Library Board of Trustees

By City Clerk at 4:16 pm, Feb 17, 2026 Library Board of Trustees Finance Sub-Committee Meeting October 22, 2025 In attendance: Aimie Westphal, Library Director; Library Trustees Jessica Ducrow and Anne Campbell, and Mary Chatigny, Library Trustee and chair of finance sub-committee. Meeting called to order at 7:02pm. Item 1: Council Order 2025-089: Amesbury tax override. Nothing to add beyond what was discussed at the October Library Board of Trustees meeting other than the signed letter from the Board was mailed to the Mayor on Monday, October 20, 2025. Item 2: FY2027 Budget: Aimie informed the Committee that the Library Professional Staff Union has not yet ratified the collective bargaining agreement that allows for a 2% increase in wages each of the three years, FY26, 27 and 28. Aimie has worked up scenarios for the library budget assuming the library is level funded and we fund the 2% salary increase along with increased consortium fees with no changes in staffing. Allowing for these increases will put us in a place where we need to cut about $16,500 from other areas to meet the level funded amount. Currently there are hours in the budget, for Meghan to work and additional 5 hours/week in the historical commission position. If those hours are cut from the library budget, then we would meet the level funded amount. Level funded would put us over the MMAR minimum. If we are over the MMAR amount we might be asked to only budget to the MMAR which would cause a decrease in staff. Aimie is also looking at the number of hours we are open. Currently we are open 53 hours/week and the MMAR minimum is 50 hours/week. We are averaging the same number of people through the door each day over the past year. She will work to compile the average number of visitors/hour and is hoping to get some good data when we do the strategic plan. Currently we close for the one-hour lunch period on Saturdays and yet we still have the same number of visitors. It is pretty quiet Monday through Wednesday between 7pm and 8pm so that is a possibility to close early those evenings. We are allowed to go down to a low of 45 hours/week opened but would sacrifice state aid by about 10% If there is a yes vote on the override then Aimie will ask the city for increased staffing in FY27. (We requested increased staffing, two part-time circulation assistants at 13 hours/week, increasing a part-time staff member to fulltime and returning the administrative assistant to 9 hours/week in our FY26 budget.) We would also be able to reopen during the Saturday lunch period. With regard to facilities, we would request a custodian position dedicated to the library and may need to increase our cleaning contract line once a new vendor is chosen. And finally, we would look to increase the budget for books and materials. We are trending about $200 more than budgeted for Hoopla streaming services and we can narrow the offerings available or shift our entire collections budget to Hoopla. Item 3: Proceeds from the sale of #5 and #9 School Street properties: We have been informed we will need to pay for contractor services so that means the funds available to us will be less than we had first thought. Both the CPA funds and MPPF state grant funds will be available to us in calendar 2027. Mehan and Aimie will compile items from the Master Plan and lay out against the pots of money available. We should still make a capital request for FY27 budget and are inclined to put the cost of the ramp back into the capital request. Window Woman will provide a budget number and the updated cost for the gutters is now between $250,000 and $300,000. Jessica made a motion to adjourn, seconded by Anne and the meeting was adjourned at 7:51pm.