Leach Library Trustees - Regular Meeting

this meeting to order? Yes, we're going to call the meeting to order at 7.01 p.m. Love it. 7.01. You're making me edit this already. All right, we've got one thing done. Check it off. All right. Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one with liberty and justice for all.

All right. So the way that I'm organizing this is trying to make sure that new business, we're keeping up to date with new business, but old business, just in terms of any communication updates, any new things that we have to reconsider, and then just continuing to talk about organizing the trustee donations because we do not have a magical answer yet.

Oh, so we can throw into that this time. Yes.

So we'll... keep trying to figure it out and maybe start actually trying to practice without ever excel sheets we can use in the meantime just to even start working backwards from 2026 2025 and wherever else we get to so okay so we will now talk about supply management services Donna take it away

OK. So I said, I apologize, I did not give you a lot of time to look at all the reports. But I just realized yesterday, I was like, oh, we're meeting already.

And with Monday. Yeah.

So I did go through and come up with some initial recommendations, and I put together the same look we had last time.

It was very nice that you did that last time, so thank you for doing it again.

So I will explain, this one's a little bit different from last time, mainly the management services, because This fiscal year is the first time we have these new lines to work with that were requested by the board. So specifically to break down management services into target audience for programming. So I think that request was mainly to make it clear, not only to the board, but to members of the public. Because there is quite a bit that's fit into the management services line. So these numbers that I got for the fiscal year 27 budget were numbers that were presented to the board previously when we were talking about putting money in those lines. What ultimately was decided was to keep All the money in the management services line, so all of these lines right now are zeroed out. Okay. I'm very sorry. Can you please repeat that? Yes. Thank you. So for fiscal year 27, right now, as it stands, all of the money is still in the management services line, so this total.

That's right, but we created the lines and created them as zeros so that next year we can have the lines.

Right, actually. question of whether you want to vote to move money into these lines okay so what's a little bit of a challenge is that we haven't started using these so coming up with like a number to put in there for fiscal year 28 is tough I think the best I've gotten is really to stick with the same thing yeah with the exception of of the management services line. So what's still remaining in the management services line are things like our ACIBIT subscription, so that manages our calendar that does the reservation system, yeah, for programs. It also, right now we have the calendar module and we have the museum pass module. Okay. Something that was on the CIP list or memo that I gave you was to add a meeting space module that would allow members of the public to reserve space online. So that is factored into why I asked for an increase here. The other thing that's factored in right now is another thing that was on the CIP list was a strategic plan. In order to put together a strategic plan, there will need to be funding for a survey and promotion, particularly any public hearings you're going to have. We have to post. We legally have to post and pay for an ad in the paper. So that's why it's increased so much right now. But up to you if you still want to include those in the budget for FY28 or take them out. That's an option. But that's why I put them out.

I appreciate that you're you have like the foresight to think about those pieces because, you know, I like to think of logistics and the money that we would have needed to set aside for each of those pieces. It wasn't in here. So thank you very much for that.

Yeah. I mean, obviously when it comes time to present the budget, if we kept that, we would need to communicate why it's such a big increase. Yeah. over the previous year. I mean, what's tough is that they're going to see this number versus this number. So maybe there won't be as many questions, but I'm not sure. But that's why I estimated more for that.

That makes perfect sense to me.

All the other actual program lines I kept the same. I think, like I said, it'd be hard to... Say unless unless you're wanting to project like that you're gonna want to see the one I was I was unsure of honestly was the children's programming because I If we really hope to have a children's librarian, there could be a need for additional funding in children's programming. So that's an idea. I didn't do anything with it, but if you want, you could.

Yeah, and things keep going up cost-wise in terms of performers or presenters or even just... simple things like paint and glue, you know, a dollar here, $10 there, same thing with books, same thing with a collection. I asked that thing, how many meeting spaces do you have? Like how many spaces would?

We have the big room downstairs, which is mainly reserved by like local nonprofit groups or clubs or even some town clubs. groups that meet at the library. But instead of having, like right now we just have a paper form to request it, and we've had a lot of people like, can you please create a digital submission for this? Which I understand would be a lot more convenient for a lot of people. So that's the main one, and then we have two study rooms that are smaller spaces. Each of them has a different occupancy. The thing with that is that if we were going to include that with this, we would have to update our policy because the policy right now is just first come, first serve in person. Nobody can reserve it in advance. So if we were to change that, I would change the policy. So the one I know easily could be added is the big meeting room downstairs. The question mark on those study rooms.

can get a quote and we can at least talk about it just because I know that before the building issues the foot traffic had been going up exponentially and I think that you can really I don't want to say justify but you can really quantify using that module in Acibet so I think why not my plan is to bring you a quote the next time we renew so that would actually be

fiscal year 27 okay um and then my hope is it would be a yes at that point and it would already be budgeted for 2018 gotcha okay might increase the occupancy too because it's just less of a hassle of all i don't know if it's going to be available like me if i see it i'll be like okay i'm just i'm doing it i'm putting in the calendar yeah yeah and there will be some yeah

you know, onboarding with staff, figuring out your workflow, policy change, but I think it could help lessen staff workload.

