Board of Library Trustees - Grafton Public Library - Regular Meeting

EVERYBODY IS READY AT 7.02 P.M. ON JUNE 24, 2026. AND WELCOME. SO THE FIRST ITEM ON THE AGENDA IS THE APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES FOR JUNE 2, 2026. DO I HAVE A MOTION TO APPROVE THE MINUTES?

We'll make a motion to approve the minutes of June 22nd, 2026. Second. Oh, second, sorry. I read you may choose when I say it.

Yeah. Okay, motion made. Any second? Second. Seconded by Doug. Yep. All right. Any discussion on the minutes? Okay, great. Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? I declare the motion carried. Great. THE NEXT ITEM ON THE AGENDA ARE THE WARRANTS 50, 51, AND 52. DO I HAVE A MOTION TO APPROVE THOSE IN BULK?

I CAN MAKE A MOTION TO APPROVE WARRANT NUMBER 50 $8,599.94. Warrant number 51, $16,109.52. And warrant number 52, $16,470.53. Great. Question made. Any second? Second. Doug got that one again. I can do that now. Any discussion?

OKAY. HEARING NONE, ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. ANY OPPOSED? GREAT. I DECLARE THE MOTION CARRIED. OKAY. ONGOING BUSINESS. THE GRAPHIC PUBLIC LIBRARY CAPITAL CAMPAIGN UPDATE.

GOOD EVENING, PRABHU. GOOD EVENING, SIR. DOUG. THAT'S ME. I SHOULD SAY THAT WE DID GET OUR ANNUAL DONATION FROM HOME FIELD CREDIT UNION. THEY'RE THE ONES THAT DONATED TO THE CHILDREN'S ROOM, AND IT WAS A 10-YEAR COMMITMENT.

Any large items or anything in the next six to eight months, year, year two, nothing?

I think there's only two items, Katrina. I don't know if you mentioned this last meeting or not, but the 3D printer is no longer working. So I know they're going to look to replace it, and I think they're going to request funding from the capital campaign. We haven't met about it yet, but something we look at in the next month.

Yeah. With summer reading, it's sort of been on the back burner.

AND THE CURRENT BALANCE OF THE FUND IS ABOUT $75,000. SO STILL A PRETTY GOOD JUNK OF MONEY THERE.

EXCELLENT. ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION OR QUESTIONS FOR DUCK? Okay. Hearing none, the next item on the agenda is the Friends Update. And Carrie isn't with us, but has anybody attended a Friends meeting or has a line on anything that they want to share with the board from the Friends?

I did attend the annual meeting, if you'd like me to speak on it. Yes, please. It was well attended. They... Obviously voted in their new slate of officers, which is going to remain the same as it was last year. So Jackie Dillman is still the president, and I think it's Betsy who's still the deputy secretary. And they just reviewed their year. I don't have my notes in front of me because I thought Carrie would be here. But they reviewed their year. They had a great time. successful year in terms of the fundraising. They had a couple of additional fundraisers that they had planned and that were really successful, including the May one, which was not normally in their annual schedule. So I think they made something like $13,000 or something last year. Thank you for sharing.

That was their June annual meeting.

Exactly. We had it after hours at the library. We were going to have it in the historical meeting room, but it was very warm in there. It was a very hot day.

I think we should probably coordinate representation at the annual meeting. If Carrie was there, that's great. But certainly, I know I was traveling. BUT I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU GUYS, HEY, I CAN'T MAKE IT. SO I THINK IT WOULD BE GREAT TO MAYBE GET A YAY OR NAY FROM EACH OF THE TRUSTEES, YOU KNOW, GOING FORWARD, JUST TO MAKE SURE THAT IT'S WELL ATTENDED AND WE'RE WELL REPRESENTED, BECAUSE THAT'S AN IMPORTANT ONE FOR US.

I LIKE HEARING THAT I COULDN'T GO TO THAT ONE. NORMALLY I DO TRY TO GO TO THE FRIENDS ONES. I HAVE FEW.

I WAS OUT OF TOWN AS WELL. I KIND OF WISH THEY COULD DO IT ON A FRIDAY, ESPECIALLY IN JUNE.

Yeah, that's historically how they've always done it. They have, yeah.

There's just a lot of family and kid and school events that happen right around that time. So even if she had done it the week before, it would conflict with. So it's a hard month for everybody.

Well, maybe we can provide that feedback in a constructive way. Okay. Excellent. Any further discussion on friends? Okay. Strategic planning problem. You skipped library trusts. Oh, did I? I'm looking at the wrong agenda. Oh, sorry. I'm looking at the draft agenda, I think. Hold on. If library trust is next on the agenda, let's go to that.

Yeah, so I don't have a big, I actually have a lot to update, but nothing really to share yet. Last week, last month, whenever it was, earlier this month, unexpendable and the expendable pieces since then. Been talking to the town accountant and she connected me with Skip Currier. And I had conversations with Skip, gosh, probably four or five years ago, but he did a ton of work on the library trusts, I think about 10 years ago or 15 years ago or something like that. where the funding came from originally details on the funds the some of the larger trusts are a little bit more complex like the Jerome Wheelock turns out it had a bunch of pieces going in not just for the library but for other things in town and so remember we had some weird numbers for like the the non-expendable and I was like, why isn't it just a nice round number? And a lot of that's because money, percentages of money came from different sources. He actually tracked a lot of it down in the early 1900s through documentation and papers and has worked with the town accountant to make sure that they're defined properly in the accountant system and we've also gone through a couple of accounting systems since. I know you were on these emails, too. I reached out to Skip and I'm like, can we get together and put together a single document that has all this information in it that I can then share to you guys next month? He actually sent it to me, I think yesterday or today, a large piece of it, but I didn't get a chance to put it together. But the numbers we presented last month for expendable amounts are working on.

That certainly puts some puzzle pieces together because he was very knowledgeable, more so than we are, but now I get the connection with the library and also the finance committee. He did that research, but it's too bad that it took this long to bridge the gap there, but I'm glad you're taking that on and it seems like it was constructive. Excellent.

AND ACTUALLY I'M GLAD THE TOWN ACCOUNTANT IS INVOLVED, TOO, BECAUSE I THINK THERE WERE SOME QUESTIONS OVER THE YEARS ABOUT IF THE ASSIGNMENT TO ACCOUNTS WAS ACTUALLY CORRECT. SO THAT'S GETTING LOOKED AT AS WELL.

Great. So once we compile that and it's shared with us, what's your vision, I guess, for the trusts, right? I think we talked a little bit about that the last time about things that are used for the purpose of books only, right? And there's ways to, you know, we have books buying in our annual budget already. So there might be ways to make sure that we're expending the balances and they're not just sitting there in perpetuity. I think that's what Skip's pain point was, is that there's a lot of trust that the library has that we haven't touched ever.

Which is true, especially a lot of the smaller ones, less than 10,000, less than 5,000 or 6,000. I don't think we've touched them certainly since I've been a trustee. So we do know the breakout of some of them and what they can be spent for, for like books, illustrated books. Some of them might not actually be relevant in today's library. But I think we should just, I guess, entertain requests thought for some of them especially some of the smaller ones would be if there was a special program going on whatever children's program where you're gonna be buying like you know 20 or 30 books we can use it for that we can put little name tags in the books like donated by this group the larger trusts You know, like the Fisher has $20,000, $23,000, and the Wheelock has $14,000. Another one has $7,000. So some of those larger ones we can consider for more capital-like projects or larger projects.

Right. I know that there's like a, you know how you have like a grand wish list of things that you wish that you could accomplish? Yeah. I think one of Sarah's ultimate goals, things for the children's room was how we put the musical instruments and everything on the back. She wanted to have a story walk put in back there. But we've tried to pair up with the Boy Scouts about it. They've cleared some land certain other times. It's never all come together. So I think if we had the possibility to maybe use a trust to accomplish that or at least get the foundations for it and then we the library could interchange all the pages and build.

Is that different than the story walk we just approved in April to go in?

Yeah. Oh, did you? Sorry.

Is it the same one or different?

