Board of Library Trustees - Grafton Public Library - Regular Meeting

We'll um call this meeting to order at 7:01. So, happy new year everybody. It's already the end of January. [laughter] It's already like we're already a month in. Yes. Um hope everyone's been staying cold and enjoying the snow. If if you guys do enjoy the snow. Oh, I love the snow. Except I never I never envisioned shoveling a roof, but I have to shovel I have to shovel a roof. Anyway, um there's a lot of snow over there.

Yeah, exactly. Um so, Prau is not going to make it. He's out of town and um something came up with Rachel, so we still have the five of us and we still have a quorum. So, that's good. Um any other kind of just general announcements or anything comments from the board? All right. I I don't know. Were you gonna introduce? I would love to. Um everybody, this is Christina Modi Angola.

She's been with us for two weeks now, and I mean, I think she's been doing a wonderful job um getting to know the staff and getting to know the role [clears throat] and really picking up um everything that I'm putting down on her. So, [laughter] she's been a wonderful uh asset to the and she's been very helpful with getting this agenda and all that stuff put together, too. So, thank you for that. Yeah. And yeah, welcome aboard. And uh so, Mr. Chair, I did have one announcement. If you'd oblige me, of course,

just because of the timing. Um with the town election coming up, I will not be running for reelection in May. I've just kind of run out of time. It's been a great run. Um, but it's just one of those things where um I just don't have the uh time to commit to it with the level of uh you know tenacity and and such that that I knows my standard. So, [clears throat] um, so with that, I guess, um, I don't know how things are officially announced on the town clerk's website, but people can take out nomination papers, I think on Groundhog Day, the second of February.

So, Groundhog Day. And so, um, it's been a great run. It's been great working with all of you. And I'm not gone yet. I think we have four more meetings. So, yeah. Well, Roger, thank you for your service. And it's been great getting to know you better. Yes, we got some pickle ball. Yeah. Yeah, we [laughter] got to do some pickle ball. I'm not going away. Yes. In your tenure, you've contributed kind of as chair. I can't remember if you were vice chair. So, you've done a little bit of everything. I just jump right in. Just did you did right. Wow. That was So, we have what, four months to pile a lot of stuff on. Yeah. [laughter]

Yep. Let's do it. Let's do it. And I will um [clears throat] I will ask that the trustees start to socialize that we have an open position on the board too because um as much as we love Prabu and his contributions he was a right in because we couldn't find anybody in time for the election. So we did have a vacancy coming up to the last election. So as much as we can do like we have the luxury of almost kind of figuring out what skills we want on our board which is pretty cool. Um not a lot of boards get to do that. So, um, you know, start talking to your friends and neighbors, lovers of the library, or just skills we think if our staff, you know, have obviously like if there's somebody they know loves the library and, you know, wants to contribute, [clears throat] that would be great.

I'll definitely put that to them. And and I plan on putting it on my am I sounding old Facebook page. Um, and also, um, I'll put something on all things Grafton and Grafton Rise and, um, you know, just to to plug that opening. So who who else is up? That would be me. So So do you want to make an announcement? Are you ready to one way? I was not [laughter] pled to make an announcement. Yeah, that's okay. All right. No pressure. No, no pressure. No pressure. Yeah, there's still many months, right? Couple months. So Okay.

All right. Well, with that, then we will move on, start working through the agenda. We do not have any minutes to approve, so we will have probably [clears throat] two sets next month to approve, which is good, right? Um then the next is uh approving the bills. There are one, two, three, four, five, six. Mr. Chair, um I move that we um take up these uh warrants numbers 26 through 31 as a consent agenda. So that's a procedural motion. Yep. Motion made. Second and seconded. Um oh, sorry. Um, so do we, so are we taking meeting minutes? Yes. Okay. Terrific. Yeah. Great. Thank you.

Yeah, it's also being recorded. So, uh, motion made and seconded. Any discussion on the procedural motion? Yes. I thought and, um, at one of the last, uh, meetings, we had determined that we didn't need to have a consent agenda to approve them in in bulk. Um, but but I Yeah. All right. Um so but we we can certainly at this time I I think you weren't at that meeting. Okay. When we discussed it so we can certainly do it um this time around. There's no harm in it. Okay. And then we can double check on that. Um okay. Motion made and seconded. All in favor? I opposed. Declare the motion car.

Okay. Mr. Chair, I move um that we uh approve the following warrants and the following amounts as uh and with these sources contained in the meeting packet. Warrant number 26 for $3,212.93. Warrant number 27 in the amount of $2,3.36. Warrant number 28 for $1,96.65. Warrant number 29 for $4,995.75. Warrant number 30 for $6,52.18. And warrant number 31 in the amount of $3,868.91.

Second. Motion made and seconded. Any questions on any of the six warrants? They looked like they were all pretty standard expenses, typical expenses. All right, hearing none. Uh, all those in favor? I opposed. I [clears throat] declare the motion carried. [snorts] Um, ongoing business, the Grafton Public Library Capital campaign. Um, only a minor update from the campaign. Um, uh, Katrina put in a request for some small, they weren't small, but, um, for a few items, um, that the capital campaign approved. I think there was like a the all weather carpets, those water hog things,

three rugs, and, uh, some shelving for Heidi's office. Yeah, relatively relatively few. They've already made a huge difference in um the amount of stuff that gets tracked into the library. So, thank you. Great. [laughter] Great. Now, which office is this? So, the reference office, you know, the tiny little cubicle one uh right outside of the historic for the historical reading room. Yeah, that's um small, right? It's very small. Shelving is a great idea. So, I think it was originally supposed to get shelving and then maybe things got missed in the shuffle. So, um Yeah. And being such a small office, the shelving will help. I was surprised that it was an office. Yes.

Yeah. So, so just a quick question. So, um are the staff coming to you with hey, it would be or are you kind of soliciting feedback? Hey, what what can we do to to kind of make your your your workspace better? Yeah. So, this was part of uh my initial meeting with Heidi. Great. And it was also on the um the trustees document the punch list. I think I I I think I recall this has been was on the list for quite some time, but it just never got like approached again. Great. So, it was low hanging fruit because Heidi is so sweet and she doesn't want to ruffle any feathers or or or uh you know, be the squeaky wheel. So, good.

She does have a lot of things. She's always you dressing up for the different story times and sorry, the um the book reading groups. Yeah, the clubs. So, yeah. Great. So, thank you. And other than that, I don't I think that's the only update for the countdown campaign. Any other questions? Okay. Um, next would be the friends uh membership and update by Carrie.

Yeah. So, um, so since we met um, we had the friends board meeting which Katrina um, attended. So, thank you again. And um last night we actually had uh the a planning session for the spring egg hunt which is going to the friends is going to um run again on the graft in common on Saturday March 28th. Um there'll be three hunts again this year. So um there'll be um a a a sensory friendly one to start and then two of the larger hunts after that. So um very excited you know for for that. It's always a great event and um we get you have a lot of volunteers helping with that. So um and then also um the friends are preparing for um for February um some book bundle sales and also um a new idea which is really cute for Valentine's Day which is a blind date with book. Um, so there'll be some, you know, kind of cute, nicely wrapped, you know, books that have a little hint as to what they are and it's up under here again for the the friends, you know, supporting the library as well. So, um, but yeah, but those are really the major activities that the friends are are doing. So,

great. Um, so no no um like activities uh in the winter for like in the past they've done that golf thing. I mean this was many years ago but um so no [snorts] active programs like that planned. Um definitely has been talk about doing um another you know one of those like type of activities, but the two immediate ones are definitely the um in February the you know the the you know the the bundles and the um blind date with book and then u March 28th um Easter is um you know it's early and usually the spring egg hunt is um you you before um before Easter. So, um it's, you know, it's a it's a very big activity. We've talked about um eggs like

uh there's 5,000 eggs that need to be filled for the event. So, um we get um you know, National Honor Society and typically Boy Scouts, which actually I wanted to mention to Aaron, um because usually the the Boy Scouts help out on the on the day, which is is wonderful. So, um there's, you know, procuring um you know, everything for the hunt. Um also, um coordinating with um our uh children's room. O um touched base with Sarah Banister and there'll be activities in the library and weather permitting um uh hopefully on the front lawn of the library as well. Last year we had a little bit snowstorm so that didn't work exactly the way [laughter] we envisioned but um but there will be activities in the library as well. Great.

All right. Any other questions? Yeah. So um you you said membership also. Did you want to talk about board membership? Oh yeah, friends membership. That's what it said on the agenda. Kind of a typo for I didn't I didn't list I mean

it's a it's a great mention because this time of year uh is when we usually um will reup our membership with the friends uh individual memberships as um you know a partnership with the friends and the support that they give us and the board. Um we want to make sure that we're members in good standing of the friends so that we can also uh go to their board meetings as well. Sorry, their annual meetings

um you know as as um patrons who are friends members. So rather than them trying to track us down individually uh we had discussed uh just becoming members at the same time every year so that we wouldn't have to figure out when oh is my membership of I don't know who who do I reach out to. So, we just decided as as a board we would renew um December January time frame. So, u that's a great reminder. I'm glad it was written that way because that means I need to reup.

Yeah. And I think that's a great idea. I typically renew at the annual meeting. So, um so I I did renew then, but if anybody, you know, needs to renew, you know, that's um obviously wonderful and you know, it's very much appreciated. there are very reasonable memberships and also you know some a lot of people um will just very generously donate you know a larger amount so yeah but thank you great thanks for the reminder I don't because I don't think we get reminders from the organization it's been difficult and they and it's a cost for them to [clears throat] send out the form you know when we just do it online anyways

yeah um they didn't mention [clears throat] it the last one but um typically around this time of year they they do work on a mailing Okay. So, I just encourage everyone to see when you renewed and renew if you haven't. Great. Um, thank you for that. Um, the next uh item is missing meeting minutes by Katrina.

Yeah, I just wanted to give you an update on that. So Christine and I are working on um watching the old meeting minutes from 2023 and 2024 that have been recorded but we don't have records for so that we can make the minutes and then bring them to the board for approval. Um I took some time to look through our um shares drive and the library to see if I could dig up some of the older minutes with no success. So, and I did look through um all of the kind of paper files that are in my office as well. So,

um my due diligence was done on that with no luck, especially for those 2016 and 2017 dates. 2016. And the funny thing about 2016 and 2017 is that they were once on the server, but our server crashed as far as the GCTV server. We lost thousands of hours worth of meetings and um And so that's why you know anytime we want to rely on technology we need to do it quickly. And so, and then the other thing about 23 and 24 is that

um when I was chair, one of my habits, and I think I shared this with you, is that if I made the agenda and even if the um minutes weren't uh done, and I knew in advance of the meeting that certain minutes weren't done, I would just keep on piling them on as a placeholder. But then once they disappeared that was sort of an internal note that at some point we approved them.

And so the question becomes did you look at the agendas to see where I may have listed or whoever was running the meeting. I was chair during a year during that time where if the meeting minutes were on the agenda to be approved then they disappeared. the following meeting, it means that somewhere during that meeting, we approve them. And it's possible that they didn't get submitted to the town clerk. But what you're saying is that you can't even find anything internally. I can't find anything. All right. Because I did find a few of those examples where I saw that they were approved, so the draft existed somewhere, but I think I found some of them. Oh, good.

