Board of Library Trustees - Grafton Public Library - Regular Meeting

So I will call this meeting to order at 7.04. First, I'd like to congratulate our new trustee and our re-elected trustee.

And I guess you guys weren't in.

I did. Not to make this a competition, but who got more votes? I always look. Yes. But the clerk will say, well, you're the incumbent. You should get more votes. And I'm like, but I don't. It's my name. Something with an M. It was Dutch people.

It was a close race. I think there was like 15 votes between us. Oh, wow.

And were there any, I guess, If there was only one write-in, would that person get elected? No. Like with one vote?

No. If there was another space, but there wasn't as we were both.

No, I know, but you still could have, someone still could have put an, oh, that, never mind. But you would have tried for that.

You would have a lot of votes, yeah, never mind. Like if there were three open seats, like, you know, Prabhu got written in with, you know, a small number of votes.

So you can get voted in with just one or two votes. I wasn't sure of that.

I think it was a minimum.

but thank you for thinking of joining the board and thank you for your time commitment you'll have in the next couple years yeah so this is a little unusual to be in this room but we were actually just commenting that maybe we like this room so we can consider coming here each month if we want and okay so do we want to go through the reorg first yeah okay Yeah, so new business would have been Grafton Town Elections, congratulations and all that. It's typically after the May elections that we reorganize the board, which essentially means the chair and vice chair get re-nominated or nominated. So I guess I will open the floor to nominations for new chair and vice chair.

So I would like to nominate Erin as chair. I would second that.

Sounds good. Sure.

Thank you, Erin, for volunteering before.

You've certainly been chair many times in the past.

It's been a while. The last time I chaired this committee was during the pandemic. Oh, really? I don't remember how to do it in person anymore. But I'm happy to learn again. We're still on Zoom, so.

Any other questions for Erin? I know you're going to do a great job. All right, so I guess all in favor of our new chair, Erin Weinstein? Aye. Any opposed? Congratulations, Erin. Thank you.

Thank you, Doug, for doing it for two years and doing a great job with all your work.

It's been a couple of terms, at least.

Yeah, although I took a break with Roger. Roger stepped in for a little while.

It has been, too, because when Roger, the first year he got elected, he was the chair. The first, wow.

Yeah, he got it on like day one.

That's tough. Yeah, that's tough. And a lot got thrown at him.

Yep. So that's great. Now we can open the floor to nominations for vice chair. I would like to nominate. Excellent, excellent. Any questions or, I don't know, do we put her on the, you know, ask her some tough questions about this chair?

I've done this one year, so I have answers.

Yes, exactly. Rachel's been great as vice chair. She's probably done more work than me for the past, like, six months, so it's been great having her.

So if you're willing to continue that, that would be fantastic.

And I think also, too, it'll be a good bridge to help Erin, too, because you've created the relationship with Evan and William as well, so you can have some continuity there.

And we still have a lot of, we have the new monthly meetings with the town administrator. Quarterly. Quarterly, sorry, quarterly meetings.

Yeah, no, no, no. Katrina gets monthly, we get quarterly.

As a board, right, we're starting the strategic planning, so that's obviously really important. It's, you know, really what, the first six months with you? No.

Yep. Yeah, six months. I've got my six-month mark. Oh, my goodness.

Awesome. Yeah. That's amazing. It feels like you've been here forever, but in a good way. Yes.

Thank you. But as part of that, we need to kind of more formally do the goals and the reviews for the director, so that's going to be another.

Yeah, this is my five year with Unibank in June.

So yes, another anniversary. That's awesome. Great. Any other questions for Rachel? All right, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you both. So I get to step away now, I guess? No, you get to finish this meeting.

Yeah, I mean, certainly I can take over the meeting from here if you'd like.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, that's what we've done in the past.

Oh, yeah.

It doesn't matter either way. So I think the other point about the reorg is any subcommittees, right? Yes. And anybody who is representing the board with other groups such as the friends, and I'm more talking about policy committee as well. Are there any other subcommittees or outreach that we do that we need to consider as part of the reorg?

Walkabouts?

Walkabouts, yeah. I mean, first and foremost, we can talk about policy subcommittees.

I was just going to say, do you want to chair both?

No, I'm not sure that I want to chair the policy subcommittee anymore. So, happy to hear anybody who would like to volunteer for the chair of the policy subcommittee.

The other piece I'd mention is we have two members who aren't here, and I know Prabhu's been really engaged in it, so I don't know if he'd be interested, but I don't think we can sign him up without...

as chair.

Do you think he's interested in chair? I don't know. We could just pass this off until next meeting if you want.

So we will need at least two trustees. And then we can have any number of staff. We'd love to have staff input during policy.

Can you remind the board just the commitment generally? How many times a month you meet?

It's generally just an hour. I wish it was more than an hour because it's hard to get a lot done in an hour. But we tend to meet at the library after we have dinner. So really they're from 6.30 to like 7.45 right before the library closes. So we do get quite a bit done. Maybe not as much as... We'd like to sometimes, but I think we've had a lot of good energy recently with the current members of the subcommittee and Katrina's preparation has been fantastic, so that we're ready to just hit the ground running. She has her edits ready to go and the discussion has been really productive, so I feel like been able to finally put some policies in front of you guys. But if whoever ends up chairing that board, the subcommittee rather, one of the things you might want to consider is adding a little bit more time.

Not more days. So it's just once a month?

It's once a month, yeah. Trying to figure out a way to add more time. But yeah, once a month we meet in the same kind of format, Robert's Reservoir. We have to take minutes and generally whoever's not leading the meeting It doesn't always have to take the minutes, but sometimes they have to, so that can be kind of difficult when you're leading a meeting and taking the minutes too. So that's a challenge, but something that you'll have to account for. And then those... minutes need to be submitted to the town just like we do and the agendas have to be posted as well because I missed a couple windows you know but the new clerk is really fantastic and whenever there's a holiday or something you know that's upcoming she lets us know that you must submit by this date to have a meeting on this date and that's been really great too

So I guess I'm curious, so you're new to the board. Is there a particular role that you're interested in?

Actually, those two things were the two that I was most interested in, the walkabout, because I love the building. I'm up there constantly. And I was on the policy committee up until my leaving. So I will rejoin that. I don't know if I'm able to share it. It would be great to know which.

You can chair the policy subcommittee if you want to discuss with Prabhu first. Right.

I would default to him if he wants to be the chair first, and I will be the second.

But if he doesn't feel that he can do the time commitment, then... Yeah, his schedule is challenging, and I don't think he'd mind me saying that because he knows... meetings in person, which is great. Sometimes Zoom is difficult, but we like to meet in person. So if you'd like to discuss that, first and foremost, would you like to join the policies of the committee?

I would. So do we need to nominate or do we just appoint?

I think the chair and vice chair can appoint a subcommittee, so I'm happy to appoint. So done. I'm back on policy. Yay! Let the minutes show.

I had a feeling. Speaking of minutes, Rafe, are you taking that?

Prabhu, we don't necessarily need to change things up for the walkabout at this time. I believe Prabhu would probably want to continue his work with the strategic plan. So there's no reason to bring that up in discussion.

And I think Chris really likes the walkabouts. I mean, we could all do it too. I mean, nobody's prevented from doing it.

Yeah, but again, I also want to make sure that if somebody wants to spread their wings and do something a little different, you know, we allow everybody, including yourself, Carrie, who's been great, you know, representing us with the Friends.

I mean, I would like to continue with the Friends, but, I mean, somebody else really was. I mean, and it's, and other people are welcome to join. Right. So, like, like, Stacey, like, I know you're, you love the Friends, too, so if you wanted to join, but I think it's good to have one designated person to kind of act as a liaison, but, like, but as long as we don't exceed... quota, we can have three members of the board join any particular meeting.

Yeah, I'd be happy to have you continue that relationship if you'd like. The only thing that the feedback I've gotten from the friends when I used to attend meetings and also be the liaison too is they really like getting to know the new trustees. The new people, yeah. Clearly, they know you very well because of your work with the library. But I don't know, Rachel, have you had an opportunity to?