It's different. Yeah. Oh, so there's a scout who is putting in a story walk on the trail behind the library. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. And so we asked him to consider, like, who's got, he's like, oh, library staff will go ahead and they'll go out in the woods and they'll change out the story. And we felt that that really wasn't a good use of, you know, library resources. Yeah.

No. It's more like, I don't know if you've gone to North Street. North Street School has a really, really nice one. And there was one that was also put up on Brigham Hill during COVID, which was really nice.

She mentioned that one. Yeah, Brigham Hill.

Those two were both really nice, but the one at North Street is usually rolled into summer reading. They talk about it for the kids.

I like the idea of the back of the library, though. I mean, it's a nice space, it's got a nice walkway, it's got the instruments and the amphitheater back there.

Right, I think it could be set up.

I know that there's two Boy Scouts who are looking for Eagle Scout projects, and maybe already have them picked in Troop 106. But if not them, there's more kids that are working towards EGLE as well that we can offer to both troops. But I think it's nice to say, hey, the library has a project that they'd like to do.

Well, and I almost wonder, because the strategic plan that's going on, maybe we wait until after that just to make sure it's still in alignment. But that's good to know as we think about it. Maybe part of it is local community projects for people who are looking to either volunteer

Do eat gold Scout projects or whatever it might be because I don't think we naturally think about reaching out proactively It's more they think it's definitely But whenever they do reach out I would say that the staff does try and accommodate there are like several books in the library from projects there are certain kits that we release for Girl Scout ones, like how to tie your shoes and other things like that. They've built learning kits.

How neat.

Yeah.

I've heard some really interesting Eagle Scout projects with libraries. And I'm going to get it wrong, but I think I heard that there was a community food cart or something where people could bring, you know, veggies and fruits and vegetables and donate them. I don't know how safe that is, but, you know, it seemed like kind of a neat thing, you know, for the community, you know, just like a food cart. But I'm not saying we do it, but it's an idea.

Well, again, I think it's whenever we land on our, like, strategic planning, right, like, does one of our pillars end up being helping with food insecurity in our community right because then that aligns well right and we just have to see where we end out of it yeah and we can use fun you know different funding sources you could go to the capital campaign for installing like the structures for the books

Definitely a few options there.

You're going to be our trust accountant.

There is money to spend.

That's great. Because also, if we use some of that, sorry, I keep saying we. If Sarah used some of that for the purchasing of physical media like Ingram, then it would free up for like play away and digital space for you guys in your budget. Which would be most welcome. Perfect.

And I think Katrina you also mentioned or someone mentioned a second tree in the children's room. You know the tree? Yeah. So I've looked into that and so I've talked to an architect and they did indeed design it. It turns out that he's still looking but he

construction person okay and they made it like yeah like it's not like they bought the parts they made it from scratch so that's still an option because I think Sarah I think her vision was to have the seasons on the different trees so right now we have the spring like a spring summer one so I think she was trying to because we have four pillars so it would be really cool if each one could be a season

if he actually has the physical plans.

Awesome. Okay. Any further discussion on library trusts? Okay.

Next is the strategic planning update problem. So since last meeting, we have not had a chance to meet up. Katrina, myself, and Rachel, you're going to connect. We haven't connected. So there's scheduling conflicts to be prioritized and addressed before the next meeting at least.

Yeah, so what's the best way to facilitate that, right? Is that you have quite an extensive travel schedule, or do you not anymore?

Nope, this one was on me. It was. I thought I responded to the email because I had another library meeting on my calendar, and then I realized it wasn't, so I already apologized to Katrina. I'm so sorry. That was a calendar.

I was supposed to take ownership of that. No, no, no. I was looking at you because it's usually you. Because I remember you from the...

And Katrina prompted us this morning. So we'll do it. And again, if we end up doing a Zoom call or something, we can, I think it's just the three of us, we can make it work how we need to. So maybe before we leave this room today, I brought my work calendar with me.

Sure. I know a great place to meet, the library, in her office.

Although it is covered in lawn games right now. That makes it more comfortable. That might be a positive. Axe throwing while we figure it out. I'm in.

Take an action item before the next meeting, say like two weeks prior to the next meeting. We should have an update to this group.

Okay. Can you remind us, do we have the actual members of that group defined, both from the trustees, the library, and any community members?

I have some community members lined up. They've just been waiting to hear from me.

And I think we were going to confirm if we have the right mixture of people and then figure out if we need anyone else and then start getting stuff scheduled, right?

How can we help? Or do we need to help? Is there certain skill sets you're looking for that we can go out and... I love to talk to people, but...

I think we need to have the meeting to figure out what it is. And that was originally our goal to have for tonight. So I loved your idea. We'll send out an email so that way we don't have to wait for the next meeting if there are gaps and things. And then we can have a conversation via email, right? We could have whoever sends it out. If people know someone, they can just send a direct email. So that way we can start gathering names and be a little further along before the meeting.

ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS FOR THE STRATEGIC PLANNING COMMITTEE? OKAY. NEXT ITEM ON MY AGENDA IS POLICY UPDATES. STACEY.

YEP. SO I GOT VOTED IN AS I'm learning how to write up meeting minutes and run an open meeting. So I have lovely mentors who are going with that process. Yep, so we tackled The meeting room policy, it has been sent over to the union for its final review. Then we just need to present it here, and then it should hopefully be all set. The next priority for us is going to be the attendance room children's policy for the teen space, the age policy.

Is that the one that was a change from age to grade level? Or one way or the other?

It will say both in it, but it's going to add in the grade level to allow early 12-year-olds in.

That's brilliant. I know. That's the solution.

We're so excited. So we're just going to alter the wording a little bit to allow. Thank you, Rachel. Happy to use my resources. So we plan on tackling that before the next meeting, hopefully. Have it all drafted and at least present the initial to Regal and the union for review. Our goal with that one is to have it in place for the beginning of the next school year.

Okay, so question from Policy Committee. You're in the hot seat now. whole process of like you know when we write new policy um legal you know union in your committee and then also trustees right um for stuff that we're making edits to um do you guys feel that it needs to go through the whole process again um union legal um you know because there's a time and expense to that i do feel like the union should have

I say because essentially they have to enforce, like the employees have to enforce it.

Legally, I think. I think we could probably get away with foregoing.

Yeah, foregoing it because it's already.

Unless you feel something has legal precedence, right?

Are you talking about the children's room one?

Or are you talking about all policies? Oh.

Well, I'm talking about all policies that are already written, right? I think it depends. And we want to edit it. Right. We're going to change it.

I think it would depend, like with the meeting room and the rental facility one where we're going to charge and things like that. I think that one should probably go out to legal just to make sure that our wording and everything.

Likewise for even to the union. Not everything needs to go to the union. Right. It depends on which policy. And who's enforcing it. It's a good idea. Yeah. If it impacts the staff, if it is... If there is involvement in their work schedule or the way where the staff are working, and then probably there is an exposure, so you want the union involved in that, have a view of it, on it. Like any other policy stack, it depends on... These are various stakeholders. Legal is to safeguard us as a town. Union is a protected class. So how do we make sure that their interests are addressed or not inhibited by any policies that we define? So we probably need to have a conversation when we meet up to see. Yeah. THEY SET UP POLICIES, WHAT GOES TO WHAT, ALMOST A RACI, NOT A RACIAL THING.

SURE. A FLOW. SURE. RIGHT. DID YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO ADD?

the policy committee has enough knowledge that they'll understand if it's like a meaningful impact on either of those groups right if there's no meaningful impact it seems like it doesn't need to go through a review if it's like verbiage or something or a time frame or a dollar dollar amount or something it seems like that doesn't need to go through a review unless there's a meaningful change right yeah i think that's true i agree i guess the other thing i would ask too like in terms of going through legal

I'd probably want the town administrator to make that final decision if we think it doesn't, right? Because the reason it goes through legal is really because of trying to get it ahead of potential town legal fees, right? If you're in the policy well, then you don't get yourself in a legal situation. So before we save the money, I would just want to make sure they wanted to save that money and it didn't open up a bigger risk.

Yeah, it wasn't, okay, but maybe my, the way I presented it wasn't so much the expense. It was, I almost look at legal as a partner. It's like, oh, I think we should have a legal look at this, right? Do you know what I mean? Because we've changed something that might have legal implications, you know?

