Parks and Recreation Committee - Regular Meeting

So it's 5 p.m. We'll call the Appleton Public Library Board meeting to order. We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Looking at roll call of membership, Chua is excused. I think we are missing Denise and Mary, but otherwise we are here. And Mitesh. And Mitesh, but otherwise we are here. We've got a quorum, so we are good to roll. We'll start with approval of the minutes from the previous meeting. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes from August 13th? A second? John Tuller will second it. Any discussion, corrections, or notes for the minutes from the previous meeting?

I realized that my last name that got put on there was not my legal last name. Is that something that should be revised on there?

Is it the last name that you prefer on there? Yes. I think that's fine then.

Perfect.

Amazing. Good question. Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the 818 minutes, say aye. Okay, motion carries. We'll move to public hearing or appearances. We have, for the first time in a couple of months, no new board members to introduce. No one has signed up to speak. Is there anyone from the public here to speak? Who's not signed up? Okay, we'll move to establishing the order of the day then. So we have four action items. Are there any of those that anyone would like to pull out for a separate vote before we potentially move to put those four on a consent agenda for the day? So any you would like to pull out for a separate vote and discussion? In that case, do I have a motion to establish a consent agenda with all four action items, including the bill register, the budget amendment, the report of the finance committee, and the 2026-27 committee assignments? So that's a motion to add those to a consent agenda.

So moved.

Second? I'll second it. Any discussion about moving the four action items to a consent agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. Okay, the consensus agenda is established. So with that, we can entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion of any of the four items on the consent agenda? And then again, that's the the bill register, the September 2026 budget amendment, the report of the Finance Committee for the 27 library budget and the 2627 committee assignments. Any discussion, questions of any of those four items on the consent agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the consent agenda, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. With that, the consent agenda is approved. And that moves us through our action items to information items, starting with administrative report. So I'm not sure who's got the recruitment status. Is that Tasha?

That's me. Thank you very much. So just a couple of updates from the status report that's in front of you. For the security monitor, we will be doing interviews on Monday, the 21st. And for the halftime library clerk, interviews will happen on the 28th of September.

Questions for Tasha on the status. Now that summer is fortunately coming to a close, is there an expected dip in applicants or like, I guess, the pool of people since it's no longer summer help or like college students, grad students, stuff like that, or not really a concern?

It depends on the role that we're hiring for. So we have the shelver positions, the page positions. We sometimes get college students for those and high school students for those as well. So, um, But we have luck all through the year with recruitment from those two populations. So yeah, no expected dip, but yeah, we definitely appreciate their application.

Questions about hiring positions. Okay, next is strategic planning. Is that what you're sharing on that? Okay, great.

All right, so we are continuing on with our strategic planning. So last we had talked about this, it was actually the staff and trustee workshop day where we had closed for the day and worked with our consultant, got a lot of input. We have received kind of a draft of some of the kind of bones of the plan and we're providing feedback right now. We've got some specific things that we thought we needed to see in that draft and that really is just kind of creating right now kind of the bigger, higher level concepts. So just sent some feedback to the consultant today and she was receptive and will be reworking a draft for that internal planning committee to then go through in more detail. At some point then after the internal planning team kind of gets it all wrapped up, it will then go to the library board planning committee. So now that we have committees, for those of you that are on the planning committee, keep that in mind. You will get it at after the internal work is done and then at this point we've currently got it scheduled for a December approval at this at the board meeting but it you know if we're gonna do it right so if there's a reason to shift anything we will let you know we'd rather make sure that we work through all of the elements that we think are important I think the thing we've learned in this process is that Staff use our plan, our existing plan. They recognize it in the staff survey. There was a connection to it. So we want to make sure that whatever we end up with becomes something that, again, has a real strong connection to the staff who are going to be carrying it out. And then it is something that over the years, Tina has also really relied on for a lot of the public communication strategies. And we know we're going to be then using it as touch points in these board meetings in the future as well. So more to come on that, but if you have any questions, feel free to let me know.

I have one quick question. I'm sorry to put you on the spot. Can you... Remind us, who is on the internal planning?