And the whole point of breaking out the management services is so that we can accurately portray each need. So... the need for more programming in the children's room likely will increase. Like, we've defended to the voters that we need to, you know, additionally staff it, and that's the goal of the board is to make that happen. Programming should, you know, fall suit.

Yeah, yeah. And I know that the different departments work together, so for you guys to figure out if a program is all ages, do you want to split it up, or how does that work? at least them being together allows some flexibility. But at least that'll be also helpful for staff to know how much they can spend otherwise.

And also gives us the opportunity again to, like you were saying, if all of a sudden children's programming goes up like 200% and we're like, wow, but we're seeing less in adult programming or alternate stuff, then we can sort of adjust the line items accordingly. Not only within that year because the joys of a bottom line budget, but

for predicting for the future yeah and also knowing that we have these numbers to look at because of course the friends can help with supplemental aspects but the building and them not being in person not being able to do in-person fundraisers kind of puts a wedge in that um that's also something to consider but not assume yeah yeah okay

And that's a relationship conversation to have too, is how do we want to interface with the friends a little bit more clearly and effectively so that we have a better delineation of who's trying to take on what and how do we want to work together and not step on each other's toes and not cause wrecks with each other.

Yeah.

Which is a side quest here.

Yeah. Okay. So I think we're good.

So do you want me to make any adjustments to this at the moment?

Have you talked to staff about it or had any kind of inclination based on previous years? No.

No. Would you feel comfortable getting their input on? Sure. Okay. I would personally like to see that. I'd like to hear from them. Do they see a need for any of those numbers to be shifted based on what they're offering?

Yeah, because in that way you can have that conversation. Now it's not to say that we can't exactly respond to those questions, but at least we're aware of what they're thinking for planning purposes. And like COVID, this has been a weird year.

Yeah. So, like, all the data is skewed. Yeah. And we're just going to do the best we can. Yeah. And adjust accordingly in the next time, you know, but we'll just get as close to accurate as we can with what we have.

Yeah. And it's not to say, like, to remind them that they're doing a great job with everything, considering being able to put performers and presenters in different places, still have a whole entire summer reading with no building. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. All right. So I'll put that as an action item. Awesome. Thank you.

All right. And then general supplies, office supplies, postage supplies.

I'm impressed that office supplies is down and postage is the same.

So I will say, context-wise, the general supplies and the office supplies, in my opinion, have... always been like, I don't really know how to explain this. I think there's been generally, I mean, you can see how we've been gradually adjusting the line over the years. Part of that is because it has been used a lot to help with the bottom line budget. I feel like especially this year if you look at the huge difference, this is mainly because we knew going into the year, I mean Erin set the tone of like we're spending conservatively, we're not stocking up on anything, we're only buying as we need it, and now at this point in the year that line is pretty much, because of the budget-free situation, we're literally only buying absolute necessities. So I would not use this year as a typical year. I think a typical year looks more like around the $10,000 mark. And with costs going up, I understand why for 27 we budgeted at $11,000. I think we could come back a little bit on 28 to more of the 10-5 mark.

Do general supplies include like toilet paper, paper towels, or is that something that you... I can explain that a little bit. So that would be office supplies, actually.

Oh, okay. And we do buy those ourselves.

Oh, okay.

General supplies actually is more like processing supplies. Okay.

Like collections?

Yep, so like covers cases. It also has some vendors we outsource processing. So there's what they charge us in there, too. So like Midwest Tape, we get some processing through. So they send us a monthly bill that gets paid through there. So the processing is separate, like they send you separate bills for that? Okay, all right. And when we had Baker and Taylor, we did the same thing. They would cover and send us a bill. So my concern here is that I'm actually really surprised by this number, because this year we have not been ordering at our normal rate. Yet, I mean, we're looking at less than $3,000 difference. And we're still spending somewhat. So I really think when we're back to like our normal ordering and when we actually have some more consistent vendors that do processing, we're going to be looking more at like the 8,000 range. Because even fiscal year 25, we still weren't ordering normally. Yeah. So... But on the other hand, we don't want to increase it too much too fast. So my thought is to just add 5% for 28.

That's very conservative. It is. I mean, you're a library. And if you're having to slow roll your collection sizing, it's just...

I'm paying for your toilet paper. That's a lot of people.

How much would it cost to install bidets? We're not going on that.

You're like, but the math is math.

The math is totally math. You can get a squeaky clean behind.

Personally, I think the faster save would be if we had... the, um, like hand dryers. Um, cause we also buy paper towels and yeah.

Yeah. But all the mechanical aspects. So there's always like something with something with something and you buy, I'm assuming your own hand soap too.

Yep.

Okay. Hand sanitizer, hand soap, paper towels.

Yep. Wow. Okay. Wow. Okay. All right. Um, Yeah, so that stuff comes out of office supplies as well as what you typically think of as office supplies. So, yeah, that's, again, same thing there. We're not... stocking up or just buying as we need it. I would say that the only stock up period that we really have to do is towards the end of the fiscal year, because there's a gap in the transition time. So about now, we're like, OK, what do we need to get us through that transition? So in terms of ink and paper products and that sort of thing. So that's really the only stock up that we're really doing. um postage this one is tough as you can see it's all over the place i will say a big impact well actually the fiscal year 25 was the year we did the postcard yeah um marketing for library card sign up yeah month that worked really really well um to my surprise and uh oh this is great yeah it worked really well Obviously, because we won the state award. So that is kind of an outlier. This is pre-joining Gmilks. We were not sending out as many notices in the mail. When we joined Gmilks, we had to send them out more often than we were.