Yeah, I think with the... two that we have right now they shouldn't need to because one's already gone through those stages so the meeting room one has already gone through that and then the age adding the grade level for the children's room one shouldn't i don't think that'll have any legal ramifications because that's more just like amending than rewriting

Stacey, would it be possible at all? Because I know we have a lot of policies moving at different points. I think we have a spreadsheet at some point. We could just get a spreadsheet of all our policies, the ones that are up and we feel good about, the ones that are down that we need to review. It would be really helpful to see the holistic picture of what's going on. I think you're making some really great progress, but if there's stuff we're going to skip legal review on or We say we don't need union. It just would be helpful for us all to see it and kind of nod along to say no concerns.

I think after we get through these three priorities, we were going to sit as a committee and then kind of do a quick review of what's up there, what needs to get updated, what is okay to sit for a little bit longer, because I think the ultimate goal was to eventually move to every other month for the policy committee, unless... We're actively working on one that needed to be changed.

I'm making it happen every month. Good.

Sure.

Every time the policy committee is looking at me. I just happen to be here next to the three of you. Yes. The policy subcommittee, I never miss.

I have ones I have to review annually at work and some we review every three years. So I think even coming down with when's the last time it's reviewed and when do you want that next one could be helpful too as things get moving.

Yeah, I don't think that there's been a lot of consistency between everything over the past five or six years when it comes to the library in general, so I think that this is a great opportunity for us to move forward and kind of set maybe some realistic review periods for these.

Almost like a, I've got to say it wrong, not a policy for the policy committee, but almost like a run sheet, like here are the expectations, so that when there's turnover, the next person coming in, you know, can at least go, okay, it's just a one sheet that says, you know, here's where to find, or we keep, like you said, everything organized in a spreadsheet, and, you know.

I know we've asked that in the past, so I don't know if there's one that already exists that could be updated, or it might be easier just to start over.

I mean, all the policies are available through the website right now that are active, but I know that the website, might potentially go through some review and update, hopefully.

Well, we had taken some down because they were inaccurate, but I think it didn't mean we didn't want to put them back up.

Didn't want to review them, but at least consider them.

Do we have a drive for all the problems? We sure do.

Yeah, that was one of the first initiatives.

Do I have access to that now? I have a note in here to make sure that you have access. Fabulous. You had it when you were a staff, but you don't have it on your end. I HAVE TO GO THROUGH. I WAS ALLOWED AND THEN DENIED.

I HAVE ONE MORE QUESTION. ANYBODY ELSE HAVE FURTHER QUESTIONS? ONE MORE QUESTION IS REALLY SURROUNDING THE STAFF, RIGHT? SO IF WE'RE MAKING A CHANGE TO A POLICY, LIKE YOU SAID, THE STAFF NEED TO KNOW IT'S CHANGING. how do they, what's the review process for the staff when we make policy changes? Is that communicated to you, the director, or it's just kind of an expectation part of their role to just know what's being changed from time to time?

Well, I think the union sends it out to the state. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but when the policy goes through you before it's approved by this body, the entire union gets to look at it?

They'll peer review it, yeah. So it'll filter through, like, Sarah and the union reps. And then if they feel like... they usually spread it around to make sure everybody's kind of on board.

Katrina, are you doing like a weekly direct?

YES. WHEN WE HAD NEW POLICIES STARTED TO PLAY, LIKE WE DID THE VOLUNTEER POLICY, WE DID THE COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY. SO AFTER THOSE WERE APPROVED, I DID ADD THOSE. OKAY, PERFECT.

AND I DID HAVE A QUESTION ON THE RENTAL POLICY. I THINK WHERE WE LEFT IT LAST TIME IS YOU WERE GOING TO GO BACK AND THINK LIKE, what's the process I want to use to manage it, and then make sure the policy, I didn't know where you are in that process of defining the process.

I know we had some good discussions around, and we're going through, I mean, feel free to take over, but we're going through the rental facility policy and the sections where we needed to have discussions around those.

And we were taking our... lead information off of Grafton's facility rentals for what they do for the other buildings in town to try to make ours comparable and make sure that the wording and facility use kind of lines up with already what the town has. That's mostly the direction that we were going.

I think we did. I think you guys did that.

Great. Any further discussion for the policy committee?

I think the only thing, Katrina, is it would be great to understand, like, what you still need in place to successfully operate that rental room because I know the policy is one piece. I just, like, I think last time we talked about we don't know how the stove actually works. Like, there's a lot of other things, and sometimes those have long tails. So I'd hate for us to get through the policy and be like, we're ready. and then not actually be able to really let people use the space, because maybe we needed to change something out, or there was something with the alarm company. So I think if we just see everything that needs to be done to actually allow people in, in addition to the policy, that would be helpful for next meeting.

Oh, sure. I have, I guess I can say, my meeting notes aren't fully constructed yet. Sorry. But some of the details that we were looking at were how the staff could incorporate if they wanted to pick up shifts. Is it just going to be custodial? Things like the kitchen being an add-on that we were looking at and how the staffing wording is required through the town rental says that they have to work certain minimums and things like that. they have we kind of decided that we do a separate um rates and schedules fee not written into the policy but as like a link so that way it could be changed and amended kind of as things go um we're looking at how to structure the fees so i think once we get uh base policy written, we want to present it here for review first before we move out anywhere else.

Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense. I feel like with the policy piece and all those covered, I'm worried more about our stoves not working. So then people can't actually use it to make food. So there's other pieces outside of that that I just want to make sure we feel good about. I think that would be outside the policy committee. So I think that's luckily yours. That's me. For sure.

I was like, it's on my to-do list.

And I think some of that, I mean, you might know, but does the people that have been requesting it, have they been asking for kitchen space or the pianos in there?

I haven't had any requests for the piano. I haven't had any specific requests for the kitchen. Just the little annex with the shelving.

Just the counter space, yeah.

I just wonder if all those Sunday weekends after hours stuff, we can't. accommodate for is when you would have like some food and things like that so we might not be seeing it because of the time of day people are doing like coffee and donuts or everything all right

Well, thank you very much. So next item on the agenda is new business. I don't have anything listed specifically, but I wasn't sure if I should say this during public input or new business, but it being the 250th anniversary of our independence, we've had more questions about why isn't there a flag on the library property. And some other questions were, was it just not thought about during the building plan? I don't know if that's something that you necessarily came across your desk when you were part of the building committee as well. But I don't see any reason why we wouldn't want to pursue this, but I know that we had considered it from a patron request. They came in front of the library board and just, they basically just asked the questions, you know, why don't we have one? And I think Doug did some initial investigation in terms of the cost. YOU KNOW, BUT I THINK IT JUST WASN'T A GREAT TIME FOR THE BOARD TO DO A PROJECT LIKE THAT BECAUSE I THINK WE WERE IN BETWEEN DIRECTORS OR SOMETHING TO THAT EFFECT. BUT, YOU KNOW, SOMETHING TO CONSIDER NOW GOING FORWARD IF THAT'S SOMETHING WE WANT TO PURSUE. THAT WAS BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION. AND I SAID I WOULD BRING THAT UP TO THE BOARD.

Would we be able to wait until after the strategic plan? I just feel like there's going to be a chunk of stuff we need to do, right? And I'm just thinking about everything you have on your plate, right? We still haven't gotten the meeting room out for use, which is top on the list, the strategic plan. I just wonder if it's worth it. saying, yes, it's on our list of things we start thinking about for capital stuff after we get through that strategic plan. Because it's come up from a couple people putting requests, it sounds like. And I saw the email about the patron, too. I guess my question is like, the strategic plan will tell us what people in the community are really looking for and not saying that we shouldn't do the flag, right? But I'd hate to prioritize that and not have money for something that we're seeing a large need for in the community. So that's the only reason I would recommend we wait until after that because we're so close to it.

I'm curious from a maintenance standpoint who would maintain because right now just the Do the police station and the firehouse, do they maintain their own flag? There are certain rites and rituals that you have to adhere to when it comes to the flag in terms of raising and all of that. And I don't feel like that is something that should fall to necessarily the library staff. They already have a lot. So if that's something that the town would like, I get it. But I don't. If you look at other libraries in our community, not all of them, a bunch of them do not have an American flag. And I think our American flag is extremely well represented in our town, all over the place. at most of our public buildings. It's not a requirement that it has to be posted at a library specifically. So I would look at it from a maintenance standpoint.