But that's why we should circle back. Yeah. Okay. um see and I know there was a large group that were um policy committee meeting minutes and I had reached out to when I ran into um Debbie last week I asked her to check so she was going to check her computer just to see if they happen to be there because she was the scribe at the time but I haven't heard back from her I have not talked to Debbie yeah I haven't I mean I haven't heard back from her since then but you might want to check in with her and so my my reference to 23 would have been before my tenure year and so which was in May of 23 and I recall that there were some that were early in 23, right? Like January, February, March. Yes. Yeah.

Okay. There are a couple from January and February. Okay. Right. Well, it is an ongoing battle especially for those old ones. So certainly um let's try to make sure that at least for this year moving forward that we can try to keep track of everything whether it's the policy committee meeting or this larger meeting. Sounds good. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Thanks for doing that because that's a little bit of a pain. Um and someone will have fun watching some old movies [laughter] about our history. Yeah. Let us know if you

She threatened to leave me earlier. [laughter] Well, keep in mind that they are recorded and people can always view the recording. So, the minutes don't have to be super detailed. Um, you know, we want to capture the key points, of course. Um, but some of our previous scribes were very um, what's the right word? Meticulous. Meticulous. And they were great, very detailed minutes, but you don't always have to be that detailed. Right. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things too is that I think that um that gets lost in the shuffle is that we kind of beat ourselves up sometimes trying to be overly detailed and and minutes were never meant to be a playbyplay verbatim

and uh was just meant to primarily just give a highle overview and and record the votes and um you know sometimes they can get cumbersome. They shouldn't be like dozens of pages long. It's not a It's not a a uh transcription. So what we need is we need graph and cable to use AI and yeah provide an AI summary. Yeah. So and then we can start with that. So I was going to bring it up. There are actually I think Google Gemini if you give it a video it'll give you a summary. But I've tried it and like you almost have to be a member of the meeting to to to validate the accuracy of what you're reading which is difficult.

That's true. But if you can get a trans like a a transcript because transcripts do often show up along the side of some like teams does great job. They do it does do a great job. So we could rather than a rather than a summary maybe you could get a transcript and then plug it into AI and have it make meeting minutes. Yes. Yes. That would be that would probably be the right way to do it. The dream. Okay. [laughter]

All right. Thank you. And then I owe the committee two sets of executive session minutes. I will have I promised them this month. I guess I lied, right? But I'll have them in February. U it was uh the executive session where we discuss uh upcoming director during the director search. Yeah, director search. So Okay, great. Um but it'll be awesome to have uh Christine keeping track of this moving forward. Okay. Um, next, the walkabout. I'm assuming the walkabout was not done in the, uh, uh, I actually went by today because I figured it would be worthwhile doing it in the snow. Okay. And I have a couple pieces from December. So,

okay, great. Yeah. Uh, so, in general, I one of the reason was to check the snow clearing, which is actually I thought was phenomenal. Um, it was really, really, really pretty good. Um, one thing to keep an eye on in the future that I noticed that some a lot of the downspouts are covered by snow because there's so much um, just as things th out. And then the main entrance, so not the little pull through by the bookdrop, but the main entrance is probably a little narrow for two cars. But that being said, the snowbank on my right hand side as I came out was probably 10 ft tall. So I'm not sure where it's going to go. Um, something worth noting.

Um, the temperatures in the main part of the library, which had historically had issues and that they were placed bunch transponders, continue to look really good. The historic reading room was a little bit on the lower side. I suspect that you already have noted that. um when you mentioned about the um uh invoices for those. So that may be a known thing and has come on. Um the uh there was one of the front the very front study room above the main entrance. So those two smaller ones. Um there was looked like there was a some electrical work or something done. There was some paint that could be used for a patch there. Um and then uh the EV chargers have been out. Um but I know that those are also really finicky to fix.

Um I know had trouble with that uh in the fall. Um so that may or may not be fixable and I think was already on the list. Um I think that was the main pieces. The poles have been painted and I thought looked good and I know that that has been for a little while now. Um but not something that's come up. So that looks good. Um yeah, those are the main pieces. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Poles. Do you mean the blue? So there was the there was like the stain I don't know if it actually was stainless but there was like a met a raw metal pole like so you can't drive through the entrance of the library. Oh and they got and at one I think it was the November meeting we approved painting them yellow. I can't remember which fall meeting it was. Yeah. Right.

There was a walkth through by the the DPW or some town and that was one of their recommendations was to paint it yellow like elsewhere in town. It looked pretty good. So and they have been painted so great. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. All right. So, moving on to new business. Um, it looks like all of these are Katrina. Um, so we can start with the SWAT. Yeah. For those of you not familiar with it, that's gosh, strengths, weaknesses, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Threats. So the intent here was to have um Katrina well think about those four categories um and thinking that it would be an idea for the trustees and for the um future work on the strategic plan if there are certain areas that we wanted to focus on. Uh yeah. So I didn't know I'm assuming that you do not want me to go line by line through all of this. Does any did everybody have an opportunity to take a look? It was in the meeting packet. It's an excellent job. Um I think you did a very good job summarizing where we're at. Thank you.

So maybe what we do if people didn't get a chance to read it through in detail, which guessing they probably didn't, we can. I I did and I I just had a couple of questions. I like how this is broken up, you know, as far as um it's it's an easy read and it it breaks things down as um sort of punch list for lack of a better term. Um regarding um internal weaknesses, number six as far as marketing efforts, um

do we have internal expertise on web stuff or marketing? Um, as far as social media, I'm not sure other than social media what marketing efforts we really uh uh do. Um, back in the day, there'd be mailings and other more archaic forms of communication, but do what is our internal expertise regarding uh social media? I don't know that there's expertise per per se. So, proficiency. Yeah, [laughter]

I think that there's proficiency. I think that um there's not a sort of peace meal. So, the I think the children's department will post as needed. the borrower services and reference will post as needed, but there's no overarching strategy um to any of it. And in my experience, it's more effective if everybody's working together as a team on a long-term strategy um so that you know, especially with social media, you have to be posting regularly in order to keep your um footprint on, you know, all of your followers. So,

um it's something that I would very much like to uh implement thoughtfully. I know Debbie was doing a lot of posting for like a little while ago. Um it would be I think maybe good to like touch base with her. Yep. Yep. Definitely. I'd love to form, you know, not only a Facebook plan, but a Tik Tok and an Instagram plan as well as um maybe more of a newsletter, constant contact. um presence mailings if we can and coming up in another thing is the website. So, [laughter] all right.

Do the um do the department heads have that in their job description? Like presumably they would be responsible for their individual groups kind of marketing efforts. I don't know what it says specifically about. I'll have to look into that. Yeah. I mean, I agree there should be an overarching person, too, but it seems like each each department should kind of have their own plan on how they're going to reach out to their community, whether it's Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Definitely. And they do um you know, in advance of like the summer programming they put together like the kind of I don't know if you call it a brochure or the calendar. Um so that's a big push, you know, to communicate because that goes out to all the Grafton school children and I'm not sure what additional outreach they do, but

yeah. So, but you're right, like having an overarching strategy is a wonderful idea. Thank you. Then as far as staff development, I know oftentimes there's like a large swath a group group where there'll be staff development and there'll be a larger group, but for whoever may be willing and designated to sort of keep up on these marketing efforts, having maybe small group staff development on these media and marketing and web design, not web design, but I guess um that all comes into play. But um you know, social media, so um

I think the library does a pretty good job at least [clears throat] on Facebook and Instagram. I mean, I see them posting um events coming up, references to the li uh to the calendar and different events there. Okay. Yeah, it it they library does a good job. My frustration has been in the last few years um I get whatever algorithms are are going on. I I'll see things like five days postfact. [laughter] I was like, what what's going on? You know, and so I don't know what's going on there, but um and that's through no fault of the library, you know, that I'll say, "Oh, I wish I had seen this five days ago or whatever."

Um under opportunities on the uh final page on external leverage leveraging grants and partnerships. um as a municipality, as a library, we certainly have access to certain grant opportunities, but as a town, we're not a nonprofit. So, I think of uh like the friends or or even the capital campaign that may have access to grant opportunities that the town does not just because it's not a

nonp you know it's not a nonprofit. And so, um you know, just just to throw that out there. I don't know um you know Carrie uh as far as you know whether the friends pursue those heard of the friends pursuing grant opportunities. So, that's a great idea. If there are some um we should we should try more, but yeah, I've Yeah, I definitely haven't heard of us getting from the front, right? I know I know in the past the director has found opportunities and the trustees have helped out like with the Koopa. We had that grant for the Koopa. So,

um certainly if you encounter any grants that you might need help applying for, um you can bring that to this group. Wonderful. Right. And then um that's it. Thank you. Okay. Um I know it's a pretty I mean it's great. You've put a really nice document together. Um if we can have if you guys did not get a chance to look through it, we can have a agenda item next month if there are any questions or comments on it as well. Sure. Okay. Thank you for that. Um next would be website proposals.

Sure. So, it's my understanding that Tom was working on um updating the website. He had reached out to this revise folks um which is the second proposal in the list. Um, and I had reached out to my director cohort um, in other Massachusetts libraries to see who they had worked with that they really liked and uh, contacted a few people um, to, you know, kind of understand what they what services they offered and how much money they cost and all of that um which is part of I was speaking with William the other day and that's part of the procurement process. So, we're good on that. Um, I would like to propose if the board is um interested in going and still going ahead with website redevelopment going with um Evan [clears throat] Barta of EVPRI

and that's the first one listed in the package which it's a lower price than the second one.

It is much lower um but not for a lack of quality. So this he actually comes highly recommended by um a director, my mentor, somebody that I trust. Um he's done a number of websites, library specific websites in the area. He's actually a library director in Warwick, Rhode Island. So he's familiar with the needs of libraries specifically and very intimate. Um, we had a long conversation about ADA compliance and remediation. He's going to be rolling out a service shortly because um, I'm not sure you might be aware that the laws are changing in Massachusetts for municipalities um, in terms of accessibility standards. And so all of the PDF documents that we have on our website are not going to be um in line with the new laws pretty soon. So that is uh top of mind for him in terms of making sure that um websites are in compliance. um as well as the usual you know usability studies and access you know easy to use for users essentially. So, um I don't know thoughts, questions.

I um I have a uh uh some comments and and a question. Thank you for uh you know proceeding with this. Uh cities and towns under 50,000 have to be in compliance with title 2 of ADA by April 24th of 27. So, we have a little time to play with not a lot. And I like the time frame that uh they uh both Evan and Stephanie [snorts] um have uh laid out that that it it's doable and we're tackling it with a decent amount of time. One of the things that I had done, I took the liberty this afternoon to speak with Christy Proctor. She's a fellow accessibility advisory commission member in town and is also director of student accessibility services and assist of technology at Quinc Sigman Community College in Worcester and they've been using uh the Drupal uh platform for like three to four years and they love it.

Okay. And so, uh, one of the things that I had asked her about is [snorts] there was some wording and some articles out there that there was significant learning curve to this platform.

And that, and this may be actually probably will be tied into the other agenda item about freeing up different services and the whole idea of having a page. I said, "What are we talking about?" Well, her um uh advice was that there would need to be a a staff uh member to upload content. Content would need to be accessible before it goes up on the site and that on the front end of things that it may take half of an FTE to to just be focused um on this task and getting things up to speed. And once things are up to speed, probably a quarter of an FTE.

