Library - Regular Meeting

Good morning. This is Mary Lee White, chair of the Teton County Library Board. I'd like to call this meeting to order on Thursday, July 16th. We have a quorum with other board members, Miles Yasalino and Elizabeth Rohrbach present. And I'd like to entertain a motion for adoption of the agenda. I move to adopt the agenda for today's meeting. Thank you, Elizabeth. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Miles. Approval of the minutes. I will move to them. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. I move To approve the July 2026 regular, wait, minutes. Wait, oh, sorry. I move to approve the minutes of the June 18, 2026 regular meeting. Is there a second? I second. Thank you, Miles. All in favor? Aye. Did I get a second? No.

I'm sorry.

I slept so badly last night.

Nine o'clock versus 9.30.

So I guess we're moving on to public comment correspondence from Dale McCord.

Yes, we received an email from somebody who works for United Airlines at the airport. We received an email on the 30th of June that I never saw it until actually on July 4th in the afternoon, and they were requesting that we possibly take an item off of their float from the July 4th parade, the fluffy Airbus. It was cute, but I told him, one, I was apologized for being late, but it was not an appropriate place for the thing to live at the library, and Since it was the middle of the holiday weekend, I said I wasn't able to talk to the youth services team, but I did suggest the Children's Museum. And then not included here, I did get an email back saying that as far as he knows, it never found a home and it was going to be recycled.

It's so hard for that kind of stuff when you put all that work into it and it's for like one day and you're just like, what are we going to do with this throughout in the dump? But that's kind of the way it goes. Yeah. Thank you for taking care of that, Kip. And I would assume there's no public comment today.

Public comment.

So we'll move on to Estella and she can tell us about what's going on financially or not.

I guess just quickly for like,

change location is that posted somewhere that we're not in the other room like if there was it doesn't say we're in the other room even so usually I just hit the desk I may when I rewrite now that I have to rewrite the meeting schedule I may actually put Ordway on or Elk on the thing so that it's more specific so will the board always meet here now I'm going to try to okay good make sure that I fit yeah Maybe a little tight.

Maybe if we have a lot of guests or something, we might.

Yeah. In five years, we've had maybe five people over five years.

All right, Bella. So good morning. I did not send you a report because I didn't have any reports to report off of. Although, as I'm sitting here, I realize I should have at least sent you an email last night saying there's not going to be an actual financial narrative today. So I apologize for that. So as far as the county goes, I was going to try and look at last year to see when we got the June information because I don't necessarily recall not having any information last July, but I didn't go back and research that. I do know that the county, right now we're in a weird period in which it happens every year where when invoices come in, you can either code them to the current fiscal, the new fiscal year, or to the previous fiscal year, if that's appropriate. And I know that the county, their deadline for that is mid-August. For us, our deadline for staff to code either fiscal year was by this week, because obviously our board meeting. So it could be that the county has not released the June information possibly until they get all those invoices for August. I don't know. But if I do see that, I will continue to check the reports and see if I see reports, then I will at least forward those to you all just so you have that information in the meantime. I was checking periodically yesterday and as of yesterday evening, they weren't there. But I do can share with you a couple of things. One is as far as revenue goes, At the end of May, the library received the check at the amount of $2,600 from the state of Wyoming. And that is a reimbursement cost as related to shipping regarding state interlibrary loans items. That's a one-time check that we've received. So that's not going to be a regular check that we'll receive every year. But it was a nice little bonus. And that's in relation to with interlibrary loan, uh, the state of Wyoming had been using a software called VDX. And some time ago, the library, uh, consortium decided to switch from VDX to another service. Um, so the reimbursement was for moving federal funds that were previously, previously spent in the VDX system. Um, and so that was a one-time reimbursement of $2,600. And, um, I don't know if you were more familiar with that, if you had anything else to add to that. Yeah. Also, we are going to be, so in the current credit cards that Mary Lee was looking at yesterday, there was a charge for $489.98. That was for various staff have the, not a full stand-up desk, but the attachment of a very desk. which you put your monitor on so then you can opt to stand up or sit down. The Foundation and Friends very generously funded those for staff, I think twice now. And so with the addition of two new staff, they also requested that they could have those desks Unfortunately, that item was purchased out of the operating budget and should have been purchased out of the Foundation and Friends budget. So that amount did show up on an operating credit card, but we're requesting reimbursement from the Foundation and Friends. So that's nothing that you're actually going to see, but just to inform you of what's going on. And then I also want to let you know that regarding Fall River Cooperative, and the solar shades that we were purchasing with EMP funds. The county library did receive the first bill for that. And I know that the county is actually submitting a check to Fall River to actually purchase those. We're calling them solar shades, which is a new term I haven't heard of. So just to let you know that that showed up on our bill, but of course it's the county. The agreement was they were purchasing that LVMP funds. And I guess that's all I have to say. Okay. Oh, actually, I do want to say one more thing. Sorry. This month, we are sending our first check of the fiscal year to the state of Wyoming for our central acquisitions account, and we're sending an amount of $30,000. Did not bring that to the board because that's one of those items that has been pre-approved by a previous board and, you know, in perpetuity, I guess is how you would say that. So that's why it's not necessary to bring that to you all for approval.

