Library - Regular Meeting

All right. I would like to call to order the August meeting, August 13th meeting of the Teton County Library Board. It looks like we have a quorum. All board members are present. Elizabeth Rohrbach, Miles Jasolino, Peg Gilday, our new board member, Travis Ward, and me, Mary Lee White. I would like to entertain a motion to adopt the agenda. Would someone like to make that motion? Moved. Thank you, Peg. Second? Second. Second by Elizabeth. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Well, we have a new board member, Travis. Travis, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah. I'm a longtime resident. I've been here about 26, 27 years or so. I work at the hospital. Started off in the laboratory and now I work in the IT department. Two children that are now getting older, so that's why I have time to volunteer now. And I've been a, myself and my kids, whole family, have been library users our entire time that we've been here. So, I always thought this was a great opportunity to be able to start volunteering and give back.

Okay. And what are you reading right now?

Currently I am reading the Truman biography by David McCullough, a big David McCullough fan. And I've never read any of the presidential biographies. And I happened to be, I don't know, a couple of months ago, walking by a garage sale that was done for the day. So just everything was free. And I looked down and there it was. And I was like, well, that's great. I'm taking that home with me. So that's what I'm currently reading. And it's only 952 pages.

I have to think of what your next book is going to be.

Exactly.

All right. Well, welcome and thank you. And Peg, welcome. For another three years.

I have a couple of things under this agenda item. Since we're welcoming new board members, we're welcoming them to a new meeting room that the library is officially opening to the public today. We have renamed all of our rooms instead of numbers after animals.

I thought it was because we were such good board members.

Well, there is that too. And we will be having, we have them out at the Brent Fest for people today to when they would take a study room or whenever they want to have a snack. And on the youth side, they get mythical animal cookies because the rooms over there are named after mythical animals. So this room will be used as a meeting room primarily. So it falls under the meeting room policy because of the size. And on day of, if the meeting room is not reserved as a meeting room, the public will have access to it as a study room. So we're going to make as much use of it as possible. And if you notice behind you is artwork that was in a staff meeting room, but it is the first library board. So we thought that was appropriate to put in this room. And I know the foundation has already used this room a few times as a committee meeting room for their board. Nice. And the other thing I have under the agenda item is Joe Gunyan is our volunteer coordinator. And he is here to talk about your role as a volunteer. Yeah.

So do you want to bring him up? Yeah. Perfect. Yeah.

All right.

So since we have a new board member, most of you have gone through this, but just a little reminder of how to log your hours. So I'll do a little demonstration. But I just wanted to first talk about, you know, the importance of logging your hours. You know, our volunteers are wonderful people and you are all such good board members, as you've mentioned earlier. So we want to give you credit for all of that. I know some of you are a little humble and you're like, we don't need credit. We don't need anything. But the library does like to capture our volunteer hours because it's a really powerful step to tell our community, you know, not only from like a financial fiscal responsibility, you know, we're leveraging a lot of donated time To provide a lot of programs and such for our community. So we really like to highlight that, you know, that's a good way to show, hey, you know, we're really using our community to the best of their ability. But it also shows, you know, the impact that we have, you know, because our board members and volunteers, they're donating their time, they're giving us that time. And we can't do a lot of the stuff that we do without that. So once we show that stat in that big number, like last year, fiscal year, we had over 3000 hours of volunteer time. And that's wonderful. So we just want to make sure that we're accurately showing off what we're doing here and what you're all doing here. So you all know, except for Travis, about Volgistics. So we were able to streamline how to get into Volgistics once we did the new website. So you just go down here and you go into this volunteer login. And then you'll do your email, which is your tclibedu email. And then your password. Your password will be capital TCL, lowercase V-O-L, TCLVOL.

And if you forget that, you can let me know.

And then you can set up a more permanent password.

and soon because this is now unrecorded.

I can change that. Basically, all we want to capture from our board members is the hours. You will get notified of all volunteer opportunities. If you want to sign up for those, you're more than welcome to, but I know you're pretty busy here with all this policy stuff. So you can just come up to the service tab, And we only keep track by the month. So if you want to say, you know, this month I did 18 hours or 198 S's. And I just got the assignment library board. And then you can just post it. And then that puts it into my reports and I can accurately report. How much time do you have?

Peg had a good question. Like, if we just want to go in and put, like, so we're starting a new fiscal year right now. Are your reports... Like calendar year or are they fiscal year?

We generally do the fiscal year report, but we do we keep track every month and you get those stats in the report.

So we kind of do it at least we need to do it at least once a month. So you can't go in at the end of the year and just say, I attended this many meetings and this many hours.

Ideally not.

We can't do that for last year.

Yeah, because we've kind of run all those reports already. So occasionally we do like calendar year reports, but usually it's fiscal year. So yeah, if you can just keep track on the month, I'm going to try and set up something to remind you to log your hours at the end of the month. It's a little tricky within logistics. Okay.

Karen Hollweg, I could do a little we almost should at the end of our board meeting just take a minute and everybody just yeah. Karen Hollweg, While we're here and we don't have to put it into our brain for other times.

Karen Hollweg, I'll see what I can.

Karen Hollweg, i'll try to remember.

If you ever have any issues or anything like that, feel free. I can also load them in for you. Shoot me an email and be like, I did 198 hours this morning. I'm happy to put those in for you as well to help you out because I know you're doing so much for us. We really appreciate your work. Thanks so much. That was all I had. Feel free to pester me if you need any help.

Thank you, Pastor Ross. Yeah.

Thanks, Jeff.

