Parks & Recreation Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay.

We're calling the meeting to order at 05:01PM. Are there any request to amend tonight's agenda? No requests? Okay. We'll go to public comment. Members of the public are invited to speak at the Nantua Public Library Board of Trustees meeting each month on any matter related to the oversight of the Nantua Public Library. The comments from each speaker shall be limited to five minutes in length unless extended by action of the National Public Library Board of Trustees. Is there any public comment? I'll ask one more two more times. Is there any public comments?

And last time, any public comments? So we'll move on. I need approval of the minutes.

Move to approve. Second.

Okay. Alright.

So I think Chris Abel will move to approve it. Brett seconded. Alright. Are there any questions on the minutes? Okay. All those in favor?

Aye. Opposed?

Alright. We're gonna move on to the financial reports. Mister Abel, I'll let you take over.

Thank you. You have before you the budget status report for March 2026 fund twenty eight ten, January 2026, fund twenty eight thirteen, February 2026, fund twenty eight thirteen, and March 2026, fund twenty eight thirteen along with the check register. And to ensure that people get a chance to ask any questions they might have, I will move that we accept them as presented.

Oh, and we do have a second? Yeah. Perfect. Alright. Stephanie, second. Any questions? Yeah. Any discussion about the financial reports? We're good? We're good. All those in favor?

Aye. Opposed?

Wonderful. Let's go into correspondence. Did everybody get a chance to read

the blurb?

I understand. I understand. Understand. I'm sorry.

I'm just not used to anonymous Facebook post being

nice. I

may live in a different world than the rest.

It will work.

Okay. Thank you, sir.

Okay. Then we'll move on to the administrative reports. So, Karen, I'll let you take over. Sure. Big the big news in March was Blizzard Elsa came through at the city quite a bit. We'll see with the snow removal. Thank you to Stacy. Early mornings trying to get all the snow. That's what prevented a lot of reason that getting open was removing all of this. So I'm putting it somewhere away from our door.

And then we had a nice all staff training day, half a day on March 20 in collaboration with MCLS. So the other libraries and our system were invited here, and we hosted and watched the documentary, the librarians. It was very good and lots of good discussion on the movie. We we broke out into small groups, and all of our groups had people from the other libraries in it. That was really nice to hear from other people. Any questions? Is it something Did you buy the rights to it?

Yes. So it could be shown as a film discussion and

talked about Yes. To the public? Yes. Great. And then we I wanna keep it so we can use it for that, but then we can also circulate it. People can check out. Yeah. I actually saw it at Sundance. Yeah. Oh. And they had the librarian two years ago, and they had some of the librarians had a panel discussion, which is really amazing. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Very cool. It was really nice. Very emotional. Definitely worth watching. Yeah. Any questions for me or for the managers? You can also go for

the manager reports. No. I just wanna say for managers highlights where you said about the Lakeshore master gardeners, I wanna really thank them. Our plants in our library are awesome. And I saw them one day. They put a lot of work into that behind the scenes. Mhmm. And really for them to also be tackling the project for us outside, I think that's very generous of them to give their time expertise like that to us. And I just really think that's awesome. And, also, welcome to Rory for being the intern. That's always great just to live in the library. And the other comment of Max leaving his very sad. And that's about yeah. That was what I had wanted to say on that. So thank you.

And then there's statistics and other other news articles. Anybody have anything else to say? Okay. And Okay. So we'll move on to new business, and then I'll hand it over to you again.

Our yearly annual ask for the use of the MPL parking lot during the Lakeshore Beleni Valley Bend for the day to Friday, August 14. In the past, we have kept it open in the morning. So it's about 02:00 that we try to move people off the street and out of the parking lot and take over. For approval. Oh, okay. We have motion by mister Abelis. Do we have a second?

A second.

Okay. I'll have Michelle do it.

Yeah. Michelle do

it. Spreading well. Any discussion?

Yes. I wanted to ask, on this memo, it says, event start time, five to nine. And then it says, set up start time, Friday, August 14, 07:00. Takedown end time, Tuesday, August 25 two thousand twenty six, twenty three o'clock. My concern is I want to know when like, I want us to put in our motion when we're actually closing the parking lot so it doesn't look like we're closing it for nine days or for eleven days or whatever. You know what I'm saying? Like, on this thing, it says eleven days. So are we saying we're is our motion gonna be we're gonna close library Friday from two to nine, or what are they exactly looking for? Because it's not clear

from the paper. I would say starting at 02:00.