Okay. That's it. Thank you. Questions? We'll move on to payment of library vouchers. Would someone like to make a motion? I have the total here of

Should you be sharing the total now? I move to approve the payment of library vouchers in the amount of $107,819.70. One second. Thank you, Elizabeth, for your motion. Thank you, Miles, for seconding the motion. All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Tiff, would you like to share with us some highlights of your director's report?

I'll get Diana in here first. There we go. Okay. Not a whole lot to share other than there's a lot of dates of things coming up. Fall is a busy time for everybody. Reminder that the board was invited to attend the library barbecue at We all took ranch on Sunday, this coming Sunday at 5 p.m. I know you've got invitations. I don't know if everybody responded or if anybody's able to even come.

I'm going, but for one hour. And then I have to get back because I'm having company for dinner. But I just wanted to show up.

Library staffing news. librarian position vacated by Alex Cook. We were unsuccessful in the first round of recruiting. So we reposted the job and expanded the coverage area of where we advertised. So it was advertised on the Pacific Northwest Library Association's website, as well as the Mountain Plains Library Association's website. And we did receive much better response this time um however the same story of once you inform people about the cost of housing and have them just sort of do their own research most of them have pulled out i believe we have either one or two interviews scheduled for next week um one i know for sure i think angela may be waiting to hear from somebody else second interview um And she's on vacation this week.

Where are they from?

I don't remember.

I mean, it does make sense. Like if you, for example, advertise a position in the Seattle area where rents are comparable to our area, they're not.

I paid much less when I lived there. My daughter paid very little. it's also the availability of it yeah yeah that's it's different too um we did have one local person with an mls and their partner spouse accepted a job out of state and soon they moved away so that fell through um so i don't know what we'll we'll see we won't repost it again as a librarian position. If we're unable, we'll have to convert it to senior library assistant and go from there.

Unfortunate. Yeah. What sort of side effects would come from that if you shift the position?

The intent of the librarian position is to... refine it a little bit from what Alex did because he kind of did a little bit of everything but more on looking at community partnerships managing the community partnerships that we have a little more professional level work than just doing what the senior library assistant would do and so program development but I don't know Yeah, thank you. What that looks like if we are unable to fill it.

And the difference in qualifications for that is having a master's in library services.

Yeah. And then the senior library assistant, I believe, is an associate's degree, a bachelor's preferred in whatever field. So a little less grounded in library principles, obviously.

Have you ever seen detrimental effect from the compromise of hiring staff that don't have that sort of specialist degree?

We have had to make those compromises. That sounds wrong. When we hired the youth services manager when we've hired the election, and as a services manager, neither of them have a master's degree. However, they had vast years of library experience, and they understand the library principles and how libraries work and such. So they bring their years of experience, which is in a lot of ways. Yeah. So it's just the reality of here and the master's in library science is not the most common degree in the world. So finding somebody locally is not likely unless they already work for us. Which is ideal. Yeah. And then the other library staffing news is We did lose a lot of part-time library assistant in Alta, which kind of created an opportunity to look more at how the branch operates. What are the real needs over there? And Eva is the only full-time employee and that creates some hardships. Sometimes she's unable to leave for meetings or doesn't feel comfortable taking vacation sometimes. And so... We have the opportunity to place a full time senior library assistant there who can do collection development on her behalf, because that's one of the things she struggles to get done with everything else she does. They would be unlikely to be on vacation at the same time, so there's some building responsibilities that the person can take on while in her absence. Um, so, and really long-term, not that Eva's going anywhere anytime soon, but, um, possibility of, um, succession planning. Uh, I know that's a big concern of hers is what happens if she were to ever leave and retire or whatever. And, um, who's, there's, that passes a barrier. People here don't want to go over there and vice versa. So, um, So we are trying to work on some issues around hiring that sort of, I guess, play that you are an employee of Teton County Library. You're not an employee of either branch. So we're working on that. Is that position being advertised right now? Yep. It just went up maybe Friday or maybe Monday. I can't remember. So if you know anybody... It's likely the person we've talked about, what are the possibilities that come with having another full-time? There could be the slight chance that the branch could be opened on Mondays because of the next full-time person having another full-time person, though there's concern that that's just going to leave them in the same boat that they're in now, sometimes stretched a little too thin. So it's likely... their hours will remain the same. And we might, because we have a, our team librarian goes over and works there on Fridays during the school year. Right now it's open and stays in the summer, but it's going to shift to Fridays. Maybe that person will be hired to work four days in Alta and work here on Fridays as a swap. So we'll see. Okay. And that's going to get everything else is, For your reading leisure.