Okay. Moving on on our agenda for 12 minutes, and I will move to approve the minutes of the July 16th, 2026 regular meeting. Did anybody have any comments or concerns about the minutes, anything you want to ask about? Do we recuse ourselves if we weren't in the meeting?

You do not. That was tricky. I just learned the other day you don't get to vote, and that doesn't make sense to me, but you do.

Is there a second for the motion? I second. Thank you, Elizabeth. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Financial Information and Reports. Nella, do we have to respond? I assume we do not.

We do not have any correspondence and we do not have any members of the public on. Well, we do. We have Diana, but she's here for something else. And under Financial Information and Reports, We will do those next week at the regular board meeting because the county hasn't released all the reports yet. So the only thing under there is a copy of the adopted budget. Yes. And every single year, the revenue and the expenses do not balance. Oh, that was my first question. Because the county... rolls over money from the previous year and but it doesn't get reflected here so they give us some rollover money but the that's what they're giving us this fiscal year but they're using rollover money from this year uh this past fiscal year and i don't know where it ever shows up but it so we're not projecting a deficit no we're projecting more income

I mean, we're expecting. We're not projecting, but we're expecting more income, right? So then we won't have a projected deficit.

There is no projected deficit despite what it shows?

Oh, I thought our income was $4,874,000.

And if you do the difference between that and the expenses, that's the rollover amount that the county does not have to fund us this year for. Okay. But it never shows up anywhere. It makes no sense.

Wait, I'm confused. Because the total revenue, the total income is less than the total revenue on this budget.

Total expenses. Total expenses. And it is every single year. Because of the rollover. Because of the rollover.

But this budget without the rollover would be projecting a deficit.

Correct.

That was what I was saying.

But it won't be.

It won't be. That's right. I can't explain it.

I don't think Stella can even explain it.

We don't even know how much it is, right? The rollover. No. No.

But it's enough that it will end up to cover all of the projected expenses. Okay. Great.

I don't know if they don't parse it out per department and they just do it at the end as a budget amendment or something, perhaps. I don't know where it happens, but it balances. There seem to be a lot of mysteries with the game.

I will also add that in my experience of now being here five years, we have not gone over anything. similar fiscal year, so they're similar to that. I mean, obviously, we want to try and spend as much as we're allotted, but we have not gone over overall. We might go over in one account line number, but then it all balances with the double amount.

In the past, before the account took over management of everything, they would just give us the money and it would go into a library bank account, and we always had to tell them what amount of cash was on hand at the end of the fiscal year. And then they would track that from what they would give us. So it's the same, it's happening, but I don't know. We had it, we could show it in our bank account. Here we don't have the ability to show it in our bank account. So I don't know where it sits, but.

Okay, Peg. Two things. In the past, this is more for Travis, We did midstream have some concerns about budget countywide, and the group did have to work on decreasing the budget maybe or so. It looks like this year we're not anticipating that, we hope, but should something occur drastic, that might come up, just so you're aware. And I did, during my interview, have the opportunity to say that I thought that the county financial systems were a little bit antiquated and cumbersome. And, you know, I think the three commissioners that were there nodded.

You know, I don't know what they're planning to do.

It's actually not the county. It's the state. They use the state software for accounting. So every county uses whatever this strange system is.

Well, the captains must hate it because accounting is just numbers and they need to add up. And so it's just very interesting to me. Or the paper or vouchers or these kinds of things. But anyway, I just want to let you know that I thought as treasurer, they could be greatly improved.

May I explain why the audit takes six months every year?

Is now an appropriate time to ask about a line item in the budget?

Sure.

Great. Thank you. I just am curious about the equipment expenses because it increased $20,000, I think, from last year to this year. 83 to 105. And I was just curious what that's about. I know there were like 50 new laptops purchased this year.

Could it be the server?

It could be the server. I'm sorry, I don't know exactly. So the equipment budget, I'm sorry, which I don't even know the budget. I apologize. Equipment expenses.

Equipment expenses. Their maintenance went from 55 to almost 75. And then equipment leases, one from 27 to 30. I think it's mostly this equipment maintenance.

So that one is also, it's a shared budget between both facilities and IT. So it could be in either case that that the overall request was increased. Elizabeth, to your question about computers, that was actually out of our capital reserve fund. So we plan that every five years, due to the lifespan of the computer equipment, that we'll replace that. So we put that in to our capital reserve for every five years. So that's where that actually came out of. I'm trying to think if there's...

The firewall... I don't have the detailed budget in front of me to remember.

Maybe, Sully, you can email me after the meeting at some point. I'm just curious. Sure. Thank you.

Which is your job?

I'm curious. It does seem like there are many things. Right. Yeah, there are some big jumps, but many things like fees and things that could go down. I have another question about the top line item under workforce plan of WFP salaries was a pretty small number than all the library staff salaries. It's kind of more what I was expecting.

What was the first salary item? The first salary is full-time, which is $2,817,553. Yeah, I was not seeing where that went. Um, that's the full-time staff. And then there's one further down that says library staff salaries, and that's part-time the way that the County has difficulty recognizing part-time employees. And so they don't get included in the workforce plan when they calculate, um, annual costs. So I have to put in a separate line that says we estimate all of our pocket time employees may work up to, I think we budgeted 18 hours on average per week this year. So, uh, and it varies some work 12, some work 20. Um, so we can, it just kind of works out that 18 is sort of the average and, um, the County clerk provide, uh, Estimates the cost for full-time staff, but does not estimate any part-time staff costs. So we have to put that in separately.

But it looks like the part-time people still get benefits.