That's that FTE is like within the library. Within the library. Yeah. And so, uh, whoever is the most techsavvy. Um, I I mean ideally it would be someone within the library, but um, it would need to be someone to really get this done right. It would need to be someone that would be focused on that. And that was um her estimate of the time that uh from based on their experience in rolling it out at Quincig how much it would you know how much um resources it would take. So

um and then the other thing is that uh as far as uh the this is an overview about uh but the details of um remediating issues and how how do they define remediation? um how do they train people and and and what uh what time frame and hours would be required of that and like who fixes things. So, Mhm.

Um, so this is like an overview, but I'm I'm sure that that there'll be some more fine print. But, um, I I I think this is a a good time that we're killing two birds with one stone where we were talking about an overhaul, but we would be forced with the ADA overhaul anyway. So, I I think it's good timing that we tackle it all at once. Mhm. And so um and I I think your recommendation is a good one. Thank you. So I do have some responses to your concern. So um while I know that Drupal does take uh it is a steep learning curve.

He he creates a content management system that is very easy for staff to and intuitive for staff to use. So, um it's not like we're diving into code and right, you know, managing the CSS or anything like that. It's really a very, um he did take some time to show me the content management system on the back end. It's very simple. It's very intuitive, right?

It's um even easier honestly than what we have right now, which is WordPressbased. Um, so I think that the time the most of the time upfront is going to be porting over the information that exists on our website to the new content management system, which he will assist with. He won't do all of it, but he will assist with.

Um, I've already reached out to staff and gathered a website team who are interested in helping me to do that work. This is actually my wheelhouse. Redesigned a few websites and this that [laughter] was because this is a graph and public library website development team. I was like, were those his words or did you have input? I was like, who are these people that are going [laughter] to be the team? So, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. No, so and I'm glad it's your wheelhouse because this

um a lot some people it really struggle with technology. So, um that this is something that is you're tackling with such enthusiasm is is uh really good to hear. So, I would be Yeah, I'm excited to do it. So, I noticed in the in the information you also included hosting. Who hosts our current website? So, um I can't remember the name. Would we move away from that hosting or We would move away from him. Okay. Yeah. What's the current Do you know what our current cost is? What the what the current hosting cost? the curring ho. Uh, I do not.

So, the the current the person who developed the current website is also the one that's hosting it. Correct. Oh, I'm sorry. It's um it's $80 a month and it's paid. Oh, it'll be less because this is a Yeah, I did look at that. I [snorts] didn't realize that they are both the developer and the hoster host and their certificate says bedfordl.org on our website. So, there you go. Yeah. Is there Yep. So, anyways, um Yeah, I I think I think the hosting cost is is smart and it provides you guys um you know, they don't just hand it over to you and say good luck.

So, um you know, I did I did take a look at the other proposal and I did like that they you know, it's more expensive, but they you know, they had a five-year plan, which was pretty cool. Um and that they would offer to do a redesign because that's kind of where we are now is like, well, we need a redesign. So, are we going to in five years are we going to have to do this project again or are is the web team right at the Grafton Public Library [snorts]

uh going to be empowered enough to be able to keep our site modern, right? Because Drupal is a pretty modern platform. I don't know a lot about it, but I'm assuming so that it would be something that um you know we as long as we keep paying the hosting fee and have that that support we could persist 5 10 more years as long as the technology is relevant. Yeah. Is that accurate? You think?

I think it is accurate. Okay. Yeah. Um, I can't speak to Evans uh style or um modus operandi, but in my experience with library uh plat like website platforms um the hosts are in my experience more than willing to look at rebrands or redesigns on a smaller scale um [clears throat] as needed. Mhm. So, I can certainly reach out to him and see if that's something that Well, no, it's just more of a general comment. Um,

but it does look like they'll do billable work for us too if they find whatever we're asking for support is out of scope. Um, so that's good. Yeah. I mean, there's a comment. It says large overhauls to say contact or functionality after launch plus three months will be build at $60 an hour. Quotes will be pro before any work is completed. So, yeah, it does indicate that. Yeah. And have we given the current host um of our WordPress site an opportunity or no? No. Um because he works solely with WordPress and I wanted to move away from that. Okay. Great answer. Thank you. And I noticed the second quote has all these kind of add-ons,

you know, email notification. Are any of those things features we want to have in the new one? And does the other guy support that? It's not anything that I was um I don't think we needed. Okay. Yeah. I think they were bells and whistles that were unnecessary. So, you're looking for the board to approve funding for what's the name of this thing? It's got a strange name right here. PB R I P R I. So, that I think that's his initials, right? because Rhode Island. Yeah.

Okay. Um I'll make a motion to uh fund the website project um with E Bri. You got it. Correct. Um in the amount of um just remind me, is it $4,500? Uh $4,500 uh for the uh website uh project. Um, and I don't think we need to discuss hosting fees. Yeah, I'll second the motion. Okay, great. Uh, motion made and seconded. Any other discussion or questions? Funding source um, with state aid. Thank you. Okay,

other questions. That's great. I mean, we've been talking about a website redesign for years now, so it'll be nice to see this thing go forward. My only comment is is please remember the friends when you know because there is a page like there is a link kind of for the friends. So um just absolutely and um and I think if there's I think they're willing like they would like to work cooperatively with the the library. So like you know if there's any extra fee or anything I would you know you kind of bring it to them but um but they'll be very excited to Great that you selected somebody. So wonderful. Yeah. So, are you are you asking Carrie for All right. So, the friend's website is really not part of this, is it?

Well, there it's it kind of is. It's like I believe it's a do it's a separate domain though. Youoo you host your own site, right? The friends or the friends too? Friendsgpl.org. But it was the same developer. It was WordPress. Um, so maybe Oh, yeah. I was and it but it's it's um it's not something that they can easily change like it's always been a challenge. Um but is there any reason why the friends can't keep that and just update the links in the new

I think that they would like to redesign their page um and and be consistent with what the libraries do. So, um I think we should brace it at the next, you know, discuss it at the next sure meeting. Um I can I can email them and let them know, but um but yeah, I think they would like to work, you know, cooperatively and um if there's, you know, Yeah. And I think they would be willing to fund their share, but we want to make sure that it links in. Yeah, definitely. All right, cool. Makes sense to me. Great. Any other questions or discussion? Yes. So, the hosting fee will just come out of the the budgeted funds for the website and it's less so. Correct. Excellent. Save a little money.

Okay. All right. Uh, no other discussion. I'll do a vote by not roll call. Um, all in favor? I opposed. I'll declare the motion carried. Thank you. Thank you for that. Uh, next up is SharePoint.

Yeah. So, I wanted to bring this up um in light of our uh minute debacle. So, I made the policy committee a guinea pig. The town uses um Microsoft SharePoint to organize its um documents. And I created a policy subcommittee SharePoint site that houses all of our or will house all of our agendas and meeting minutes and policies that we're working on and finished policies etc etc. And I was wondering if that would be of interest to the board um to have a separate SharePoint site that houses all of our agendas and meeting minutes and related documents. And that way when scribes move on or um and their email gets deleted and we no longer have access to it, we still have all of the documents. They belong to the town. They're on the town server and everybody has access to them all the time. Um I I'll let Erin speak to this because he's the one who has to deal with the two-factor authentication, but it does require um a little bit of work on the back end where we've got to get it to add everybody's emails individually onto the site and then you've got to set up two-factor authentication in order to get onto the SharePoint site itself. So

and then how would we manage the coming and going of the trustees for example? So it's it's as simple as just uh having it add or delete emails. Is there any possibility to have someone as another owner that could do that as opposed to it? I mean normally SharePoint you can assign an owner. Maybe that's you you know someone in the library. I am an owner. I am the owner. Um

oh this maybe this is too much in the details. Yeah. I do think that it require well so whoever has admin access to the town's SharePoint site has the ability to um to add and delete users. So is this more um sort of working documents because for for historic purposes any department or or um not department but committee

that when we go on the town website or uh when we're looking for meeting minutes and then under the new way of it it shows all right is the agenda posted or did the minutes come in and then is little TV icon is it recorded. So this would duplicate the hard documents but then it would I guess primarily serve as a repository for like working documents. I that that's my hope. Yeah. Okay. Couldn't it be both though? I mean like it's kind of like a backup [snorts] because if they got lost on the town website like because that's what happened before because they were all submitted before and they disappeared. So

yeah, certainly there's the agendas, there's the policy stuff, but there's other, you know, we we came up with an onboarding plan for Katrina.

Yeah. So for I think the question you asked the board is there value in this, right? And I would and that's what I want to pick apart, right? So um we have posted agendas. No, no value putting them in SharePoint. Um and meeting minutes, right? Posted meeting minutes. No value there. So what is it that we would want access to, you know, and I think you hit it right on the head is working documents, right? So anything that the board is working with the director on um you know this this anything that we're posting here um we're working on individually because if we work on something as a board, it has to be publicly, right? Uh done and worked on publicly, right? in public session. So, I think there's there's certainly value for the policy subcommittee, right? Because that just to have a repository of the most up-to-date documents, right? Because we make revisions all the time. SharePoint is awesome about having a revision history

um because I don't often know which, you know, copy of the document I'm working on. But, um, you know, I think as a repository so things don't get lost, I think that's a perfect reason to have one for the board. I don't know how active any of us will be on that though. It's more for, you know, library purposes to to um and you guys have always had some repository for board library board stuff. It would used to be Google Drive, right? But I don't know that I ever had access to that. So now we're talking about opening up access to trustees,

right? But again, like you know, I guess like we go back to the the missing meeting minutes. Like I mean, I'm kind of surprised that those disappear like they were. But that's not for you and I. That's for for the library staff to be posting somewhere. But but when we have turnover, you know, like if we know that everything is there, even if we have turnover in any of [snorts] the positions, then we'll have access. But there's Yeah. There's no reason why um Christine can't have the document sitting in the trustee space as a draft. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. But we don't need to be looking at draft stuff, you know, as things are getting worked on. Right. Right. Yeah. But down the road if we ever need to look for something, all of it's going to be in that one.

Yeah. So, we could be like, oh, like if we if we got this like, oh, your meeting minutes are missing. At least we like, well, it's at least it's there on it should be there on that shared repository. I think it's a great idea and I I support it. I just don't know that how active we're going to be in there. We're not gonna be very active. Um, but it's Yeah, I mean I think it's a good idea and you should because the only thing basically would be more or less policy subcommittee stuff, right? Oh yeah. And it' be 99% of it, right? But but like Doug said, we do the goal, we do the goals or we do the the onboarding. Onboarding plan. Yeah. Like when we did the interview

and then in two years or No, no. In the future when you move on, you know, and someone has to do a new onboarding plan, it's going to be sitting there or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Not that you're going to be here you're going to be here forever retire. [laughter] I'm going to retire in draft. Yeah. We hope so. Anyway,

yeah, I agree. I think um if we could start gathering all the board stuff and and have it in one location. Um, okay. But to to the question I think you wanted me to address was um with the process for getting in and I think it was very mic Microsoft heavy in terms of making you download the Microsoft authenticator and using the push notifications because they don't offer like text messages or email um two-factor. So you have to download an authenticator app. you might be able to get away with Google or your your favorite authenticator. Um, but it forced me kind of into using Microsoft. It wasn't terrible. I did it all on my phone while I was on vacation. So, okay. He did it on vacation.

