we were, I think, pretty much in agree and set things were looking pretty good, but we wanted we wanted to see a final version. So we included the current that we are currently running off of just even though you've seen that before. But the proposed is just taking all the things we talked about in the last meeting and then putting them into place. So there's nothing new here.

It's everything you've already seen. We believe we have covered all of the additions that you were looking to have. All the vernacular errors were corrected. And then, of course, there's the permit form as well. We added the print name. Took out some of the duplicate duplicative language in the paragraph part of the form. So, yep, so if you have questions, I would love to hear it. Otherwise

So much about the. Oh, Oh, know.

That was crazy. Hard to show before and after and especially when you're moving stuff because yeah. But and that's why on the next one too, we just for the new business, we're doing just kinda go forward if we're because I'm excited.

Comments? Should we vote on this? Are we ready to do that? Hearing no comment on that, then I would entertain a motion to pass the proposed changes to the library program and facilities use policy. Move that we adopt the main library program and facilities use policy as presented. Second. Okay. Second. Robin Barber?

Yes. Judy Boire? Yes. Barbara Fitzgerald? Yes.

Catherine Meek? Yes. Milva Perkins? Yes. Vera Walters? Yes. I would say. Yes. And for new business, we have a possible vote on changes to the library standards and acceptable behavior.

Thank you. So you're on the screen here right in front of you, our current library standards of acceptable behavior, which I believe was revised approximately five years ago when I when I close to when I first became director. We now have new security guards, as you're aware. We have different patrons in some cases than we have in the past. We've noticed that some some behaviors might need to be more clarified.

And so what I've done for this one is made, hopefully, the policy a little bit more specific. There was some duplicative language. There were some things that just needed to be spelled out a little bit more clearly. And then we did add a couple of things to this that weren't currently in the policy, or we changed them in a significant way. So let me just start by saying there's a couple things that we moved.

Nothing major, but, like, on the current policy, 1.3 just says theft. We took that, and we put that in the proposed in 1.1 to go along with abuse, misuse, or vandalism of the library facilities because that goes along with those topics. So that's just a minor change. The rest of any changes in the in the first section are all just it's just word. It's just a suburbage Mhmm.

To to more clearly explain what is appropriate and what is not. I do see that we have eight in this one. It could be 10 in this one. So let's see if we did have one more thing. Yeah.

It combines several things. Consolidation. Yeah. Consolidation. Good word. Mhmm. Yeah. Exhibition is in flashing. You can use some exposure.

Yeah. 1.4, 1.5. Right?

As it falls towards the first one. Yep. A two two right there.

K. So that's the two and that one. In two in the second section, destructive personal behavior, 2.3 from the current, which was creating tripping hazards or blocking paths, exits or entrances, or breathing areas with personal belongings. That was moved and added to what is now 2.8. 2.8, on some types of personal belongings, we reworded it a little bit, may not block out sick of storeways or seating areas, or otherwise interfere with safe access to library spaces.

Items that occupy an excessive space or create safe safety hazards may be restricted at staff discretion. We do have some instances where people come in with a large amount of items, and we just wanna make sure that because of the way that the building's built, people wanna plug in their devices. The plugs are not in floor. Like, modern day buildings are on the walls, and so they'll sort of put their things up against the wall and leave their phone there. We're trying to curb them to their behavior.

So that is the only change, I believe, besides verbiage, just diction, and number two. Number three, we did add something new. We added 3.1 It's different than the 3.1. It says consumption of full meals is prohibited in the library except within the designated cafe area. And as you know, we call it a cafe. Does it have a coffee shop? Yeah. It's. This includes some food, food requiring utensils, sandwiches, and similar food diners. We do have a lot of people that come in with their cans and they bring their lunches or they come over from Genesis and they have a lot of different stuff.

And they're taking up a lot of different table spaces in the library where people are studying, trying to find some quiet area. So we wanna really restrict that food, and especially out of the garden coming too, which will have a whole new different set of flavors, plants. We want to we want to move those bigger meals to the cafe. If they have snacks, you know, pretzels, chips, candy, that's one thing. You know, if they're sitting down eating three quarts meal, It's a perfect design.

And this does align with a lot of other East Valley and even West Valley libraries. So that was had a significant change was about the age of children that can be unaccompanied in the library. Currently, it is children under the age of nine have to be supervised. We are proposing to change that, I'm sorry, to change that age to the under the age of 12. We have had in recent months, especially during, like, breaks, and a lot of kids now are homeschooled.

Parents are getting, you know, second jobs or whatever. We are we have seen some instances where younger children, seven, eight, nine, have been coming to a live hurricane, usually as a sibling set, but they can serve the baby. So we have corrected those cases. But, you know, kids today are exactly the same church wise sometimes as other kids, and we really feel like 12 under the age of 12 is reasonable age. And it also aligns with what the multigenerational center does.

So we feel like if we mirror them, it'll be consistent. And we did discuss that with Lynn's thing about over there. So that is the only other big change that, otherwise, like I said, is just playing with the words a little bit, making them a little bit more clarified and grammatically having to just let them breathe better. So did anybody have any questions, comments, concerns with? I understand that people

the parking lot area as their home during the day is acceptable.

What do you They

need to leave when they're. Is that right?

When you say parking lot area, what specific area are you referring

The parking area that borders Idaho Road. And under the library, there are those benches. Okay.