Gotcha.

Because we use the longest period that we could of the options, but it still is more often than we were sending them. So that's why we've spent more than fiscal year 24. Also, postage costs have gone up. The other thing that's spent out of here is interlibrary loans that we do out of state in the mail. So those get built to this line, too. For this year, this is where we are right now. However, I expect having to buy more stamps for the transition to fiscal years. So I'm thinking we're actually going to end up somewhere in the $1,500 range. I do think that 27 is fitting with 2,000, and I suggested keeping it the same for 28.

OK. How much? With ILLs, I'm assuming you are spending a lot less on that with having Gmilks.

Not really, because it's the same... Gmilks has the same materials we got through the state library ban, it's just that it takes less time. Whereas the stuff we're getting by mail is stuff that's not owned in the state at all.

So Massachusetts or Vermont?

We've gotten stuff as far as Texas and... Wow. We do well by our patrons. Yeah. Wow.

And go to lengths. And you don't charge them for any of that.

The only thing we will charge patrons for is if the library pays, or the library requires a fee, like a borrowing fee. If not, we just pay the postage, the return postage.

Because that's pretty nice. Yeah. That is. Okay. Yeah. And as terms of the overdue notices and things like that, you haven't been in GMUX on, I have to know. And then this year is a whole disruptor to see, does the billing, does the late notice, how does that work? And probably in the next few years, you'll be able to see a pattern and maybe be able to reduce.

For sure. The fiscal year 26 was a good first year to look at for that pattern. And then, yeah, we'll see that going ahead. The only thing... that I can think of off the top of my head that you would consider adding to postage is if you were going to do another postcard thing for the strategic plan. And I know there's been talk and I know Nancy's been really wanting us to investigate like a homebound delivery service. And I think potentially starting that as just mail delivery.

was an option but that would definitely need money in this land for sure and also staff time staff time and gas and everything that might be I think that's a wish list that's a wish list yeah that's like a fiscal year and I think it's honestly it might be great to incorporate in the strategic plan yeah my I guess my concern is it's good to talk about a strategic plan but would we even be remotely ready in 2028 with the

way things are going the way that we're trying to just make sense of everything because that's an investment too and maybe there is a grant for that kind of thing that we can explore that isn't available yet that might be you know available at some point but i think right now it's a lofty goal because there's a lot of moving parts yeah to that there are i i think what the

In an ideal world, I feel like our strategic plan would align year-wise with the town's. The town's obviously ahead of us, depending on whether the council adopts the current strategic plan. So yeah, that's a little bit of a challenge, but the library doesn't have to also align. the town yeah and there's all kinds of strategic plans you can make it as lengthy and involved as you want to be or as short and sweet yeah true if if it was a goal to become aligned with where the town's at you could start with a shorter one to match the end date of the towns for example yeah and it'd be worth investigating is there like a volunteer organization that would you know expand their role for the community to kind of be like a meals on wheels kind of thing but with books or something i don't know yeah yeah yeah there's been an initial so in the m your current memorandum of agreement with the town there's wording in there about staff being able to use the park man um which is a step in the direction of library staff being able to do a physical homebound delivery service. But yeah, you're right. I always try to look for things that already exist that I can add to and to save money in it. Make the most of our resources, I guess.

Yeah, and there's plenty of libraries.

Does the high school require students to... When I graduated many moons ago, we had to do 40 hours of community service before we could graduate. So I don't know if there's any contingency thing where we could build up one or two students that deliver over the course of a month. Deliver, pick up, deliver, pick up. I don't know.

I mean, I don't know about specific for all students, but I know that there are several community service organizations at the high school that are always looking for hours. The PTA, Matthew Thornton, we use them all the time. And there are always students who want to give more time and who are always like, wait, but what about me? What about me? And they're like, it's the teams it's the clubs it's the you know youth led organization like all of these things so that would be an absolute and we could have like a contingency where they had to be you know a certain age and yeah you know like license driver yeah just to make sure that they're safe and I will say in our Erin in my initial like

thoughts on this um we're concerned about liability yeah so like especially a volunteer though if you're having a volunteer go to someone's house even if you're dropping it off at the dropping stuff off at the door if there were ever like throwing a dog bite situation. But you don't want staff to get beat. You don't want staff to get beat.

I feel like a volunteer, you're kind of waiving the risk a bit.

Yeah, but when you're doing that with teenagers, you know, the under 18 crowd.

And the most important thing that we have to remember is the distinction between volunteers and staff. So volunteers can't be doing staff jobs. And so when you start with volunteers, you have to continue.

And for example, that's a great point that if you had volunteers that didn't show up, you can't have staff replace them to go do it. It's the same work. It'd just be like, you're not getting your stuff.

Or there could be like a substitute situation, I guess. Yeah. So there's a lot to think about.