I know that it's Kevin from the board. Yeah, Kevin from the board. And then we have kind of representation from across the library. So several folks that are seated at this table. So me, Tasha, Peter, Ann. Let's see, which way am I going here? OK. And then Tina. And we have Ann Patterson, who is one of our catalogers, who also had a background in the publishing industry, is an excellent writer. And Sarah Kapesky, who is our electronic services librarian, also just kind of like perfectly suited for being on this committee. Both of them also have, I think, a good, like they're the ones who are not on the supervisory or leadership team. And so they have a good sense of kind of the, you know, non-supervisory library kind of sentiments. And they've got a significant history too. So they've been around for a while.

Excellent. Thank you. Other questions about the strategic planning process timeline update? Then I think we can pivot to the next administrative report, which is the OWLS Nicolet merger exploration committee.

Yes. So another planning process. And so this is a potential merger between the library systems, OWLS and Nicolet. We currently have an existing relationship already with the OWLS net catalog. So when you go into InfoSoup, we have already an existing relationship for like materials exchange with the exception of the fact that brown county is not in our catalog um but by and large there's a lot of kind of commonality because of that existing relationship with the catalog system. But mergers of systems are bigger than just the catalog system. There's a lot of services the system provides. So this is an intentional process that has representation from both systems as well as both resource libraries. So Appleton and Brown County, myself and my counterpart from Brown County are on it. We have now covered, we're kind of going into deep dives in different topic areas of interests that need to be laid out before we would even consider approving or recommending. We don't approve a merger. We would recommend a merger or not. So we have covered things like staffing, how the staffing plan for Owls and Nicolet, who both have existing staffs and services would work as well as governance model. These have both been developed with the two system directors at Owls and Nicolet. We will be meeting in person for the first and possibly only time to talk through things like resource library roles and other elements that need to get hashed out that way. And then all of these meetings are public meetings. So I know I've in some cases forwarded some invites. You are welcome to attend either the in-person or the virtual ones. So just let me know if you want me to make it easy and send you anything so you know where to go for these. But to be determined where this ends up, I think we're getting a lot of some good models that could be the way this would move forward, but too early to say where I think things are going.

It sounds like then I assume much too early for a timeline. Do you have a sense of whether this is a one-year process or a three-year process?

The merger exploration, that work should be done by the end of the year. And then the committee would be recommending to the systems to either move forward with this or abandon the idea if the recommendation is to move forward or perhaps even if the recommendation wasn't to move forward but the library system boards felt that there was a reason to move forward the real decision would come from those system boards um of which we have representation on this on the system board uh with bastia and um And then those recommendations, should they approve that? Every county would need to approve this merger. So that is 10 counties, I think. It might be more than 10 counties.

Knowing the OWL's board, I think they'd be really unlikely to go against the recommendation. Has this exploration made it along further than the Winnifox exploration? last one we did, right, was looking at the fog.

I think this one's structured in a way that is more, gives it, well, first of all, probably learned from that experience, and it's structured in a way to work on some of the big barriers first, like governance, like the staffing model. I think we started with the catalog in the Winifox merger, and then that that was so detailed and in the weeds, probably just in hindsight, doomed to fail. Especially because both systems had kind of different products and they were dedicated to those products at the time. So to make a decision based on a product in hindsight is probably not the way to go. But I think this one is being facilitated by Wills, and Wills has a really strong understanding of systems. They have a strong understanding of systems that have merged and have merged successfully, which is a big hill to climb. So they've been really great to have kind of facilitating this whole process.

Maybe I'll ask my question. Have you had any recent systems that have merged? And if so, what have we learned that has worked well and perhaps not as well? But it sounds like that's covered by them.

It is. And there's whole white papers on that that I'm happy to share if you're interested in that. But it's Prairie Lakes, is that what they're called now? So the southern part of the state had two systems that merged. Okay.

Other questions about the merger exploration? OK, then I think we can move to the last administrative item, which is thinking about a couple of committees that need to be scheduled for the end of the year, which is the planning committee and the personnel and policy committee.