Okay. Okay.

Three at the event.

I'll I'll have to amend the motion to approve closing the library parking lot from Friday from two to reopen on Saturday.

Yeah. Saturday morning. Yeah. Normal.

Saturday morning.

Sure. Everything will be cleaned out Right.

Before the Verizon starts. They work very hard to get this lot done first. They're very disciplined about that. So I would trust them, but I understand you wanted to be sure, so I'll put that in.

Okay. And then it's gonna be open starting before the farmer's market on Saturday? Yeah. Okay. Perfect. That's good. Then I have a long favor.

Yep. I'm I mean, I'm here for these guys, and I wanna make sure everybody's out. Cool. Okay. Before I leave.

So we need to

vote on this then, right, to make sure Yes, please. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Alright. So that passes. And then you're gonna talk about the bathroom. Yes. So continuing the conversation about bathrooms. Just a reminder that this was the catalyst for this was the the foundation, And it's been just about a year probably that we've been exploring different places to be able to install a family sized bathroom.

And the other areas that we have looked at have not been useful. So that brought us to a full renovation of the men's and women's right here on the 2nd Floor here. So the quote that we have is just about a $150,000. And, you know, we needed that amount to know what to do for public bid and know what kind of money that the foundation is looking for. Technically, library board is in charge of all money assigned to the library.

So you get the say of whether we move forward with this project. I will say that the foundation is very much supportive of having this happen. I can do as much as possible for being a liaison between the two groups. Right.

Mhmm. And just for clarification, then the then the foundation gives the money to the library

Correct.

And then we approve

Again. Yep.

So that it can be done.

Yes. But I So now

are you looking for an acceptance of the money from them or just the project?

Of the project and using up to $50,000 from the library reserve fund. Okay. I would like to go into the May meeting with the foundation with knowing that the library board supports the project, and this is how. And then before we start before they also, you know, get on board and then opening a public bid for the project. Alright. Do we have motion chips out? Alright. Dana, in a second? I'll second it. Okay. Discussion I did wanna explain Oh, sorry. Is there any do we have any questions?

Yeah. I had, two questions. First, I think it would be a good idea, and this is more of, like, a suggestion, I guess, and a question. I would like us to have the police or somebody that knows something about security more than you or I would, like, more than we would, look at this plan and see if there's anything we should be doing to make these bathrooms more secure that wouldn't be a huge cost? Like, should we have frosted glass instead of all wood doors?

Mean, is there something we can do at the install that's gonna make for better security, less chance of crime, less chance of vandalism, less chance of issues before we build it. Like, if we could talk to them first and just get their input, I think that would be a really good idea to be, like, for feel like thinking ahead on it. I think I would like to see that. Also, I wanted to know because we've used these bathrooms quite a lot, the kids and I. And what do we need all four?

Could we do three and have it meet the same needs? I've never seen the bathrooms full ever. Do we need to have four bathrooms, or could we just get by with three? Or, I mean, what's you know, what what are all our options, and how would that all look before we, like, vote and spend the money and do all this? So those two would be my big questions.

Can I

ask? Yeah. Yeah. Please.

The first thing with the police coming through, they've done this we haven't done this here yet. They can do that in Maine, but they do walk through for security. Mhmm. And in the past years, they've talked about these bathrooms being kind of a a only spot for things to happen. Mhmm. So one of things we did do, we go to cameras. We also got to put the locks on the doors, which eventually we did not been abusing because we had

Cameras outside in my hallway pointed towards the doors. K.

It was a safety,

including the security walk.

Now we do hourly, if not even more than that. Mhmm. We'll also do it randomly too that people will walk through. It was a big bench. The only thing they asked that we should do, one of the things they did suggest was making an open concept. Those walls that kinda kinda shadow the the doors opening up. They wanted to take those down. Well, at the time, we couldn't do that. But now with this concept, we can't open them opening up in the big wide open lobby, so the doors are actually exposed right in the walkway.

And that's the plan.

Yep. That's the plan. That's the plan we're we're asking for. The other things we ask for too about the handles, the handles will say unoccupied, occupied. Some of the extrusions you can go through is actually have a in, like, the nursing stations, have a pull rod for SOS or emergency. We can go that route, but that's kind of the extreme. But we do have there's no hiding things or you can hide it to open concept stall, so there's nothing you can hide behind. Mhmm. The doors are ADA optical. So if you walk in, you lock the door, you can still open up without having to unlock it with a with a with a knob or anything. Just push the door, the door will open up right away. So those are

the Basic.

