Library Board of Trustees

By City Clerk at 9:52 am, Jun 09, 2022 Amesbury Public Library Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes - April 2022 Amesbury Public Library Board of Trustees Location: Amesbury City Hall Auditorium Wednesday April 13, 2022 7:00 PM Board of Trustees (BOT) Members present: Anne Campbell, Audrey Proctor, Brenda Rich, Delia Rinaldi, Laurie Cameron, and Pam Gilday APL Interim Director: Aimie Westphal - present I. Call to order at 7:00 PM by Anne as chair. II. Secretary’s minutes March 9 minutes – Motion to accept by Laurie, second by Delia, unanimous. III. Communications • Laurie does not have a resolution on access to the email account – continuing to work on it. • Anne sent a thank you note to Mr. and Mrs. Mark Wojcicki for their donation of the CH Davis painting. The painting now hangs in the library’s Amesbury room. IV Budget report: Line item overage requires that Aimie move some $ from Books to Periodicals. Aimie is working with the City CFO on this. City Council bill 2022-042 (An order to authorize the transfer of $66,100 from the Library Front Stairs Capital Account [120 0610 5861 01] to pay for engineer’s revised drawings and work recommended by the architect’s investigative report relative to repairing the compromised North wall at the Amesbury Public Library) has been presented at City Council for 1st reading. Aimie, Meghan Fahey, and Gail or Anne (possibly additional Trustees) will attend the council’s Finance Committee and 2nd Reading meetings (April 26 and May 10 respectively) to answer any questions that the councilors may have. This transfer need has been discussed in earlier 2022 Trustee meetings. City Council bill 2022-043 (An order to transfer $15,662 from Library Salaries and Wages to Library Expenses) has been presented at City Council for 1st reading. Aimie, Meghan Fahey, and Gail or Anne (possibly additional Trustees) will attend the council’s Finance Committee and 2nd Reading meetings (April 26 and May 10 respectively) to answer any questions that the councilors may have. This transfer need has been discussed in earlier 2022 Trustee meetings. The Spring allotment of APL state aid came in at $15K. V. Director’s report: The APL is now fully staffed. Assistant Director and 2 PT Circ Desk members round out the team. Back wall procurement project team being formed and including Rob Desmarais (DPW), Shaunna Ring (Procurement), Vinny Tirone (Inspectional Services), Ann Marie Casey (Mayor’s 1  Amesbury Public Library Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes - April 2022 Chief of Staff), Aimie Westphal (Library Director), Meghan Fahey (APL Head of Archives and Special Collections) – team will also include an architect as part of project management. Records room – Needed to stop work possibly until start of next fiscal year (July) – issue with amount of money paid to a single contractor based on MA procurement law. Basic overview is that up to $10K there’s no need to RFP. Above $10K the City needs to issue an RFP for scope of work and the contract/job needs to go to the lowest of 3 bidders. Work has been stopped before we hit that $10K threshold so we can remain in compliance w/ this procurement policy. Water leak in staff offices downstairs – Issue is being addressed but has caused impacted staff to need to work elsewhere until matter is resolved. Tech – There has been some positive movement despite the recent departure of the City’s IT Director. Commsat (Friend Street) is handling oversight of the networking upgrade grant that Tim had started until a new IT Director can be hired. General library news – Clare D (Children’s Librarian) will be attending Amesbury Farmer’s Market (weekly Wednesday afternoon) and APL Friends are having a pop-up used book sale downstairs at the Library April 30-May 6. The Friends may be planning to move the bookstore back into the building (downstairs) when the downstairs buildout is completed – they will likely vote on that in the next few weeks. Also, a local landscaping resident has started a local gardener’s club, they volunteered to (and did) clean up the library landscaping ahead of AHS promenade, which is scheduled for April 29 (looks great!). Closing delays – 2/19 delay due to staff shortage, delay on 2/25 due to snowstorm. No planned delays or closings in March. For more info, a snapshot of the Library Director’s Report to the Trustees - April is included in the Addendum at the end of these minutes. VI. New Business Discussion of Bylaws. The BOT is not voting on the Trustees Bylaws updates tonight as Bethany has not supplied her updated draft to the BOT and she is not present at tonight’s meeting. VII. Old Business Discussion on previously published (November 15, 2018) APL closure and early closure dates and how they impact staff pay – There’s a discrepancy between content in that previously published document (concerning how APL staff is paid on these earlier closure dates) and the union contract. The union contract takes precedence. Dates impacted are only for Prom, Thanksgiving Eve, Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Eve. Whenever there is an early closure for these or any other events, union contract rules are used. For example, if the Trustees close the building early then staff is paid until 5PM per union contract. No vote was taken or is needed