Yes. So as I mentioned, the planning committee is going to have the first pass outside of the kind of internal strategic planning team on the strategic plan. It's also going to be a place where we can discuss how to bring this plan into the structure of this board meetings as well. So more to come on that. And that will get working on scheduling. Once we get a sense from our consultant, the timing of when we'll be able to bring something to that committee. And then the personnel policy committee is the one of the three meetings a year for that committee. So that'll include any policy updates that we're bringing forward as well as my end of year review.

So if you're a new member on one of those committees, or especially if you're one of the chairs, Brian or Mary, keep an eye out for a message about scheduling those meetings and the agenda for the rest of the year. Excellent. That takes us to the end of the administrative reports. And I'm excited to have Adriana McLeer with us today from Friends of the Public Library to talk about some items. So over to you.

I see some new names here and faces. I'm so glad to see you, Adriana McClure, Executive Director for Friends of Appleton Public Library. And as you know, our mission is to do fundraising, advocacy, and outreach in support of the Appleton Public Library. So, did you know? I was excited to learn that there is a special holiday that is recognized by United for Libraries, which is a division of American Library Association, that is National Friends of Libraries Week. So that is in October. They're coordinating their 21st annual Friends of Libraries Week, October 18th to the 24th. So it's an opportunity for friends of Appleton Public Library to celebrate, and we're doing a new fundraiser. So that new fundraiser is called Locked Library, the bookcase. It's an escape room style event that will be held after hours. So the library is locked, except if you are participating in this event. So people can register individually or in a team of four. So we're encouraging folks to create teams, whether that's with friends, friendly competition with family, coworkers, and already seeing registrations. So I'll hand out the flyer for that. Registration is online, and it's linked in the flyer or on the Friends website. So it's friendsofAPL.org slash events. It's $25 per person or $80 for a team of four. So glad to have that as a new fundraiser.

Are you accepting volunteers also for that event? We are.

So Colleen Bolt is helping us coordinate volunteers who are part of the volunteer team. We'll have friends, board of directors as volunteers and welcome trustees as volunteers also. It will be a funny one.

Sounds great. I love it. Another question about the fundraiser? It's easy to sign up, but cheaper with a team of four.

Sold. All right. Other updates?

So next update is related to our friends board of directors. So we have 17 voting members on our board of directors that range from two months of service to over eight years of service. And Colleen is an ex-officio non-voting board member like me. I'm pleased to share that we have four new directors that joined the board this summer. So those members are Joy Jordan, Jamie Lafreniere, David Gerard and Samantha Zinn, and just sharing some details about our new director's onboarding process. They get to know the friends of the library and they get to know about the work that you do and the library staff do. So Colleen is leading a session called APL 101 for our new board members and inviting existing directors. where they learn about the foundation of public libraries, how APL fits into Wisconsin's broader library systems, how it's governed and funded, and what the library provides for the community. If you do want to learn more about our board of directors, our website has bios for all of the members. So it's friendsofAPL.org slash board.

Thanks. And then upcoming book sales.

Yeah.

So another fundraiser that happens throughout the year is that we sell books that are donated to the Friends. People can make donations throughout the year. We accept books, DVDs, CDs, and jigsaw puzzles. Those tend to be popular. And those are accepted at our front information desk, the library's front information desk, any open hours of the library. And we have a team of volunteers who meet every two weeks, who sort through the donations and determine what's a good match for our book sale, shop, and inventory. We open up that space for what we call pop-up sales, which are usually shorter. They're usually scheduled in advance, but it's a shorter session. So we do have a pop-up book sale on Wednesday, September 23rd from 3.30 to 7.30. And we typically have a three-day sale in the fall. And that is scheduled for November 19th through the 21st, Thursday through Saturday. If people are curious about upcoming sales, they're added to the library's event calendar, as are our fundraiser events. So thanks to library staff for sharing information or checking in with me if there are questions that are not answered there.

Great, thanks. Any questions about the book sales? And if you haven't seen it already, the new building has a nice space for book sales that the old building did not have. So I think that's great. But questions about the upcoming book sales?