She has gone. Yeah, it took me a couple months.

And so I might ask the same question of Prabhu and Chris, who are relatively new.

Prabhu has gone, and Chris, I think, did one.

does a really good job on their own. So it's part of it. It's almost like you don't need to be a of their space.

OK. Any further commentary about appointments?

No. I mean, I'm certainly looking to commit time somewhere else. I want a strategic plan. I can help out with a policy.

I completely overlooked you, Doug. You just stepped down from a commitment.

I can share walkabout with Chris. I can commit some time to the strategic plan once we get to that point where we're trying to form that group.

That sounds great. Next item on the agenda. Approvals. So we five sets to be approved as a group. Am I looking at the right thing? No. I'm looking at the minutes. Yes, just April 29th. My eyesight is not as good as it used to be.

It's the full package, not the meeting minutes.

So what's the next item on the agenda? Approved minutes, April 29th.

April meeting minutes.

I'll make a motion to approve the meeting minutes of April 29th. I'll second that.

Motion made and seconded. Any discussion on the minutes?

I didn't have any edits.

I didn't either. Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I declare the motion carried. Still looking for my packet.

Okay, so the next item is approving the bill.

Sorry, May 29th was when Katrina sent those.

Thank you. I'll make a motion to approve the bills. Warrant number 45 in the amount of $1,526.55. Warrant number 46 in the amount of $11,872.81. Warrant number 47 in the amount of $5,395.15. Warrant number 48 in the amount of $5,080.91. Warrant number 49 in the amount of $4,531.94. Seconded. Okay, question is seconded. Any discussion? Just a question. I saw Evan barbara um in there totaling about three thousand dollars is that for the strategic place that was the website that's a website okay okay great exactly okay yeah i saw for some like his name is so similar to evan or sometimes i'm like yeah okay thank you i had a question too so um playaway products is that the audio recordings they are um so those are the

They're like a little.

Right, the little thing you can check out the whole thing.

Exactly. And you just plug in the headphones.

And that's, is that an actual, but it's, so the actual, and it was like over 3,000. Those are like multiple units that you, we have that are part of our collection and people can get them through CW Mars.

Correct. Both. So we purchased a whole bunch of them and I believe that that includes some Wonder Books as well. So that's the full book format with the audio book in the end.

Any further discussion? All right, hearing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? I declare the motion carried. Okay, so I do have the agenda finally. All right, so we have the ongoing business, the Grafton Public Library Capital Campaign Update. Doug?

Yeah, not a lot of activity, but one small update is that we had purchased a The Grafton, sorry, the Capital Campaign had purchased a handicapped accessible gardening bed where a wheelchair could kind of go up and do the planting. And it's been sitting there, I think, since last summer. We finally got Henry Pratt Wilson as part of, I think, one of his service projects. He came a couple That's exciting. I don't know if there are any gardening programs planned for the spring and summer, but certainly that's going to be available for that.

Yes. As far as I know, there's nothing planned yet, but we're working on it.

Okay. The campaign continues to have a decent amount of funds, so Katrina, if there's anyone, you or anyone on your staff that's looking for some funding for some projects, the capital campaign is available. That's right. And I do have another, that's another thing, right? I'll go over the other trusts too. So yeah, the capital campaign, Stacey, just for your FYI, it's a funding that was around the renovation project. And for the most part, it's meant for kind of larger projects and items that get installed and stuff like that. The green roof maintenance, I think, is the main ongoing funding from the capital campaign, but certainly open for other options.

Does it still take donations?

It does, yeah. I don't know. We've been getting, so the commitment from Home Field Credit Union for the children's room was like a $50,000 10-year commitment. So they give us $5,000 each year. Interesting. But that's the only, I think, the main money that comes in each year. Occasionally there's a random donation every once in a while. But there's no active fundraising at this point. Yeah, there's no publication of it right now. Right.

But there's no reason why we couldn't actively fundraise if we needed to.

Not at all. Yeah, I mean, the intent was it was going to kind of go on for Perpetuity? Perpetuity, thank you. And at various times we thought about different fundraising efforts like BRICS, getting your names on BRICS and stuff like that. So that's always an option for the future.

And I guess also too, I guess to tie in with the strategic plan, if something comes

I'm happy to hear that's still alive and well.

It is, yeah. There's no termination to it.

Sorry, the other thing I was going to mention is because a lot of the capital campaign projects were around the grounds and funding the grounds, the capital campaign has in the past funded mulch and kind of like the bigger landscaping, so that's another option if there's a need for that. Okay. They've done it. I think last year the town did the purchasing of the mulch and putting it around. So that's obviously would be a first choice, I guess.

Great. I know that Dana would be very happy because she was the one that really fought for the 501c3.

Yeah, she drove.

She totally established it. She did all the investment. Like, yeah, it was all Dana. And she recruited...

fundraising and actually there are still some open there's open some rooms that haven't been named so there are definitely still opportunities in the library as well for naming rights I think we were gonna bring it back if it was needed but it wasn't something we need to actively because we have 30 something

Next item on the agenda is the Friends Update, Carrie.

Yeah, so the Friends Annual Meeting is upcoming, so it's going to be Friday, June 12th at the library at 6 p.m. in the Historic Reading Room. And, of course, whoever, you know, any Friends members are... encouraged and invited to attend, and of course, we'd love to have as many board members attend as possible. We had done it in the historic reading room two years ago, and during the board meeting which Kachita attended, So yeah, hopefully, I'm hoping folks are able to attend. It's nice. There'll be light refreshments, a very short kind of meeting. There'll be elections for the new board members, so this late, and then just kind of update as far as kind of what happened over the year and the financials and everything. So yeah, so looking forward to that. Oh, sure. So Stacey actually used to be on the board of the Friends. I was VP with Carrie before I was. So I had to step down because I became a trustee, and she had to step down because she was. I think you stepped down before me, and we were like, oh, no, because she has like a million great ideas. So now she had a million great ideas for the library, which is great. But yeah, so Stacey and I have worked together. Cool.

I've been intimately connected with the library since I moved to town.

She tried all the different roles. I did. I tried all of them. Better look out, Katrina. All good. But, you know, the friends, you know, I guess it is a nice time to think about the friends, you know, with the annual meeting, you know, they, you know, They've been doing great fundraising activities. So they had the special book sale in March. And actually, it did quite well. And it was so well attended. You could just tell people just really enjoyed coming to the library and buying books and everything. So that was really nice. And there will be the back to school book sale at the end of the summer. It's like the last weekend in August. So that'll be nice as well. So it's typically the Saturday and the Sunday. So I think we have that locked down.

Are you going to do teacher special for that one?

Yes. Yeah, that one is usually, yeah. So, yeah, so, I mean, I mean, what's great about, like, the book sales is it's a fundraiser, but it's also, like, a recycling program because, you know, people donate the books and then we're able to, you know, get them to the community. But then also it supports, like, you know, the teachers, too. Like, you know, so for the back-to-school sales, yes, you should, like, price discount for you know for teachers to help get their school libraries up and running before school starts so it's um and it's it's so like it's really so rewarding to see how thrilled they are you know to come in and like oh my goodness i can get ready for my classes especially the new teachers who might be like doing a new grade and they're like i have nothing like you know so

that we are thinking about the Friends. It's one of those things that it's easy to take for granted because we've had such a great Friends group for so long and the book sales have been fantastic. Can you imagine if we did not have that? What an incredible loss that would be for the community.

That's true. We're very fortunate. And we're fortunate we have such a really nice space in the library. When you first walk in, the new signage is nice there so people know what the heck the space is. Yeah. So yeah, just over time, learning how to do the book sales in the new library. First, it was during the pandemic, we did it on Fisherville Park. And that was really fun. People were so excited just to be able to go to an event that was outside. And it raised a lot of money, so that was great. But things are just being refined. Oh, the other thing I did want to mention. So the friends really prefer to have donations be kind of once a month. It just makes it more efficient. So it's usually the first Friday of the month and then the next day, Saturday. So it's actually this weekend. So Friday, June 5th during normal library hours and also Saturday during normal Library hours, so Friday normal hours are 9 to 6, and Saturday it's 9 to 2. And it's just in the friend's corner. So you can bring books, games, DVDs, things in reasonable condition. No encyclopedias. If you look at it, it looks yucky, just get rid of it. donate that but um you'll be amazed at the condition of some of the things like i literally think people go to the store buy a book and drop it off they it's just so pristine but it's some really good good uh materials would you continue

It's always a good reminder for the community to let them know.