They earn, they get limited benefits. They earn three hours of sick time per month and four hours of holiday pay on the 11 paid holidays that we receive. and that's provided they work 15 hours or more per week.

Okay. Thank you. I noticed you reduced your health insurance costs. That was amazing.

How did that happen in this quadrant? I don't know the answer to that, but I know that they did renegotiate some of the providers on some of the other related benefits, and so those costs went down, so

And that's another county benefit. So is the county doing the negotiating?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Thankfully, we don't have to do that. I believe it is expected to increase, I think, 12% next year.

Stella, did you have comments?

I did not. Okay. Or do not.

Could you remind me about the capital reserve, please? I know it's been $50,000. Wasn't it $150,000 in the past? This past year it was $50,000, and so we're jumping up to $150,000 again? Yes. Great.

When we were doing the budgeting process for fiscal year 26, because we're now in 2017, That was the year that we had to do budget. I think we had to come back and forth like two or three different times where we were told from the commissioners that we had to cut across countywide, not just us. And even though we knew that we don't want to cut capital reserves, that was definitely a budget that it was a little more seamless to really be able to just take funds out of. And so that's why... Last year, it was only funded at $50,000. And then this year, when doing the budgeting process for fiscal 27, fortunately, we were not told that we needed to do any sort of drastic measures. And so that's why we put it back to $150,000. But I will mention that there was a process that changed at the very end of last fiscal year, which is... Typically, at the start of every fiscal year, what we were doing was coming to you board and asking you if we could move the funds in capital reserve for the current fiscal year, if we could transfer that into our capital reserve account, which is like a separate account. At the end of, and I think I may be touched on this in either June or July, but I know that Peg wasn't here and Travis wasn't here. We found out that we actually can't do that anymore. I guess the treasurer's office found that out from the accounting department, from the auditors. So what we'll be doing now is just that 150,000 will just stay in the expenditure budget like any other accounting amount. If we spend over that, then I need to then do a process of emailing Mo Murphy, the county clerk, and just saying, It looks like we're over, but we actually have the funds sitting in our capital reserve fund. And then they would do some sort of adjustment accounting-wise. So that's just one slightly different process that we'll have from the way we've been operating in the previous years.

And if we're underspent, do we then at the end of the fiscal year do a budget transfer?

I'll have to find that out.

Yeah. Otherwise, that means the 150 never ever makes it over to the capital reserve.

Yes. And just to add to that, one of the reasons that we have done that is that per state statute. Once our funds are in our capital reserve account, they cannot be touched by the county versus other departments can have can touch those funds, but that stated. If we need to do something that is a capital project, a capital improvement project, we must use our capital reserve funds first before going to the county for any additional funding. Thank you.

And I would add, even when we only budgeted $50,000 last year, for the last at least three or four years, we've transferred our earned interest income into that fund. So we are over, we fund it well over 150,000 every year anyway.

So yeah. Thank you. Okay. One more question that might come up later with them, Leslie getting job in Alta, but, um, is there any plan to do passport processing on the Alta side, having her there? That's just too many things.

It's site specific and, um, it would require a lot of paperwork and work on, um, probably Eva's, uh, part over there. So it's site specific and because Leslie will be working here on Fridays, she's going to do two passport appointments on Fridays while she's here. So she will continue to be an agent for us. And apparently there's not a whole lot of demand for, I think Eva said she's had maybe one person ask about passport application over there. So, um, either they're coming over here just because they do, or people over there travel less. I don't know.

All right. Thank you, Stella. The director's report there?

The first thing you'll notice is the report is 16 pages long. That is because in July, I did write a report and apparently I didn't save it and gave you May's report or June's report. So you saw the same report twice. So I've included June and July in this report. So you'll see a lot of information from leadership team. But the things to note is mainly library staffing news and you mentioned Leslie will be moving over to Alta as full-time senior library assistant, bringing some stability and stability for sure, but more flexibility for Eva to be able to focus on her job as manager of the branch and not having to worry about staffing the branch as much when she goes on vacation or calls out or something. So is she commuting all the way, or is she actually... She lives in Drix. Oh, okay. Excellent. So that was... She's done the commute for five years, so she's excited to stay over there.

Yeah.

We also, after a long period of recruitment, we were successful in hiring a librarian. That's such good news. He comes with a lot of great experience. different perspective that we don't really have reflected in the library pool right now. So that'll be great. He will be coming to us at the end of September.

Did he say anything about how he's managing his housing?

He's looking. I know he has submitted some applications because Angela has been asked to. do the piece that she's supposed to do as the manager for him so I know he's actively looking I don't in the interview he talked about what the community might be like from over the pass or through the canyon so he's aware of what he may have to do but he wants to be here it seems so And at some point if it gets, if it looks like he's not finding something, I know in the past we've sent out messages to staff and anything, you know, even if it's just a room or whatever, it's a good place to start.

Okay. And when does he, when's he coming here?

He starts on the 28th of September. So sometime prior to that.

Okay.

And then we... musical chairs continue with Leslie moving to Alta. We have her provision. So we will be, that is now posted on the county and the library's website and recruitment is underway. And we have some part-time staff who I know are interested in full-time at the library and perhaps somebody in the building is looking to change departments. So I'm guessing maybe it's gonna be another internal hire and then more musical chairs. And then the other thing, Institute of Museum and Library Services has been doing some programming around the countries focused on the 250th anniversary of the country, but also on just civic engagement and trying to increase that. And there's an event, the last one of the five I think they've done, will be in Reno. And given who they say should attend, I don't know why they invited me in the first place, but I did nominate Leah as our representative. And so she will be going to Reno at the beginning of September to represent us and to hopefully engage and talk about with other people doing the same kind of work she's doing and come back with some great ideas on top of the great ones she already has.