I was I was waiting in line for the the Seven Dwarfs mine cart ride and it was [laughter] unbearably hot and the kids were like playing with the gems and like I don't know. I was just like I want to read your memoirs. Yeah. [laughter] I was about to pass out. It was so hot in there. But yeah, I got in. So yeah, I don't I don't think we need a vote on this. No, no, I don't think I have one question. Um, so I'm completely supportive. I think clearly you coming on board, you probably have identified a need here and so I'm fully supportive of that. I think SharePoint's fine. Um, I use Duo and Microsoft uh authenticator apps for it. So you can use multiple different ones. The one question I have is I'm curious. So we've been talking about kind of board documents and things of that sort.

I imagine because I think the library is typically on the Google suite. Is that true? So the town moved away from Google. Y we I'm trying to I'm trying to personally move towards what the town is using. So we're sort of straddling both. Okay. Um, so maybe this, so my question was going to be if there's a need for this outside of just kind of board documents if there is a there's a need for kind of additional ways to perpetually store work product from, you know, even if it's not necessarily boards, but employees as they move on. um doesn't necessarily need to be lumped in with this decision, but you know, if we're seeing this is a pro, this is a need now for these,

is it also a need for other pieces when we lose access to emails and things of that sort. So, that's all I would ask, but I think this is a great idea. Um particularly if you think it's a need. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. [snorts] Um next up is building repairs funding. Okay. So, Doug, this is related to our conversation that we had with William yesterday. Um, oh, of course, I'm making notes. I don't know how you want to handle this because it was such a short turnaround time. I didn't get an opportunity to send the document that William sent me out to the board. Do we have like the were the invoices in the report?

I have the invoices here. Okay. They're not. Um, and I'm happy to pass this around. I don't know how you I would just say that anything that we review needs to go into the um correct to the to the you have to add that whatever afterward. I can absolutely. So, you can hand that. So, I'm a little nervous. What is [laughter] Yeah, just just one copy or multiple. Okay.

There. One copy. Um, so the the library has a number of long-term uh major building repairs that I'm sure many of them are not going to be a surprise to you. Um, for instance, as Chris mentioned, the HVAC um, system. So H5 is a unit on the building that is no longer um connected to the um mini splits in the historical reading room which is why the historical reading room hovers at around 59 degrees. Um it's basically unusable. Uh, so we're working with Renard and actually I'm bringing in the building inspector and she is helping me to um identify a longerterm solution for that room rather than just keep replacing the mini splits as they

So did it break? Like was it connected and then it or just wasn't designed? Uh my understanding for this time is that there's a leak in the pipe somewhere and they want to fix this leak, but I think I mean you you all know what's happened over the years. They're they've replaced the mini splits three times. Um they keep breaking because they're too small for the room, the space that they're in. I'm going to share that. And there needs to be a larger is is this the same document that's in your uh monthly report the 36,000?

Yeah. So it's this is a different document, but this is this was what I'm trying to present to you. This is summarizing all of the things. Yes. [snorts]

Um so that's one example of all of the repairs that are happening or will be happening over the next few months. The other big thing is um our water heater is going. We had uh the plumber come in, take apart the water heater and pull out all kinds of silt. Um the water heater is so scaled that he says it's six months before it fails. And if we don't install a filtration system into the library um on a uh what's the word? It's not residential, but mean commercial

commercial scale. Thank you.

Um, on a commercial scale, the next water heater that we replace the current with one with will fail eventually. So, that's going to be a huge cost that needs to be addressed. Um so there above and beyond what we have appropriated for regular building and repairs. We have sort of these largecale issues that need to be addressed. Um the we've gotten I got the go-ahad from William and Evan to do the repairs that have come in and they've been paying for them out of a separate municipal fund for the town administrative build administrative building. Um yesterday, uh Rachel and Doug and William and I and Evan had a conversation around this about um bringing it to the trustees to see if you would be willing to uh set aside a certain amount of money um for me to take care of these kinds of issues as they come up. So, not all of this has been build. I haven't gone ahead with a lot of these things. Um, we're still working on the HVAC situation. We're still working on the filtration system. We haven't gotten the quote yet from the plumber. Um, I haven't gotten the second opinion yet from the other HVAC company that the building inspector brought in, but I imagine these are going to be pretty big ticket items. So, um, and if and we've already expended all of our our building and repair funds. It's it's gone. The leads account is gone.

So, the leads, when did we finally expend all the moneyies in the leads account? It was recently. Um, I think right around the time that I came on board. Okay. Because um the finance director shut it down when when Eileen and I were trying to pay a bill from it. She's like, "All right, there's no more money in there." So, and I had asked um them to get us kind of a list of items that you know, like a list of the balance and stuff to see what just to see, but they they said they expended that at the end of last year towards the end of last year.

So, the 36,000 that's on in the packet has like so the filtration system to be determined. So the Smith invoices that are there that to that totals the 12,000 but then there's going to be more. Uh so the the the Smith invoice that's in that packet was for his repair of the existing water heater. So that's and it comes to 12,000. I saw 7,000. I saw 5,000. That doesn't even that's not even in this one. [laughter] So I I have a question for you. Yeah. Let's let's go for um Roger first. Yeah. First,

I it has to do with and and this may be nuanced that um and and I'll I'll think of the school department. they have a lot of buildings and and we go to town meeting and there's a roof issue or there's a boiler issue and I I remember in recent years where there's been a big um expense regarding let's say a boiler or a heater or an HVAC system where it becomes part of the cat town's capital budget

and uh I don't know what that threshold is um as far as the dollar amount and you know its usable lifespan about how the town defines what a capital budget is to be part of that list because there must be some threshold where it becomes too great to be considered just regular operational and um especially where we've identified some of these larger items. Might there be some of these items that are one and done? I think yeah, but if there are also ones that are larger and that we keep on bandating them and we'll be eventually spending some big money on them. So I I would like to see what um what the parameters are of what we would keep within our budgetary items and what would be extracted in part of the uh capital the town's capital plan and there's always this laundry list that adds up to this bottom line figure

uh at spring or fall town meeting. I think it's spring town meeting. snow. Yeah. I I don't know if any of these would fall under capital though, right? Except for maybe the water heater. Well, except for the ones that say TBD.

But the thing is is that I I thought that the threshold is $10,000. But I'm I'm sure there have been departments or buildings where they put a laundry list together of like items and called it one capital item. It didn't have to be every single line was separately 10,000, but they were all related to

keeping either repairing systems or keeping them online where the total added up to whatever that threshold was. And I think we've probably reached a point where where it shouldn't be part of the operational budget if if we're expecting that it's a a big repair. So, can you can you clarify um so when we talked to Evan and William last night, there was this $24,000 memo. And that's for items that have have already been completed.

They've already been So that's the total sum of the invoices in that packet that's in your hands. And is that reflected in the Some of them are, but not all. Some of them are, but not all of them. This says there are currently four invoices pending for maintenance work. So that makes it sound like the maintenance work has not been done yet. No, those have been completed. Okay. The barnyard, the Bernard roofing for necessary repair work to address leaks and installation of additional copper. Yeah, I didn't even get a chance to add that to the list. This was a little older. But um did this arise in part out or in whole out of the facilities assessment committee work? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think these are all just items that have been okay ongoing. Yeah. Okay.

I think maybe the bottom two might have, right? Okay. Yes. Yeah. So, um I just want to try to clarify what you're looking for the board to provide funding for tonight versus other items because the normal normal routine Katrina asked about, you know, allowing the having the trustees give her authority to have some kind of pool of money that she doesn't have to come back to this committee for, right?

But the normal process would still be coming to this committee getting approval for spending the state aid. But in cases where something needs to get done, you know, between the month, we don't want to have an emergency meeting, that would allow her to to kind of approve those expenses right away. But that seems separate from this, right? This is the the town administrator. They've already expended the $24,769. They're looking for the board to approve funding that. Correct. Okay. And we're asking for even more than that because there's some items some items in there that aren't on here and vice versa. Right. So, correct. Right. So, so so this isn't a future expense. You're saying 24,000 has already been

it's already been exped and there's four of them. There's the Encore fire protection for 8505. So, two of those items are on this list on the computer. Um roofing for 8550. Um, Smith Plumbing for a little over 5,000 and then Renard for 2703. So, yeah, those aren't I don't see this was was more because there was more than one invoice for Smith. Yeah. Um, so I think we should separate the two and we should work on this 24,000 first. Sure. Um, may I see that please?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Uh, if you're ready to make a motion, B. No, no, no. I'm just I was just going to reread these things. Right. So, the four expenses, did I already read through all four of them? I didn't. So, I'll let you look at them. So, it's 127 of 26 from the town administrator. the because I do um think we should consider what Roger's talking about for some of these major expenses like the heating situation in the historical section. Let's just say that ends up being $50,000.

I mean, that's something that, you know, we don't want to spend state aid on. That should be something that we should look at other ways to spend that fund that situation. I agree. Or the filtration system for water. I mean those [snorts] are those are more like a capital expense in my in my opinion. Um so as far as the memorandum of agreement um um town administrator is referring to um the care and custody is thought it was it was joint. He's saying that it's to his office, but I mean I I think that the idea was for it to be a partnership. Partnership, but it gave them the authority the authority to Yeah. to work through work on the separate,

especially where they they're drawing from that maintenance account. Well, that's the municipal maintenance account that they're talking about. They want us to approve funding to move state aid money into that municipal account to pay back those 24,000. Are there any restrictions on how state aid money is spent? I don't think so. As far as those four items, although we have other potential funding sources we have um we could look at the trusts that we have control over, right? I looked at those. Um I don't know if those might be a think something we think about for other expenses. Maybe not this one

if they need a decision tonight. So is state aid money is that the pool of money that if we didn't spend it would carry over? Yep. Yeah. We don't lose that money. Right. And we had we had uh what's the right word? We hadn't spent much of that for a number of years in anticipation of using it for funding a lot of the renovation type project. So do we know what the state aid balance is? I do. It's right there in the somewhere. It's right there in your packet. Oh, which page is that on? Do you have a page number? Two. Two. Yes. I think we've got

So, I I think we can probably work it we can should continue to work this list over the next few meetings. Right. Uh just to do it in bite-sized chunks. Anything that's needs, you know, is emergency or needs to be paid now, certainly the ones which Evan pointed out, I think we can figure out a funding source and take care of that. Um I agree with everything on that list. I I looked it over rather closely and um you know the filter is sorry the list of this four items or that big list the big list you know so talking about working on over the next few months right um you know certainly anything that has already been done we need to pay for it. Um

but the the the filtration the filter system is so smart. Um, I have a I mean they're in town water though, right? Yeah. It's interesting, but I have a well at home and I had to deal with a water heater that just kind of cruded up and, you know, replace the whole thing. So, that's probably what's happening to the library. I'm surprised that the town water just is um so scaly that surprises me, too. Especially it's four, you know, whatever. It's four or five years old. It's not that old. Yeah. I mean, but they looked at it and they said it's it's it's nasty and needs to be replaced. So, um I saw the inside of it. Yeah. It was bad.