All right. And Diana, do you have a report for us today?

Hi. Yes. I was just unmuting myself. Thank you. All I have is just a verbal report. We just met with you last month. And since then, we don't really have any new financials to share with you. We're so early in the fiscal year and haven't closed out fiscal year 26 yet. So nothing new on the financial side of things other than the board did approve all of the library funding requests. So that packet that I shared with you last month that was the full request that was approved. So we are good to roll for fiscal year 27. Very excited about everything that's going to happen at the library. Also right now we're just in the middle of wrapping up all of our annual report content. So we're working with Diana Eden on our joint annual report to the community. And so we're getting all that content, all those stories in to be laid out and printed in the coming couple of weeks. So excited about that. And then Finally, that really the only exciting thing I want to share with you is that we relaunched our collab meetings. And I thought that Mary Lee, Kip, our board president, Stuart McGeever, and me, we had a really, I felt a really great meaningful discussion about how we can work together as partners with both the library, the library board. What we did is we talked about a few of our priorities that are rising to the top, and I have some notes that I will be distributing. Mary Lee and Kip, are you fine with me creating our minutes or our notes from that meeting and sharing them with the entire board? Is that fine through email?

Your notes will be better than mine.

Just to lay out for you what came of our discussion, what priorities we want to focus on in the coming year. And I think the things that just did rise off the top of my head are that we want to talk about the challenge of staff housing, as Kip just referred to in his report. Talk about how we might mitigate for the challenges of affordable housing for staff, and then also talk about how we might create an MOU for our organizations that really outlines our individual roles and responsibilities as an independent organization, and then also how we can partner together and in what ways that we can join forces to advance some of our, you know, whether it's advocacy or appropriate housing or whatever. the things that matter to us, how we move those projects forward in a partnership. So I look forward to sharing all that with you soon, as soon as we wrap up this annual report content.

I did get my letter done yesterday and submitted, finally.

Oh, great. Now I just have to call Stuart and say, where's your letter, Stuart? Kip's is already in.

That was my goal, to beat Stuart.

Yeah. So we're, we're excited to share that with everyone. So that's all for me. Does anyone have any questions for me?

I don't think so, but I look forward to seeing you on Sunday in Alta. Yes. We're excited that you're coming over. It's going to be a beautiful day. It should be. I'm really sad. I have to go home and eat dinner because I'd much rather eat your food. I know.

Big hole barbecue. Yum. Dana, thank you. Please extend our thanks. Thank you, Elizabeth.

Okay. Thank you. So now the transfer of interest in terms of... Did we skip that one?

We have one that I inserted that probably didn't get printed. Oh, okay. The last month we voted to close the library on Wednesday, October 28th for an in-service day. Around the same time, the Association of Rural and Small Libraries was planning a board retreat, and they asked for a range of dates that the board was available. I said I was not available that week. However, it turns out that the rest of the board must have been. So I am scheduled to be in Seattle the 25th through the 27th and will be flying on the 28th. So that would be a terrible day to miss work. So I talked to Rose and she said it was no problem to push it out one day. And that was a day that we had also considered as an option to begin with. So we just need to vote to change the closure day from the 28th to the 29th.

Okay. I think you'll have to come in costume though. It is close to how to leave.

Would you like to make that motion?

I move to approve the full day closure of the library on Thursday, October 29th. All staff in service day focused on workplace culture development.

And maybe add that I'm thinking about it. Resend the vote of Wednesday, October 28th. Resend our prior vote on approving that closure day for Wednesday, October 28th. Otherwise, we'd end up being closed today.

I second it. The motion, there was a motion and it's been seconded. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Now transfer of interest income to the capital reserve fund. I'll make the motion. I move to approve the transfer of $100,000 to the library capital reserve fund from the library's interest income account. I think before we get a second, maybe we should see if Stella has anything she wants to illuminate or if you have questions for Stella about that. Different amounts.