There's also the privacy aspect from a library user perspective. Very true. Erin and I were looking at other libraries' waivers, because there are waivers for the- Got the brown bag, everything.

Yeah, I know. Here is- Here's your wax seal.

Wax like it's smut. Essentially, the patron would have to sign off that they understand that they're essentially waiving their right to privacy, because we can't guarantee. Right. It seems like this is a... No one's going to look at it.

I mean, it doesn't seem like it's impossible, but it seems like this is something that is so large that trying to account for it in the postage supplies line item for the next fiscal year is just not... It's going to take a lot of research. Yeah. Thinking about things like the postcard campaign for strategic planning would be something in there.

Just the GMLX.

It's GMLX, my love. I know. GMLX.

I know. I'm sorry. GMLX.

It sounds like GMLX. I know. I'm having a day.

It's okay, but ask me what it stands for. I cannot. Greater Manchester. Library Consortium. Plum.

okay does the contract allow us to swap um residents you know like snail mail for an email address like is there something in the system that we can just alert people to overdue books through an like an emailing process?

So we have that, but the patron has to opt into it.

So maybe the campaign could be opting more people into it and the friends could maybe take on some of that. you know, reach outreach or I don't know, I bet we could do a better job of getting more people to click the right box and we could drop all my information from, uh, I didn't realize that they had to opt in, but it was funny.

So when we got, when we were swapped over, it was like, whoever, I think it was Nick who was doing that was like, do you want this thing? And we were like, yes, please. And he did it right there.

So staff have been, I will say staff have been great about whenever they come across a patron who we're still calling or getting those mailed notices that they're asking hey this is something we offer now however I will say there still comes a point when you get to like did you forget one more mailing still even if their preference is email they get all the email stuff first and then it's longer overdue they get a gmail notice yeah yeah but i still think there's room um to do more outreach work in terms of getting people to opt into the digital notices and londonderry has only been part of gmail since october of 2024 that's not a long time and then you add the building stuff into the mix so yeah yeah there's progress there okay all right yeah i think we're

Any other questions, ideas?

It seems like you've got a thoughtful number there. Which is no surprise. It's not like you approach any of this. Yeah, and we have the files that you sent too. I think the only thing I would want to see is I would love to hear how staff feel about the numbers on the programming. And I think that just helps us affirm that everyone anticipates things staying roughly the same.

Or actually, how do they ask? They want to try to do something bigger. Absolutely, I'd be happy to ask them.

Yeah. Okay, thank you. That sounds great. Thank you so much. You're welcome.

What lines do you want to look at next meeting?

What's next down the line?

I like the idea of pairing one fun thing with one boring thing. I mean, it's not like this has not been a lively conversation, but it's so much fun to think about thousands of dollars for programming versus thousands of dollars for postcards. But it's also fun to think about what could we do a postcard campaign for?

Yeah, I definitely feel like you could do it for all sorts of things. Oh, yeah. Okay, so we're still skipping salary and benefits for now. Actually, I mean, we could look at tuition reimbursement if you want. That one would be generally fine.

Are we allowed to touch that with being in a contract? Yeah, I was going to say. That would be something that I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, you're not, by making a budget decision on it, you're not necessarily changing if you're going to offer it or not. How much?

I was going to say, but it does potentially restrict how much we can actually follow through on that. Yeah. Yeah, so.

So that might be. I can tell you where I can have the hard information. by the time we need it for July.

Sure, but we could at least get feedback for, I mean, I know we don't want to like go running to Hannah with every little thing, but it wouldn't be a bad thing to reach out to Hannah and say, what is the appropriate way to address this for the budget given that we're in status quo? Like she could at least give us like a,

quick generic like okay when you're in status quo you you know you do this with a number and then yeah as a placeholder or whatever you know yeah and i know you yeah we're just not gonna have hard answers before yeah yeah nothing that the board will be able to vote on and hand it to town council um we've done elect all the utilities i don't think we've done printing yet we could do that one

that one um there's gonna have to be some decisions because i think i let you know that the right now the um staff copy release agreement is included in here but the public copy release agreement is not okay it's in another it's in the maintenance line um so i think a good thing to think about would be moving that to printing but um so we could talk about that dues and subscriptions um that would include gmail actually There's going to be this similar conversation because we have a new line for consortiums. But right now, everything's grouped into this line. So it's museum passes, the staff and the trustee professional association memberships. It no longer includes Baker and Taylor because we don't have a Baker and Taylor. We do have a membership to GameStop to give us discounts on video games. Oh, very cool. But you do have to pay, I don't know, 20 bucks a year or something. So those are the main things in there. We could definitely go through those probably pretty quickly.

Because you'd also, I don't know if you would have potential amounts for 2028 yet, but... For GMOPS?

Well, for like NHLA, ALA. Usually not. We usually, that's the hard part about budgeting out, so... far we usually take what we just paid this year and consider what we budgeted for 27 and then add like general is usually three or five percent yeah yeah that i mean anything with like um we could do the dues and subscriptions mileage the only thing to note with the because gmail is voting the board is voting june I can't remember if it's 18th or 25th. It's one of these Thursdays on what will be our dues for fiscal year 27. So I think having that information would be very helpful to that discussion. Because we could factor in a percentage increase.