It makes sense that it's the first Friday and the next day Saturday, but it's kind of hard to word it. If June 1st were Saturday, that wouldn't be the day. It's the first Friday and then the next day Saturday.

know about the donation?

You know, that didn't come up at the last meeting. It didn't come up again. Yeah, but we can certainly ask. Yeah, that is a good point. So yeah, I will take that.

some people would bring stuff if it helps.

Yeah, okay, I will, oops. I will. Like book donations this weekend, I think is a generic one that Westboro uses.

Yeah, because then you can reuse it.

Yeah, because then you can put it out, or book donations Friday, Saturday.

Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Okay, so I'm gonna.

I just want to give credit where credit is due

kindergarten. The goal is to encourage them to read to their kids and read to them often and to read a thousand books before they enter kindergarten. It's a little more approachable than it sounds because if you read three books a night you're there in a year. The Friends generously offered to fund about half of the program. They gave us a thousand dollars for the children's room so that they can spend it on incentives and these adorable car magnets that say Grafton Public Library, a thousand books before kindergarten.

It's got a little bookworm on it. It's adorable. That's great.

Internally designed graphics. We were very grateful for them to do that. Awesome.

All right. That was a great friends update. Yeah.

I can talk a little bit about that. So I had reached out to the community at large to see who would be interested in joining the strategic planning committee. I have one staff person who is willing to be on board, Allison Kusher, because I guess she served on the previous strategic planning committee. And I don't remember their names right now, but three other people. folks from the community who would be willing to step in. So I didn't know if, I didn't have an opportunity to, I was hoping to see probably this evening, to

still be worthwhile because based on the folks who did volunteer if there was like a gap like from the school systems or something we might want to just kind of put our heads around that yeah so there's a question that I had maybe it's for Prabhu but certainly anybody can chime in and answer it is there

committee we're putting together of you know smaller group and then our is there a large group of community members that you know you do is a what they call like a focus group right so is there kind of two groups we're trying to cultivate here and what you've cultivated so far is basically the subcommittee that would

what you've talked about, Katrina, is we're gonna have the different major focus groups and different things, so it wouldn't just be a small group.

So what is the makeup of that core group?

There's a homeschooling parent,

Well, I don't need to know the street people, but what's your target makeup? You're going to have yourself on that committee? Do you need another second board member?

Well, there will be Rachel and Prabhu. Myself, of course. And there's a staff person. And then as many community members as possible.

So I guess I thought we're going to have somebody from the MDLC help facilitate. We will. Okay. So this is in advance of reaching out to the MDLC?

Yes. Yeah. So the group that I'm trying to assemble now is the group that will coordinate the focus groups and help draft the survey and compile data and help to organize that kind of thing. neighbors and community groups and to gather them in for the focus groups. So that kind of work.

I think I'll speak for myself, but if you, Prabhu, and Rachel want to take it offline and if you feel you need to fill out that core group a little bit more, but that's why we have a subcommittee. You guys can do what you feel is best. All right. But thank you.

Sounds good.

Next item on the agenda is the policy update. So that's for me. So going over my notes that I ran through AI, so we'll see how accurate it is. We were looking at of tutor rooms, you know, because there are tutor rooms all over the library, and to really kind of rename them as study rooms, you know, because if you say that something is a tutoring room, then it's really kind of pigeonholing it for that kind of one purpose. So we felt study room was a little bit more, I think the signage even says tutoring. So we just decided to call them study rooms because that was much better nomenclature. We talked about the circumstances where adults may enter teen and tween spaces because there are study rooms slash tutoring rooms in those spaces. We talked about how adults would feasibly enter one of those spaces to use one of those rooms for those purposes. You're not going to have tutors. You could have children tutors or teenage tutors, but really the expectation is the tutoring room or study room is for an adult to go in. We talked about the conferencing room, how it could be split up into two tutors, right? Oh, so no, the conference room, which is, I didn't realize it was a conference room, but with the historical collection, that's the conference room, could be split up to allow for two tutors, because it's large enough. And then the community room could support up to six tutoring sessions. So are you getting that many?

I do. I have multiple thoughts on this. You're talking about the room that's across from the reception desk that we meet in sometimes.

multiple bookings in one area. No. No, it does not. That I know for sure. Also, in the teen space, are you requiring that there is an adult and a child for the booking the study rooms? Because that's not currently how they're used in the teen space after school. I think it's allowing an adult to be in there for the purposes of tutoring. Okay. I wanted to make sure that peers could still

This is not a written policy. This is just the discussions we've had about it. So certainly, you know.

Well, there's a policy we're going to vote on. We usually get it ahead of time. We get to read it. Yeah. Legal, seen it. So this, yeah. No, I got confused my first time, too. You're good. You're good. This is more to keep the rest of us up to date.

So if we had thoughts, we could kind of weigh in early. I just don't think we have the ability right now to make multiple spaces.

I think we got into that discussion for a reason. I think it was because, you know, something about the policy said that we have

tutoring spaces available or something. And when you get to the point where there's no tutoring spaces available, then make reasonable accommodations. And we felt that there are certain rooms that could support more tutors.

Are there more tutoring requests than rooms? Not currently.

Not that I... Maybe we're going overboard.

Over the summer, there will be. They do reading tutoring and other things that... where they'll do group sessions. So it'll be one tutor with maybe six students at the same time for reading tutoring or math tutoring. So maybe possibly the community room would be a good spot, but usually they are for children too. So I know the study room and the children's room is not an available space for that.

And I know they do tutoring in the main historic reading room too, right? Sometimes they just sit at a table and do that.

of volume, it might be worth almost waiting to finalize that policy until towards the end of the summer when you guys kind of figure out how you want to manage and operationalize it too, because that way it can be reflective of what you found worked and tested. Do we know when the next policy meeting is?

It was supposed to be scheduled this week, but... So that was a discussion we had about meeting rooms. We discussed the facility's rental policy. in Mary regarding alarm codes and the desire to avoid requiring library staff to remain after hours. So one of the things that we discussed, but I didn't really have a good answer for it. I want to put this out to people who are on the building committee, which I think is just Doug. Was Prabhu as well?

He was at the end, yes.

So we've kind of gone through it. a different administration since the library was built and constructed and planned. But I believe the original plan for the community room was that it could be used outside of library hours, right? And by the public, yes. So when we approached the town administrator, that was our desire, he said you'd have to have staff present, right? I think that was a discussion you probably already had, right?

conversation with the town minister if it's i mean it's related to um you know the facility rental policy sure yeah and katrina feel free to jump in here right but we've been talking a lot about could we allow like a board member or just like a anyone renting it to be able to kind of go in and around like what's the liability? Do we do that anywhere else in town? And essentially the conversation we had back is we don't see that anywhere else in town. Even our existing like town hall, like if anyone wanted to use the courts or anything there, there's always like a janitor or someone on site and so their recommendation is we follow a very similar path so whether it's opening it up to library staff if they want to be there for after hours or seeing about like having a custodian or someone there they said they haven't had any challenges when someone's committed to doing it that it's it's fallen through because the couple times or someone no longer can someone always picks up if someone's

Yeah, so that's a big shift from what this board kind of set out to do, and so that really changes that conversation on how we originally intended for that room to be used.

Yeah, I think the discussions were that it wouldn't, like, I know there was concerns about that it's not in the job description of any of the staff, so the idea was it's basically a volunteer-type position, and they could get paid out of whatever

Yeah, that's how the fee would be.

Whether it's the janitor or a staff that decided that they're willing to stay for an extra two hours or whatever that time period is.