And I, um, made a note of this under, um, matters from board members, but, um, band book week is coming up. I mean, it'll be here in a flash, October four to 10 and October 10th is let freedom read day. And then with, um, Leah going to this conference and we talked about advocacy in our co-fab, co-fab? Co-lab. Co-lab group. I'm just wondering if there is talk about what we might be doing and if there's a way that our board can support.

I could tell you we have partnered with Off Square Theater for the staged reading of Fahrenheit 451. If you would like to audition, there are open auditions. You have to have no acting experience. It will be a staged reading. But auditions are open. I think they're at the end of this month. So if you'd like to participate in that way, I will be out of town. So I'm actually going to email them and see if there's a way I could do something without having to be here present for the auditions especially kind of fun to get out of my yeah that'd be great comfort zone a little bit um but we are doing that we always have some sort of display um and i'm not sure what else might be planned but didn't we cover books last year or something like that i remember oh yeah

That's kind of clever.

That might be Mr. Gates.

And we were gearing up because that's the week I wrote the op-ed, right? For Banned Book Week about the Wyoming. Oh, because the Wyoming law was in committee and it was being hashed out. And so we need to be up on all that. What's going on with the upcoming session, which is going to be way scarier than the last one because it's a general session. And there's going to be more time to get that terrible legislation through. But we have an election between now and then. And you're going to a WLA meeting and probably can tell us what's going on about statewide advocacy in this upcoming session?

Yep. As a member of WLA's executive board, and Angela is also on the executive board, we both participate. Wyoming Library Association has a legislative committee. So we have a meeting, I think, next week. But at the WLA conference, Better Wyoming will be doing a pre-conference. And then there are some... library employees throughout the state of Wyoming that are part of the advocacy with MPLA and so forth. And they'll be doing a pre-conference as well, which I'm hoping to attend, depending upon my overall schedule. So that might be able to bring some information back regarding that.

And I did notice that in most of the forums, they were asking the question about library of banning. And I know Y.O. File has like the responses from all of the candidates and you can read what their responses were. And if you want to know who to vote for, just ask me. I don't think I can tell you. And I did send out the results of the W.L.A.

survey of candidates.

Thank you for cutting through kind of their report.

Yeah, it was hard. That was so hard looking at it.

I may have slipped in a little bias in my interpretation, but... And it was in every county, too, so you're like, oh, where's my county? It was just really kind of a dismal response rate. It's only people who... cared about library issues that responded, I think.

Yeah, and that was scary, the percentage.

And the number of people who didn't respond leaves you wondering where they... What bad trouble we could be in.

Yeah. Like accounting-wise, do folks, do library employees get time to go and vote on election days for primaries, or how does that work with library staff?

Great question. It is required by law.

Yeah. Yeah.

But they've got requests. Yeah. I mean, I think most people either early vote whenever they can, or I mean, anybody who works in the building can go stand in line and vote. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Any questions for Kit Kipp on his report? One little thing.

I do love your report data from what's going on in the library. I feel like it's a little, it's great. It's all there, but I kind of have to pick through it a little bit. Is there like a chart so you can see, can you turn that data into a chart or a more, you know, a more readable format? I'm just curious to know, are there any real trends? If some things would go really far up, some things come really far down. I'm not asking for a reason for everything, but Maybe a better understanding of trends as opposed to just this year versus last year or this month versus last month. I would assume that's a doable thing, such important data, but just the way you read it is a little tricky.

I get that.

Is it possible with the software to do that, the software this comes from?

This comes from Excel. So if I knew more about Excel, I'm sure you'd do it.

Somebody doesn't give you this report. You're pulling it all together.

Everybody enters their data. And then. Yes, it used to be. I don't remember how many documents. It was like five or six different documents that we used to have to pull this from. So this all is in one document now and it's designed. all primarily to meet the needs for the state report that's done annually. So these are the things the state or IMLS collects. But yes, I'm sure

excel data could be turned into a pie chart or a graph or whatever so try to make your life harder but yes i cannot understand why you would want to see downward trends in a lot of categories why is it just a shift just yeah and maybe it's more of whoever analyzes it to just give us you know a half a dozen highlights maybe. I love that. Something. It doesn't have to be. I don't want more paperwork either. You understand what I'm asking for. When you look at this, you know that, well, this looks like a really big up or down and here's why. Just picking a few highlights might really help us.

And I'd say conversations I've had with some of the staff, what I think, are sometimes putting things in Like, oh, I'm glad someone's reading that. I will do a better job because there's a lot that, like, we don't get one month when we get it the next month. So, like, I really am interested in that.

Please extend that.

Yeah. We can keep getting some of those because, like, when we have a missing one for, like, two months and then the next one's really good. Right.

I do have a question about one of the line items. I feel like a trend that I might be recalling is less Spanish. Speaking events. So I just kind of wanted to call that out again. I think maybe one of the reasons in the past was shared just like attendance was less. And so for that reason, we were pulling back the programming. Am I recalling that correctly?

Patty has significant declines in participation. Right. Because I saw we did zero. For some obvious reasons. Right. And so she's... Focusing in other areas, primarily her outreach to Munger and doing Spanish story times and more youth than adult things. Yes. Though I think she still does, does she still do her parenting? She hasn't. That's what I think. Yeah. And the language exchange program that she used to do is... now going to be through CWC. Okay. So some things have shifted. Sure.

All makes sense. Just something I'm keeping my eye on.

And I could probably invite her to a future meeting and we could talk about it.