And we do have an American flag inside the building.

Yes.

It's not like we don't have a flag.

And we showcase those.

Those are all questions that came up three or four years ago about who was going to maintain it. I know we did discover there are Like you can leave it outside overnight in certain situations and certain types of installs stuff like that But there were there were a lot of there are a lot of little things on half mast and all that stuff And who was going to deal with I think in town I think the other town buildings it's typically like the custodial staff that does it but I'm not sure for sure but I would agree I mean we have a lot of them around town at the buildings and Um, I certainly think there's a lot of other stuff we can be doing here too.

I just feel like I would want to represent it and have it be treated with the utmost respect. And I'm not sure if our custodial staff could, could take that on or the library staff. And then also with their normal duties, like it's not, it's not as like a two second, Oh, we just go and raise it up.

Question, so it sounds like we're talking five poles. Is that what that is? Yeah. Is there an in-between situation that could be faster where it's something that's next to a doorway? that is much less of an install in terms of cost, probably less onerous, and at least an interim solution until we get through the strategic plan. But that's what we have inside.

I mean, it's inside, but it would be outside. That's somewhere outside, actually. Or in that vestibule.

If you literally walk outside the back of the library, you can see one at the post office and the firehouse. Right, that's true. Like, I can guarantee you can see two right from walking out of the back of the library.

Yeah, we didn't know where we put it on that building. If you put it on the common, it's part of the historic district commission. Right. If it's like, you know, there's a couple of different areas that you could consider putting it. So we just never got into that detail.

And I do think that the agenda behind the person potentially pushing for this is to maybe highlight the American flag over other... Like the state flag, you mean? Flags that could... be used throughout the year. Boston has multiple flags that they fly on their building. But I know specifically this topic always comes up in the month of June, specifically.

And Katrina, did it come up to the library? Because we got the email from the town administrator, or someone over in the municipal building saying that someone came. But no one came and talked to you directly.

from the library staff?

I had a community member reach out to me.

OK, but you did get pulled in. Yes.

OK. Yes. And actually, he brought some fun for me to hang out in the library.

And part of it, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't part of it a request for the 25th, or 250th? I saw Cindy.

I thought a different Cindy. Yeah, no, I think that's where we got the email from was that someone went to the town and asked about it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, it came through the town administrator. And then you also mentioned that that person had been in the library.

Is there a town policy on flags, maintenance, the protocols, not maintenance of the flag, but say the protocols, all the things that we talked about?

THAT'S LIKE A FEDERAL, THERE'S LIKE A BIG LIST OF THINGS.

NO, NOT A FEDERAL, NOT A GUIDELINE. I'M SAYING A PROTOCOL AS IN A PROCEDURE THAT, OKAY, HERE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE. WE NEED TO IDENTIFY THIS. ALL COMMON BUILDINGS, THERE IS A GUIDELINE AND THERE IS A PROTOCOL AND A PROCEDURE ASSOCIATED TO THAT WHO IS GOING TO DO IT. THERE ARE PEOPLE ASSIGNED RESPONSIBILITY TO MANAGE AND IMPLEMENT THOSE GUIDELINES. DO WE HAVE SOMETHING AT THE TOWN LEVEL? Probably that's a question to the town.

So I think what Rachel and I can agree to do is talk at the next opportunity to the town administrator and to kind of understand what the town's stance would be if we were to want to implement the flag at the library.

And I would say, so when I got the email, I was intrigued, so I did a little research on laws, because there's nothing better to do at dinner that night. So it is vague, and it says, like, it specifically doesn't list types of buildings. It says it has to be at, like, your town hall, essentially, but it really doesn't go through and list anything more than that, too. So... Again, I think it will be interesting to balance who's maintaining it. I think to your point, I think, is this really something that serves our community? Is there interest in it? So I think it's just balancing it all. Okay.

We'll get back to some information.

I tried to think of a bunch of the legal aspects of it, too. So I know Boston Public Library, they have about eight flags out front, and they will ALLOW ALTERNATIVE FLAGS TOO. SO THEY HAVE LIKE THEIR OWN LIBRARY POLICY FOR FLAGS. AND I WAS IMPRESSED AT HOW DETAILED THEY WENT WITH THEIR FLAG POLICIES. IT'S A THING.

ANY OTHER NEW BUSINESS? JUST ONE LAST COMMENT. I THINK IF KATRINA, IF THE LIBRARY WANTS TO PUT SOME ADDITIONAL FLAGS OUT TO CELEBRATE JULY 4TH,

We can do that. Decorations. Decorations, yes.

OK. Last call from your business. All right. Next is the walkabout.

Yeah. The main one I would have mentioned would have been the stone railing. And I know that that was discussed last week or last meeting, excuse me. Um, so the one thing I did note was that it might be useful to put orange tape or something across that area. Um, just to note that it is gone until the repair happens. Um, there were a couple on the outside, there were a handful of plantings that had kind of like support, uh, strip like line and. Wood that's in the ground around them, most of the wood is free-floating, so those can probably get removed. I suspect it was from the plantings were new. They're certainly not serving a function, so those can probably get removed. They're also mostly on the back side. In some of the gardens, there was the signs that say Rose's Garden, and there was one back by the amphitheater that was covered. by vegetation, because the stuff has grown in so much. So whether we want to move those or trim back things, that might be good, because a lot of them, I think, were donors.

On that note, I can approach the volunteer that does a lot of the gardening and ask her to clear those areas out, because those signs are visible. Because I noticed they're very overgrown.

Yeah. The roses garden one was the main one, but there were a couple others on that backside. The front, facing the end, it was not too bad.

Should we? Sorry, I can wait until we're done. No, go ahead. landscaping and the mulch. Do we know where we're at with any of that?

I tried to reach out to a couple of landscapers, and they never got back to me. And then I dropped the ball.

Me too. I reached out to mine, and they're like, oh, we'd love to quote it for you. And I pinged them twice.

Yeah, they're so busy. They're super busy. But I just know that it's like one volunteer that pretty much tries to take care of the maintenance.

But I can follow up at least with my contact again and see. We haven't made a decision yet if they're interested.

Another one, this I think had been identified, if I remember, when the town did their walkabout three months ago, whenever that timeline was. The front stairs facing the common, the north side of the steps on the side, and I had noted in stuff even last fall that it looked like the grout was coming apart. Some of the stones have actually started to move now. So I can share that picture so you can see that it was at least flush before, but now they've really started to move quite a bit.

Where is this again?

So if you go up the old building steps on the left-hand side, so facing the end, right kind of under those initial three or four steps, there's some blocks on the side. You could kind of see they were a little loose, and now they're really starting to shift quite a bit.

I know you had mentioned that. Oh, yeah, okay. I never walk in that entrance.

I always do, but I didn't notice that.

Is that something that the, that's probably not something that the custodial person could deal with.

It seems like, I mean, it's probably a Mason, I suspect. Maybe DPW?

I don't know if we would have luck asking DPW.

Or if the days of C-Click fix.

I do too.

I know.

Or maybe the DPW, if they,

I'm sure that there's somebody that does it for the town.

I'll ask Pat, so maintenance Pat. He is going to fix the bell straight for us. Oh, cool. Yeah. So he had recommended initially reaching out to a mason. And then he was like, no, we've got some patchwork. We can make this happen. So I'm just waiting for him to do that. So I'll bring that to his attention and see what his thoughts are.

The other side is not nearly as bad, but I think probably is moving in the same direction. One of the trees up front is, I think, probably dead because it does not lose. So my guess is at this point. I thought it was actually doing okay.

Oh, wow.

So the one as you walk out on the right-hand side, kind of by the sidewalk.

Okay.

So that may be a planting that we should replace.

Is that technically on the town lands?

I don't know where the line is. It's... Oh, okay. I don't know where the line is.

I don't know if the town put the tree in. Is it a historic? Do trees fall with historic?