as there is no debate – the union contract simply takes precedence. Long range planning – Aimie is working with the LRP consultant to draft the community survey expected to be made available to the public in May. Focus groups will then form, a final draft of the LRP document is scheduled for readiness in September, and the final version of document is 2  Amesbury Public Library Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes - April 2022 planned to be ready for APL Board of Trustees (BOT) to vote on in October. Aimie will send sections of the document to the BOT over the summer for us to vote on so that when we see the final version in October, we will already be familiar with various sections. Policy review proposal – Aimie’s proposed policy changes to the Borrower’s Rights and Responsibilities and Museum Passes policies are captured on a single page in our packet and in context in redlines provided in our packet. The content of the single page document is included at the end of these minutes. See Proposed Policy Changes - April 13 in the Addendum for details. Discussed these proposed policy changes. Motion to accept the proposed policy changes as presented by Pam, second by Brenda, unanimous. VII. Committee reports: Preservation committee has not met since last reported in previous minutes. VIII. Matters not reasonably anticipated in advance of the meeting Windows Project. Aimie’s was able to repair one window in the Reference room (~$950) using state aid. Aimie is asking that the Trustees consider funding the rest of the windows project. Further discussion to occur at a future meeting. Also of note, the original windows project scope did not cover the costs of painting the windows. The APL Repair/Replace Feasibility Study. No update other than to share that Meghan and the Office of Community and Economic Development (OCED) Director are looking at the old (early 2000s) Library Renovation project to see if there is any content in that project documentation that can be repurposed. IX. Adjourn: 8:43 PM. Motion to adjourn by Laurie, seconded by Brenda, unanimous. 3  Amesbury Public Library Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes - April 2022 Attachments/Addendum Library Director’s Report to the Trustees snapshot from April 13, 2022 BOT packet: 4  Amesbury Public Library Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes - April 2022 Library Director’s Proposed Policy Changes from April 13, 2022 BOT packet: Proposed Policy Changes - April 13, 2022 I am proposing the following changes to two of the Library’s key policies to remove practices that are discriminatory in nature. Borrower Rights and Responsibilities Policy • Alter the language: o Pg. 1 – The Library Card – “…three-years of age…” ▪ Change to zero, by dropping the age to allow anyone to get a card allows caregivers the ability to use the library with a child under three years old that they have in their charge regardless of their ability to get a card with us. o Pg. 2 – The Library Card #4 – “…Amesbury-only card” ▪ Change to “a library card.” To allow teachers in our school district to have a normal card to increase the resources available to them. • If changed, would need to remove the following sentence. • Remove these phrases altogether: o Pg. 3 – Borrowing Limits – “Exceptions: periodicals (up to 10), video games (one at a time per library card).” ▪ This would allow us to have no checkout limits which create unnecessary barriers to our patrons trying to borrow these items. o Pg. 3 – Fines and Fees – “…overdue museum passes are fined at $5 per day.” ▪ Remove to align with proposed removal of it in the museum pass policy. o Pg. 3 – Fines and Fees – “…$2 for the second time [a library card is replaced], and so on.” ▪ We do not count how many times the person has lost their card, charging $1 each time for a replacement is a reasonable approach. o Pg. 3 – Fines and Fees – “Printing from public computers is 10 cents per page.” ▪ Factually inaccurate we charge 15 cents but propose removing altogether since this type of detail is not necessary in our policies. o Pg. 4 – Patron Account Communication – change 35 days to 49 days ▪ Factually inaccurate o Pg. 4 – Long Overdue, Lost and Damaged Items – entire clause ▪ Factually inaccurate and a burdensome process. Museum Passes • Remove these phrases altogether: o “On vacation weeks during the academic school year families are restricted to one pass per week” ▪ Unnecessary barrier to our families trying to reserve our passes. See no need to restrict in such a way. 5 Amesbury Public Library Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes - April 2022 o “Unused reservations prevent use by other patrons and may result in the loss of pass privileges. If a pass is not picked up or cancelled by noon the day of use, the patron’s card will be blocked from making pass reservations for a period of 30 days.” ▪ Language is unnecessarily chastising and to block a card for any period of time because they did not pick up a museum pass is extreme. This would restrict them from using the library at all for a month. o “There is a $5 late fee per day for passes not returned on time which has a maximum of $25.” ▪ As a whole we want to move away from charging late fees and in particular this is very high. There is still a charge if they lose it altogether. 6