That'd be amazing. Yeah.

But just to talk about like the Spanish collection itself, very little circulation. Okay. And I think that's, Maybe we made assumptions that that's what the community wanted, and that's not what the community wants. So we need to do a better job of understanding and reaching out to the community and asking, what do you really need from the library? Because it's not a Spanish language collection that people are looking for, probably don't have time often to just sit down and read.

Good to have a conversation with Patty about it because I have a lot of questions that I don't know much about our Spanish-speaking community these days. And so I hate to take up library board time with those questions. So it'd be nice. Have a chat with Patty. Yeah.

The partnership with Sprout Mobile, lots of the kids I work with are, you know, going and getting books there. And I can't say that I've had workers that are Spanish, but there are some at those partnership ones, which has been cool to see.

That's great.

Yeah, the usage of zero to five-year-old children is way up this year, 705 from 458. Good job. Yeah.

No, you go. I saw in one of the comments, something about the chairs and the computer area changing. Is there a plan for that? I'm not being anatomically correct. I intended to go, but then we came to a different door. What's that chair situation for the computers? The Broadway chairs are...

plan to be replaced this year and i've just included those as ones that we can replace this year too um i don't know why the computer center has the same uncomfortable wooden chairs i mean it's just not appropriate furniture but that's what's been there since i've been here and probably forever yeah but they're not appropriate for computer stations so they will be replaced with more office chair type seats. Well, if you want to. You've got to do it within the rules of behavior.

I there are a lot of dates in this report upcoming closures trainings, etc. And I think Diana is probably going to hit on this, but a big day to remember is September 12 old bills fun run Yeah, I don't have that on here. Yeah, I didn't know. But Diana probably has got some information about that. And then The other thing is, can you remind me about customer service training? Are we going to see the kind of evaluate the outcome of our cultural?

The thought is that through the process with Rose, that customer service itself should improve somewhat. So we'll see where that goes and then, We may still want to do a full-on customer service training, and that would probably be in the spring.

All right.

We wanted to get through Rose's work first and deal with workplace culture and see where that lands us and then go forward with customer service. Yeah, sounds like a good idea. Yeah.

Okay, we'll move on to nomination and election of officers.

No, you want to go to Diana.

Oh, Diana. Oh, my God. How could I forget?

Hello. Thank you so much. I sent my report super late, so you probably did. I don't know if you got it last night or not, but I included in the report just a quick summary of some of the upcoming things as well as what we've been doing. One, just to point out a few things, one is that we are just about, well, we have just about finished annual report we have all the final edits in for the library and the foundation and friends combined annual report and so that's going to print today we will have that ready for distribution of the week of August 24th and so you'll see it on the library front desks we're also going to have it as an insert into the Jackson Hole News and Guide August 26th and then the foundation and friends will do a direct mailing to all library volunteers and supporters or donors that week as well during our old bills giving season so super excited for you guys to see it it just turned out phenomenally so I can't wait for you to see it old bills yes a couple of things right away we have our launch of giving season tomorrow and Friday the 14th. So we'll be at Russ Garamond Park in the morning. So if any of you would like to join us, we will have our library is calling signs out. We'll be taking photos and we'll be rooting for our rubber ducky that has the Library Foundation and Friends number on it to hopefully finish in the top three. And then we are awarded some funds. So that's exciting. So if you have some time tomorrow, we'll be there around, well, the events from 930 to 1100. The rubber duckies are launched at 10. And so just come anytime and they'll have, Community Foundation will have refreshments out as well. And then Old Bill's Run Day is gonna be on the 12th. So put that on your calendar for Saturday, September 12th. It's gonna start a half hour early this year at 8.30. And the Foundation and Friends will have a booth again for the full morning giving out free books. And then we invite you to join us for the start of the run where we'll be making some noise for the library and holding up our signs, taking photos. So we really hope you join us to do that on the morning of the run. And one more date for Old Bills is our rush hour rally. So if you've I think some of you participated. I know Elizabeth was there last year. Mary Lee was there last year. I think were you Peg too? I think this was on Thursday before the run. We gather outside the library during the morning commute from 815 to 845, holding up our library signs there. Again, a lot of them, you know, honk if you love the library. So we just make a lot of noise within our community to raise awareness about the library right before the old bills run. So that's going to be Thursday, September the 10th. Also on the report I submitted to you. Yes, that's right. Thank you, Kip. We do work up an appetite, like waving your sign around.

You have to bribe people.

Totally forgot that we host breakfast that day. So DOG burritos in the morning, breakfast burritos. So we sent out an email, excuse me, an email invitation to you all a few days before so that you could submit your order for which burrito you want. So yes, we do feed you breakfast. Thank you. Also on the agenda or on the report is the budget approval. So two items on there. You'll see the fiscal year 27 final approved total library funding requests. That document, we send it to you in the format that the library staff submits to us. So it's a little bit different format than what I shared with you last month. This is what the final budget that the library staff submits that's approved. And then we also submitted to you the final, roughly final, I think, I don't know if there's any more straggling payables to insert into the report, but that should be just about the final numbers for fiscal year 26 that just wrapped up June 30th. So you can see what the Foundation and Friends supported in terms of library enhancements for 26.

How much is that, Diane? I don't see it in there. I'm looking at my... We don't have it in front of us. Do you mind just sharing the number? I just got it.

Oh, it's from you. It's from you. Okay.

Okay. So it's... Yes. So the approvals... Oh, do you have it?

Yeah.