I know technically the front of the library is part of the town common, but historically I feel like we have planted trees there, like replaced trees a while ago.

Especially if it's like the same type. Does the library get say on what trees planted there?

I would say if someone's paying for it. Is there a trust?

What was the tree that was there?

I don't remember. I feel like, is it more on the left when you're looking at the library? So it's this one. But it's... That one seems to... I feel like we've replaced that tree more than once.

On this side, when you're looking at the library? When you're looking at the library, it's on the left.

It's the big one on the left.

It's on the left as you look at the front door, or on the right as you walk out.

Is it getting damaged by the... It's all that, like, water main, they've been replacing it. Like, is there something in, like, the balance of the, like, the dirt that's making it not... Like... Should we not, if we put a couple trees there, I'm just wondering if We just say Mother Nature. Is that where the gas leak was?

No, so what happened there was they were doing some sort of electrical work or something, and they accidentally took the huge tree down, and then that's what they planted in place of it for us. Oh. Yeah, because they made a mistake, and it just never did very well. It didn't take.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I know I keep falling back to the capital campaign, but the capital campaign funded a lot of the landscaping outside the library, so I would come up with an idea of what you want and go to the capital campaign. Because the Bartlett tree, I know they've installed trees for us and trimmed trees for the library. I mean, at this point, should we... And we might want to talk to the historic district, because there might be a certain type of tree they want.

Yeah.

As opposed to like an oak or something, I don't know.

Would the capital campaign at that point... look at, like, a one-time big landscaping just to get it into a good spot?

I mean, the campaign is just a funding source, so someone needs to come with a proposal or an idea, and then somebody on the capital campaign could look into options and then...

Okay.

On the note of masonry, there's one loose stone that I think has been out for a little while on the patio. wall that's near that large transformer. If there's someone that's doing minor repair, I bet that that would fit. It's sitting right next to the missing spot, but it's where all the chairs are. Oh, yep. On the teen patio? Teen patio, yeah, exactly. So I think probably a little bit of mortar would do well there if someone's already doing repairs. I did notice a little warm inside today. Not as bad as some, but at least the thermostats were registering the same warm temperature, relatively the same, which is a positive from last year.

The program room for the children's room, it's still freezing in that room. Currently? Yeah, it was really cold. It does match.

I didn't mean just to... Well, I've got new ones.

The girls just sent me a message.

So... In the parking lot, you remember the granite that kind of aligns the parking spaces where the detention pond is, is that what it's called? Retention pond? It's called a detention pond. I said retention pond. Retention pond retains water. This is retaining it. That's what our friend, the OPM said, or what was his name? Anyways, yeah. So there was chips off the granite. And I mentioned to my neighbor who sold his house, and we'll never get to talk to him again, but I guess he had done some granite work or worked with somebody to do some granite work. And essentially, once it's damaged like that, I mean, you just have to live with it until it gets really so damaged that we just don't want to deal with it anymore and replace the whole thing. So if it gets chipped at all, you basically have to make a determination where your threshold is in terms of when you want to replace it. But I mean, I don't know that we can really govern what the plow trucks are going to do during a snowstorm. I wish that we could. Maybe there's a way to kind of mark the curb for them.

As long as it's not dangerous, I think chipped carbs add character. They're everywhere.

It's part of the New England charm.

It is. We appreciate the plows.

Yeah, but if there was a significant chunk that damaged, then we'd probably want to replace it.

Okay.

Okay. Any further questions for Chris in the walkabout? So you have the punch list and the priorities as well. Do you have an update for us in terms of anything that either came off that list or what you're planning to come off that list? I know you said the ballast trade, right? That's going to be repaired.

I have some orange flagging tape at home, if that is of help.

Yeah, that would be great. That would be great. Okay. The filtration system is potentially, I was gonna bring this up in things that came up in the last 48 hours, but the plumber contacted me and wants to put the water filtration system in on July 10th, which is a Friday, and continue the work on July 11th, the Saturday. I have concerns about the water being off during a lot of various business hours, especially during the first week of summer reading. So I asked him, and maybe you can tell me because I don't know all of the building codes and I have not in the life of me been able to get a hold of the town administrator's office because apparently everybody's on vacation. Is it okay, so he said that they would likely be able to come in do the work and have the water shut off for a couple of hours as opposed to all day. You can't do it at all. It's an OSHA violation.

Could they do it Saturday afternoon once it closes? Like, because the library closes at 1. At 2, yeah. Could they do all the work and then just do the part where they have to turn off the water?

When the library is closed. I don't know if that's the first part or the latter part of the work. It's a violation for a public building to be open without running water and a restroom. So you have to have continual access to that. We had that problem a couple of times where we would drop and lose water pressure in the sinks but the toilets would still flush and then then the water pressure would fix itself. But there were times where we almost thought that we would have to close the building, but it would resolve in, like, 15, 20 minutes. There was too much water usage in the building itself. But it is, like, a mess.

So could you work up a plan that we could approve to close the library for however long they need to do the water filtration? Because I don't see any other way happening unless we make this person bow to our whims and work when the library's closed. And I think that's very difficult.

Either before it opens, or on Saturday afternoon, or we have to close the library.

One of the questions, just filtration that's going in, correct?

Right now, yes.

So it might be worth asking them, because when they're going to do that, they're probably going to put in a bypass as one of the first steps. And so once they put in the bypass, they probably can do all the other work with the water on. I would suspect. I don't know. But that's my guess. So maybe just asking if they can do that in off hours, and then maybe they're OK. I don't know. I don't know enough about the specifics of it. That might be possible. We've had a couple of projects recently where it'll be a couple hours or something off. They create a work round, and then they do most of the rest of the work with it on. So that might be possible.

Maybe be willing to do Saturday afternoon for that, and then finish on Monday.

What time is the library open?

9? He could come in at 7. I know a lot of them work early, assuming he's done by 9.

And that's the trick, too. If he runs late, then what are you doing?

Sorry, I don't mean to put you in that position where the building has to be closed during.

Well, I don't think we want the building open if the bathrooms are down. They could go without filling up their water.

I get that. OK.

The building inspection is almost done. I have been trying to chase around Encore, which you approved approximately $8,550 for them to come in and do the sprinkler repairs and to do the inspection. They quoted us, they billed us, we paid them, they came and did the work, but they never did the inspection. And I cannot, for the life of me, get these people on the phone to give me answers about either where the report is or why they didn't do the inspection that they said they did. Can you call the town administrator and see whoever does our town inspections if they can call them? I have asked them if they can help me and I haven't heard from them. So, yeah, I'm struggling here. They do not want to talk to me. So working on that, it's very close. We have every single inspection that we need except for that one thing.

Okay.

Yeah.

And those are the big ones.

Okay. Thank you.

I have a question. I know I come in because there was the water damage that was in the main room that up, right? and you had all the hot fixes done, were you able to reach out to see if those were in correlation with the water damage? I have not reached out to them yet.

Don't worry about it.

And that's like way low, but I'm going to check in on it every once in a while.

Good. Please do. Keep me on my toes.

OK. Well, the next item on the agenda is the director's report and stats. Katrina?

Yeah. So highlights, the union contract finally finished negotiations between the town and the union. The union ratified it. The select board did not take up a vote at their last meeting, so hopefully they will attend to that at their next meeting on July 7th. I'm very happy to hire Brendan Rogers in the 18-hour position. So he's going to start on July 6th. He's already going through the paperwork processes and all of that stuff. And he seems very excited to start as well.

What 18-hour role is that?

That is the children's library assistant position that was Greta's prior to her moving into Stacy's position.

Okay. Potato, potato. Yes.

I will begin interviews for the department assistant position next week and the week after. I'm planning on interviewing seven excellent candidates. There's a huge pool, and they all are great, so I'm excited about that. Obviously... Can I ask a question? Yeah.

Who's on your interview panel?

Me. I would love another staff person, but I haven't been able to nail anyone down.

Summer reading is rough. It's a tough time. Everybody is stretched. It's a tough time.