Certainly, you know, things come, and this is not for policy discussion, but certain things come to mind on what is a reasonable limit to allow someone to use the space, right? You know, and if we're tying up staff... you know, then you're tying them up for as long as you're there, right? So we need to also probably think about limits, or the policy committee needs to think about, you know, limits if we're going to allow to be open after hours.

Yeah, well, that's interesting, because I think when I heard William and Evan talk about it, it was much more around when you put in the request, we then see if someone's willing to staff it, right? So say someone wants to do an eight-hour day of activities on a Sunday, right? If no one's willing to maybe someone comes back and says, I could do three hours, and then we could propose that, but it seemed like that's how it worked. I almost wonder if, Katrina, it makes sense, instead of starting with the policy side, if you want to build out how you want to manage the process and everything, and to because I feel like there's so many moving parts with this one that it's really to enable the safe operating is what we're trying to get to with the policy.

Yeah, I would just add that the time limit would be, yeah, I would agree, especially if it's a long thing. I don't think we were envisioning people, we were envisioning a couple hour meetings like some community thing, but the staff member would get paid more the longer they stay there because the fee rental would be

with staffing and their union that Katrina's going to have to speak to them about in regards to any outside hour.

I personally don't think it should have anything to do with the union because it doesn't have to be library staff. It could be just a town employee. It could be the custodian from this building that is willing to do it. So I agree that if it's the library staff, you've got to be careful with the way that contract is written. It's not, my take is that it wouldn't be anywhere in a job description. This is like a, not really volunteer because they're going to get paid, but it's not part of anyone's responsibility to do it. It's all a volunteer.

But Evan, and Evan wants it to be a town employee. He doesn't want it to be like a board member or...

So when we talked about board, he's like, if the board really wants to take on that accountability, he mentioned, like, he's never had any select board members or anyone else want to do that for any other reason. So, and, like, as we were saying there, like, the only exception I could think of is, like, Carrie, I know sometimes you go in for, like, the book stuff on an off day.

Yeah, but usually staff let us in, though. Like, it's, you know, it's not.

like what we're taking, like to me, I'm having trouble finding that use case where the best decision is for one of us to be that person. And I haven't found that good one where you wouldn't. Like the custodian knows what to do if there's an issue. So yeah.

of what your concerns so you know when you talk about including custodial staff is an opportunity for them to pick up some knowledge too so I think there's more to come on that but that's generally where our head was at and it seems like you guys are in the same space too so okay and the last thing we talked about was unintended child policy and the proposed age change up to instead allowing in seventh grade who are at least 12 years old. That is like a nightmare in policy to try to figure out the wording for. So Katrina and I discussed that maybe we just throw it at AI and see what it spits out and see if it can come up with a solution, a scenario that might work. Because I think the desire is to allow seventh graders in.

at-home lawyer who would probably be willing to not be a lawyer for you, but words.

Yeah, we tried to write it. We could not in the time that we had.

If you want to email it over.

Next item on the agenda is new business.

Yeah, last month we talked about the library trust. So part of the numbers that Katrina included in the packet, the balances and stuff like that, includes the trust funds. And there's two groups of numbers. There's the non-expendable and expendable. So many of these trusts have You know, some fixed amount of money, I'm just going to say $1,000, you can't spend that $1,000, but you basically can spend any of the interest that's earned on that money over time. And so I sent something yesterday that just describes, just lists all the trusts, and this is a work in progress. But it shows you what the current balance is and what the expendable balance is, just approximately. And this is what I'm still working on. But if you look at the notes, it kind of says what those trusts can be spent on. So for example, if you look at the George W. Fisher, it's fairly generic. That's one of the larger ones. change that's available for expense but it's used to the public library so that's actually one of the general ones that one is from 1849 Thank you Doug. And then like you look at the second one though, you know, it's written just books and papers. Now of course some of these obviously thing evolves because these are a hundred years old, but that's what I wanted to do with the documents is just read through them again and just make sure that we're using them for the intended purpose.

So Doug, I'm just a little confused about column E and F. So sometimes the expendable balance is bigger than the balance. So the first line, the George R.P. Fisher, makes sense because the initial amount was $20,000 a million years ago. The balance now is almost $48,000, but the expendable balance is $23,600. So that line completely makes sense. And then the next line, there's no initial amount, and that just could be whatever. But the balance in column E is $2,500, which is lower than the expendable balance, which is $3,800. So I just couldn't really understand.

I think what that means is the total fund balance is the combination of those two, like 60. The column E should be non-expendable balance, not total balance. So if you look at the second one you combine $2,500 and $3,800 that's what $6,300 is the total balance.

So if we added another column that would be the total balance. So it's the non-expendable plus the expendable. So it's the $71,000 plus the $74,000 so it's like $145,000 total.

If you look at the balances that Katrina have in the sheet, you'll see there's kind of a list of totals and lists of expendable. I'm sorry, a list of non-expendable and a list of expendable.

Okay, all right, that makes sense. Would it be possible to add in

we talked about earlier from the capital campaign fund i know it's not technically a trust but it's just this is honestly a super helpful view just to understand where funds are available sometimes we get asked to fund things i feel like we're trying to pinpoint it so this is a great reference okay so so doug if i add in that column i get 146 000 total if i so you're saying column e is

And I will add that to them before I send it around again. And historically, if we go back to the renovation project, we expended some of the Wheelock, which was the largest piece, and the George Fisher, which is another larger piece. I think the remaining funds, we haven't spent any money since I've been around. know certainly it's the purview of the control the board if they want it you know like uh the the winthrop balkner has you know 12 grand 12 000 that could be used to purchase books and the other one purchasing illustrated books we would be able to confirm for these like when they say books if it's really like materials i feel like so like you obviously purchase books but there's a lot

for people to take out, like the Tonys and the Library of Things.

We have a bottom line budget, so we can always take this money, put it towards books, and then take the money that we've put towards books in our budget and put it towards something else as well.

Oh, okay. Smart. So this could essentially, for Ingram and... Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I think I would think of like a...

the children's book drive.

Well, no, I meant like a special event where you need a bunch of books, and let's say you take it out of one of these funds, and then you can put a little label in there that says, you know, donated by the Emma Goddard Trust.

I love that.

Because then we can recognize the trust, not that any of these people are around.

For giveaway books, though? For what? For books that we would give away. A thousand books before kindergarten. Yeah, why not?

if the friends are doing half and then...

the same thing as you go through it would be really nice to see your notes are great but actually categorize it you know have a category for books books and papers I think I did the notes section probably ten years ago or something and you know obviously although we're

in it as far as the trust. But I do know that it was the Wheelock, and I feel like it was the Fisher. They had language around permanent things. I think it was the railing, the glass railing that went up the stairwell. That wasn't part of the original project. That was funded by one of these two trusts because it was considered a permanent fixture of the building itself. And then I included Nelson. Actually, I didn't put the balance in there. I think Mary takes those out of here now. But Nelson used to be included in our monthly report.

There used to be three libraries. There used to be the Center Branch, North Grafton, and South Grafton. South Grafton Branch is now the Historical Society. Okay.

I was just checking because it came up at town meeting and I was like, I'm not familiar with that. So there's a trust.

Yeah, there's a trustee that's appointed. They're not elected.

Okay.

Sorry, did you get your question out?

Yes, I did. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't in scope with us. So it's its own thing. It's basically a monument they maintain.

Do you know where the softball fields are when you head out of town? 140? It's back behind there. Oh, yeah, that little building? It is that little building, yes.

It's a fantastic property. It used to still be open. I'm not sure it is anymore, but it used to be a functioning library until a few years ago. They would open one day If so, I will continue to work on this and hopefully by next month we'll have a really clear picture of what we can expand it on.

Thank you for taking this on, Doug. Any further questions? Landscaping and roof repair, Katrina.

So I had hoped to have a formal proposal for you for the landscaping. So it is true that the town will fund the library, sort of fund the library in a sense, library landscaping. They have the maintenance staff do it. So Joe and Tim, who typically clean the library, would instead spend time putting out the mulch and doing some of the clean up. So that is an option for us. It's not a great one because there's only two of them and that's not...