Okay. So the approval for fiscal year 27, total library funding $620,458. And that's a 14 page workbook that you can see all the various areas in library departments that we're supporting. And then for fiscal year 26 that just finished, the total funding was $510,707. And you'll, again, that report, you can just go through every line item to see which areas were funded.

Thank you so much. Please extend our thanks.

Oh, it's our pleasure to partner with you all and really help to impact our community. It's just such a meaningful experience, and we're really excited about it. We have an upcoming social, so one more thing to mark on your calendar. We would love to have an opportunity for all the Library Foundation and Friends Board, the Library Board, and Library Leadership, as well as our Friends Committee. to all get together for a social opportunity. So on Wednesday, October 21st, it will be in the evening. We'll be sending you an email invitation and details soon in the evening after our board meeting, we'll gather for a social event. Elizabeth, you look like, oh no, it's a conflict with your schedule. I'll be out of town. Okay. We'll miss you. I will too. Thank you. Last thing I want to just is request if you all want to participate in our outreach and communications, we do have a grand reads feature on our monthly e-newsletter and our social media account where we feature board members' favorite books and book recommendations. So if you all have one, I included in the report I sent to you a link to our Google form for you to fill that out and submit your favorite reads. And then we can feature you, if you're willing to be featured in our email newsletter, and in our social media. And Travis, great to meet you via Zoom. Hope to meet you soon in public and in person. And that's it. I look forward to working with you in the coming year.

Great. Thank you. Looking forward to it as well. Diana usually likes to have a, just to sit down and talk about what the foundation does. Oh, great. So maybe a range.

Yeah, I'll arrange that. I'll reach out to you. And I think I haven't even sat down with you, Miles. Have we sat down for your orientation for the Foundation and Friends?

Okay.

Let me send you all some email invitations to get together. I love to spend a half hour or so, whatever you want, half hour to an hour, just getting to know each other and talking a little more in-depthly about what we do as a supporting nonprofit.

Great.

Thank you. Thank you, Diana. Also, I wanted to just shout out that the last newsletter, I found the Kayla Brosius Collection and Access Services librarian. They did sort of like meet Kayla and follow the journey of a book through the library. And it was like, I thought it was really, really good. To know. So if you can take a look at that little feature that they had in their newsletter, their last newsletter, it was really good. Really great.

Thank you, Mary Lee. And if you all if you if you are not receiving our monthly newsletter, please jump on our website, support TCLIB.org. and sign up for a monthly newsletter. And then we also have all of those stories that you just mentioned are included on our stories tab on the website. So those are our blog stories. And one more thing to let you know, I'm so happy you pointed out, Kayla, because one of the things we're doing is we're featuring people profiles every month. And we're kind of rotating between what we call library champions. So those are donors and volunteers, board members like you, everyone who supports the library. We have a feature about library partners. And those are folks and organizations within the community that actually partner with the library on programs and services. And the last feature are library stewards, where we'll be featuring library staff members like Kayla, who steward our library and help to impact our community in great ways. So look out for those, you guys. Thank you, Mary Lee, for pointing that out. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Okay. Now, nomination and election of officers. Would someone like to make a motion?

I move to nominate for one-year terms. I'm going to leave White for chair, Peg Gilday for vice chair, Miles Iazzolino for secretary, and Elizabeth Rohrbach for treasurer.

Thank you, Elizabeth. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you, Peg. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Great, nobody belled. Glad to teach you.

I'm happy to feel about you because I'm familiar and even trained somebody. Thank you. Because it sounds like you might have one knocked over that.

I've done it once now.

I know.

So I have experience. I can't say I know.

I will say, maybe just for it to be on record, I know there are reasons why it has to be done here. but I just feel like that is so restrictive in terms of the time in which the treasurer has to be available to come here to do that. And I just, I wish it was able to be done outside of the business hours. Not your fault. Not just. Yep. Good.

Noted. Thank you. Um, so did everybody have a chance to look at the meeting schedule and, um, Any comments or concerns?

I think I don't, I have a fair amount of flexibility. So I just, if someone feels the need to wiggle things around, I'm open to it.

And it just note that our September, our next meeting is a voucher meeting.

Yes.

Yeah. We have a meeting next week.

That's in person. No, next week is awesome.

We can be online.

Yeah, that's good. We're just doing vouchers and financial reports. Perfect. That requires me, though, to do the vouchers. Yes. Great. Yes.

So I'm just curious right now if anybody knows they're going to miss the September meeting because I am going to. And I just want to make sure that we have a quorum for that meeting in September. Yes.

Yeah, it's a voucher meeting, so just... We'll put it in Montgomery, Alabama for my... You'll be gone.

I think I can tune in if need be, but I think it's just vouchers, so Stella... And the big thing is that we have a quorum. I can be virtual. Okay.

I can join.

Okay. I can be here. Great. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. That's a column. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Is there room to potentially move it back to what's in kind of the bylaws of 9am over 930? Or is there a reason why we've made it 930?

I can say it was set at 930. I don't know when Lisa McGee was chair. None of us, several of us are not morning people. So we went with 930. I prefer that number. But it's your meeting. So you get to decide when it is.

I mean, the library opens at nine. So it means staff really have to come early. I would prefer nine. I don't know. I can do either.

Does it require working with the county to change?

No. Okay. We don't have to do anything to change the rest.

Since I think there's a lot of indifference here, other than Miles would like it, really like it, to be at 9, kind of brings it to you two. Is it troublesome to come at 8, you know, like 8.30 and get ready for a 9 o'clock meeting?

No, I just have to adjust my schedule. So, I mean, it's your meeting, so you get to decide.

I'd go for it. I mean, we could vote if you want, if we want to go 9 o'clock or 9.30.