However, how we did the children's position interviews was Sarah and I spent about half an hour with them in an interview, and then we had a staff person take them around in kind of a mini tour of the library and it served as an additional way for another staff person to do a vibe check and get to know them a little more and weigh in. I have managed to secure people to do that so I will have other eyes and ears on this. Something that I thought was interesting and how I broke this out differently this month was the physical circulation versus digital circulation in the statistics. Because I thought it was odd that our circs went down as from last year when they've been consistently increasing. But as you can see, the digital circulation more than doubled since last year. And that's a trend that we're seeing in the library worldwide. So we will be putting more resources for FY27 into digital resources. Building and grounds. I obviously wanted to mention that we've fully expended the $20,000 you set aside for me. with like the roofing and the Renaud repairs and I have to fight with Ransford Pest Control because they're coming when they're not supposed to. So there's a number of things happening there.

This is great. Thank you for providing this.

Thank you for providing it. It's been a lifesaver. Do you need us to replenish it? That is up to you. I would always welcome it. I am very pleased that the budget line item coming up for FY27 is about, I think it's $67,000 or something like that that I requested. So I do have a significant amount more to handle these kinds of issues. I imagine that by the end of the fiscal year it will run up, just due to the nature of the building and the ongoing issues that it's having.

So maybe wait until, and then we can do it then.

That's what I'm wondering, like as we, you know, let's see what happens kind of deal as we go through the course of the year.

What was the increase over FY26?

$20,000 to $60,000, $67,000 or $57,000.

So $40,000 something increase, okay.

Yes, sir. And just in terms of the budget and where we are, we've expended 100% of our educational materials that were allocated. So the staff did a great job shoring all of that up. We've got one more warrant for FY26 that will be posted like the week and a half into July, just to nab all those trickling in invoices. And the staff and I are working on allocations for FY27.

are children, I guess they really like children audio books. I noticed that too.

Is that like Tony's and stuff?

So that is the Playways and Wonder Books. Yeah, they're relatively new and very expensive formats that are incredibly popular.

Yeah. How have they really kind of evolved in the past 10 to 15 years? I know you haven't been there that long, but I just remember that before kids were able to have cell phones in that sort of audio format, Just little boxes, right? With a clip or something. You plug your headphones into it and you listen. Same deal. Same deal.

That's exactly it. Because cars nowadays don't have a CD player in them, so a lot of those types of audio books are going down. This format allows multiple children in the car to listen to lots of different ones, and they come in all different age levels, too. You could have frog and toad, but then you could have... Harry Potter so there's lots of different and not everybody has to listen to the same thing in a car ride and they always come with a battery and like a back plate for it which is great so I mean their own earbuds so we don't have to worry about that piece of it it's interesting to understand how you know technology trends evolve back to still using people preferring those players

Because you could do it on Libby, right?

Libby does. Libby has an extremely long wait list to get a lot of the digital media, especially the kids' stuff. Hoopla is good, but it's limited in how many you can do. So there are benefits and negatives for each. So with the Playway, and a parent can give it, and it's not screen time, which...

As technology savvy kids are, going through a process or procedure to check out an audio book or something, that can be daunting for them, even for my kids who are in their teens. But yeah, it's accessible right there. I want to listen to this. Boom, they got it. Smart. Interesting.

I know Sarah went through... lot because we it used to be a pack and you'd have physical media and that tape on some of them some of them were tablet based so we went through those play ways were so bad oh they would try to like read stories out loud so it is scaled back to just that individual like it looks like an mp3 player which is It's pretty awesome. And they have new Vox books and Wonder books. I don't think those are under... Are those considered audio books? Okay, so Vox and Wonder Books are two new series that the library also picked up, which are books that read to you, where you push a button. I don't know if you guys had Teddy Ruxpin when you were little, or the Disney tapes, and you would open the book when you heard the chime. So these have it built into the physical book, where you press the button, and it reads the story to you, and you change the page. And those also go up to... chapter books for some of the older kids to help kids that don't want to read so those also fall into that type of media category and those go out all the time as well that's a new collection that they've been pushing a lot that get a lot of

I'll be honest with you, one of the reasons I became a trustee is because there's so many different ways to tell stories and Grafton has been really great at providing that because I just don't read and I'm glad to hear that Kids, you know, as much as we want kids to read books, but some kids are really resistant to picking up a book and reading it. And, you know, audience stories can be accessible in a lot of different ways. And I'm glad to see that in their young age, which is pretty cool.

I think Sarah tries each and every different way that is out there to get a child to interact with some type of a media of a book.

Did you have more, Katrina?

I, the only other thing was the last page of the packet was a quote for, so to Stacy's point, the solenoid valve on the H1 unit on the roof blew out again. And so because we're out of that $20,000 and it's not the new fiscal year, I didn't know if you would like to vote to... approved funding to get that repaired or if you would like me to just wait until the new fiscal year and use the building in repairs funding for that it's either way i'm happy to make a motion to pay off state aid whether or not for 4 490 one thing i'll note is that is that the pricing is only good for a single day which was a week ago so we should probably

I'll go up to $5,500. Yeah, just in case.

Okay.

I second that.

I have to believe most of this is labor, so.

Okay, motion on the table. I made it seconded for $5,500 to pay for the repair of the solenoid leaking. Any discussion? So certainly, could this be why it's so blazing hot?

Yes, it is exactly why it's hot.

100%.

Do you know the history of this? It sounds like this is not the first time the solenoid is going down. It would be nice if Bernard could give us some kind of... I mean, it's actually a lot of money, $4,500 just to replace the solenoid. Wow. And I know a lot of it's going to be refilling and recharging the system. It's not just the actual little solenoid, but it seems like if it's like the solenoid manufacturer, do they have a warranty on it?

Or like did, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to guess that the warranties are expired. Um, they did say that it's rare for solenoids to fail. And they weren't really sure why other than manufacturing quality They also said like they were looking for a solenoid replacement part for a long time Like they had come out and I was following up with them for weeks Because they couldn't find the part because LG just doesn't support their products very well That's what they said so

And this doesn't have any water, so any of our water, like it's not being damaged because of water, right? The refrigerant's very, it's a separate system.

Right, yeah, it's just, honestly, the biggest cost is, yes, labor, but after that, the refrigerant, because I think they said they're going to have to put in, like.

Yes, that was my only question. Up to 60 pounds. Does that mean that it does have some refrigerant and maybe they don't need the full amount?

There's nothing there. Okay. Yeah, there's nothing left. They shut the thing off. They had to drain everything. They said that everything, because the solenoid went, it was just all over the ground on the roof. Oh, goodness.

Yeah. The thing that really worries me about this is the last item in scope here. Any unforeseen deficiencies or work outside of the scope described above will be addressed and approved. And once approved, be billed on a time materials basis. So I guess maybe what they would do is come back to us Once approved, be built, right? So once approved. So I guess we're approving them to do this work at that cost. And they're saying they would probably find other things going on. That's probably a standard.

Yeah. I think that's like... It's just a case.

Yeah.

Like when you go to the... if they find that third or fourth thing.

But we are voting for an additional almost $1,100, so there's a little bit of room in there.

Yeah. Do we have a town policy? Do we have insurance policy? Some of it could be covered as part of the equipment breakdown and stuff, right?

As far as I know, the town doesn't insure anything. It's all self-insured.

Oh, wow.

I think that's true with every building in the town. I think I heard that right. Did I hear that right?

I think they're self-insured, which means they're not insured. Huh?

The town pays. It means the town pays, exactly.

Because if you think about it, the town is the insurance policy. All the people either were all paying to support the insurance policies will be a lot, or in the case something happens, it's now everyone's, like the town people are the insurance.

But regardless, I know the HVAC is not insured.

What a shame. I think it would save so much money.

Okay. So we are checking for the, sorry, one last question. So are we checking, is there an action item to follow with the court that is some warranties for what they install? Is that intruding?

I think we landed on that we don't believe there is one, but we just confirmed.

Yeah, but to warranty the work that they're doing for us. What they're doing, yeah.

Oh, oh, okay. To say, well, they warranty the work they're doing.

It seems like they're testing and they're pressure testing and, you know, they say, yep, you're good, and they walk away and go... You know.

Have you called them, Mark?

I guess. They probably charge us time and materials. It's something. You know, but I think that would be a nice follow-up question, at least, if you have peace of mind. Yeah. But that's not necessarily going to hold up, you know, the approval to move forward, unless you feel it's a showstopper.