Yeah. So, are they actually descaling it? It says that they descaled the water and they fixed it. So, of water heater. Yeah. Yeah. So, so is it clean? And could do we need to replace the water heater or just add the filtration system? Both. So, he um he opened up the water heater. Because it was broken, right? Because it was Yes, it was an issue. It was broken. It was That was related to when the fire department came in cuz there was a gas smell and they had to shut the water heater down like my second week of work.

Yeah. Um, so it was so plugged up with rust and soot and yuck. Um, that he had to clean everything out, replace all of the sensors in the middle part of the water heater. Um, and he said, "You're good to go for now." Oh, and that actually um the children's room was having issues with water pressure, not being able to um run the washing machine. We didn't have any hot water uh pressure on the upstairs staff room. That fixed all of those issues. They're gone.

Um he said it'll last for six months before it goes back to what it was, what he just fixed, unless we put in a filtration system. Right. So, I guess what I'm proposing is we do the filtration system, but is it foolish not to also do the water heater at the same time because maybe it's more cost effective to do all of it at once? We'll need to. Yeah, that's that was his recommendation is you you need to do the filtration system and you're going to need a new water heater because it's it's just damaged already. I think what you're asking is can we put the filtration system in to extend the life of the current?

And that's what he said. You know, that's kind of what I'm I don't know what he said because you I'm you're telling me what he said, but that's kind of what I'm hearing is, you know, you're good for now, but you need to put in a filtration system. That's what I heard. But, you know, to be pennywise pound foolish, right? Are we just kicking it down the curb to have to do it later and be more costly down the road? If we can't fund it right now, then sure, we can do it later down the road and do it in peace meal. But if we can fund it now, I think it's smarter to do it alto together, I think is what I'm hearing also. And is was the filtration cost quote on? No, we don't have it yet. Um I was expecting it a couple of weeks ago in time for this meeting, but I have not. I would think we would defer this.

We could do this piece. We can defer this. Yeah. Yep. I agree. So the question I had was on the trial the general ledger there's there's f uh FB library incentive FB library equalization and and um [snorts] I don't know whether we put whether these or and then this circulation but that's something separate what the balances coming in like can we just is this similar to I guess because it goes year over year it's almost similar to like a stabiliz ization. I think the library incentive and library equalization are two different funding, but it's basically state aid. So, [snorts] we can expend money out of either one of those two. And

I mean, when we say state aid, I think the town accountant just So, but the the the combined figures of those two lines comprise our balance. Yes. That is separate from our our annual budget coming into the fis this current fiscal year. This is completely separate from our town. So, so um that should be down farther in here. So, it seems like we have some wiggle room. We do. We have that even if we we uh took care of things now. I mean, is there a short list that are priority one type things right now? Yes. Versus can't wait. Those four we have to design tonight.

That's what I would propose is that we handle the four right now and then we deal with the next one because we're still waiting for some quotes here. still waiting for some assessment. Great. And if you can prioritize those. Yes. We can work on those next month. All right. So, I guess to get [snorts] get back to like the request to like have the pool of money. I mean, you were able to work with the town administrator um to handle that. It is it that he doesn't want it to go through that and get reimbursed for it. He wants to have it come directly from the library so we don't have to go do the back and forth. Is that Yes.

Correct. The these were emergencies. So, um, the the invoices in there, they needed to be done in order to get things up and running again in order for us to be in compliance with the fire code. Like, we owe a thank you to him and it was good that you set that up. You and Rachel set that up with him so that we're able to address those emergencies. So, Mr. Chair, are you uh ready to receive a motion for regarding this? Yes.

All right. Um, I move that uh the board uh authorize an uh monies uh in the amount of $24,7696 to be paid from the state aid funds um for the items uh per the January 2726 memo from the town administrator um to reimburse. We don't you can just say paid out of state. So So uh but do you want me to list what they are in each amount like further broken down even though I've mentioned the dollar amount total? I think it's fine the way you

I think it's fine the way you've done it. Okay. All right. As long as this gets u circulated. I'd like to just have a copy of this and such. All right. Okay. Second. A motion made and seconded. Any additional discussion? Everyone clear on what we're voting for? Yep. Yep. Okay. Hearing none. All those in favor? I I opposed declare the motion carried. So then you can notify them that it's going to come out of state aid. Thank you. All right. All right. Thank you for that. So that spreadsheet is a really nice snapshot. So can we continue to keep that as you get more information and keep that, you know, even just like what we paid. Yeah.

Yeah. Even just like, you know, close out items on it too. So that over the next three months that's the body of work we need to be focused on. Great. Yeah. So then the second request would be um if that's urgent, do we want to authorize a pool of money that Katrina can um approve upon without having to come to the board first? I think it would still come to the board afterwards, but she would essentially have already spent it potentially or at least already approved moving forward with that. And the idea would be that would be The idea would be that those cases where it's, you know, safety or, you know, potential further damage. So something that needs to get addressed relatively quickly

instead of waiting for the next month. So we we looking for it also to be state aid and then identify a dollar figure. Yes. Yes. Uh what do you think is a a reasonable figure? I don't know. It's hard to say. Evan was suggesting um I think he was suggesting $20,000 a year. Okay, sounds reasonable, right? Yeah, that was my notes was 20,000 a year. And again, it's that's really only for potentially a month, less than a month. So, it's between when it has to get taken care of and our next meeting because if if it's not urgent, she'll be coming to the next board meeting with those requests. Gotcha. All right. I get it. Mhm. [clears throat] For inance,

you know, whatever this um sprinkler, well, like the stuff you had to do with the fire um Yankee fire, you know, $8,000, like if if if that didn't have to get paid for a month, she could just come to the next board meeting, we would approve funding and it would get paid out of that. But if it's something that had to get approved and taken care of quickly, for instance, the ceiling tile uh in the second floor fell and there's leaking from the roof. I need to call the roofer tomorrow to get that fixed. So, it's I mean, it's like a 20 inches of snow on the roof, right? So, yeah, I guess we got lucky if that's the only thing. Hopefully. So, yeah, those kinds of

I don't know how how would we propose just tracking like so we approve the board approves $20,000. I mean, how would we track how much you actually utilize that? I think she'd have to just um keep a report um to the board of here's my expenditures, you know, for January, you know, as you go throughout the year and hopefully it's budgeted enough, but we can track, you know, kind of how you've been spending it and, you know, if we have any questions, we can bring it up at the meeting, but so that we could put under like ongoing business, like an update on Yeah. state aid expenses or something. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. So, the motion would be for the director to have access to up to $20,000 of state aid monies for um un anticipated expenses. Unbudgeted and emergency. Carrie, do you want to make a motion? [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. I'm just I'm kind of at a loss on this one for the words. question is would it be physical repairs of the building only or are there other elements that you think would be potentially you'd want to spend that on? That's a wonderful question. That is I mean everything in in front of me is physical emergency repairs of the building. So,

but you know when the fire department came, didn't they come and have to do some kind of software update or something like that? They had to pay for the elevator going down. I think that was prior to me. Okay. But services, right? there could be some kind of service that I mean the expectation is you never have to use this because everything's budgeted right right and nothing is nothing is an emergency and nothing you know really is um unexpected so ideally in an ideal world right you'd still have that $20,000 at the end of the year

um so but you having the the I don't know scrutiny or however scrutinize what really should come out of it um at at any given time. So, at the end of the year, like say you had you spent $3,000 of it, that would be an ideal outcome. We could continue to budget, you know, an appropriate amount. Um, you know, that would be my expectation. This isn't what we talked about at the other meetings, at least not how I had um understood. This is different. This is different. Yeah. This is just maintenance type costs.

Okay. Very good. Um, I know you were going to look at what our annual maintenance contracts entailed, right? So, a lot of our um, maintenance in the library budget goes to annual contracts for, you know, maintenance contracts. So, you were going to try to get to see what that number was, right? So, there's actually that full maintenance budget already is already spent for every year. You know, some portion of it is already called for. Okay. If you could come back next month maybe with that as well. Yep. Okay. Did we finish a motion or not? No, I didn't even begin to make question. Do you want me to make it or do you want to do it right? No, I guess it's the word is is it unanticipated emergency like what type of [snorts]

expenses would you want to like emergency unanticipated emergency? Is that a I I I can try to tackle this. All right. All right. I move to the board vote to authorize the chair to the director. Director I mean not the director. See, this happens late at night. It's like the fog sets in. Um for the director to have access to up to $20,000 in state aid monies um to spend with without further appropriation from the board

without prior approval. Without prior board approval. Okay. Yeah. without prior board approval. Um, for the purposes of funding, unexpected repair work, unexpected maintenance and related items like when we talked about the computer or whatever, some it could be related items. unexpected maintenance and related items. Yeah. And and so that's in each fiscal year. So So

emergencies because it might not just be a it's just it's an emergency like emergency item. Does it make sense to include anything like notification of the chair when it's spent or incurred? Or incurred. Yeah. I I think I think the board would get notified within that month. So I don't think that's necessary. Okay. Yeah. Through throughout the regular regular monthly monthly reports. [clears throat]

Okay. So I have authorized the director access up to $20,000 in state aid to spend without prior board approval for purposes of funding unexpected maintenance and related items. So, so as far as a sunset provision of that, that would be the end through June 30th, right? Are you talking for for the fis the current fiscal year right now? Um, we can do I mean, we have a pool of state aid money. I think it could be fiscal, it could be for the next 12 months, it could be annual or So, wouldn't we want to define that? I mean, maybe fiscal year. Everything else is tied to the fiscal year. Yeah. Or we could continue to fund it as needed,

right? So, so almost exactly six months. It's a pretty good trial period. Yep. Yeah. For related items for the current fiscal year. Yeah. I think I think we should do it each fiscal year like kind of Yeah. If we need to increase it later, you if 20 isn't enough for this the remaining of this fiscal year, we can add more, but then let's start it fresh again. I think it's important to say um emergency, right? which which means things that can't wait um until the board meets next. So why don't we just say for the purposes of funding unexpected emergency maintenance well expenses it can doesn't always have to be maintenance expenses. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah

okay yeah motion made seconded by Chris. All right any further discussion? All right. Hearing none. All those in favor? I I opposed. I declare the motion carried. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Do we are you is that a good for the rest of the funding? We'll just keep track of that and next month we'll address the next items. Sounds good. Okay. So then next up is the children's page funding.

Yeah. Uh okay. So, um, when I arrived at the Grafton Public Library, I was very surprised to learn that there is no library page for the youth services departments. Um, and that we only have one page. Uh, especially for such a large library doing so much circulation. Um in my other libraries uh both of the children's departments had dedicated pages because particularly in Grafton I think we do uh children's department does 63% of the circulation. Um I asked Sarah to gather some statistics and uh the children's staff does approximately 42 hours worth of shelving every single week. um yeah, every single week and um they have about 12 volunteer hours. So, I was wondering if the board would entertain um hiring a children's library page to help offset the amount of work that the paid staff does so that the professional staff can focus on professional tasks as opposed to tasks that can be done by somebody who doesn't need to get paid almost $40 an hour to put books away. [snorts]

So, would this be part of the CBA as far as actually creating a position first? In other words, you're asking us to fund a position that hasn't even been created. I It would be an additional page. So, do we have a page? We do have one page. Oh, okay. So the position exists and that person is working how many hours? 20 hours. Okay. Okay. And that's upstairs. Only upstairs. So would this be like an additional union position like the existing PH position? So it'll just kind of slot in. Okay. Okay. And the union I guess we have to discuss it with the union or

I that's a great question. I don't know. I have to figure out. And do we have any money in our current um salary budget for this? Unfortunately, not. That hasn't been appropriated. And there's like z not even a portion of the funds could come from that. So you're looking to fund all of it with another source. Okay. With a different source. Correct.