Basic stuff we've done. Like I said, we can do the extremes. You know, you do the SOS pulls. We don't have the you'd have to be lower to the ground in case you fall down or you'd be a short person. But I'd say that's the extreme. Like, we have the the police department coming through is security and showing us kind of things we need to do. So the cameras, the open concept lobby, locks in the doors, which they all have, that's kind of the road we've been. So we have kind of looked at. We have none this year, but I think we pretty much covered some of things we talked about in the past, especially the open concept and the cameras and then the security walk throughs. Mhmm. So

A question about the four versus three. Yeah. Is that a capacity thing? Like, for the size of the building, do you have to have x number of bathrooms? Wait.

We went with four because it's the size of the building. Again, the how much volume we have for as far as visitors. Mhmm. It has to have that many, and everyone will be 88.

Yeah. That's what I

was thinking. So we're not losing anything with that.

Dash. So right now, there are four toilets. Okay. Because there's three of them. Sure.

It's the same number. It's like handicap parking stalls. Per yeah. Per year usage. Capacity. And you have to have the x amount of yeah. Okay.

And using the same square footage that's already there.

Looking towards the future, some of the old things are urinals. Urinals are just just messy. So you go all toilets. You train certain people to have to use a toilet properly. It looks it's a lot cleaner rather than having a urinal which plug up all the time Except they're very messy.

So

Okay. So what I'm like yeah. That all sounds awesome. Once we get this done, though, can we just show it to the police and say, is there anything big that you would change before we build this?

What concerns do you have?

Well, my concern remember and I I don't know if you were on board when we had that assault up here. There was an assault in the bathroom. I just if we're building something new, I wanna make sure that we're doing everything we possibly can as a board to make that as unlikely as possible. And we have this opportunity renovating it new.

I guess I would So that was my point. Like, just My perspective would be if I as a user of a toilet, that a single person lockable door toilet is much safer. I would feel much safer than walking into a toilet, you know, a bathroom setting where someone could be in a different stall or

you know what I mean? Open to the lot.

Yeah. I mean, that's

You don't have a separate

You don't a place. I think this

is great. But I'm just

saying if there's anything we can do

when we're building it, let's talk to people that know what's going on.

Let's see if they kinda looked at this. Right? Already?

Not the new plan. They walk through these every year. But we're using Yeah.

They do a secure they secure our building every year. Right. Right.

It is. Are now. They we've had

it secured.

Exits are Exactly. All those things. Yeah.

Over the lobby. Yeah.

We're that's just historical. Where's the video screen for the cameras? Who's watching that? Manager. Managers. Management. Do the librarians have it at night when you guys are gone? Like, if they can seat at the desks? There's always a manager here. Yeah. There's always Okay. Yeah. Yes. We do have a desk as well. Mhmm. Okay. Yeah.

And a lot has to do with being just the awareness. Mhmm. Not necessarily the cameras because they really you can't hear, but if we do the walk throughs constantly, that those trips really it'll knock down the potential crime.

And that's why we started doing those. I

think you guys are doing an awesome job. It was just I thought if we run the plan past, please see if they

what they're thinking. We always do the brainstorming beforehand. What can we do before? Yeah. It turns to cement. That's that's the best thinking.

So we

we pretty much covered everything we can think of, but there's always the potential to adding things that would happen in the future. Those pulls for emergency, we had to do that. That'd be an extreme, but there's always potential of doing it. There's always potential of adding on or altering what we've done. So

Okay. Do we have any adult changing tables in the library? We do not. No. Two things. I would say, specifically, me and my tenure here, I have not had that request actually from a patron. Maybe it never actually came to me from a manager. I don't I feel like you guys would have said that to me. I haven't had that request. And I will say I've talked to several other library directors where they do put them in, and there have been issues Yeah.

Of them being used as a bed. That we've been And as well. We lock it now and Yeah. So I'm certainly not opposed for that to be one, but it would have to be more monitored, I would say. Just to know how much would be used too for the space. I'm sorry? How much would be used for space? I I we we actually did talk about it. Now that I'm remembering, renovating the downstairs bathrooms, I would think maybe putting one down to like, you know, in the future, renovating the downstairs bathroom. Having one on the 1st Floor Mhmm.

Level made a little more sense, I thought, than up here. So maybe in the future, our big plans for more bathrooms renovations. I'll keep that in mind for that. Any more questions for Steve? Should I up here? Should I? So should we go ahead and vote in all in favor?