Yeah, so we could push that off. So you might want to wait for that reason. Just do dues and subscription and printing services. And I know you said it, but what line is the copier in right now?

The public copier is in maintenance. Okay. Which we have looked at already, but we can always go back and adjust.

Okay. So that's interesting. NHTLA is in that budget line?

Yes. Where would you expect it to be? You look like you don't like it there.

I don't know if... I guess I'm curious as to see how other libraries do it. I assumed that it would be coming from trustee funds.

That the trustee account would pay for it?

Yeah.

Just so you know, that would, I think, require an update to the bylaws. Right.

We can't budget for something that comes out of the trustee meeting, like the trustee account, without some kind of a document that says, we will pay for this. Because otherwise, it's up to each board To pay for the membership.

It is in the bylaws that it will be paid for through the library budget. Right now. Okay.

What we've seen with previous boards, it might not be a bad thing that it's not up to the board to decide that. Yeah, because then that just... Yeah, because you can imagine what would have happened last year.

Yeah.

To put a not-too-fine point on it.

Because if we're talking about these numbers and we're saying, well, we have to have enough for the NHLA stuff, but then we're... shortchanging the staff. Sure.

I agree. Yeah. I mean, we could just start like a, you know, um, a tradition where we right off the bat, you know, write the check for covering that bill, but yeah, it doesn't exist yet.

Yeah. So there'll be further deepened plot. Um, yeah.

Okay. So dues and subscription services, printing services.

So do this subscription will include Gmail.

Oh, it's under concern. I'm sorry. Did you so? Yeah. Okay. I see what you're saying.

I like the same situation as management services.

I'm operating off of like, Oh, it's like, that's why we're keeping it short and sweet.

Yeah. Thank you. Printing. Yeah. Yeah. The books are kind of fun.

Yeah. Do we want to do printing services, seminars and workshop services, and books next time?

Do we think that's going to be too much? We can bump one out if we can't get to it.

Sure.

It doesn't make sense to keep travel and mileage with the consortium. Oh, okay. It's all related. Okay. Seminars and workshop services. Yeah, that's always honestly more of a guesstimate depending on the year. Some years we've had no trainings. Some years, like this past year, we spent some money on staff development day, which was great.

Yeah, really glad we got to do that.

And we did send two staff to a cliff workshop, which was good. Yeah, and there's some things you can guesstimate. So for 2026, NELA will be in Vermont. So we can kind of figure out mileage, maybe figure out how many people maybe would like to go for 2028. Um, 2028.

I don't think they have that one yet, but it's going to be, I keep thinking, okay, we're looking at fiscal year 27, but it is currently 2026. Yeah.

So try and get used to this.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's possible. So save that. Do you want to save that? Or do we want to do it?

So do we want to, do we want to just maybe next time we just look at books.

Yeah. Okay. Just plan on. So big books and technically this e-book is the new one.

Yeah, since it's a new one.

Yeah. And then, yeah, Google and Libby, Cloud Library give a donation, or is it? It's not really calling it a donation.

I more look at it as our contribution. Like we have to give something. Yes. We get to choose how much. And I kind of liked how we actually had, like, usage data to work from this year. So that will continue, whereas the first year was just like a, oh. Yay. Yeah. Okay. I will, to give also some context on Hoopla, I'm going to have to talk to Nancy to see if she wants it on the agenda. But either June or the first meeting in July, I'm going to need, like, a solid answer on where that $51,000 cut is coming from. And Hoopla was part of that conversation. So that is going to have an impact on the 28 budget. So I can still, that doesn't mean we can't still come up with our idea of a number, just that we might have to revisit it depending on that decision with Hoopla.

Yeah, that's a hard one.

Yeah. I hope it's one of those services that people are going to feel that one.

Yeah. Unfortunately, it doesn't make it any better, but it's not a unique situation with big libraries having to.

It's not going to make a patron feel better knowing that other, I mean, unless they come from another library that has had that same situation. But a lot of our patrons, I think, aren't going to know the bigger picture scenario. Yeah. That's going to be tough.

That's the postcard campaign we're going to start. You want your hoopla back? I said it's $5.

But this is also why we're working on this earlier so that we're not getting to that point where things are being asked of us and we didn't give ourselves the wiggle room to discuss it and to plan.

I also hope we're a little more able to push back on when the town asks us to cut before anybody else again, which I assume is going to happen because this will be the third or fourth year in a row that they'll look at the library and say no. Yeah, we gave back the library. And we're going to have to push back and say, you can't. This is a service like a police department. This is a service like a fire department. We're going to have to be on top of communicating the message that we provide things at no cost to patrons, but there is a substantial cost to making us happen. And we have to stand with that.