Is it more of a burden on staff, like IT setting up this room and staff? No, they're here.

And it's just if you don't get to come through the staff door like some of you did this morning, then the meeting will start a little after shortly after 9 o'clock if you wait for the doors to open or something. But

9 o'clock is our so we do need to amend this resolution are we good with the third week that's better for county reports should they ever get released yeah okay yeah okay and so I see that I have to sign the report So can we just make a...

It will be quick if you want to wait. If you want to make the motion as amended, and then I can re-create this after the meeting.

All right. Would someone like to make that resolution with the amendment?

Move to pass the resolution adopting the SPHER 27. library board of directors meeting schedule with the 10 amendment to the start time of our regularly scheduled meetings to 9 a.m.

I'll second. Thank you, Miles, for the motion. Peg for the second. All in favor? Aye. Moving on. Matters from board members. And yeah, I Don't know if any of you noticed, but in our Teams folder now, you will see a folder called United for Libraries Conference. And I put all of the slide decks from the four sessions that I attended. The one of the greatest importance is be the best public library trustee. And I actually want to discuss a little bit of what I learned in that at our retreat. It was really interesting. This was so great to be able to attend a virtual conference. I was like riveted from 9 o'clock in the morning till 1 o'clock in the afternoon. It was really good. The other one was pertinent, navigating the hiring process. I learned a lot and also brought up a lot of questions. Breaking down silos. and really I think that's kind of what Rose will be dressing a little bit too in her, um, her workshop with staff, um, and leadership, uh, and then library champ champions is what, uh, Ames, like Ames, Iowa library did, um, in light of, um, of the, these banning laws that are being, um, put forth in legislatures. And, um, and it just made me really feel like, I think it would be so great if our library could do something a little, you know, beyond, uh, just letter writing and contact that that's more enduring. Like how do we educate the public to be more of, um, an advocate for the freedom to read and how to, how to negotiate the league, you know, like the, the legislative, um, neighborhood and just something a little bit beyond, uh, having our book displays and things like that.

Um, ties into something, um, the article that I sent last week or early this week, uh, by Marian Yoder for wild file. Um, she reached out to me after she sent me the article and said that, uh, Amanda Jones, the, Librarian from Louisiana who wrote Fat Librarian. And it really wants to visit Wyoming. And so I was going to talk to Diana. Like we did the librarians last year, maybe something around Amanda Jones as a special speaker would be something we might want to consider doing. I don't know what that looks like. but she will be at my conference in September as a speaker, so I will talk to her and see if she really is interested in coming to Wyoming and see what we could arrange. But she's a great speaker. She's experienced a lot.

And maybe something could come out of that, too, like the Ames Library did, where they had a cohort of community members who went through like three sessions to learn how to, um, how to lobby and how, how to speak, uh, at public meetings and how, you know, basically how to be an advocate for freedom to read. Um, yeah.

So just things to think about and, um, Interesting situation here where people don't, the rest of the state doesn't want to hear Teton County people speaking. Right. So we, I think whatever we do, we want to maybe expand it beyond Teton County. Right. And help create advocates around the state somehow. And I know that Better Wyoming has done a good job of trying to do that. So

There was another effort that Diana has a question.

Oh, Diana. I just wanted to add to what you said, Mary Lee, because that is a conversation among our board members about how do we continue the momentum that was started with the librarian screening and film panel. And you'll see in our end report that comes out next week is we did about a one and a half page spread of. about advocacy featuring the librarians event and talking about the impact of that and how it did rally so many folks in the community to attend that workshop, the advocacy workshop. And then I think it rallied about 165, it was documented, residents who either spoke out with a phone call, public testimony, or a letter, to their legislators. So I know that our board has established for fiscal year twenty seven within our budget a substantial allowance for any potential other events like you're describing with Amanda Jones or any, you know, any workshops or I think we would love to continue this conversation with you and with the library about how we can support. And I just wanted to also raise a quick note that Angela came to me yesterday to talk about the upcoming partnership with Off Square Theater, and said there is a bit of an interest for the Foundation and Friends to potentially be named as the partner for that, just so that it's kind of like the librarians, wherein the library gets to remain neutral and the Foundation and Friends and volunteers who support and advocates who support can be the ones to rally the community around these things. So this is all just early conversations. I just want you to know that we're having them and we'd love to continue having those conversations with you.

Excellent. Thank you. Made me think of quite a few things. Great. But also the other sort of outreach advocacy effort that caught my attention took place in Texas. And a librarian put together this display that traveled from school to school. And it is dressed up as a patriotic kind of like, you know, be a great citizen, you know, know how to be a good citizen. And then it had all these different things about really like what does it mean to have the freedom to read and who benefits and who, you know, anyway, it's an, I could, I try, I look, tried to look it up so I could talk a little bit more fluently about it today, but I failed to do that. So, but I will find it and maybe I'll share it with us during our retreat at our retreat. I can share it with Cole, lab and we can think about some possibilities of how, because I totally agree with Kip, we can rally all the support in Teton County that we can, and it just isn't going to help us if everywhere else in Wyoming is falling and failing. So, yeah. Yeah. I hope that we can think a little bit beyond how we can influence beyond. I mean, I feel like it's our responsibility. We have that freedom here that we could put together some kind of something and tour it around the state. And maybe that's what we need to do.

The one thing I can add to that is I was in Cheyenne late winter, early spring, got a tour of the Capitol from Mike Perreault. our legislator. And one of the things he mentioned at the very end is show up in person. He said when the legislators are meeting in their committees and subcommittees, uh, sure. There are lots of lobbyists who attend in person, things like that. They, that's pretty standard. They don't really give them much attention. He said, but when the public shows up, his quote was the legislators start getting nervous. So, um, it, He said the most effective way is show up in person.