Aye. Opposed? Alright. Thank you,

guys. Okay. Yep. Go for it. Lots of information.

The first one, I I was a little unclear if we needed a motion or not, which is why this one's labeled as possible action since that I need to be out of town in in May, which is officially the library board meeting because the fifth fourth Monday is Memorial Day. So are we okay with And should we make a motion?

I don't know if they have a motion. I just canceled

the meeting. Yeah. Officially, it would be the president canceling. But, yeah, we can certainly let you know how

And I've talked about Darren. I've talked to Darren about all this already.

So So

Even without her here, she knows. Okay. And then from our city attorney, we are all, I'm sure, up to date on your emails. So he wanted to make sure we were clear in the switch switch to Office 365 that you can access your email web browser based, so by going through outlook.com and signing in. But you will not be able to use an app to do so, on a device. So on your device, you can use a browser on your device, but not the official Outlook app.

Well, actually you. What he's saying is you can Yep. But you're subject to open records so

they can take your phone.

I think that's So besides you, because you were given the city issued device.

This one is.

Yes. I think for everybody else, they turned that off, actually. Don't think you could even yes. Kinda,

like, set

it up. When we

set it with Karen, we set it up with the app. So why I brought this up is because there's been a change since, like, February to now. So that's what I'm confused about. Yep. Has she helped me set it up?

So originally, the thought because originally, the thought was library board members go ahead and and you can use an app. Then then Eric comes in and says so they made it at the city council level or department head level, I would say, made a decision that, if you don't have a city issued device, then we're just gonna turn it off and not even make it an option. Because if you were to use an app on your device and we get an open records request, then you would have to give up your personal device and let Eric go through it for however long it took took for the open records request. So they made the decision behind the scenes to just turn that off. Web based is cloud based, so they have access to all the emails.

Yeah. Does that

And you and if you have Outlook, the city has it. So if you already have an Outlook app and an email in it, you can't add a city email to it.

Right. It

it they

make it separate. Right?

So the only way you you are able now going forward, the only way that you can access your email is through the web.

So how do we go to outlook.com? And then

On any browser. Okay. Whatever your Yeah. Web browsing Mhmm. Choice is, and I go to outlook.com and just sign in. Oh, okay. That's fine. You will have to use the second authenticator. Oh, even before, you were allowed to use the Outlook app before, but now with Office three sixty five because they have the capability to turn it on. So if I have it on my app, do I need to delete that, or how do I make it? That's why I'm competing. You're sure that you can still get on?

If it's still working for you, you're not say anything.

Well, let's see.

Set it up. Say anything.

I'm so on my phone, I was not using the. They put it in the the iPhone email, and and the city set it up for me. And I got Eric's email, and I deleted it.

Oh, okay.

Because I did not want it I did not

want it to go through my personal files.

Yeah. Okay. Right. I'll have someone

My understanding was you wouldn't Maybe I'm wrong, so I'm gonna have somebody Like, wouldn't Yeah. It wouldn't Right. Sign in. You know what I'm saying?

It wouldn't stop us indefinitely.

I'll we'll look at it after.

Okay. Sounds good.

So if we can't figure this out, we'll just say volume here.

Call them. Yes. Of course. Oh, that does come. No.

She's gone to you. They love

that. Okay.

Then we get a charge. Bothering someone else. By the way. It's fun. You should has everybody tried it at least? Mhmm. Yeah. No. I haven't had it. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry. Two. Yeah. But now I know. Okay. But now you know. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So going forward, I would like to I could push out that the agenda has been posted, if you would like, still to your personal emails, but beyond that, just as kind of a nudge. Sure. Monthly. Yeah. To to check your email.

Yeah. But then after that or anytime in between, if you wanted to reach out to me, do it with the city. Sure. Does that make sense? Yeah. Mhmm. Okay. So that being said Alright. No. Got more?

Well, our our IT system administrator submitted their resignation. Max is will be leaving us in a couple weeks. So we are actively working on that knowledge transfer as much as possible with Karen and myself. I'm meeting with MPU to to kind of assess our tech needs. So we will be in conversations with the city about technology and what's the best way to move forward with that.

So we're not gonna skip immediately to just posting the vacancy. Especially with library, as the city is finding out, every department kinda has unique IT needs. The police department very much has unique needs. We do with public facing and employees. So, you know, just talking how we can as a city maybe have a better way to to get IT help.