So, like, the planters out there and stuff? Yeah. That is something that we're we're having discussions with with parks because we do wanna get more in alignment with them and with the park rangers and what they do. And there has been some differences in opinion over the years. And so we haven't met yet, but we are gonna be meeting soon about the outside areas of the library. So that would be something I'll come back to in a different time. But for now, this is more about the inside.

Right. Yeah. Because I have some more concerns about the outside.

Yeah. Yeah. I I understand. So we are we are working on that. Just have to get everybody together and get

Okay. Thank you. You clearly got them. She used to really very nicely. Okay. Mhmm. Mhmm. I do I I'm glad to see the age of the children go up. Yes. There have been a couple of times in there that the young kids that are in there, I just as a mom, I get very nervous about who else is in the library, and I would hate for any little young child to have a bad experience with a a bad person.

Exactly. We would it would be devastating.

I And we Yeah. That that would just destroy it so much.

So that there'll definitely be a reeducation. But for the most part, it's not a huge problem, but it's been a problem here or there.

So Well, I know. We will get help with

the age of the past, but, you know, it's out of discretion of. What are

your plans for reeducation? What's showing?

Well, we do have signs that are on the walls right now in the youth area. Those are gonna have to be taken down. I would like to get new signs made, and that should be a big deal. Mean, if we can cover the spots that might have holes or whatever going to get taken down. Besides that, you know, it's it's unfortunately, it's it's a lot of it's up to our staff to be diligent and and paying attention to who's in there and and, you know, enforcing the the rule.

And I know our security has been really proactive lately on getting prepared for some of these changes, and they're actually, like, making, like, little, like, little half sheets of paper or whatever about certain things that they have to deal with more often than others that they can hand to somebody and say, hey. This is part of our policy. Here, you can read it to let them know. We, you know, we might do some maybe signage on the new desks because that's a popular area. We have our scavenger line there and whatnot. People come in to desks. Did you have any other ideas?

No. I just I have been in there a couple of times in the last five or six months and seen some behaviors that, you know, in cultures, behavior quality in general that are Yeah. Kind of unacceptable. I wonder who actually

addressed It it should be anybody from our staff. A lot of our staff. I would say one of our staff. Want their security to do it because it's their job. Also Absolutely. Uncomfortable situation. Yeah. It can be depending on the situation. So we're really grateful that we have security there. So yeah, enforcement is definitely an important part of it because you can't just, you know, rule and just slide because then that doesn't have any.

The curiosity. I I'm just curious. Has have parents in the past asked about how old a kid can be before they're there on their own? Something that's come up because I haven't

asked me. When I see a service supervisor, I don't recall anybody asking me that, and I don't know if it's because there's signs on the wall. Or I have a feeling some of the kids that get left there, their parents aren't regular patrons, so they just don't know, and they just think, oh, the library's a safe place. It's a public building. There's people there all day. They'll be fine. People just put them on the computers for ten hours and let them go. But but I don't I it's not a question that we need to answer.

So so the signs on the wall, you think, are telling people what they want to

I think for some, of course, you know how signs are. Sometimes you you just walk by and don't even notice them.

Is it also on the Internet? On your web is it on the website also? What age? Yeah.

Well, it's in this policy, which is on the website. Yes. We do have a policy section. But how many people will probably go on there? Yeah. We will rebook for it. You know?

It just seems to me that you should the things that have changed dramatically like that and the the meal thing only in the cafe. Those and there's just really a few of them that are dramatic changes. It just seems like maybe something at the checkout desk, on the desk. No new policy. Exclamation. Exclamation. You know, just to ensure that people have had the opportunity to see it. Whether they read it or not, that's up to them. Yeah. But giving them the most opportunity possible. Yeah.

And, yeah, I think that's if that's reasonable, I mean, I think that's any other business or anything that has most likely, like, you can't bring your best packs into the convenience store. You see that sometimes. I mean, know, those types of things are supposed to be because they're special. They're, you know Yeah. And then it's a change, a big change. We've had in place here for at least, you know, twelve years that I've been here. It does need to be made visible.

Any other description of the security officer include getting out behind the desk and behind the desk and the. Yeah.

Yes. It does.

You have pretty often too.

Yeah. Both of them. Yeah. So we have two different babies, but yeah. Yeah. They do they do routes. Right. And they have the camera system as well. So, again, you know, they can look at a lot of things from their desk or when they see something, and then they just do their normal rooms inside and outside the building a few times from ours.

Yeah. Any comments here? Are you satisfied with this and ready to accept it? If so, I can use a motion. I I motion that we accept the proposed library standards of acceptable behavior as written. Second. Oh, she had a second roll call, please. Robin Tucker? Yes. Judy Mori? Yes. Barbara Fitzgerald? Yes. Catherine E? Yes. Janella Bergens? Yes. Meyer Walters? Yes. And Alexander?

Yes. Alright. We have a request for future agenda items. Anybody have anything they wanna see besides the outdoor garden?

I'll walk with the outside regulations for parking and for visitation.

Yes. I definitely would do that. I can't say it'll necessarily be the next meeting. It depends on when I'm able to meet with the other departments that are involved, but we've already discussed it the email, and Amber said, and Liz is the one that's gonna make the meeting invite. So we're just waiting for to do that, and but it it'll definitely be done before the. So it could be sooner than later. Yeah. Anything

else for future agenda? K. In that case, we will do a meeting at 07:15.