So um a couple of couple of thoughts. Um, ironically, as I'm reading this, it if 42 hours are currently performed by professional library staff, they're almost making the argument that a full-time librarian could be nixed in exchange for two pages. Am I right? I mean, that that's kind of how one could read this. Well, yes, but the the professional staff instead of doing the professional work that they were hired to do, right,

are forced to do the page work because we don't have the person to work. it since having come on board. Uh has it been your observation that certain things that those that skill set that librarian and skill set their focus should be that they're falling behind on at all or it's short staffed or or because that that would be the idea question. Yeah. Yeah. that what what is what is um not getting done that this is required. In other words, the the efficiency that you need to reallocate or shift work

would suggest that there's something that isn't being done to the the level that it should be or within the time frame that it should be. So,

uh, that's a wonderful question. I think that it's hard to know what um what we're lacking because I think this has been the standard of service for so long because the staff has been without a page for so long. [snorts] Um, I think that with this position, this page position would ease the pressure on staff

so that they have more time to serve patrons at the desk and answer reference questions and yes, provide programming and plan for programming and do all of the other activities that they can't because They have four carts in the back that need to be shelved and I really need to get ready for my program, but I have to I have to do this first.

So, I guess the the way that I think of it from a a financial point of view is we have um the remainder of this fiscal year, right? So, we're asking to fund for the remainder of the year. So, we're in January. Um we end June 30th, so we're really only talking about five months. Mhm.

So, so um can we fund this for five months with our existing budget taking into consideration that we were without a director for a number of months, right? So, do we have any do we have room in this year's budget um because of the fact that we did not have a a director, you know, for a full-time director of the full year. Um is there any money available in budgeted money to cover it for the remainder of the year? So that's the first question. Then the second question is we're budgeting for next year. We've already submitted a budget. So can the budget be reworked because we wouldn't want to hire a new person

even if we had enough money this year to cover them for the remainder of this year. Um but we can't fund it next year because we don't have the budget next year. I think that's what we really need to think about in two parts. like and if we and I guess if if we can't if we don't have money for this year then we could wait until next fiscal year but again it's like do we have room in in the budget? I think that's what we have to think about because I we again we would not want to hire somebody we can't keep them on.

Yeah. May I add to that? I mean you you echoed exactly what I was thinking too. we don't really have an appropriate funding source to to to um you know pay uh you know staff right um in perpetuity right so it would have to come out of the town's budget at some point right and so I know you came in right when we were doing the budget um and I think it's just unfortunate timing um I don't know if perhaps that page uh we could give them more hours the one currently supports the rest of the library, but then you know you're you're now looking at a 35 hour

benefit, right? So I know you probably put some thought into that as well. Maybe how you can use existing resources as well, but um so I think

you know I think we'd love to help. staffing has always been a very difficult um um challenge uh for the for the director um you know in in in the past. Um you know we'll support uh the director's proposals with the town in terms of what you know uh they feel they need for uh you know to properly staff the library. We've always done that. We've always fought for extra um positions too. Okay. Um, I just don't know that. I think it's great to bring this to our attention because we'll support that. Um, but I don't know any other thoughts.

Well, I think also too like we have to be very budget conscious. Um, I'm sure like you you've been here for a little while now. Um, we we do have, you know, concerns about the overall town budget. So, um, we certainly can't ask for more money, you know, from the town. And, and I have a working conditions question as well, aside from a good point about the money as far as Yeah,

I was thinking the exact same thing, but that's only a a one-time thing, and we're talking about being in a an possible override idea. Uh that said, when we talk about a change in working conditions, oftentimes the context of our discussion as a board to stay within the union parameters, the the CBA parameters is that you're not adding something to someone's job. [snorts] If you were to take away something and make their life easier in everyone's opinion, is is that also considered a change in working conditions that need the union approval?

A and on top of that, if we were to take away things and then those people said, "Sorry, that's not my job." and you you've basically eased their job and now for some reason either that person leaves or it's no longer funded and then now you're basically fighting tooth and nail to give them back tasks that they were doing just six months ago. I I wouldn't want that to happen. Um is is sort of busy work or non-professional level work or menial work or however you want to describe that. It's still part of a librarian's job. Yes.

Um it's just a matter of how we best allocate our resources. I wouldn't want to get into a position where those uh various employees would say, "Sorry, that's no longer my job. I don't do that." So, good point. Do we know I mean that was the point of my question and what you had asked about the compensation budget because we were without a director for a period. I would assume we have a balance in that piece. Uh it's not as much as you would think because we did have a the interim too. We had the interim

and um even the um the other sta the other staff line item that's not under the director. Um we due to some ongoing medical issues, we've pulled in a lot of sub hours. Right. Um, so we're actually probably a little over on those line items as opposed to less.

But I do I do think it I agree with the the board in that it's careful consideration because it potentially will be needed to be added to the next budget. And if it's not in there and it doesn't get passed, then we have to come up with another funding source next year just as well. But a aside from the requests, one of the things you brought up is that that's not in this memo in this request is and you use one example of carts or whatever.

I I would certainly uh like to see that sort of doesn't have to get into the weeds, but high level high level analysis that in this area we're seeing x amount of quantifiable work. Call it a cart, call it a a stack of books, call it so many tasks that are piling up because this person is doing, you know, file work versus quote unquote real work um according to their skill set.

I I would certainly want to see what that is. Has have has that been presented to you in detail? like what are those items like what what is this task should take a day but it's taking three days and this work is piling up because I'm filing instead of doing I I I would want to see in quantifiable terms versus I'm overworked you know and that's not to make light of people who say they're overworked I think all of us in some respect um could say we're overworked um but I would like to see it quantified yeah it would be nice to see some data about what's not getting done, you know, which programs can't get done or what, you know, right?

What what reference questions aren't getting asked or what patrons aren't getting helped because of this? Or is the phone ringing and it can't get answered or is there three people waiting and one of them walked away because it was taking too long. I I would want to see some observational stuff, too. Okay, I can definitely get that. And I don't want to speak on behalf of the other three, but

I I think that's kind of trick. I mean, you did ask the staff to track like how much time they're spending doing that, but there's a lot of different options. Like, if if they're not, you know, putting the books back, they could be working on a program or they could be doing a a p like there's different options. Like, it doesn't mean I don't I it's spending your time doing that, you don't know what else like you you're missing out on, I think. But, I mean, if you can come up with something, great. But, I think that's that's hard. And the other thing too is that and I don't know if this speaks to a larger issue of right so you have borrow services reference technical services and children's okay and then teen so you got these five I don't know if you want to call them silos but

do they if if are these sort of siloed areas or if one area needs someone do they borrow from the other is it one sort I I know that there's certain tasks that each and and then managers that oversee these people doing all these different tasks within what we call like departments. Is it that one department is not borrowing from another or how does that work? Do you mean in terms of staff like if one area is particularly busy and there's maybe a little bit of downtime to shift a person from here to there

to account for that sort of overage activity? I think that that happens uh infrequently, but I think that for the most part we're staffed where um each department kind of takes care of their own um responsibes over and helps the children room. Correct. They just start working on their next program or Right. or getting ready if some teenagers all all of a sudden show up. Yeah. because somebody has to be at the team desk in the space, correct? Are we still um having um staff um at the uh welcome desk? We are.

Yeah. Yep. That's regularly staffed. So, what I'm hearing is that the board is asking for a little bit more data and information. Um and yeah, I I I want to say it's a not right now. Um but we can continue to to you know support this initiative you know to certainly um figure out uh what makes sense right. Yeah. And and I think like trying to think about probably more towards like is it something feasible for next year budget and if not for next year budget maybe even the following year. Yep. Yeah. Because it is essentially adding staff you know it's adding a position and

and it makes sense that that's in the annual budget. Yeah. I know you kind of addressed this in in in the report um but uh volunteer hours is that something we could could try to ramp up in any way, shape or form?

So yesish. Um as a former children's librarian, I can tell you that it is very difficult to have volunteers shelve in the children's room. Um there are many many different small collections. It can be very confusing for people. Um it's very tedious. Uh it is oftentimes you're crawling around on the ground so it's not great for certain subsets of the population. Um, so it's it's very difficult to get um volunteers that want to continue on along.

Is that because a lot of your volunteers are on the senior workoff program? Is that how many volunteers do you have a senior workup? I actually don't know. There's a handful, but there but none of them in the children's room. Oh, okay. Right. Right, Cindy? Yeah. Okay. [snorts] But also too, like um when you have a volunteer and they're only working a few hours, that's not free time for the staff because they need to manage. They need to train the staff. They need to manage. They, you know, so, you know, once you get them up and running, they're But you're Yes, you're right. Like to get them going and to train, it's obviously more work up front, but once they're comfortable with the room and with all of the collections and with the flow of the

the work, then it's then it is helpful. Um, unfortunately, it's um it's never enough, right? I think this is going to be a good segue. By the way, [laughter] I kind of set it up for policy committee. Oh, wonderful. See, we're on the same page. So, is So, I is uh are you saying, Mr. Chair, that you want to just table us indefinitely, or do you want the director to come back with more details for next month's agenda, even if it isn't in in the form of an ask? I I think that I I think it I was implying that we'd come back with some more information. Okay. Just for future consideration. Okay.

Yeah. But I agree with the board that it's a it's a budget issue that we'd have to deal with as far as the fiscal year budget because you're act have you been asked to present a reduction budget too? Uh we have not been formally asked but uh it's it's coming. All right. And one more reason to to sort of put the brakes on. Yeah. Because we're we're a percentage of the town's overall budget, right? So that's Yeah. Yeah. It's it's Thank you for mentioning that. So I had put this on the agenda prior to the meeting where I learned that we we were going to be called in for a reduction budget. So um but I figured I'd go ahead and give it a give it a whirl anyway. All right. [laughter]

But that that's certainly an area where if you want a board uh trustee uh to support you on that or help you look at the numbers and stuff like that, we be glad to do that. That'd be great. Thank you.

Okay. Um any other comments, discussion around the the children's page funding. If not, we'll move on to the policy update with Aaron. So, we had um not a quite fully staffed um policy subcommittee meeting, but we had two trustees and uh Katrina as well. Um but we are hoping to uh have one additional staff member uh join us um to really provide that um in the know um you know perspective of you know are do do some of these policies make sense or maybe there's a gap um that we need to address with other policy and um just provide that kind of um in the feedback. So, I'm excited um to have uh that person join us. Um but they have not quite yet. Um but I think we will have some flexibility in terms of if we still want to continue to meet in person or have Zoom uh in order to support that additional member. Um and then we'll be fully staffed. So, that's exciting. Um, so we met um at the library um I want to say it was last week and we um finalized the volunteer policy which is um uh for your um review and uh potential um vote tonight to vote in the new volunteer policy. Um some of the things that we discussed at the uh regarding the last revision um was the feedback from legal and they talked about um um doing Corey checks for all volunteers. Um but we had decided as as a a board that they're um really sorry as a subcommittee that um there really wasn't a lot of uh risk um in terms of um just Corey checking

volunteers 18 or older. Um um and then the other question was surround that we discussed um last month uh with this board was um about uh home delivery and uh any sort of risk uh associated with um people driving their cars and doing home delivery. Um we discussed that this is actually very common service that um all libraries do. So, we wanted to make sure that we are not just saying we're not going to do it anymore because legal says it's not a great idea, but they um there's an appropriate uh form that they can fill out a waiver if they decide that they want to um you know volunteer in that way, do home delivery. So, that is for your review as well and that'll go um not alongside the policy, but volunteers will be required to to fill that out. I um I have a question um with regards to the volunteers age 18 or older. Yeah.