This is what the clean is like.

Yeah, exactly. So we're pulling them off of cleaning duties to do this other thing, which doesn't get, they don't have the time to do it in full scope. So I did reach out to the company that actually does the building and grounds for Grafton Cemeteries. And when Rachel and I had our meeting with Evan, I remember him saying, like, $2,000 is great for landscaping. $6,000, that would be crazy. So this person came back and gave me a $9,600 quote. And I was like, how big do you think I am? So I immediately was just like, no, we can't spend $10,000 on landscaping. person, yeah.

I know last time, I feel like the last time the Capitol campaigned for it was parole, wasn't it? It might have been parole, but it was not the full, I mean, there's a lot of beds now if you're just thinking about mulch. If you look at the front, the back, you know, there's a lot of mulch, and I don't think we did the full thing last time.

know we didn't get the walkabout but are there and i haven't walked around the grounds recently are they in need of pretty big need of uh i mean it doesn't look great um all right so he didn't even really give me his it's jamie yet yay lion Mulching, edging, all beds. It wasn't even like a quote. He just threw this in a word vomit in an email. Mulching, edging, all beds, weeding, mulch to be used. $200 per yard. 8,000 cleanup. 1,600 cleanup. Debris. I don't know. $2,600 total. I'm happy to, I don't know. I don't know. How much did I even think it was going to be? $2,000. He said it would be reasonable.

I paid a landscaper to do my small lawn and he wanted $1,800 and I got him to have $1,600. That was just a part of my own property. I think $2,000 is kind of low, but $96 is really high.

So somewhere in between.

They used to do our condo association, I don't remember what they would charge.

I think they actually do ours too.

Yeah, but they would do mulching and landscaping and cleaning.

Yeah, I mean there's like dozens of landscapers in town. Yeah. And some of them are fairly young people, small businesses, and some of them are paid for. Yeah, small businesses, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, so I could give you at least two local companies. Okay. It would be great to reach out to. I mean, it's tough, though, because they're so busy.

And now they already have their contracts for the summer, so that's kind of tough.

Are you looking for weaving and mulching and edging or just mulching?

I'm clear.

Do you have an opinion?

Yeah, I can ask the guy who does my yard, I can ask him to quote it.

Well, I just meant like, because Katrina was in Sharpe, they should be like weeding, edging, and mulching, or if we're just looking for mulching.

So we do, so when I'm looking in the grounds, we do have a couple of folks who come It can't be done by two people once a week. There are some weeds in the beds that are overgrown, so it could probably use it, but if that's the difference between

I can help you. I can come over and walk through the place and see. Because obviously the town common facing is probably the most important because that's the view and then the main entrance. You might not have to do the full back. It's along the back side of the property.

That's where the kids are.

On that side, on that pathway?

Yep, they go along that pathway. We have a musical garden on that side. So I would say for mulch or weeds and stuff, that part is actually... pretty heavily used. Okay, well we can walk around. Sorry. No, it's good to be back.

No, the capital campaign actually paid for the music.

Yeah, yeah. And they get a lot of use.

That's great. I hadn't seen that.

Yeah, they do. It's funny, like walking in, like when you come from the parking lot to the front door, the lupins look amazing and the beach rolls. So I was like, I thought it looked really good. But I didn't like go to the children's garden. Yeah. Okay.

Great. So you had any more discussion about landscaping?

How about roofing? So as you might remember, we had an ice dam over the winter. I think this is going to be a call where I just tell them to come in and take a look and fix it as opposed to getting a quote. I didn't know if you wanted me to just go ahead with that and we'll pay for it out of state aid or... What is this again?

This is not the stuff that Bernard Roofing is doing.

Yeah, that's different. J&J Roofing came, I think it was in January because the... the ceiling had sort of fallen in because there was an ice dam in the drainage pipe from the roof right behind the borrower services office. So there's a bunch of ceiling tiles that sort of melted onto the floor and we should probably fix that before winter comes again.

I have a question on that. So previously, probably like last August or September, we had talked about like does the director need like a bucket of money that we've said you can use up to this amount for like emergency without having to wait and come here. Is this an example of one where you probably would have done this over a month ago if you had that fund, like you would have just had it repaired, or is the waiting for the meeting not impacting how effective it is?

Well, yeah, I think my, so I have been using that pot of money. We're about $8,000 into it, so out of the $20,000 that you authorized. This was a non- in the way I see it, sort of a non-emergency because it's nicer weather, so I'm not worried about an ice dam right now. So I wanted to just get your input on it so that I wasn't diving into my $20,000 pot of money and getting prior authorization.

I guess I'd be worried if the ice dam's gone, but the roof's damaged, so if it rains, it leaks, right?

It actually hasn't been. I haven't noticed any kind of leak at all.

So the repair you're talking about is just to repair the drop ceiling and they're actually going to go up on the roof and look at it?

Yes. Yeah.

They would go on the roof. What part of the, is that the, so it's the borrower services, so it's the main roof up top.

Yeah. So that second bathroom and then it leaked down into the children's room storage area. In the children's room? Right above our bankers, the bankers racks. Okay. Yeah.

issue right is is one thing to repair damage is another thing right so i think certainly um we probably want them just to remediate the problem to begin with and if there's any sort of residual damage that is you know causing the building to not serve its purpose Certainly, I think I personally feel that I like your approach where, say, we had a nice dam here and we need it remediated. If you have someone on retainer, not retainer, but somebody who you've worked with before, have them come in and do their remediation work and say, hey, this is kind of what happened. Is this something that we can maybe address at a later date? And then if you had an expense, you could bring it to the board. Or do we want to just say, authorize you to use that money?

It sounds like you still have $12,000 left. It's within that. If not, come back and we can.

Yeah.

Because we're getting near the end of the fiscal year, right?

you don't have to expend it but certainly um we can we can replenish it okay i don't want to say it's cumulative it's our first time doing it right that's your feedback yeah and we'd hope that it would last at least a year okay so far six months yeah and i will add that because the override passed our repair and maintenance line is going from 12 So that's going to help a lot.

And you have the six hours back that we thought we might use.

Yes.

Which I think there was a little confusion about the hours. Some people thought that it might be short in library hours, but it was just six hours on the children's room, which is understandable that people, you know.

I'm sorry, Stacy, you have something else to say about the second roof item?

Oh, I just wanted to inquire what specifically the second roofing was in, but could you?

yeah okay but that's what barnard's fixing i thought yeah so barnard's in the middle of that yeah okay gotcha and that's in the direct issue yes all right any further discussion um all right moving on the tech replacement plan yeah so um a few months ago i had brought um something that entre

comprehensive, like, here is what we recommend you replace every single computer in your building with this. And it was a lot. And I think where we left the discussion was maybe Aaron and Doug, using your expertise, you would help me to figure out a path forward for that. And we sort of reached the place where we're in a little bit of an emergency mode. We have a couple of staff computers that are either did it all together, or they keep blanking out. And so I didn't know how you wanted to approach this. We have contacts through MHEC, which is like the consortium where we get discounts through certain vendors. We have access to vendors like Newegg and Tech

I think the last when you brought this to us the last time there was I want to say sticker shop it was and it seemed like There was question about you know, why isn't this just a free upgrade? I almost feel like that that need to be replaced, that we can do so by attrition rather than going through and doing a mass replacement. Because technology, even though it's maybe a certain component. I think it's, what is it called? Anybody know what it is? This would be a really great tech question. I'm missing it off the top of my head. TPM module. Don't know how I got that. So if it doesn't have a TPM module, it can't take Windows 11. So as long as our devices have that, it can take Windows 11. Are we still stuck on Windows 10?

So I think most of the, I think Andre asked

Yeah, I would love to just, like you said, determine what an appropriate replacement is. And so one of the things that we do in my department is we will find something that we like and we mostly order from Amazon. But we will put it in a preferred buying list. And every time you need that item or need to replace something, this has already been vetted. And then you just click Purchase, and then you get it and replace it. So how you pay for that is maybe the question for the board. But I think having that sort of a model where you could say, okay, this one is really not worth spending more time with. Let's purchase something.