I just want to say from the previous book sales downstairs, it was always kind of dreary and dark. How amazing the space is so different after the renovation. Yeah.

Excellent. Thanks, Adriana. Appreciate being here. We'll move to the president's reports. So two brief things. Colleen mentioned earlier that, so I'll be working with Mary, who's the new chair of the planning committee and the rest of the planning committee to think about the board's role in the planning process and how to use a little bit of time at the upcoming meetings over the next few months. So more on that to come. And especially for those of you who are new or maybe just need a refresh, After the meeting, Jade will be sending out a link to the updated trustee binder. So it's a folder of documents that includes things like the meeting schedule, the committee assignments, if you want to find those in an easy place, the trustee bylaws, chapters from the trustee essentials handbook from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, a brief explainer on things like municipal funding, and a few more documents. If you're new to the board or you joined in the past year or so, I've gone into those. And I find things that I'm still learning and are new. So it's a great resource. It's all in one place. And Jade's going to send that link out to all of us after the meeting. So more to come on the board role in strategic planning. And take a look at that updated trustee resources binder when that comes out. Questions about those? Okay, then I think we can move to staff reports, my favorite part of the meeting. So we're starting with Anne Children's.

Hello, everyone. My name is Anne. I'm head of Children's here. We have a lot of fun specials coming up in October. So I do want to also say that we still have our normal story times every week and our normal lineup is still happening, but we had a lot of extra special things. So I wanted to run through some of those. So one of the ones I'm most excited about is happening October 5th, and we have Jim Gill coming. Jim Gill is a musician and a children's author, but he's very unique in that realm. He spent about 20 years directing programs in music play for families and children with special needs in the Chicago area. So he has a very particular style that combines wordplay and movement opportunities into songs. And he completed his graduate studies in child development at the Erickson Institute in Chicago with a special emphasis on the study of play. So everything he does is very playful and extremely educational. So he's coming Monday, October 5th for a family concert in the morning. And then he's also going to do an educator workshop in the evening. for child care providers, teachers, librarians, anybody in the community who wants to come. It is free. And they can submit to the Wisconsin registry for credit if they would like to. So we will be offering certificates for that. Baby Anne, like 20 years ago, saw Jim Gill. And a lot of the play that you see anywhere started with Jim Gill being really amazing. So anyway, it's really fun. And you should just come to all of it. I'm very, very, very excited. And then we also will have our digital art lab returning. This is actually an eight-week program, but the first one will be Monday, October 12th, and Sia will be leading that. And if you have never seen anything Sia does, it is always incredibly artistic and amazing. So that will be fun. We're also doing a special program, Pantau and Bricks, exploring identity, memory, and belonging through bricks. So this will be Thursday, October 15th. This is also all on our online calendars.

I feel like you have to remember it all. But join us for Pantau and BRICS, a fun family event celebrating culture, creativity, and connection through hands-on building and storytelling.

Our guest speaker, Chua Xiong, PhD Assistant Professor of Hmong Studies in Anthropology, Global Religions, and Cultures at UW Oshkosh will guide participants in exploring identity, memory, and belonging through BRICS. So the bricks are kind of like Lego-like things. So that will be really fun. So children, grandparents, everybody will come together for that one. We also have our first fall symphony story time starting. That will be Saturday, October 17th. If you've come to those before, they were usually on the learning stairs, but we sort of exceeded our space with our attendance the last couple of times. So we're going to be upstairs in the Mary Bethany House room for this one in October. And then we have a spooky celebration Friday, October 30th. We will have a special visit from Jasper Rabbit, the star of Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds. If you've ever read that book, Jasper Rabbit will be here. And Miss Teresa will do a fabulous program with amazing things. So I highly recommend. And then you can take a picture with Jasper Rabbit, even if you don't have children with you.

Jasper Rabbit.

And then all month long, we have a writing contest, my powerful pencil writing contest, scary stories. So you can submit your work to the children's services desk between October 1st and October 31st. We will have two different levels, K through third and fourth through sixth. So I have a lot of fun reading the story. So I would encourage everybody to submit.