I'm correct that there's about 107,000. Yeah, that's how much is as of the end of May. That is what was in the account. We don't know how much interest was earned in June yet. We also know that we have to keep a certain amount in the account, and I don't remember what the reasoning was for that. The county requires you to keep a certain amount in there, but because we don't know the May or the June interest, we want to transfer as much as possible right now because we want to make sure that it gets to capital and the county doesn't have access to it. So... we're doing 100,000 today out of the 107 and knowing that we may come back once we know the June interest amount.

So a few years ago when we did this and the county said, yes, we've done the journal entry to transfer that amount. Then they came back to us and said that they had to back out that journal entry and it was kind of confusing. It was something about We, as the library, that particular fiscal year, didn't use all of our funds. So then we went in the red, if you will, because we had pulled the money from the interest income. So there was some weird back and forth at that time. So that's when we learned, oh, we can't request 100% of what we think is in the interest income.

Now I... So... we get a monthly allotment from the county that satisfies our budget request. At the end of the fiscal year, we may or may not have spent 100% of our budget. And while we can't carry over, the county can take that money back and put it toward the next fiscal year. And So we were overpaid on interest is what that kind of says, because we didn't we earned interest on the full amount and we didn't spend the full amount so they.

And with them back the revenue reports and I know you don't have one in front of you. But you may have noticed that there's always the year to date amount. But then our balance is always less than the amount that we projected as revenues so, for example. our year to date amount is 30,000 more than what is actually showing in our balance for fiscal 26, because that we projected $30,000, $30,000 in revenue, interest income revenue for fiscal year 36. So the county somehow automatically deducts that and it was a county, a county magic.

Okay. Um, Would now would someone like to second the motion? Are we all clear on what we're doing here? Kind of, sort of, at least? Okay. I second. Thank you, Elizabeth. All in favor of the motion? Aye. Does anybody have anything else before we go into executive session? Any other?

We already talked about the co-learning

yeah i think diana covered it quite well um i guess i'm just wondering once we have new board members that's when we'll talk about dates going forward oh yes the because we don't have a new board we there was a lot of agenda items that we just couldn't not a lot of agenda items but a couple of agenda items we couldn't address today um so they were removed from the agenda well meeting dates being one of those Until we know who they appoint, I don't know what their availability is. We could tell them they have to be here on Thursday at 9.30, but that doesn't seem fair.

I'd love to move away, but Thursdays, personally, are just very challenging for me, but let's discuss it once we have a full board.

Yeah, and just looking now, though, what had been proposed was Thursday, August 20th for our next board meeting.

Well, that's What I was going to say is we have a we said we would talk about options for the next board meeting and when we have a special board meeting and all of that because it's going to be the end of July before we really know who's been appointed and have correspondence with them and get them somewhat onboarded and find out their availability. I would propose instead of trying to schedule in a special meeting, just stick with what the bylaws say and have a Thursday, the third Thursday in August regular meeting at 9 a.m. And at that time we can then set a schedule, take care of whatever's not taken care of today. It's summer and it's hard to schedule people.

And for clarity, the document said 930 and you just said nine.

That document would have been adopted today. Right. And we don't have that, so we have to follow the bylaws. Which is 9. Which is 9 o'clock. Thank you. Which is why we're here today at 9 o'clock.

Got it. Unless people don't want to have a special meeting and try to... Or isn't the question, do we want to have a special meeting? Because aren't we assuming right now that we're not going to have a special meeting? We're just going to meet on, I guess, 20.

And in that time, we can talk about, well, maybe not. I think if the August meeting, then we decide when we have a special meeting to do housing conversation and strategic plan.

Yeah, that's my biggest concern is when we get that, when we figure that out. But I guess we can't do that until we have our new board members. So the question is, do we want to wait until August 20th to figure out a date for our special meeting, which will be that longer conversation, like something of a board retreat? I think board retreat is a little overblown for what we want to do. We just want to have sort of a little education session. So, yeah. What are your thoughts about that? Can we wait until August 20th to figure out when we want to do that?

What if we hold August 20th like you proposed and say if we find out a week from today who's joining the board, we can... At this point, we don't know if it'll be next week. We don't know if it'll be two weeks.

They're supposedly interviewing people on Monday. Right. That was also the case this week and that didn't happen, so... Yeah, it's unpromising. I don't want to assume that they'll actually accomplish it on Monday. Right. But In the past, when they do hold interviews, they tend to make the appointments in the same day. But they've had some interesting meetings lately, so I don't know.

There's a little bit of a crisis going on, it seems, in the government.

The only thing I would say about the special meeting for housing and strategic plan is... There's very unlikely any time in September that any of us are available.

Because we were thinking that we would do this special meeting in August. And if we wait until August 20th to even talk about it.