So um so it's um prior to beginning as a volunteer. So, if you have a volunteer who starts when she's 17 and then she turns 18 while she's a volunteer, how would we I I guess do you keep track of the age of folks and then make sure they're Corey checked because that would be a very common scenario for somebody who's a junior or senior in high school.

As far as I know, we do not keep track of the teenager's age. And and I guess does this policy like it says all volunteers 18 or older are subject to cory background check to be completed prior to beginning? So do are they kind of grandfathered in because they started when they were 16 or 17 and then we don't check them. That's a wonderful question. Yeah, I hadn't thought of that. [snorts] Not that I have a personal experience with that, [laughter] but can we just I mean it doesn't have to be written in the policy, but can we just have like an annual review of the volunteers and that would be something that would come up in the annual review?

Yeah, that's a really smart way to do it because um to be honest um as a as a scout master with the Boy Scout troop um you know they have Corey checks that need to be uh reuped, right? So it could almost be like an annual review of um your volunteer po population. Do you have like an actual list that you keep track of of all the volunteers? We do. Um I don't think that it has their birth dates on it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean a reminder if you turned 18 in the past year, you can send I'm sure you have communication um with the volunteers, right? Email and phone numbers. Um, yeah, I think that's a great suggestion. I I had a question on I I found that a little bit confusing. I All right. So, we have So, Katrina, you sent us on Monday. Um, says here's a copy of the volunteer policy for the board to take up at the meeting on Wednesday.

All right. And so it was it looks like a final copy that says adopted by the board of trustees library trustees on 43 of 2025. And then there's another document that is nearly identical that to me doesn't have any draft language nor redactions or or like stricken out language for me to recognize this as an updated draft or an an amendment. So it's it's basically the one with the voluntary acknowledgement and liability release form Aaron that you're speaking of. Mhm.

That is this the subcommittee's work and because I'm trying to figure where it's different, where it's the same. Um, and it looks nearly identical, but like the one that Katrina sent us has under volunteer expectations. Well, this one is numbered. The the what I think is the updated one, but voluntary expectations goes A through G. This only goes A through E. And I can see that there are a couple of redactions. I So I'm thinking the one Katrina sent us is the original one and the one that has the the release form is what the subcommittee worked on.

I made a mistake. I didn't realize it was in the packet. So I asked Katrina to resend it. But is it the same copy that was in the packet or no? So the one that went out in the packet is numbered confirm with Christine like volunteer age restrictions volunteer application those are all numbered one two three all right so what so what is the unnumbered one as as it exists now that's the one that that's the one that as it exists now so I went through Aaron and made um kind of checked off all of the edits that we had gone through and I'm wondering if I forwarded the edited version to Christine and she just sort of plugged it in.

Okay. And then when you emailed me, I realized that the they weren't actually checked off. So then I went through and checked everything off and sent So if it's a dra if it's a draft, I I guess it would be great if it could have that in um what's the term? Watermark. Thank you. Yeah, that it's watermarked. um just so I know that that what I'm looking because if these start getting circulated it's [snorts] like what is the real one and what is not well it's whatever's online but

um and then just you know akin to bylaw review committee at town meeting where you're looking at a document and there's like a preamble that says okay and you could look at one document and say here's what is you know stricken out and here's what's added because right now I'm trying to compare the two and and I don't know you know exactly what what the changes are. Yeah. Can I mean can we confirm which one we're voting on? Is it the one that's numbered? The one in the packet I would say is what we're voting on. The one in the packet's the one that's numbered because sorry for the confusion. Okay. I know. So,

and then I sorry, just one and I would agree. I think for future it would be great to have a redline version. So, we see the original and then all the red line edits, right? And then when we approve that at the meeting, the red lines can be accepted and then it would be approved as that. Is that how you guys are creating them or not? Not really redlinining. No, because I mean it at that point it's gone through, you know, the the union it's gone through legal, right? So these things are way marked up. Yeah, that's true. And sometimes their PDFs we're working off of and this is why we're trying to get better with SharePoint and a great idea. Okay. So, so then you would envision you'd have an old policy and a new policy, just two documents. Okay.

Yeah. Or something that's completely brand new that you guys have never seen before because it's a new policy that we're introducing to the board. Okay, that makes sense. So then, yeah, drop that expectation of red lines. Okay. So, we're currently looking at the numbered volunteer policy. The one that's in the packet. the one that's and to be honest we don't have a volunteer policy so there's nothing for you guys to compare it to okay thank you no I'm looking at the website so there's nothing okay so the the date on it oh the date there was when we sent it to legal I'm sure these are taken okay seven months to get so we didn't have one all right so these are two drafts one is more current than the other well the one in the pack is what we're reviewing right all right uh

does anybody else have questions on the Yeah, in terms of the Corey check. So, this is so um I'm curious what the justification is for 18 and older versus under. I know you mentioned that. Um my only frame of reference for Corey checks is day camps where you know people under 18 have to go through Corey checks as well. Um and so that's that's my only other frame of reference. So curious why we would draw the line at 18. But unless someone were tried and is an an adult, those Cy checks wouldn't necessarily elicit stuff depending on their age. So, isn't the idea of having them 18 to make sure that if there's anything that they did recently would show up on the record?

Um, I [snorts] mean, I I don't necessarily know in terms of the the specifics behind that, but just having worked at him, you know, even in high school, I had to run a have a Cory check on me when I was 16, 17, just to work. So, I'm kind of just curious, but it sounds like it went through legal and that went through legal that went through legal and passer there without comment. Well, their comment was u you really should corey check everybody, you know. So, um but I don't remember the specific uh conversation we had why we felt that it wasn't um that the subcommittee felt it wasn't important to Corey check, you know, kids under 18. Um I think

Go ahead. I was going to say there's no reason why we couldn't put a motion to change that age and then approve it as is with an age, right? Yeah. Um discussion, but what was that? I'm sorry. I'm talking to Katrina. I'm comfortable with the 18 and I I think we I think it just uh it's sort of standard practice to do 18 and older in libraries. I don't that there's no reason not to, but there's no reason like not to consider it. So yeah. [snorts] Um

yeah. So this is the way that we wrote it in and in and legal put in a comment that you know you should Corey check all your volunteers. [snorts] Um so I leave that to the board. I think I certainly would feel comfortable with a larger age range. it. You know, again, I don't have a lot of experience in knowing what libraries typically do or otherwise, but that's my only frame of reference. I'm sure if that was Legal's comment. So, generally, how would a um how would a minor be Corey checked um without you'd have to go to you

I know volunteering for the schools like like as an adult like like to do like you know story time or whatever you have to go to the municipal center to the I think to the superintendent's office to fill out the Corey form and then it comes back and you have to do it I think it's every three years I believe. But I think you're asking what's a Corey gonna find for a 15y old. Well, no, I'm asking like how is it even done um when they don't have an ID, you know?

Yeah. Like Yeah. If you're think because our volunteers start at 14, they wouldn't even have their driver's license yet. And some 16 year olds wouldn't or 17 year olds or 18 year olds might not have a driver's license. So, I think we'd be potentially and also too like we're talking about like volunteers like a couple of hours a week. Like we could be, I guess, missing out on like giving these kids an opportunity to get started with volunteering. I agree. I just feels like the downside risk is way worse than getting a couple extra volunteer hours. That be argument. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, and particular if that was legal's recommendation, they must have a way to I mean,

they would suggest doing that for those under 18. This is what Gemini says. [laughter] Says Massachusetts Corey is generally required for individuals uh 17 or 18 or older depending on the policy. It says some organizations like youth sports or schools require Corey checks for volunteers who are 15 to 18 year old but the norm is 18 and older. So I'm not sure that answers anything. Yeah. So, I get it for like um children's camps and children's organizations, right? Um where you're dealing with children a lot. Uh I think a library is a public institution that deals with all age ranges.

Um so maybe that's because I think the way that you just wrote that is like yeah, it's it's typical among, you know, organizations where you're primarily dealing with youth, right? Which is not the library. you're not primarily dealing [snorts] with people, you know, involving youth, especially unsupervised because if if it's in the children's room, it's going to be supervised. That would be the one concern I would have would be the children's room.

Yeah. So, we could um change the age range to 17 and older. I mean, unless we want to just do all age Corey checks, but um yeah. So unless somebody wants to make a motion to amend it, um we can continue on. But Aaron, getting back to your earlier point that there wasn't a volunteer policy in place. Why does this say 43 of 25? I addressed Thanks. I'm sorry. You missed that. We wrote this nine months ago. Oh, all right. So So he thinks that's when it went legal. Oh, so you when it got sent So you're anticipating Okay, gotcha. Yeah. I'm sorry. Y

All right. I will entertain a motion to accept it as written or as if we want to change that uh 18 and older to another age group. I'll entertain a for that. I don't um I don't see any other I don't have any other comments on the policy itself. I thought it was well written.

I just wanted to make one suggestion for an amendment since I don't think I can. One thing that I did end up changing in this document was um section one letter C instead of 10 to 14 10 to 13 because it runs up against in section A the ages 14 and up and legal did say that that was a little confusing. So I did make that that change that was one of the red lines that I had edited. Right. But if you're 13 to not be confusing the the policy as written is what we're approving tonight the way that you've amended it. Oh, right. I know you and I have worked on this for months, [laughter]

you know, but I don't think you need to go over all the So, what is the final amendment? Sorry, I didn't say anything. No, the one in the packet does say 10 to 14. Yeah. So, so we want to amend that to say 10 to 13. Point C, right? Because point A says 14 and up. So 1 C should be 10 10 to 13. Yes, we although we agreed on that the last meeting. We did. Okay. I likely will make a motion to alter the language around 1D. But do [snorts] we want to separately you can include the 1C as well if that's what

they're agreeing to. So, I'll make a a motion to alter the language of 1C in the volunteer policy to indicate ages 10 to 13 um instead of 10 to 14 as written in the packet. Um and also uh make motion to uh alter 1D to include all ages as all ages for Corey checks as recommended by legal. I think they should be two separate motions. Okay. I mean, that's what we just said. So it could be one. Well, it's we're voting on one policy. [snorts]

So you're changing C to 10 to 13 and D to all volunteers. All ages. Yeah. So that would be 10 and up. We don't accept volunteers less than 10. But they don't do Corey. You said Corey checks are only for 17 and up, right? No, he didn't say that. No, I didn't. standard. It's nobody does 10 10 year old Cory checks. No, legal's recommendation was all ages. So, I'm I think that's what I would is to follow legal's recommendation. Okay. [snorts] Uh motion made. Anyone seconding it?