Who's doing the teen and adult? I've got it here. Excellent. So I'll highlight three programs that are coming up in October for teens and adults. First, on Tuesday, October 6th at 5.30 PM, we have our first AI Summit, a community panel discussion. We've got five panelists lined up for it. We've got APL's own library assistant for technology learning and innovation, Manny Brown. Dr. Jeremiah Bohr from UWO, who's the Assistant Professor of Information Systems. Nate Gustafson, who's the Chair of Wisconsin's Assembly Committee on Science, Technology, and Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Joseph Pyatt, Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Science at Carroll University, and then one representative from Healthy Climate Wisconsin as well. This will be a two-hour program, an opportunity to hear from many different perspectives on AI, and then for people to ask questions from these experts in the fields. Then for teens, we've got College Goal Wisconsin, which is free FAFSA help happening on Tuesday, October 27th at 6 p.m. We will have volunteers available for teens and for families. I'm sitting down with them and helping them fill out the FAFSA forms. And then finally, for adults and teens, on Friday, October 23, at 5.30 PM, we have a very special program called Library After Dark, an evening of paranormal investigation. I'm going to read the description straight from the web page so you can understand it fully. Join the investigators of haunted destinations for an engaging panel discussion exploring the world paranormal investigation. We'll answer some of the most common questions about haunted locations, investigative techniques, evidence, misconceptions, and our experience in the field. Following the discussion, participants will break into small groups and venture through the library after hours to see investigative tools in action and experience hands-on introduction to paranormal research techniques. It's a registered event, so there's limited seating. Registration opens September 23rd. And so, yeah, please write that on your calendar. And we're just testing tools. We're not expecting to find anything online.

There were other things on the site, though, before it was a library.

There are haunted rooms.

My expectations are sky high.

September is also National Library Card Sign Up Month.

Are you sharing about that or who is? I'll share about that. I'm the Public Services Supervisor. So we have the proclamation from the state superintendent in your packet. So really what Library Card Sign Up Month is about is recognizing the valuable resources that the library provides to our communities and the role of the library in supporting lifelong learning and providing access to information. So APL celebrates Library Card Sign Up Month by really promoting people to come in and get a card or to come back and get a new card or update their card. Helps that just about everyone's card in the system expired about two weeks ago. And also promoting really some of our lesser known services and lesser known kind of things that you can access with your library card. So we do that through social media, promoting services on social media, and through a ton of outreach that folks in children's and community partnerships do. September is also a naturally very high library card sign up, even without us promoting. People moving to the area, school starting back up. We have groups of Lawrence students coming in and getting cards. So it's really just a reminder for us as we're having those conversations to explain all the cool things you can do with your library card. So, as an example, some things you might not know about. If you have a smart TV, you can access, and you're sick of all the shows on whatever apps you use, you might be able to download a Canopy or Hoopla app and get access to some new shows. Your library card also provides you 72-hour access to New York Times online. A lot of people don't know about that, so just throwing a few things out. And Owls also provides these really cool stickers that I thought I would share. The highlight of this year, usually there's one every year that this is the best sticker. This year, it's probably you can axolotl questions at the live broadcast.

I don't have that many of these, so you guys will have to fight for them.

And so far since like the last week in August, we've had about 430 people brand new to the library sign up for library cards, which since we've been in a year of signing up so many people, it's like, oh, that's not a huge amount, but that's really a fantastic amount for two and a half weeks.

Thanks, Owen. Thank you. Any questions for Owen, Peter, or Anne? It prompted a question in my mind when you mentioned ward students coming here. I remember when I was a kid growing up, we could utilize with our Appleton Health library card to go

Mud library, is it? Yeah. Is that still? Yeah, that's still a thing. We still provide courtesy card access. So essentially, if there's a resource that you can't find here that you could find there, we can basically fill out a form that would allow you to check out something at the Mud. OK. Thank you.

Your questions? Okay, with that, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved, Sean Cowan.

Yes, baby.

Say hi.

It's a second.

All right, all those in favor? All right, we are adjourned. Thanks, everybody.