But I would think we need like a, I thought we talked about getting like a full list of all the inventory. Because like Aaron said, we can't replace every five years, you need to kind of do some kind of cycle where you're replacing five a year or 10 a year or whatever over a period of time. So if we could get that, and I can help you now, but if we can get that list and then you can figure out which are the ones that are failing and can they be fixed? Like, have you explored repairs?

Yeah, we've 100% explored.

Because like Erin said, I mean, most of the technology, I mean, this thing's like nine years old. Same, yeah.

check the desktop so I think up front it would make sense to change out a decent amount of the tech and then going forward do a couple I don't think the library needs like a whole reset but i do think um like a a mass purchase to get some of those older ones up because it seems like maybe you think like three or four it's probably closer to like seven states still not i mean still right seven right right but like seven to ten state like that would need like immediate right but ten of them that two grand a piece or a

the other thing is where are we going to find funding for that so katrina it sounds like there's like three or four that are like major issues right now yeah yeah so like is it something where like can that come out of state aid if we say like like is state aid an appropriate fund for funding it of course yeah okay so i almost wonder before i make the most just getting the group's thoughts on this like if doug is willing to work with katrina on it like we can make a

and how we would go through it.

I just don't want to hold you up on four to eight times.

Well, if they're catastrophically failing, too, people can't.

Yeah, I mean, right now, Barber Services is working on a patron laptop that is not great. The children's room one. The children's room one is consistently shutting down randomly in the middle of the workday.

Well, I know there are a bunch of, aren't there a bunch of Patreon laptops that just don't get used at all?

Yes, and that's what I've been replacing the failure ones with.

They're not functional for that.

Those ones are over, well, when the building was first, so those are aging out. They're like five years now. We tried to do an update for them because I wanted to, when I was working, I wanted to run a Minecraft camp on them. And it took the tech team an entire last summer and then into this year. So they're just usable now through updates and upgrades. But they don't necessarily hold charges or other things. It really is starting to age out. That's what I wanted to look at. I know you had the trust... So I didn't know if the wording in any of that would allow us to be able to, because they are usable things that are staying in the library, if any of that could be used as media or other things. Along with not only those failing, but the children's room computers that the patrons use are in catastrophic failure as well. We've had to remove two of them, one of them. was smoking um and then so their main systems that the little kids use or what we use to look up books any patron um one as well uh in terms of the tech world it is also approaching um do you have a do you have like an inventory list of all these computers and do we know the approximate age of each of them like the purchase date okay yeah um i'm happy to follow that list yeah i think

I mean, it sounds like you guys have already done it. And I have no issue trying to find replacing those critically ones. But we need to think of a long-term plan, like a replacement policy. And certainly cycle through ones that aren't getting used into like temporary band-aids or whatever for temporary and then just replace the ones that are failing.

So it sounds like Doug is going to assist you on that.

Do we need to approve funding for this emergency? struggling to support the patrons.

And honestly, I don't even know what the base system would even look like. I mean, you can usually get a pretty good system for $1,000.

I would propose almost $10,000 is how I'm thinking for replacement computers.

I'll make a motion that we approve up to $10,000 for immediate replacement of laptops. Up for the final approval, I'll go with Doug as he works with

Did you want to, you said laptops, but you should say computers.

Oh, any computer, laptop, so device needed. Computers. Any computers. Okay.

Computers. Computers are safer.

Tech replacement. Tech replacement. That's too much. Sorry, my laptop is my phone. Oh, no.

My laptop is my computer at work, so that's all right.

Okay, motion made in second. Anything? Thank you for bringing that to our attention, and thank you for that commentary. I appreciate that.

You're welcome.

You don't always get to hear that.

I'm sure some of that will ebb away.

Well, it's fresh, so we'll take advantage. Okay, so walkabout. Anybody have an update from Chris? Anybody been by the library recently and want to note anything?

to the fact that the um balustrade has fall part of the balustrade in the front of the building has fallen okay um so i'm working with maintenance to see about um what's the balustrade it's like it's like the the stone railing oh okay yeah oh um actually i do have one in the children's room the big wheel oh yep

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Oh, sure. There's a large puzzle wall, a large wheel that's a puzzle. It's going to start to detach. The anchors need to be replaced. And it's not something that Joe and maintenance feel comfortable with. that they are capable of doing right now, because it's supposed to be able to support a child's body weight in case they hang off of it. And someone did, and now it's not staying.

So not capable from a technical perspective, like they're not comfortable knowing what to, how to mount it, okay.

So maintenance doesn't feel like they're capable.

Katrina, are you thinking that's something that goes out of that emergency fund, like that visit is safe? Probably, yeah, we're going to have

Any other commentary from a Walkabout perspective?

Great. Well, those are two items.

Thank you for bringing those up.

to draw your attention to our year-over-year numbers, which continue to increase. We're definitely seeing people come to the library. It's very, very busy. A couple of Building and Grounds updates that I to Tyler, the plumber today. We actually had some toilet seals that broke and the floor started leaking downstairs on the first floor. So he's gonna be in tomorrow to fix that. And he's also got all of the water filtration system supplies coming in on a pallet in the next couple of weeks. I'm gonna see him tomorrow and we're gonna talk about timing for the project. We did discuss them coming in in the evening after library hours so that we're not disrupting library business.

So you're talking about for the fountains and things?

No, we're talking about, so this is the project that you agreed to fund a couple of years ago. The children's room? It's the whole library filtration system, so it will take the sediment and stuff.

Because of all the hard water.

Yes, exactly, which is affecting the water heater. Well, and the children's room is sort of down the line. But yeah, to hopefully preserve.

Did they test the water?

Because interestingly, we had our water tested and it's not that hard, which shocked me because all I've heard about is our hard water here. Now whether that test, maybe that test wasn't good, but I was very surprised.

So I'm wondering, did they actually do a water test?

Well, there are three different, there are multiple wells in town, right? So it does vary in your town.

Are you part of the self-water crafting district?

No.

the water balance in the system. There's all the little stuff coming off the pipes that's then feeding into the system.

When is that supposed to be done by? He said it was going to be done in the next couple of weeks. But we haven't set a schedule.

Just make sure that it is ahead of schedule for the pipe that they're redoing out. Because the town up by the common, they're going to be doing pipe work and a lot of work for that area.

But you don't need anything else from this board. You're just giving us an update. Yeah, I'm just giving an update.

I hope that doesn't force dirty water into the library.

That's why I want to make sure, because I know that they're going to start on the hill.

our new one in. So that may also.

The water department should have something out when they're going to schedule the maintenance for the center of town. Sorry, I'm the bringer of bad news.

No, that's fine. I'll follow up with you on that. But Tyler's a townie and he is the town's plumber, so he's probably a

Well, there's more than one, right? There's South Grafton, too. Like, we have, yeah. Yeah. It's right, actually, behind, like, where my... Oh, yeah. You were behind it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Guardian Energy Management Solutions regarding the EV chargers this morning with William. Their proposal was $33,000 and change to fix it. He thought that we got grant funding when we put in the original EV chargers. William told him, no, we did not. We didn't because... the plans were supposed to have a wheelchair accessible EV spot and I guess it was going to cost more money to cut in the curb to create one because it wasn't in the existing plans, then we would have gotten in grant funding. So the town decided not to do the grant funding. So there's a chance that we might be able to take some money off the top of the project and then we would bring it to town meeting as like a capital expense in the fall. As of now, there's still two EV chargers that are not working. The third and the fourth one have recently started failing so that I have to recharge and reset the system.

And including the adjustment to make it handicap accessible?

No.

No? That wouldn't happen. Then we don't know that we can get the grant money.

Correct. Exactly. That's the great concern. It's like, if you didn't qualify it before, then what's changed?

I think there are different grants available. So I don't know if it's that specific one or if there's one that's not.

If in the end it costs the town less money and we can get a handicap accessible EV charger, I think it's probably worth exploring. I would say no to something like that. Kind of a win-win.