And hopefully we're on our way.

I know that's hard. One of the committees refused to take public comments online. It said that they needed to be present. And that is in violation of ADA, everything. And I agree that in person makes a difference, but it's wrong. It is so wrong. Especially in a state where it takes eight hours to travel to the Capitol. It's not, they need to wake up. In the middle of the winter.

Yeah. It's so bad. Okay. Well, great. We're all thinking about it. then we need to set a date for our special board meeting, which is going to be a retreat. As it says here, we want to talk about the role of the board. We want to talk about housing and what we're going to do about our strategic plan. Should we try to do find a date? Should we look kind of for general consensus about when we could do this um what how should we proceed with finding the date i think here and now yeah what's the rough idea within a month or two or three i would say the sooner the better i don't see it happening until october based on okay all right um

And Stella's calendar, and there's conferences and vacations, and mid-October is kind of the best time, I think.

And right now, my mid-October is wide open. How is it? Well, I think we have our board meeting on the 15th.

Okay. Will this be a public meeting? I'm assuming this is a public meeting?

Yes. Okay. It'll be... a special meeting but it'll be billed as a working session so it won't be on zoom it won't be recorded um it'll just be if somebody wants to show up in person they can be there but there's no it's a work session no there will be no decisions made or anything we'll have these discussions and if there's anything that needs to be decisions they'll be at a board meeting

OK, great. I just want to make sure like I put it on my calendar. I'd love to just listen in on the conversation, especially related to strategic planning and housing, because I think those directly impact our organization.

And Diana, actually, we talked about you possibly presenting to us about what we're doing. We need to learn about housing, how we're supporting housing for our staff now and then what we would like to do going into the future and how to get there. So it's a complicated conversation. And I think Kip and you together can really help us understand better where we're at right now and where we can possibly go.

Okay, fantastic. Then I'm unavailable October 9th through 18th out of town. So I apologize for that.

That's when you're gone? Yeah. 9th to 18th, you're out of town.

Okay. So if we want to do it before our meeting on the 15th, we'd be looking at, what, the 5th through the 8th?

Let's just talk about KIPP's availability next to Diana's. So we know now that Diana is gone the, was it the 9th to the 18th?

My best date is the 21st or 22nd. I can't do either. I'm sorry. The 14th is ideal, but Diana is not available. I'm gone the last week for a board retreat. So the week of the 7th is now. The 7th could work.

The 7th? The 7th? And if the week of the 9th through the 18th is the best, I can join via Zoom on any day except the 14th.

What about the 7th? Kip said maybe the 7th. Would you have to move something, Kip? No, I don't have to move anything. So the 7th? How about October 7th? Yes. Yes. Yeah.

And if there are anything that needs to be decision-making wise, we have a meeting the following week. Exactly.

I have a colonoscopy the day before, but hopefully. Okay. Board retreat on the 7th. You don't have to drink that stuff all day.

It's like one time before bed or something.

So are we talking 9 a.m. normal start time?

We don't have much in person, so I could do something later.

Okay. What time would you prefer?

I would like 10 to 12.

10 to 12, yeah.

So you can kind of get in and go. Is that what you just said?

Yeah, we don't have in-person programming.

Okay. Wow, that's excellent. So shall we say like 10 to 1 and maybe we'll have sandwiches for lunch?

Yeah, we can do lunch.

Okay, 10 to 1.

Okay, I asked, will you want this room or the Ordway if the Ordway is probably available at this point?

I think this room. It's going to be more of a conversation, not so much of an agenda type meeting, right? We can just chat and yeah. I think this room. Thank you.

I may ask April Norton to come.

Yes. Yes. I think that'd be good. Yeah. And I think that should be first and then strategic plan second and then board role of the board third. Okay. Okay.

And fourth, logging our time on the volunteer portal.

Yes. Yes. Okay. I'm just going to put that under other matters for the board. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So confirming October 7th, 11 a.m. to 1 potentially. I said 10.

10 to 1.

Oh, 10 to 1. 10 to 1. Housing, strategic planning, and roles of the board. Okay. Perfect. I have it on my calendar. Thank you. I'll be there.

Okay. Oh, and then the other thing I just wanted to refresh on is that I think you begin your engagement with Rose on next week, like Tuesday. And the, and we talked about this in our last meeting that she identified deliverables. And if we can get copies of the deliverables, I don't know, was that, is that for sure? Like, I am what we signed agreement for so that that'll be the way the board kind of keeps up on what's going on. And we understand how things are working and what's happening in there. Okay. All right. Anything else? Thank you for this file.

This is really great of this. This file you're putting together on the in our four packets, you know, I think that really helps. I feel like there's a lot of things in Snowstown at all. Like, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. I think that's a really good idea to have those.

Yeah, and I'm going to talk to Kip about that a little bit more. I think our files in Teams could be maybe get rid of some old stuff and kind of consolidate some things and get that a little more orderly. I promise to work on that. Because I'm sorry, I was looking for it and I couldn't find it.

Can you be a little more?

Oh, so you're just out of teams. Maybe click back at the very beginning of teams. And there it is. Yeah. Yeah. Appreciate it. Let's see a motion to adjourn. Who would like to do that? Okay, I move. I move to adjourn the August 13, 2026 special meeting be adjourned. All in second? Second. Peg, thank you. And all in favor? Aye. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.

Goodbye. Thank you.