It's just because we won't have a meeting to talk to the new board together. It's kind of hard to bring them up to speed and say, oh, we're going to have a special meeting on these two things that you know nothing about. Which could be good, I guess. Maybe they have no opinions or biases about any of it.

And the strategic plan, it expires at the end of 2026? It has a date of 2027 on it.

Oh, okay. You can interpret that however you want. It could be January 1st or it could be December 31st.

And we won't have another collab meeting. The idea with collab was to meet quarterly. So did we set a date for the next collab? We talked about October for our next meeting for the collab. So we know it would be nice to have that housing education before our next Although we are going to work on the MOU first, so we might not get to housing for a while. I think we can wait until August 20th for our first meeting with our new board members.

To give ourselves a little more leeway, I could be there August 20th, but it'll be a little more challenging with the kid that I'm helping that week. Could we move it one week up to August 13th? Or is that too confusing to come?

It becomes a special meeting at that point because the bylaws say it passes.

I'm down with that.

We could say we need to cancel that. We can cancel that meeting and then schedule a special meeting the week prior.

It maybe gives us more time if we need to schedule that retreat one just for the kids would be pretty wild.

support that following week okay let me look at my calendar I can do that it's kind of pushing into my big birthday weekend but and then do I have to be done before 11 a.m. oh good because I think I might need to be done by 11 a.m. too although 9 a.m. starts yeah yeah so but I could do that date let's say that A special meeting August 13th at 9 a.m. And that'll be our next board member meeting, unless there's a new board member who cannot make it on that day. That would be a bummer.

They may not make it on the 20th.

Yeah, true, true. Okay. A question for clarity. What would the voucher system be if we are a week early? Oh, that throws that off. We could just do it retroactively. I can do it still.

Well, we could then have a board meeting.

We could do a meeting on the 20th as a voucher meeting.

And it could be, you know, just all we do is it'll be just online.

Or maybe you can't make it, but we have two others by that point. Yeah, exactly.

And it can be a Zoom meeting. We've had those before where it's literally five minutes. Come on, there's a motion to pass the... But, you know, accept the vouchers and boom, we're done.

Yeah.

So why don't we do that?

So I don't have to cancel the regular meeting. It's your birthday weekend.

Win-win. Question, just for clarity as well, is a special meeting something that I would not come to or is that, because I don't come to voucher meetings. So are you kind of moving your discussion up to the 13th?

yeah okay i'll plan for it we have to keep in mind that as a special meeting we can only discuss items that are on the agenda so we have to be careful and make sure we add what everything we want on that agenda and then we can't deviate from it as we all tend to do sometimes sure okay i like this plan

seems to work at least for the three of us, and that's a majority. Yeah. All right. Then I guess we can have now. So we make a motion to go into executive session.

Actually, I'm going to back up. Okay. Because we do not have a newly seated board. We don't have officers. I need to know who wants to be treasurer for August.

I thought I'm treasurer for the year.

Not yet. Oh, I'm sorry.

I missed that entirely. You have to feel guilty. I'd be happy to do it for August and I have it on my calendar now to save time. Okay.

And again, if there's any problem, uh, Let us know.

As we get ready to go into executive session, Lindsay has to leave. Do you want to have experience as the incoming, possibly incoming secretary? Yes. What we do is you just, if we just write a couple of sentences of what we discussed, say no votes were taken, and then put those notes in a sealed envelope and give them to Moe. Oh, so it should be handwritten? Well, they can be typed and printed out.

I have a paper right here if you want a piece of paper.

They can be typed and printed out. And then you can give them to me, or you can give them to Moe if you're ever able to.

I'll be able to read them if it's handwritten. I can't really read them. I'll Google Doc it, and then I need to send them to Moe. HAB-Jacques Juilland. : Mobile. Yeah.

HAB-Jacques Juilland. : She is the keeper of all records. HAB-Jacques Juilland. : So just say that their executive HAB-Masyn Moyer- Thank you. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Thank you. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Thank you.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Bye. Thank you. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Okay, see you Sunday.

HAB-Charlotte Pitts, So now I asked for a motion. HAB-Charlotte Pitts, To go into executive session. Yes. Okay.

Elizabeth, would you like to make that statement? I would gladly. I move to go into executive session to discuss a personnel matter in accordance with Wyoming Statute 16-4-405-AII. Or two. Okay. Good.

Pause the recording.

I second the motion. All in favor? Aye. Now I can pause it. Okay. Okay. I'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn our meeting. We're back from executive session and now I'm entertaining a motion to adjourn our July meeting.

Because no action items were made, nothing was approved during executive session, I so move to conclude this and adjourn our current meeting.

I second the motion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion passed, meeting adjourned.