Right. And it being a communication process, this whole budget, I think the town manager is really intending for it to be a long-term discussion instead of these short, quick... Three months. And so it's give and take. We're very grateful for the building support and everything like that. But we also have...

services that we want to provide so we'll have that uh discussion um with hoopla and the cut and having a a longer process where we can develop a relationship with the budget committee yeah yeah liaison is important yeah so is nicole planning on coming to any of our

Um, not specifically. So that kind of goes into the skip a little bit. Um, sorry. No, no, no. That update to what we talked about last, which is maintenance and utilities. So I did touch base with Nicole, who's our liaison via email, um, just to kind of get on a good footing. I did ask her about utility rates and contracts. She said Justin would be the best person, um, at finance to talk about it. I did email him on Monday. It's, of course, only Wednesday, so if I haven't heard from Week, I'm gonna try to follow up just to get a better understanding of that. She did ask for quarterly reports. Donna was kind enough to send a file just so that she can get a lay of the land. and trying to understand how the library works in terms of the trustees voting on things, how are you separate from town, but also including the town, so we chatted about that a little bit. I'll keep her posted with meeting minutes, when we're meeting, if there is any situation where we need her support as a budget liaison in person, whether it's an all trustees meeting, whether it's a town meeting, she is more than willing to be there for us. so that I definitely want to make note of. So I'll stay on top of that and try to get some numbers from Justin.

Awesome, thank you.

But I didn't want that to get forgotten. So if you have any questions for Nicole, keep them coming. Happy to ask anything for you, Donna. But for me, it's really important with the role of treasurer is reestablishing those relationships with budget committees so that relationship is year-round instead of these short few months where... You know, we're presenting to them instead of having these active discussions. So not much is a surprise to any of us.

I'd love, I mean, I don't know if she'll be able to go or not, but I'd love to personally invite her to the Grand Reopen. Yes, yes.

Yes, that will be something to look forward to having. So we have something to show her.

Are we starting to make plans for what that reopening will look like? Kind of.

At this point, it's like brainstorming. Because we don't really have a date to work with yet.

Excellent. If we can... support you with getting donations from asking Canterfords to help us out with water bottles or snacks or those kind of things. If there's things you need, let us know and we'll just...

Yeah, the trustees can definitely support. Tell us how we can partner with you on this. On top of doing a celebratory thing, the staff are still behind the scenes trying to get everything in working order. We don't want to take the fun away, though. Because it's fun to have something to look forward to as staff. But that fine balance, you know what I mean? So if you're like, hey, trustees... Can you help me get those donations?

Either get out of our way or give us what you need.

Help us set up the day of. Having something to look forward to.

And the friends have already said they want to be there.

You know the entire community is going to turn up. So many people are so excited. We need journalists.

We need photographers. It needs to be part of the history room. Yeah.

Yeah, a binder that they can never get rid of. And Don has to somehow put it in the catalog.

Yeah, that's a next step. You can annotate your many months of like... Shutterfly book of just your notes.

The photos of you at the center of the text.

They'll all be like... Donna Plant, coordinating. Donna Plant, coordinating again. Six hours. Yep, it never changes.

Donna Plant, failing to sleep yet again. So jumping back to June and July, I know we've been trying to do two meetings a month, try to stay on top of that. I know some of us all have a vacation in June that will be a week long, so I won't be able to. How far ahead can you look at Sunnycrest?

So I did before the meeting. I looked at Wednesday specifically because that seems important. June, we can pick any Wednesday right now. July, the 1st, 8th, and 15th. I factored myself into that, too. Yes. Yeah, because if you can't be there, then. I won't be able to be at the last July Wednesday, I think. Okay. The other thing I wanted to note is that I know our goal was to actually bring at least a draft to the full board at the second July meeting, which is the 27th. Which is a Wednesday. So that was also a Wednesday we couldn't do because of the boring meeting.

Yeah. And the bylaws subcommittee meeting, Nancy was going to book for us, I think, on the 10th. I don't know if she's actually done that yet. June 10th? June 10th, yes.

Okay. I have not heard from her on that yet, but that's been tuned out.

She also told me, I also have it on my calendar for June 24th, which is not accurate, so we'll find out. But that is a... Yeah.

Um, the other thing that I wanted to note though, is that our, like the town's timeline has changed a little where the council did not give the town manager like direction on the budget at their last meeting. Um, so the expectation on the board isn't going to be as soon as we had thought. Um, but it's nice. However, I don't know, but it's necessarily a bad thing that the board has more time as a whole. especially if the board sends it back to committee to adjust stuff and bring it back. There's time to do that now. So I still think it's a good goal if we can make it happen.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that helps us to have more of the ongoing conversations with budget, too, so that it's less work when we're in the midst of workshopping it with them. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right, so we've got... Those potential June and July dates, would you mind sending them out?

Do we choose dates? No. Do we know? Okay. All right. Do we want to, sorry, can you? So June, I think Annie accepts the 10th.

It sounded like the 10th, yeah. Okay. I will double check my messages with Nancy.

I have a meeting for the board stuff. June 10th, she said. On the 17th. Okay. And on July 1st. So I will, I could probably get here late, but I can't be here probably on time because I'll be otherwise engaged in another casting meeting.

Yeah. So it's the 3rd and the 24th, I'm not sure.

So it's June 3rd. June 3rd, June 24th. Okay. Yep, I could do both of those. Yeah. When did your vacation go?

It's going to be the 15th through the 23rd. Okay. So the 24th will be fine. Okay.

Do you want me to book for you on the 23rd? Yeah, let's do that.

