Library Board of Trustees

MEETING OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES MARY RILEY STYLES PUBLIC LIBRARY Held in the Library Conference Room, 120 N. Virginia Avenue, Falls Church, VA 22046 Wednesday May 21, 2014 Time: 7:30 p.m. 1. CALL TO ORDER Board Chair Brad Gemand called the meeting to order at 7:30pm. The following Board members attended the meeting: Nancy Bentrup Chet DeLong Brad Gemand Stephanie Oppenheimer Jeff Peterson Excused Absences: Ed Rose and Don Camp Also present was present a Falls Church resident, Molly Novotny. Director Mary McMahon and her assistant, Claudia Gutierrez, were also present. 2. RECEIPT OF PETITIONS None. 3. APPROVAL OF APRIL 30, 2014 SPECIAL MEETING MINUTES Upon a motion duly made and seconded the April30, 2014 special meeting minutes were approved unanimously. 4. ARTS AND CULTURAL DISTRICT TASK FORCE (CATCH) REPORT Brad Gemand gave a brief report about the recent Falls Church Civil War Day. In addition to reenactments, there were books on sale about the history of Falls Church. About 200 people attended the activities in Cherry Hill Park. Brad also mentioned that the Historical Commission is thinking about a project for the final year of the Civil War Sesquicentennial- perhaps producing a book of letters from Falls Church Civil War soldiers. 5. LIBRARY FOUNDATION REPORT Don Camp wrote the Library Director mentioning that the Foundation had received $830.00 from the Virginia Department of Taxation through donations from tax payers. 6. FIVE YEAR PLAN, 2015-2019- 2"d READING Upon a motion duly made and seconded the Five Year Plan, 2015-2019 was approved unanimously. 7. 3D PRINTER POLICY- 2"d READING The 3D printer is tentatively scheduled to be installed in the Library on Saturday, May 31 st. The Library Director was not able to schedule an appointment with the City Attorney to go over the questions the Board had raised previously during its first reading of the policy. 1  After a discussion, the Board decided to wait until its June meeting to consider the second reading of the 3D Printer Policy. The printer will not be installed until a Policy is adopted. 8. DOWNTOWN SMALL AREA PLAN COMMENTS FROM LIBRARY BOARD The Director mentioned that the Plan and the accompanying comments were not included in their Board packets because they are available on the City's website, and they are very extensive. She also suggested that the Board write coinments to the Planning Commission about parking in the City's POA 6 and asked them to consider parking as an investment and that the City and the Planning Commission should plan for it in the CIP. Cindy Mester has not been able to reach the owners of the building on Park Avenue. 9. PROFFERS AND THE LIBRARY FOR FUTURE FALLS CHURCH DEVELOPMENTS The Board continued its discussion about proffers for library space when new developments want to build in the City of Falls Church. The Library does not want to miss a proffer from another major development and wants to be part of the proffer process for the possible new development at Board/West/Park since it would definitely impact the Library with more people using the facility and the need for more space to accommodate them. The Director asked libraries around the State what proffer formulas they used to derive library proffer requests. She only got one answer and that was that developers came to them offering square foot space in the project they were building, but the offer did not include any money with it. A public private partnership to build space is another proffer option, but it can be fraught with issues. The City Manager suggested that the Board commission the Director to work with him to develop a formula or amount that seems logical that can be tied to the impact the new development will have on the Library in terms of space and services. Once a reasonable formula is arrived at and can be defended with how it was arrived at, then future project proffers could go forward when there is a residential component to a project that will directly impact the Library. Upon a motion duly made and seconded the Board unanimously authorized the Director to work with the City Manager to obtain a reasonable Library proffer formula that could be applied to future City residential projects. The Board asked the Director to remind the City Manager of the number of people who come into the Library and use the Library on a daily basis, the need for a parking deck to accommodate the increased patron use, and to keep a parking deck in mind if a public/private partnership or other type of collaboration or proffer can be used when a new development project comes into the City. 10. LIBRARY REPORT AND ANNOUNCEMENTS Julie Scheina has been hired as the temporary Library Assistant I in Youth Services. She will start on June 9th depending on a successful background check and drug test. The Summer Reading Program is almost ready to go. It starts on Monday, June 23rd and there will be programs for children, teens, and adults. The Library Foundation has provided the prizes that will be given away at the end of the program. Library staff will march in the Memorial Day Parade as the Rolling Readers Precision Book Truck Drill Team. Reminder: The Library will be closed on Sunday, May 25th and Monday, May 261h for Memorial Day. 2  The new City website is live. The Library portion had some problems with the My Account feature, but it is fixed now. We also had our first telephone conference today with CivicPlus in regard to the website upgrade the Library is going to get. The new site may be live as early as July 24. The public PCs have all been converted to Windows 7 and Office 2010, and we have had positive comments on the public survey about these upgrades. The public user survey is being handed out in the Library and also can be completed online. The information on the completed surveys will put into Survey Monkey for ease in tallying the results. We hope to have the results by the end of June. City staff is completing a compensation and classification survey for the City, which has hired consultants to do this study to look at and determine if job descriptions are correct, if salary ranges are correct for the Northern Virginia area, and make recommendations to the City for the future. This will be completed by May 28th. All the Library supervisors are working on staff performance evaluations for the end of the year- they must be completed by June 30. The Director and her assistant are working on reconciling all line items in the budget with actual expenditures and then closing out the FY14 budget. In addition, preparation for the FY15 budget is also taking place. We have ordered 30 monitors for the public computers and may purchase an application server for the local history database with end of the year monies in the Computer Services budget. The Library will be leasing a color printer-copier for public use. It will default to black and white printing, but will have an option to print in color at an increased price. This is expected to reduce toner expenses and will give patrons another option when printing. There will be a book sale on Saturday, May 24, 2014. The Library will donate the remaining books from the sale to schools that need them and also to veteran rehabilitation centers. 11. BUSINESS NOT IN AGENDA One of the Board members suggested changing the starting time of the Library Board meetings from 7:30p.m. to 7:00p.m. to accommodate longer meetings if necessary. The Board agreed to try the new schedule a few times and see if it works out for everyone. If not, the meeting time will go back to starting at 7:30p.m. Brad Gernand stated that he wanted to explain why he had voted no on the amended request for proposal to the Space Study and Long Range Master Plan that was considered at the April 30, 2014 meeting. He said he felt uncomfortable with the approach that the Board was taking, that is, accepting what the Planning Commission requirements were in order to development another space plan. He thinks that the $8M offered is not enough to meet the expansion needs of the library and also renovate the current building as well as address all the parking issues associated with an expanded building. He thinks the Board should decline the money rather than compromise the entire project by not accomplishing what really needs to be done to meet the future space and parking needs of the Library. He also mentioned that it is not clear or likely that there will be any parking agreement with the building owners at 313 Park Avenue and since that is one of the Planning Commission's requirements, it then makes the expansion of the building problematic. A Board member mentioned the possible consideration of the Board of the program that would include a student as an ex-officio member of the Library Board and participate in meetings where he/she could express an opinion but not vote. The Director will talk to the 3  Board Liaison of the City about it and asked the Board to be thinking of ideas on how to structure and describe the role of the student on the Board (i.e. how long would their term be, etc.). 12. ADJOURNMENT There being no further business, upon a duly rp.ade and seconded, the Board of Trustees unanimously agreed to adjourn the meeting at 8:51 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Mary W McMahon Library Director Approved: ~~ Bradley E. Gernand, Chair Copies: Board of Trustees, City Manager, Library Reference Desk, Staff Bulletin Board, City Clerk, City Council, Historical Commission, Library Web Page. 4