I'll second it just to put the discussion on the floor. Okay. Motion made and seconded. um further discussion. So I'm just curious, normally procedurally sometimes people will remain silent on seconding a motion to defeat it. So is that what was going on here or or people not for um I'm not I'm I'm not I am not for Corey checking a tenure. I think that's ridiculous. I'm sorry. Because we could always vote it down. I just wanted to at least put it to a vote. But legal did suggest all ages. They did. Yeah. That's why we're That's why we're discussing, right?

And we didn't have a volunteer policy at all before. So, yeah. And then on 1 C, run this by me again. So 1 A talks about 14 and up. Then 1 C talks about volunteers between the ages of 10 and 14 may be accepted on a conditional basis. Is that when you say so why would we be changing it to 10 to 13 again? Saying 10 through 13. Yeah. Yes. So it's like a all it's like greater than or equal to. Right. Exactly.

All right. So I'm wondering if if maybe we should actually not replace the hyphen with an actual word. In other words, 10 through 13. Volunteers between the ages of 10 through 13 may be accepted. Is that something you've That's fine. I just was trying to mimic whatever the changes were that had been recommended. Okay, that's fine. I'm fine with that wording. [snorts] Cuz so 10 to 14 would seem some people interpret that differently and would think that's an overlap to 1A. That's all I'm saying. Okay. So, um through you, Mr. Chair, would would [snorts] um the group

I think that's semantic. So I think that's no issue changing the two to through. All right. All right. I think the question is around the Corey check. So um Okay. I don't know just put it to a vote or do I ask how many people are in favor of the all ages versus um you would propose 15 and older. So how do we come upon this as one motion versus two? I think it's one motion. It's it's one motion single motion for CND. But it seems like we may have issues with one versus the other. Correct. That is accurate. And so would it would it hurt to take these up separately or I mean I know the motion's on the floor.

Yeah. I mean it's 9:06 so either we accept or defeat the motion and and [snorts] move on with the night. All right. Um All right. So this mo Yeah, the motion been made and seconded. All right. I have no further discussion. Okay. Hearing none. Um we'll put it to a vote. So changing it from 10 to 14 to 10 through 13 and all ages uh are subject to Corey background check. You you need to say all in favor? Yep. All those in favor I I opposed. So I declare the motion. So let me ask you this. I'm not so keen on Robert's rules. Do you need to go roll call when it's a split vote like this or no?

No, I don't think so. All right. Because it's a visual everyone. All right. So, it's three to two in favor. All right. Defeated. Defeated. Three to two. Defeated. Defeated or in favor? Defeated. Defeated. Defeated. All right. Motion was defeated. Three to two. So, it's going to stay 10 to 14 and then 18 and older. We didn't approve. We didn't approve the policy because we put it all into That's what I say. We should have separated it out because we could. But you're not going to approve We're not going to approve C and defeat D. We're still not going to have a policy approved. So, yeah, we need a policy. We need a policy. So, we need to keep making motions until we agree or this goes back to policy committee.

Right. So, that's the question. Do we want to have further discussion given that it's 9:00 or do we want to wait till next month? So, so I I'm a little bit confused. I I thought that um I thought that Chris's motion was more of an amendment. All right. In other words, amending the main motion. In other words, we haven't gotten to No, we didn't have a motion yet. He We So, we haven't gotten to a main motion regarding the whole policy. Correct. His was the motion policy. Changes. Yeah. With changes. Oh,

but we haven't voted the policy. So the options are entertain another motion if we think we can agree on C and D amendments to get the volunteer policy in effective or we push it to next month for it to be effective. Do we need to have unanimous consent or is it just No, no, just Okay, just majority. Okay. Um would would the board be in favor of changing D to all ages 15 and older? What's verbal? What's so special about 15? I mean, well, I'm just thinking, well, maybe it's 14 then because 14 and up. [snorts]

Um Oh, no, that's that's 14 and up. You know, we can probably just table this. Okay. Um because I I think now we're talking about I know not just leaving the policy as it is. Now we're talking about, you know, all ages, then 14 and 15, and then 17. It's I don't think we're going to come to Okay. So, let's table it and have the policy committee move forward to next month. Yeah. So, I would I didn't anticipate this much time being needed on this. Y So, uh we need to make this uh bump this up in priority next week. So, we have lots of time to talk about

and I agree. We've we've had this discussion before. I think I agree with you in your earlier comments. I thought we were um we were bumping up on a routine basis um uh policy updates to the head of the meeting. Wasn't Yeah, that was probably that probably got missed in well a we didn't have any comments from the board on the agenda and two we have a new scribe who we started with and we only met last week, right? So we had to push our meeting out. No problem. It's not a problem. So

can I just speak in consideration and I'll be brief when you go back to the policy committee. My thought is that if we have somebody who's doing home delivery and has a driver's license, those people probably make sense to have a Corey check, right? Because they have an ID and they're not going to be directly supervised are going to be going out and bringing things to people's homes. So those people really do make sense to me to to be Corey checked. But um but pe but you know people that you know are 16 or younger who don't have a driver's license who are going to be in the library supervised by staff. I think that's ownorous to to require a Cy check for that.

But there still there's still there's still in the pres how old are you to get a license? Is that 16? More than 16 to get a license. 16 and a half at a minimum to get a driver. Okay. Thank you. So I'd like to finish the update. Oh yeah. Thank you, Erin.

So, um very very interesting, um uh policy discussion surrounding, uh combining the library displays policy, which you know, if you don't, um if you can't picture it, library display is something that the staff would curate in in order to showcase the collection. Simple as that. It could be based on certain holidays or, you know, trends in the media, whatever that may be. Um but a lot of libraries don't have their own library displays policy. Um so you know we're talking about consolidating our policies as well. So um Katrina has taken the time uh to combine a material selection policy with our library displays policy to really call it a collection development policy. And that's just um a common name that other libraries use. So we thought that was a nice a nice name for that. Um but one of the very interesting things and this is not I don't want to belabor the discussion tonight but um and help me with this because uh this was uh new to me as well but part of the collection development policy talks about you know removing um items from the collection you know based on um patron uh you know views on certain things that are controversial right um that they feel that our library shouldn't have. So, um rather than challenging the item, um a patron could challenge the policy because the policy is what the board backs in terms of the the uh librarian's um you know, purview to select things for the library, right? and you can read this policy or or come to a policy committee meeting um you know and and take a look at this because it's it's really uh inclusive and in into what we feel is within a librarian's purview to develop the collection. Now, um, if

there's something that isn't in the spirit of the collection development policy and you know what was in the purview of the librarian, uh, you know, to to to put in the collection, a patron could challenge our policy, not an item.

So, that's very very um different shift into how um, you know, we're looking at um, people challenging what we have in our library. So, um, we have a pretty good draft and I think the policy committee felt that that's what we want to present to the board, um, you know, in the future when we're ready to to vote on that after it goes to, you know, legal and, um, goes to the union as well. Um, but I just want to kind of plant plant that seed because, uh, we felt it was a nice shift um, you know, uh, for item challenges.

Yeah. I I really like that too. I mean, a it reduces the number of policies, but two, it makes sense that those two are kind of grouped together. Yeah. Yeah. So, that was a really fantastic discussion. Um and then, um for priorities, uh we're going to prioritize the meeting room policy um at our next meeting as well as the collection development policy, which um you know, we feel is in a pretty good state. So, the next meeting will be on um February 11th. February 11th. Yes. Okay.

Thank you for all your due diligence in all of this. It's one of those things that kind of sometimes is out of sight, out of mind and and um you know, I know I appreciate that it takes you put a lot of effort and work into all of this and and I you know I've said this before, the policies are so important to the board, to the staff, and to the patrons, right? It impacts all three. So, it's a really important point view of this um this board. Yep. Um, so I just want to confirm February 11th because it says February 4th in here. February 11th because um that's that was the date that worked for Prau because he travels. Okay. No. Great. So we want to make sure everybody's represented.

Okay. Um given the late hour, I don't want to short change Katrina in her director's report. Um I think the big news with having Christine come on board is exciting. So thank you Christine again. Um, I think you addressed most of the issues with the page, the children's room, and the um all the um funding and maintenance issues. Are there anything else that you like maybe top two bullets? Otherwise, I would encourage everybody to read through it in detail.

I think Yeah, I think we really did cover the most important things. The only reason I had the um in the the spreadsheet with the expenditures, the adult audiobooks highlighted is I just wanted to point out that we decided to move $1,000 over from that line item to um the Overdrive expenditures because we've been seeing a huge increase in demand for ebook and e audio through Overdrive Advantage. Um and so we gave Allison a little bit more money to satisfy those demands. That's great. That's good that you're keeping that close eye on those different um Yeah. How does media how does she see those demands come in?

Is it like somebody saying I want my library to have this item? Yeah. So, um we do get those requests, but uh the back end of the system called Overdrive Advantage will tell us what Grafton patrons have on hold and so yeah, like down to the specific title. So we can see that 34 Grafton patrons have the correspondent on hold and are waiting for our copies. So and then we can go ahead and apply and we can find purchase another title based or two or three based on um where people's interests are. I'll remember that. Yeah, please do. [laughter]

I'm a big audiobook junkie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. and and I'll I'll mention um on the um library director's report um thank you for the detail provided. I read it and so I just have uh one comment to share with the board is that um in uh piggybacking off the whole material selection policy is the freedom to read statement and on the first page there's those long two long acts act regarding free expression that's being tackled by the mass state senate

and then there's another one an act addressing challenges facing public libraries and digital resource collections. Um, if you want to just see the link or Google it, the first one, an act regarding free expression is S as in SAM 2328. Um, and you can read, it's like three pages long of the summary. And then the second longer one about the challenges facing public libraries and digital resource collections, that's SS and SAM 2710. So, um, just Google it and it'll pop right up and I think it'll give you a good idea of what they're really, uh, attempting to protect here as far as, uh, against all the attacks on free speech and free expression. So,

isn't there a way in PDF to have a hyperlink in the PDF? There is. There is, but, I didn't see one here. It's not in here. No, I mean, it looks like a link, but it's not. Yeah. So, anyway. Yeah. And so, um, yeah, because of that, I I looked it up myself, so great. I'll just, yeah, S 2328 and then 2710. Okay. So, so that's a great point. Um, so could I ask that we get the stamped copy when it comes to the board? Sure. Um, for the agenda. For the agenda. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there's one on the website we can pull up. Um, but I think that's part of it, too, is like after they stamp it, sometimes the hyperlinks get lost, right? Yeah. So, Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Any other questions for Katrina on the director's reports? Um, thank you for including the stats because it's always really nice to see um see those stats and the expenditures. That's really fantastic. Thank you for that. Great. Pleasure. All right. So, um, no public input. Um, next meeting. So, the policy subcommittee is Wednesday, February 11th. Uh, next Friends meeting is the day before that, Tuesday, February 10th. Um, our next meeting is Wednesday, February 25th. Um, I am not going to be able to make that meeting. Is anybody else limited? Because I can't make the week before either. Is it a holiday? Is that during school vacation? No. No, it's the week after.

Okay. Okay. That should be around. I'll be on time. We're talking about the 25th, correct? Yeah. Okay. So, I will confirm with um Rachel that she can make it because then she can leave the meeting and probably get out less than two and a half hours. All right. I guess Mr. Chair, um are you uh ready to accept them? I move to adjurnn. Uh second. Motion made and seconded. All in favor? I I opposed. I declare the motion carried and ending the meeting at 9:20. Thank you. Thank you.