Yes, please. The 23rd is our kickoff, so I'm coming off of a plane, sleeping for a few hours. But I'm excited for the kickoff, so I don't want to miss it. So that'll be a good week.

I do think, I don't know if it changes your mind at all, but it would be... Like board meeting is Thursday.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing because it's fresh in our minds. So if there's anything that we need to ask of the board or any recommendations we have for them, we can get that.

Yeah, especially as we get closer to needing to have it prepared for an outside audience. Okay. And still want 7 p.m.? Sure.

Sure. Yeah. As long as we, you know, we'll continue to do our best to keep it an hour under. Yeah. So far we're doing all right.

And then July. Did you want to do July as well?

Sure.

So, Beth, you said no first, right?

Yeah, unless I get here late. So, 8th or 15th or both? 15th I also have. I'm debating. I'll do the 8th. I mean, sorry. Yeah, and if you guys need to do a meeting without me or with me late, please, like, do whatever you're going to do because I can do any of those dates.

So, if, I mean, I don't think we're going to get to the end of this process and say, wow, we really have, you know, we're swamped and we're, like, drowning, but I can, yeah, we're on top of everything. Yeah.

Yeah, because we're, I mean, after books, because we're doing that, what, the third? Mm-hmm. the 24th we'd probably be looking at, I don't know if I'll have, um, I don't know if I'll have Gmox answers by then. So it would probably be whatever's left down here. So equipment, furniture, printing, something like that. And then July we could definitely dig into staff, um, and consortium would be left. So, okay.

That sounds very reasonable.

Are we planning for July 8th? What date do we choose?

July 8th is a Wednesday.

I think it's open for me.

And again, the board meeting is on the 9th, so it would be another... That's my life anyway.

Yeah. I don't see that changing until the building's open and a couple other things have changed.

Yeah. I'm just glad that we even have the option for this space.

Yeah.

Okay, so we'll put July 8th.

And I don't want to do a second for July right now.

I can do the last Wednesday, the 29th. But if that's too late, then...

I will not be here this morning.

I will have no kid coverage that night.

Nick will be out of town and the day before is my birthday, my 40th birthday. I love doing stuff, but I want to spend my 40th birthday not doing this.

I also don't want to be too much of a Debbie Downer, but I don't know with the organizing trustee donations, if that will be a done deal. So that's the last thing to talk about. if so we've got july 8th we're not sure about the second date yeah do we want then i would just say you know do the first or 15th whatever works for you guys and i'll just jump in late okay we could do the 15th and i mean honestly even if we have the books and we can't have to cancel it it's easier than Okay, so let's do the 15th, just add that. Alright, I will pick those. Okay, so with the organizing trustee donations we got, they don't have an exact form, but the charitable trust sent me the Google Doc Excel sheet that They had a sample of. I still don't think it's what we're looking at. It's got a lot, I think, more extra. Yeah, I found that.

It focuses more on trust accounts or trust funds, which right now the board doesn't directly oversee any of its own trust funds. So a lot of this I don't think applies to what we're looking for per se. The second tab applies most, but this is really very similar to what the other two libraries that shared things looks like, where I think we actually need somewhere between those two. So I was going to suggest that I was hoping that we were going to get, like, a great example that we could just take and run with. Just take and, yeah, use. I have not gotten any others from Gmux libraries besides the, well, technically three that answered me. So I was going to suggest at this point I come up with, like, use these examples but come up with what we actually need it to look like and bring it to you as a draft, potentially. But I also, Erica, want you to talk about what you were mentioning earlier from the conference.

Yeah, so at the NHLTA conference today, one of the things I got to attend was a case study on the Mount Vernon Library Project, which started in 1986 or something like that, and was actually completed this past year. They just moved into the new library building in February. But they were focusing on the last 10 years of fundraising and what it took for them to get through the fundraising and the yes vote and then the actual construction project for their town. But one of the things they talked about was using a service called Little Green Light, which is a donor. It's supposed to be like a customer tracking option, but they used it for tracking donors, and they found it was incredibly beneficial for keeping track of what donations came in, what they were earmarked for, what outreach had been done you could even do use it to like track like had you spent the money that had been that had been allocated, what contact had you had with that donor since to affirm that you had used the money and all that. So it sounded like a really cool service and something that could be very, very applicable to what we're looking for. They said it would cost between $500 and $600 a year for a service that basically does everything that you want it to do. So I figured that was worth looking into to see if that might be a worthwhile expenditure for our purposes. But it might simplify a whole lot of that process for us.

Would you be open to me getting a quote over this?

Maybe even a demo? Because I know we're trying to do as cheap or free, but also if we have the option to use something like that and be able to use it correctly. Not to say that the form you created we wouldn't be using correctly, but having that added layer.

I feel, especially if it's cloud-based, I feel like it's less likely to be lost. There are a lot of trusty transitions. So it's, I mean, obviously I haven't looked at it yet, but the idea of it sounds great. It sounds a lot like what we were looking for for an option. Yeah.

I was sitting in there like, this is phenomenal. I don't care about the rest of this. That's what I want.

I don't know if they'd be willing to do a demo at 7 p.m., but if they're... Yeah, or even if it's a recording.