Agreed, agreed. Yeah. Okay, any questions on?

Yeah, on the Director's Court in general? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so the St. Pauly's textile shed. So how did that come to the attention of the Friends? Do you happen to know?

So we brought it to the Friends because you'll remember that Jennifer said that it requires weekly maintenance and that oftentimes a Friends group will put it into their weekly rotation to take the key, unlock it, move all the things away from the shoe kind of manage it in that way. I mean, it's not something that we wanted to put on the staff.

But I think really the big open question is where, you know, working with the town, and this is probably something to discuss with Evan and William, is where could it be located? Because it's, you know, it's a fair size, and it's certainly bigger than the Friends Dropbox that's, you know, been removed.

Yeah. So Frank, I mean, do you have something to say?

Oh, I was just going to add, I guess my other question is, I feel like we've landed with them because they're the only ones who came with us. There are other options that we would actually make more money off of as the library. So I guess I would also say before we said we want to move forward with them, it's probably worth evaluating a couple others to say, any of the risk of stuff sitting there. I think there's a whole payoff options here. So my only hesitation would be that the first person who came to us, we've said, yes, this would be a good program to follow without.

I don't know that they're the first one, because if you remember when Tom was here, I think a group had come, and they didn't give a presentation, but he asked us if we were interested, and the board at the time said, no, we're not interested, because we had a lot of, what's the right word? Not exceptions, but a lot of... It helped alleviate some of those concerns. In the end, I'm not sure I'm in favor of adding that to our property at this time. It's nice that if we decide as a board we do want something like that, the Friends would be amenable to managing it for us. don't want to put this on Katrina, like you said, if we don't go with the first company, then it's more of a project on kind of going out and looking for companies to bring. I mean, is this an amenity that we currently want on our property? That is a question to ask first.

Yeah, I can't remember what the expected revenue

i think it was between like a thousand and fifteen hundred a year a year yeah or is that low i thought it's a couple hundred a month it depends on the pounds sure it depends i i for me for me personally it's a big shrug like you're thank you i don't want another thing to have to manage i would i worry about the same yeah and honestly we're like

a parking spot or it's going to be in a place where people are going to park in front of

I believe there's a lot already that the town can make use of it doesn't necessarily need to be the library I think this particular company looks for spaces like libraries and they try to go for a win-win sort of situation I wouldn't agree it is another win-win but in the end I'm just not sure that this is

that might even feel more like it to me.

They weren't that enthusiastic about it. They really weren't. My language was generous. Yes, they were. No, because they got rid of the outside donation box because it's very difficult, especially in the winter, to move the books. And that's why they went to the once a month to try to minimize moving things around. So they were not thrilled. Yeah.

I just shelve it and consider it in the future.

I think it's a nice thing to know that it's an option for us, but I don't think we should pursue it.

So then I will tell Jennifer that we're not interested at this time.

Thank you. Did you have more questions? Any other questions?

I have some questions on the budget update you have. So there were two items of over expense And what was the other one that was even bigger? Children's Audiobooks by $2,500. Excuse me. What happened there? Because don't those departments operate under, like they know what their budget is, so how did?

Yeah, so we're switching. We're reallocating funds from one line item to a different one. we ended up purchasing, that's like extra Wonder Books and Playaways that we had discussed, and we're not going to expend on children's DVDs and CDs.

So that was a conscious decision. Exactly. I see, okay, perfect.

And you were with a budget that you didn't establish, you know? Right, right.

No, but I mean, you guys made the decision, you want to spend it here and not here and vice versa.

And you can see like the young adults in tween, it's a flip flop, right?

And it's exactly the same for the YA books. So we're expending, overexpending on this particular line item and we won't be expending on, I think it's the tween section. Gotcha. Thank you.

We have like nothing in the tween section.

It's a very small, it's a niche. It's definitely full.

And now, because it's basically fifth and sixth graders and like into seventh graders, like when they're making that transition from children's room into, yeah. It's more about like it regulates what topics are in the books and like dating and romance and things like that might not be necessarily included in the tween book, but

authors are very it's hard i know we're at the end of our our year have we hit that threshold of the minimum we need to spend on like books and stuff we will when we spend it all okay which the staff are very close so um allison kusher has everybody on a a strict spending plan okay um yeah because we had a challenge with that the first year that

Tom was here. There was a lot of stress, I think, at the end of the year to get the numbers right.

And now that we look at all these grants, I wonder if there's a way to actually plan to earlier in the month hit it and then use some of that funds for additional books and stuff. There are a few things that come in through the end of the month to support that, too, if it makes it easier as well. Because we're probably talking like, couple grand of books right yeah so maybe just something to consider too because that might just help how you're managing it and then we don't have to manage it so tightly to make sure we hit funding yeah that would be great

And give them some wiggle room, especially when teens and children are heading into, or even adult, when everyone's heading into some reading. So I think that that's pretty, having some flexible funding for that. It's a really good time of year for that. Definitely.

You also mentioned merging the estate accounts. Are you proposing that to the board?

Yeah, I am actually. So one of my conversations with Mary Luria of the town finance department. So the first two, if you. The Town of Grafton Ledger History Trial Balance General Ledger. And that's on page 34 of the packet. Those first three lines are all state aid. And what the finance department does every twice a year, so when we get a check, they split it up into these three accounts. It's not required by the MBLC. It's not done that way in any other town that I'm aware of. And it does make it a little, it makes a little more work for the finance department. So Mary was like, hey, the trustees are amenable. That would be amazing.

And it's 60% here, 30% here, and 10% there, or whatever the numbers are. But Mary's the one that's dividing it up.

So maybe it made sense once upon a time, but now it doesn't really make any sense.

Yeah, and I think there is language on the MBLC site that says... you know, our each town's state aid package is calculated using and there's language around the library incentive and equalization and like circulation to other libraries in the system. And so I think what probably happened somewhere along the line is we decided that we wanted to put it into those three pots for those three reasons because that's how it was configured or calculated.

But they're not really saying you're getting this much for incentive, like they're not being so specific.

Right, right, exactly.

Well, I'm happy to make a motion to combine.

I don't think we need a motion. I mean, to me, this is just an accounting thing. Why wouldn't I? I mean, on the MBLC site, though, it does say it disperses three awards, the Ascenta Grant, the Equalization Grant, and Circulation Offset. Makes it sound like they come in three buckets.

That's what I've always assumed.

And then she just threw them into the buckets.

But it's just all one check.

But to me, it's an accounting decision, right? I don't know if this board... I mean, I guess I'm okay saying it's okay for her to do it. I don't know.

Sorry, what's the question on the table?

Well, there's the three buckets of money that comes from MBLC, the incentive grant, equalization grant, and circulation offset. And right now, we have three different accounts. And the town accountant would like to merge those into one account.

And we just get one check to begin with. How do we even know that it's for those three grants to begin with, if it's just one?

in at different times.

So we get our full award and then they give us a check in the fall and a check in the spring.

And each check includes all three pieces?

Yep, all in one.

So the purpose of splitting it up is for, one would be to use for circulation and one for, I'm just trying to understand what with the purpose of these there.

I think it's how they calculate how much they're giving to us from what Doug was saying on the site. So their calculation is taking this into consideration, but we don't care.

And Katrina mentioned that she hasn't seen any other library do this. There's no reason behind how we're using it. So it's all the same money.

Although the circulation offset says it's additional cost to municipalities whose libraries circulate materials to patrons of other certified municipalities. So do we have to make sure that that money is spent that way?

No. And then you're reporting. They're rewarding us for doing that. It's an incentive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, if we think we need to vote, I'd be glad to make a motion.

A motion to merge the three state aid accounts ending in 6-1-0-1, 6-1-0-2, and 6-1-0-5 into one account for ease of management. Second.

Great. Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? Okay. Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Declare the motion carried.

Thank you.

Great job. Efficiencies. We like that.

That makes her day a little bit better. Mary's going to be.

No.

It's been like that probably for 100 years or whatever.