Okay. I do not.

Well, after you discuss with them, if you feel like it's a showstopper, then you can reach out to me. Sounds good.

Thank you.

Yeah.

One other question. It looks like there's also about $500 of balance left from the previously approved money as well? Yes. Okay, so there's that as well if it's even above the $5,500 or so?

That's a good call. Thank you.

Okay.

Yeah, and I guess if it is, send us an email because it seems like a quick turnaround. I don't know if we can just do an email vote and then publish it in our next meeting.

Can we do an email vote or designate? Not really.

We'd probably do a special meeting. I mean, you've already approved 1,100 more plus 500, so that's 1,600 more. That would be almost 6,000. That's like 40%, so that should be enough.

I'm just thinking, because if it's a meeting we vote, we have to post so many days in advance. If the quote's only good for a day at a time, I think if there's any issues, Katrina, maybe we can just work with Erin to confirm.

I would hope that the quote's going to be exactly the same. It's only a week old.

The pricing of parts can change. No, I know that.

I have to believe the part itself is $100 or something.

We've done a lot of work with Renaud before. And if it's going to become a problem, because what we're providing doesn't match what they're quoting. I mean, we've talked about maybe not using Renata anymore. I don't know if that discussion had happened with the town in any of your discussions, Doug or Rachel.

I don't think we talked about that. I think last I heard Katrina, we talked about what it would cost and take, and we're looking at getting maybe a third-party consultant to come in and give us a holistic, I haven't heard back from my contact on some potential names, but I'll follow up. Because it sounds like it's a substantial cost to move. Like someone has to come in and do an evaluation for a good chunk first. Because they're going to own it now. Yeah, before they'll even sign up. Yeah, sure.

And I know that the town does have a contract with Renaud for at least annual maintenance. I don't know beyond that. That's another reason I'm trying to get in touch with folks at Town Hall is to figure out what that contract says specifically.

Okay.

And we are trying to move to have the town and you have more. OF BUILDING AND MAINTENANCE RATHER THAN... WE HAVE THE MOA?

MOU, YES. MECHANISM OF UNDERSTANDING OR MEMORANDUM?

YEAH, WE HAVE ONE OF THEM. AND WE TALKED ABOUT LAST MEETING. THEY'LL COME BACK IN AUGUST. WE'LL GIVE AN UPDATE, AND THEY'LL HAVE FINALIZED LANGUAGE TO EFFECTIVELY MOVE IT OVER TO WHATEVER COMES NEXT.

BUT THAT DOESN'T TAKE CARE OF ANY OF THE FUNDING QUESTIONS, RIGHT? WE STILL HAVE TO COME UP WITH THE FUNDING OF WHATEVER THAT COMES OUT OF THAT.

OK. Any further discussion on the motion? OK. Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? I declare the motion carried.

Thank you. I did have one.

I do have more questions on the director's report. But are you still working on it? No, go for it. So of the expenses, thank you for listing that out. It's great to see all those. And it's a lot of them. Yes. Can you remind me what the POL cleaning service was?

That was the carpet cleaning.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, the whole building finally got carpet cleaned. Yeah. I have a question about that. Yes, ma'am.

Was it Debbie's office, too? Because I heard that. It was locked. I know. Yeah. Darn it. So, no. Okay. It was the whole office, minus Debbie's office. Minus Debbie's office.

Is that the same thing? Well, we do have the, the town does have that, what's the name of that machine? Oh. Extractor or something. Oh, yeah. Extractor. So, you know, the. can do it.

It is a tiny office. You had a question, Chris?

Oh, so is that the same service that did it last Thanksgiving? Yes. They did a very nice job. Yes. I noticed that today. It looked great.

Good. I'm so glad. Thank you. Is this annually or biannually? I wanted to just do it annually, but because we had only done the downstairs in the fall, I wanted to bring them back and make sure that they got the upstairs too, because that still hadn't been done. clean since the building's inception, my understanding.

Which one?

The upstairs carpet hadn't been cleaned at all.

No. And this is a little off topic, so we can hold it until after we finish talking about expenses, but it made me think when they came in and did the carpets, we actually approved time off on the calendar and closed the library, which made me think, have we approved the calendar for the next year for the library? We normally do that annually.

We have.

We did, okay. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. For, well, not for, because I feel like it goes on the fiscal.

Not for 2027. No, we usually do that calendar year, I think.

Is it calendar year?

Okay.

I can't remember if it was like a spring activity.

Because we have that one-page sheet that's the calendar year, and then it does like New Year's, like the first days of the next year.

Yeah, exactly. Is the target cleaning mostly annual? Are you aiming to always do it in May after winter and before?

Exactly, so that we can clean up after the winter salts and all that kind of yucky stuff that gets ground in.

You know, 100 to almost 150 programs between last year and this year. 92, 140.

They're just doing a great job.

Yep.

People are coming out.

Okay.

Yeah. I don't know exactly. I know Debbie has regular... daily drop-in programs okay I don't know Stacey maybe you can speak to if there have been any specific changes over the last year in the children's room I know that we specifically tried to do nighttime programming

I was responsible for that, I did. Sarah wanted to push for nighttime programming and I said, okay, let's make it happen. So we started with arts and crafts and then we built out to where four of us pretty much Monday through Thursday were always running programs. I know that once we did our scavenger hunt last year that it brought in kids more daily to the children's room. which then would showcase other programs that we were having or have parents have a look at the calendar. I think in terms of other libraries in the area, what we offer is pretty appealing and people talk, so I feel like we have great word of mouth for our programs.

I constantly hear that people Grafton Library with their kids and any of the other area ones. So you get a lot of crosstown books.

Not only do we, does the library have the books, but they also have the play area and other things that they do pretty daily in the room and things like that. And some of those count. Like our scavenger hunt does count as a daily program. So that helps with stats and things like that. Because time and effort does go into, we move it around every single, well, they move it around every single night. So I think that's part of it, is that we started looking at more unique ways to interact with the kids every day when they come into the library. I know that programming took a big hit, and then especially with it being a budget program, year, so the summer calendar might, we at the time had multiple options depending on funding of how much programming they could do over the summer. But hopefully with the new hire, that evening programming maybe will make a comeback. But I know that it was an ask back

I'm a fan of scavenger hunts. My friends loved the Star Wars one. They thought that was, I mean, they're always great, but that was particularly good.

We try to do theme ones. Like Comic Book Day, it will be all Marvel and DC characters. They try to line it up or be topical or fun things like that.

I think I saw the Mario one where they had to open the question mark blocks. Was it kind of like that? I didn't see the Mario one. No, but the Star Wars one, was it kind of like that? Where they had to find something and uncover it and get the character and check it out?

No, it's just a different... No, it's just a different... characters, but they had metal pans with magnets, which I had not seen before. And it was just great.

The Mario blocks, that's a fun little block.

Yeah, because they have a laminated sheet, and they can just go around and mark them off. I thought that was kind of cool.

I do have a question, because I know we're getting into strategic planning. So it's been good seeing the year-over-year growth. Is there an understanding of how other libraries are seeing their growth, and at what point Not to say we get worried about growth, but there's only so many people who can fit in the building. And so I don't know if you have any sense of if we're outpacing other libraries, if we're kind of catching up now that things have settled out a little bit. It would just be good to know if you have any insights on that.

I don't actually know how other libraries are doing.

And are these numbers some that we have to report annually? And we can pull from that database where you're able to see where we're benchmarked across other libraries?

Yeah, you can see every single library, all the data that they report over time.

I see total numbers. Like, I'll be able to see what, for FY25, all the different libraries had for total programs. Perfect. Do they do visits from the library?

Is that something? Mm-hmm. Okay.

Okay. Absolutely. Okay.

The new website looks fantastic, but how does one sign up for summer reading?

Not online. In person. Because it's not, well, especially for grown-ups, it's not really a formal registration. We're not taking anybody's names. Can't get beads online.

We're just giving you the fun stuff.

I know. Oh, is it beads? Yeah. It is.

It's always beads.

Read to bead.

For kids. Read to bead is back.

For adults.