Yeah, a lot of the times they have like just... When they're trying to sell and market something, they'll just have a demo that you can access. They'll send you a link, and you can play around with it and see how user-friendly it is.

Yeah.

Or the other option is it could be something, if they can do it business hours, and say Colleen and I could go and we record it, if they're willing to do that, so that we could share it.

Yeah, and I'm always happy to... go with you as well virtually if you just want some notes or if Colleen can't make it. And then we can see what the board thinks. Because yes, I thought that there would be a perfect sheet or perfect something because all libraries have to track their donations.

But it's clear that they're all struggling to do that.

Donor management software for nonprofits. There's a beginner tutorial. There's a try for free. But it'd be good to connect with someone customer service-wise to get them to help answer questions for us. Sorry, I have their website pulled up. You can join a live demo of their product, or you can watch a quick video tour. It's a cloud-based platform with unlimited users, no hidden fees, support resources, security and backups. They do integrations with all kinds of things, including QuickBooks, PayPal, Stripe, MailChimp other so like if you so this has a potential if we are able to move forward with the like the website-based donation We could potentially have it Integrated right into this so we'd be able to keep track of it that way that might facilitate Yeah, and also maybe the friends can utilize it to some degree to track Let you consolidate your spreadsheets visualize and back up your data share information with your team wherever you are They let you switch systems

Yeah, I guess one of the questions I'd have for them is what libraries besides Mount Vernon? How libraries use LGL?

It might have half a brain cell today and five minutes earlier. I totally would have done this before. Hundreds of libraries, library foundations, and friends of the library organizations use Little Green Light to track their donors, prospective donors, members, and other patrons. They love the ease of tagging and categorizing people and organizations and the ability to track the effectiveness of book sales and other fundraising activities. Key features for libraries. Create your own tags to identify donors as patrons, members, volunteers, and more. Use the included membership feature to track members and send renewal notices, which, you know. Send merged letters and personalized emails. Easily set up donation and event registration forms. See which fundraising efforts, such as book sales and other events, are most successful. Import all your historical data from spreadsheets. They have a very specific free guide for using LGL at libraries, so they do targeted stuff.

so they know their audience it's a great way to encourage more donations too because people like data they like to see that it's being managed well and you know our history i will say too a huge like thing that's unfortunately happened with um understaffing and whatnot is that the like

donor acknowledgement has really been delayed, and that sounds like it might do an automatic thing for us, which would be amazing.

Yeah. Some sort of facilitation of that process. Yeah.

I mean, we'll have all the information, or we'll get all the information, we'll do our best to present it to the board.

Mm-hmm.

We don't know what the rest of the board is going to do.

I mean, this could be another subcommittee to investigate it. Mm-hmm.

I think it integrates nicely with exploring the whole trustee donations research that we're trying to do. It's worth considering for the future.

Yeah, no, this is great. This is great. And maybe for the first year, we can get people to volunteer to pay that first year. It might be that we can raise half of it or more through donors that want to see...

we can frame it as please give us money so we can better track how we use your money I was going to say I think actually our town because everyone in our town regardless of their political affiliation wants transparency and that's what we're trying to be more transparent about to show people this is what's going in this is what's going out this is when it's going out this is how it's being used and if there's a neat little software I mean $500 is

still a lot but it's a write-off for a local business i was just saying that's that's 12 months like it's a year it's a one year commitment or one year yeah and when i think about

How much time? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It could relieve some staff time. Yes. It could relieve some headache for the board and the staff. It sounds like it would be 100% worth it. Yeah.

And I think it will encourage more donors. Yeah. Yeah. You can see. You can see. On a database. Oh, $20 from this person. Yes. $100.

oh i didn't even think that i could donate you know xyz like i love the idea it gets people creative and the online processes yes i love the idea that that makes that feasible for and makes it makes it easy to track and for people to designate and like and then i i love the way that that makes that possible yeah and at the very least we ask we do demo we ask questions i think that's fantastic yeah okay I sat in the right room.

Thank you for doing that. Yeah, of course. Okay. All right. So public comment. Seeing none. Okay. All right.

Sorry. Who is going to plan on approaching Little Green Light and figuring out a demo? Me. Okay. I feel like we have these meetings and then you walk away.

And I'm like, if there's, if there's, I just thought it would make sense. I mean, if we could do the, like, I don't, I don't just don't know what the demo is going to look like.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if, if it's like a, Something that, like, it's like a curiosity thing, like, oh, I would like to see how this looks for, but I'm happy to do it.

Okay, if someone else wants to start the conversation, see what we're looking at.

Yeah, let me start it, and then I can, you know, pull everyone in. Maybe Maryam would be another good person to... Who's Maryam?

Mariam. Oh, yes, yes, yes. We can start pulling her into more in a second. Yeah.

She's got a lot of great input, I think. She does.

She's very experienced.

Yeah.

Go ahead, Mariam. Why don't you even do something?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That would help us. Yeah. I love it. Okay. All right. Yeah, I can do that. Yeah. If it's one less thing off your plate, and then you can go from there. Love it. Great. Okay. So, public comment?

Great. Thank you. We'll adjourn the meeting at 8 or 7 p.m. I'll sign. We don't have to.