Well, I I just think it's great that not the max is leaving Right. But that GWENT is leaving. You use it as an opportunity to go, are we doing it the best way now? Is there a better way to do it, and is there a better way collectively to do it? Always Right. Taking advantage of the opportunity to reexamine is always good.

And the city is willing to include the library in that conversation as a member department. So that's yeah. Feel good about that. Yep. So it might be a little slower, and we'll have to use MPU more in the meantime. But we'll just have our IT salary, basically, that would help with that if they're with chargebacks at all. And MCLS definitely helps from the ILS standpoint as well. We'll get through. It'll be fine. No stress at all.

And then just a little reminder, I've talked about Michelle and Stephanie about the end of their terms coming up. And then Pam will be done with your three year as vice president. Oh, yeah. Will be done with three years as president. So just thinking about that for the next year.

I heard you like.

So lead to be president. As I can. Yeah. And we need to meet we usually meet before I know I think June or early June. Right? Right. I'll I'll have Darien reach out to the team. Sounds good. I will add I just got the email. Basil resigned from his spot here, so we'll bring on at least one.

We just got the email today. So we'll at least bring on one in here. If if you know of anybody who's expressed interest in library board, you can send them my way. And I can I can start the conversation, give it to her? Talk to her. You know a good person. Yeah.

Oh. She she's been trying to get on for five years. So

Oh, she's great. There we go. Time is right. Yep. Perfect.

So the requirements for liveaboard are they just need to live in the same Manhawk, be over 18, and be willing to serve. Is that the idea?

And I would say have your fourth Monday of every month open. Right. If I work. Well, that's well, that would be great.

Yeah. Willing to serve with

kind of that. Okay. Yeah. But I would go I would try to go through those details. Mhmm. Okay. Good. Have a conversation. Yeah.

Discuss, like, anything fun, like, playing all these that he is during our meeting.

Which funny you say that? We're actually filling out the new US wildlife permit for seagull depredation. The city used to do it. Now that since we use it so often, they asked us to do it because we have

It's strange knowledge about seagulls. So Yes.

Which are the things I have to write down. I'll use the noodle people, and hopefully, a great kool aid is in some hazardous material I wasn't supposed to use, but it's all natural. So we're filling that out. We're handing it out. We gotta get it out by the end of end of May, and then we're able to hopefully have it for three more years, and then we'll be able to do, hopefully, just the non lethal types, getting rid of the eggs and well, not lethal, but get rid of the nests, have the deterrents, you know, like the the noodle and stuff like that. Hopefully, those things work. Hopefully, in three years, they'll take care of it. They ask for what the end game is because they only want it for so long. So looking into the future, we'll keep doing this. Hopefully, these things will eventually take hold, and they'll stop them from coming.

But they're up there making nests, and we we relocate them quite often. So we have new soft chairs, which are very nice. We have new sled bottoms. So majority of them are in unit.

Yeah. Okay.

And the rest are by the fireplace. So short term, nothing loungy. Just very very comfortable, but very nice to use. So We got rid of all the old ones that were stained and reupholstered 20 times already. So and they look very nice. Nice color scheme, so very nice. HVAC, most of the pipe installations on the AC pipes, new metal casing, all sensitive equipment. When I walked in there, all these pipes and little pieces were hanging on. I go, I was just asking to be destroyed. Now they have casing around them.

They're all protected. They'll be refilling it, doing another leak test this week, and then all the controls will be done by next week, and then we'll be ready to go for all the hot weather. So thank you for everybody at Shouse. And then lastly, we talked about doing security walk throughs. One of the things years ago was we asked about putting a a gate by your dumpster area because people use their dumpsters. So throw away their garbage. It's kinda messed back there so often. We get people who go back there and smoke. It's kind of but we're putting up the gate back there, securing our dumpster area, and we have a shed back there that has some stuff in it, the old equipment that people would love to take, but, hopefully, they'll be all secured. So and then for the peace of mind for staff, walk back here at night.

You know, you're leaving at 09:30, 10:00 at night. So peace of mind. So other than that, any questions?

Questions? Alright. Thanks. I will just say I did update your contact list. I'd make it obvious in your folder.

Just the only update I really made was that we are now dot gov email addresses. We're officially government. Oh, that's good. But So as of now, don't plan for any meeting. Okay.

Okay. Unless you hear from Darian. Okay.

So the next item we're

gonna meet is June. Yes. Okay. That's Okay. Good. So do we need a motion then to adjourn the meeting? So moved. Alright. Second? Second. Alright. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The meeting's

over.