Doug brought it up, but it was in Katrina's report. There's a couple of other things in Katrina's report. I don't know which ones you're going to hit, but there was the summer reading kickoff on June 22nd that you were looking for volunteers, so I submitted a request to help on that day. I was curious about the timing, because you mentioned it was a Monday, which is obviously different than what we've done in the past, but Were you thinking more afternoon?

Yeah, so the bulk of the event is happening between 1 and 3. And then we kind of have things going on all day. So take your help whenever we can get it.

I know last summer, Roger and we helped with the summer reading kickoff.

I was wondering when Unibank would reach out to Grafton about the money they're donating. So I don't know if they mentioned to you, but Unibank is donating money to all the libraries in towns that they serve around Massachusetts. So $2,500.

$2,500. That's awesome.

To celebrate the 250th. if I could be involved. So they haven't mentioned it to me yet, but certainly if you're looking for somebody to go with you to the game, be happy to do that. If they don't have me allocated already.

Yeah, definitely.

I feel like we used to get those. So like... Like just the annual notice.

Of we have been awarded this amount of money. Correct. Okay.

Yeah, that'd be great. Because I honestly don't remember how much it is a year.

It's about $45,000 total for the year.

So we have like almost $200,000 in the account. So we have many years of savings.

And for the WUSOC's presentation, so it's very nice of them to join the two tickets. If they do have an opportunity for other people to attend as well, please let us know. That would be a nice event to attend.

Yeah, I mean, anybody's welcome.

Any further questions from the director's report? All right. Hearing none, the next item is, help me out here. Other business. Other business.

Which I have two items for. One, I wanted to give a quick update on the other piece we talked about with the town administrator.

Yep.

And then I have a list of action items from this call. I'm hoping I could run through to make sure I didn't miss anything and I'll send them out afterwards. So this time, well, I guess it was last October, we worked with the town administrator to put together an interim agreement that said they would support the library in ongoing maintenance and It's been going great from what I've heard from both them and Katrina. So what we'd be looking to do is actually in that September-October frame, making an official change to some of that policy language on how we operate to say that that's officially supported by the town in terms of the ongoing maintenance. in August for them to give the full debrief on how it's been working. We can ask some questions and then draw up that formal language that we would need to approve and ratify just to keep it working. We can always go through and say if we want to do it for another year just to make sure it's still working. very beneficial change I also would say from our conversations it's enabled us a lot more to say oh you should probably go talk to the town administrator on it and before the director when because of how it's written. And so it's really enabled us to say, oh, find out who else does EV charging or the mulching, right? And so I think it's been a very good change over the last year.

Yeah, so for myself and probably Carrie and Doug, who've been on the board for quite a while, I've certainly seen a definite shift towards the positive in terms of how we're operating with the town.

thank you i've been great yeah okay so i just want to make sure and get an early reading that no one was like nope not don't want to continue oh no no absolutely no please tell them we're very appreciative and i think we want to continue to build on i think it's is it going to need a change of our charter charter so certainly we're going to want to make sure we review that um

from this meeting, then, is I'll get those goals drafted out to this group just to confirm. And then we'll work with Katrina. So the last plan had been that Doug and I were going to do that. So Aaron, you and I will go through and facilitate that. We said it wasn't something that needed a big vote, just an opinion for people to weigh in. We're going to confirm the new chair of the policy committee, seeing if Prabhu's interested. Otherwise, Stacey will take that role. Carrie's going to follow up with the friends and see if they're doing yard signs to promote Rachel and Prabha are going to meet with Katrina on the makeup of the strategic planning committee and move forward. Aaron's going to send me the policy language on the team room, and I can see it.

Katrina, I think, will send that because she's been mostly owning that piece.

Thank you. Doug's going to add to the trust. category column as you're progressing. Katrina is going to look at a few other options for people to come out and mulch and Doug will do a walkabout to help evaluate the beds and so they can land on what that should look like. We're going to get an inventory list and a cycle plan for all the with Doug. Katrina, I'm sorry, how many times am I saying your name? That's all good. I probably already have it all down, but lay it on me. Katrina's going to bring in a contractor fix, the wheel being anchored to the wall in the kids' room. So I have that as your... And then the whole board has to let Katrina know if we can support the 622 for the summer kickoff. And then when the state aid annual notice comes out, that amount of work that's going to be distributed to the board I'll send this in an email now. It will be in all the meeting minutes for the next one, so that's where it will publicly be, but that way we can all know what we're supposed to do for the next one.

Awesome. Thank you. Thanks, Rachel. Thank you.

So one of the things that we would often do at policy committee towards the end of the meeting is we would leave an item on the agenda that would say, you know, policies to review at next meeting, right? here is since we may come up with new ideas and things that we want to discuss that weren't on the agenda, I think this would also allow us to earmark them for the next agenda. So one of the things that came up from the town was boards and committees were invited to, and I'm going to get the name of it wrong, but in August like a town event to showcase kind of what we do for the town, right? Did anybody get that? It's probably Grafton Day.

They said they were going to send an email out to all the committees and stuff.

Yeah, so something that we can start talking about and bring ideas to the next meeting is if there's something we want to do, what would that be? in the community, except for these kind of televised meetings that people may or may not watch.

It was close to when the book sale is. August 21st, I think. Okay, so it's the weekend before the book sale.

And I know that, so that's one thing I'd like to... Yeah, you're right.

Grafton Day, August 21st. It's going to be Friday, August 21st from 4.30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the Grafton High School grounds.

That kind of came up sparked ideas from this meeting.

Well, just on this one, it says, all we're requiring of you is you provide your own table, chairs, marketing materials. You provide either a giveaway for fun family activity they can participate in when they come visit your table. to everyone who comes to the table anything else just any of the action items from this meeting we can have updates on those on the next one i love that yep um can i just say one other thing we need to reply to the email by friday june 19th and today's the second so you need to let them know if we are planning to participate okay um

All right. I think it's a good idea for us to participate, so I'll be happy to respond to them unless somebody has any objections. summer vacations, right, to make sure that we have quorums, if there's any dates that we need to move. I'm traveling at the end of July and most of August. So I'll have to take a look at the meeting dates. But if anybody has any conflicts, you know, with scheduling, like in this case, we couldn't meet last week because there were scheduling conflicts, right? I'd like to head those off sooner than later. I'll find a way to do that without violating Robert's rules.

Well, scheduling doesn't violate if we're just scheduling meeting times. My understanding is we could coordinate when we're all going to meet via email about it.

Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Very good. Okay. Anything else for the next meeting? All right. So any public input?

I did forget to ask one question. You mentioned the administrative assistant resigning. Yes. So is that able to get posted immediately, or do you have any other candidates?

It's posted internally, and I think the 10 days runs out on Monday, so it will be posted externally.

So we're hoping for something fairly quick, I hope.

That's my goal.

Thank you.

Can I just mention, I talked about the Friends Back to School used book sale. It is actually the 22nd of August and the 23rd. So it's draft day on the 21st, 22nd, and then the 23rd for the back-to-school book sale.

One of the things to perhaps for the administrative assistant to help us get organized is certainly having a trustee calendar. Didn't you bring that up at one point?

I don't remember, but it sounds like something I would ask.

So all these things that we should be remembering, we can subscribe to like a SharePoint calendar. you or the administration is going to put together. And that way, we'll know kind of what's upcoming for Grafton Day or the Friends. Yeah, I think that would be helpful.

So we are at 9.02 p.m. The next meeting.

That was a mouthful. So if there's any conflicts, I would assume that, you know, yourself and Prabhu and Katrina would work that out. Sure. And certainly if another staff member is available to join or interested, I think that's a good thing to continue to publicize. The Friends annual meeting is Friday, June 12th at 6pm in the Historic Reading Room of the Library. And the next Board of Trustees meeting is Wednesday, June 24th at 7pm. If you have any conflicts, please let me know.

I second it. Okay. I second it.

Any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, I declare this meeting adjourned at 9.03 p.m. All in favor?

Aye.

I declare this motion carried and the meeting adjourned at 9.03 p.m.