Mm-hmm. I had some bling a couple of years ago. I read The Stand one summer. That was a lot of beats.

I was going to say, that took all summer. Yes, it did.

Okay. That's the problem with the, I've been starting reading on a Kindle. And when I download the book from Libby, it says the average time is like 12 hours to read this book. That's true. I can do it myself.

You can. Just go ahead and do it yourself. Speed read. I did have a brief question for this body. Eileen would like to know if it is still worth sending out the weekly warrants for you to review, or if you would prefer just to get them in the trustee packet altogether.

I think it's a personal preference, right? I can't speak for everybody. Some people might like to see them on a weekly basis.

Yeah, I think as long as we get them a week in advance like we've been getting, I'm okay getting them just right before the meeting.

That's when I read them.

Is it more work for her to send them out? It is. I'm neutral. I often will open them when they come in and read them. I've got nothing better to do, apparently. But I can also just read them in the packet, too. So I'm not too concerned. And nothing has, there's very rarely anything that's flagged that, so.

I look for a big number.

If there's a big number, then I'll go look at it.

That's fair.

I prefer one single packet. I'm in the single packet vote. Okay. I just think you should definitely take that offer, please.

We can try it if we change our mind. Yeah, yeah. Okay, that sounds great.

Thank you.

40 hours of the posting meeting. One thing, and this is really just informational purposes, so the Historic District Commission reached out to me because I'm a trustee and I was on the building committee asking about the HVAC on the roof. So if you're in the front of the building, there's only a small area, but you can see the HVAC systems. And so they were asking if we had considered what the TO BLOCK IT.

I HAVE A SUGGESTION. THE HISTORICAL COMMITTEE CAN REPLACE THE HVAC AND MOVE IT TO WHERE IT BELONGS TO. THAT'S TRUE.

I CAN MOVE IT TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BUILDING. AND I JUST REALLY JUST BUILD THEM IN ON THAT THE BUILDING COMMITTEE HAD EVALUATED A COUPLE DIFFERENT OPTIONS. AND DECIDED NOT TO PROCEED WITH IT BECAUSE OF THE COSTS. SO I WENT BY AGAIN LAST WEEK AND YOU DON'T SEE IT FROM THE FRONT OF THE BUILDING, YOU DON'T SEE IT FROM THE COMMON, BUT WHEN YOU'RE WALKING DOWN THAT SIDEWALK AND IF YOU'RE STARING UP THERE YOU DO SEE IT. SO YOU DO SEE IT, BUT AT THIS POINT THERE'S REALLY NO PLAN TO DO ANYTHING.

COULD WE PUT A TREE THERE IN LIKE A LANDSCAPING PROPOSAL, LIKE A TREE THAT WOULD BLOCK IT?

SO WHEN YOU GO TO LOOK UP THERE'S A TREE? YEAH, WHEN YOU GO TO LOCK UP THERE'S LIKE A TREE.

I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING. THERE WAS NO FOLLOW-UP ACTION ITEMS OR ANYTHING. IT WAS JUST KIND OF LIKE AN INFORMATION, LIKE A QUESTION FOR ME. BUT I JUST THOUGHT THIS GROUP SHOULD KNOW THAT.

OKAY. AS A FOLLOW-UP TO GRAFTON DAY, I DID LET THEM KNOW THAT WE WERE INTERESTED. SO WE SHOULD HAVE THAT ON THE NEXT AGENDA. I DON'T THINK I'M GOING TO BE ABLE TO ATTEND IN JULY. BECAUSE I'LL BE TRAVELING. So that said, I also won't be around for Grafton Day. So I'll need somebody else to maybe take the lead on that. And if somebody would like to volunteer to lead, at least to coordinate this body in terms of what we're going to do and if there's any expense associated with that, making sure that it's paid and purchased because they are looking for something that we can give or game or something that we can give out for freebies. So if there's something that the library feels that they'd like us to promote on their behalf, I think that would be awesome. YOU KNOW, BECAUSE WE ARE JUST AN EXTENSION OF THE LIBRARY IN SUCH A SHAPE OR FORM, OR WE COULD, YOU KNOW, DO SOMETHING THAT WE FEEL IS APPROPRIATE.

I COULD TAKE THE LEAD ON THAT.

THAT WOULD BE GREAT. THANK YOU.

WHAT DAY WAS THAT? THE 21ST OF AUGUST.

AUGUST, YEAH. SO I WOULD SAY THAT MY NEXT MEETING WE SHOULD, SINCE WE

So just the July one, but you won't be in attendance?

Should we identify a funding source and such and a budget? Just thinking if you have to order anything, that could be cutting it pretty close. I don't know what you would be ordering, but. Is that something we would want to do, and then we could just say, confirm with Erin and me before spending or something?

What would you envision?

I'm not sure what I'd envision. I know.

I want to check in and see what the library wants us to push for them in terms of outreach for the community. Because we had talked about a library card sign up. Do they have requirements for what they wanted us to, they want to like an activity and a handout?

Yeah, I'll forward.

You have to provide your own table chair marketing materials and then provide a giveaway for a family, fun family activity they can participate in while they visit your table.

Yes. So does everybody have that or is it just you that doesn't have it?

I guess I don't have that one, sorry.

Okay.

It was probably right before you got out of here.

If you have it, would you mind just pouring it? Yeah, pour it out.

Thank you.

They just said we'll be in touch as the event gets closer. You guys are succeeded on that.

I'm just going to put it back out to the library trustees because I don't have your email right now. But now you'll be on. Thank you.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Anything further? Other business? Okay. No public input. So our next meeting of the Policy Subcommittee, July 1st, yeah? Yeah. Okay. 6 p.m. 6 p.m. Good for you guys. That's good. At conference room 219. AT THE LIBRARY. FRIENDS OF THE GRAFTON PUBLIC LIBRARY MEET ON ZOOM ON JULY 14TH ON TUESDAY AT 7 P.M. AND THE BOARD OF LIBRARY TRUSTEES NEXT MEETING IS JULY 29TH AT 7 P.M. IN THIS ROOM. THAT'S WEDNESDAY. SO ANYBODY HAVE SOME CONFLICTS WITH THE 29th? I DO. YOU DO. I MAY BE ABLE TO COME IN REMOTE, BUT I DON'T QUITE KNOW YET. Oh, to come in hybrid, you mean?

Yeah. People want to come in, like, it's summer. Like, we could just do a Zoom meeting.

I'll be out of town, so I just don't quite know what the schedule's going to look like.

I will let you know in advance. Okay.

Do you think we'll meet here?

I think if we can, but they said you can do Zoom on this. Okay. He was telling us earlier.

Yeah, that's a rally bar.

Yeah. I mean, I would kind of say if it's just one person that can't make it, I wouldn't bother with Zoom, but certainly if there's multiple and we don't want to reschedule.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I won't be able to join. Oh, you won't be here. I'll be on a boat in the Bahamas with the Boy Scouts.

Fun. Oh, darn. Darn.

I know. He's looking at fish. I'll go two weeks before that. You are? Yeah.

We're going to, oh no, just kidding. I'm going to Bermuda. I messed those two up. But two weeks before that. That's cool. I'm very excited.

Okay. Okay. GREAT. SO THE 29th WORKS FOR EVERYONE ELSE. AND RACHEL WILL HELP LEAD THAT MEETING. GREAT. IS THERE A MEETING SET FOR THE CORE LEAGUE TOWN MEETING? WE WERE E-MAILING.

I'LL CHECK AND SEE IF EVERYONE RESPONDED.

OKAY. DID YOU MAKE SURE? I DON'T THINK I WAS INCLUDING THAT. If I was, I'm behind on my email.

No, I sent it right after the last meeting. I feel like they sent out a few. Okay.

I don't think I was on that.

Oh, then maybe I didn't send it. Nope, last one was May 4th, so I'll send out an email right after this.

Okay, thank you. I WAS WAITING FOR A SECOND.

I WAS WAITING FOR A SECOND. GREAT.

MOTION BEADED AND SECONDED. ANY DISCUSSION? OKAY. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. ALL OPPOSED? AYE. I DECLARE MOTION CARRIED. THE MEETING ADJOURNED AT 8.38 PM.