 Good afternoon. It is 3 o'clock and at this point in time we are just waiting for our library trustees to be able to join us in the virtual platform. And I see that I have one trustee that is able to join, so we will just wait a bit so that we get a few more people so that we can have quorum. So Nancy, thank you for joining us and we will just wait a few moments to see if we can get a few more people joining us. Thank you. And I'm just going to check my emails and my phone just to see if there's any trustee that is having difficulty trying to log on. So I'm just going to look at that quickly. For those of you who are library staff that are already on our virtual platform of our meeting, thank you all for waiting patiently. We look forward to hearing your reports in the latter part of our meeting. Only Nancy so far? Only Nancy so far? We have Nancy and we have Meg and we have Father William. Okay, so we have four. And if there's any members of the public that are watching right now, we are not starting our meeting until we actually do have a quorum of our trustee which would be a total of six. So sometimes technology is very easy and helpful and sometimes technology is a little bit of a challenge for everyone to try to get on to this virtual platform. So for those of you who are able to join us, thank you. We're just going to wait and see if we can get a few more people. Thank you. That's fine. Thank you, Mary Lynn. And at this time, we are just waiting for one more trustee and we will, at that point, we will have quorum and we will begin our meeting. So thank you all for patiently waiting. It's a great time to reread your minutes. I don't know for the third time. But and Sydney, since you are on the line at this time, is there any trustee that has shared that they are unable to make the meeting? I just want to make sure that six people were planning to attend today. All right, thank you. Terrific. She's on my schedule, too. So at this time, we do have our quorum of six. So we can go ahead and begin. So I will call our meeting to order at this time. We do have a quorum of six. And it's not very often that I get to do the next thing on the agenda, which is to do a very warm welcome to our new trustee, Reverend William Bolson, who is to my right, more than six feet away to my right. But if we can all just extend a warm welcome to him for joining our trustee board of Mead Public Library. Library Director Garrett Erickson and I had a wonderful tour of the library with him yesterday, as well as a meeting in which I officially had him take the oath to be the trustee. He is actually completing the term of John Motiska, who stepped down in the summer, in last summer. So he is very kindly stepping in to complete that term. And we hope that he's able to continue on to a future term. But it was very nice to meet you. And in the near future, when it's a little easier for all of us to get together, we can learn a little bit more about his areas of expertise and his interest. I can safely say that he was absolutely wowed by Mead Public Library and just had a lot of wonderful comments to share that I wish I had recorded so that we could share it with all of you. But it'll be wonderful having yet another member so that we're at a full table of ten for this library board. So at this time, if someone, if everyone would like to rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. And next on our agenda is public comments, which we do not have anyone here at this time. And moving on then to 1.5, if someone would like to make a motion to approve our minutes from, I'm just trying to get the date here, from January 28th, 2021. Would someone like to make a motion? Mary Landonahue made a motion. Would someone like to second? Meg Albrink seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carried. Thank you. Next up, I'm just trying to get the buttons here. Under 1.6, I just wanted to take a moment to share with you a future communication. I am in the process of writing in my role of President of Mead Public Library Board of Trustees. Many of you are probably aware that recently the Wisconsin Department of Health Services announced additional members of our community that would be eligible for Phase 1C of vaccinations, starting on March 1st. This is incredible positive news for teachers and child care workers and, you know, people who really do work with so many members of our public and they really provide such a valuable service for the education of members of our community. Interestingly, for me, was reading a little bit more about those who were qualified for 1C in that Phase 1, 1C is the fact that despite the Center for Disease Control recommendation, library workers were not included in that very important group. And I do know that their State Professional Organization, the Wisconsin Library Association submitted, I believe, over 80 pages of testimony from all the libraries across the State of Wisconsin because they feel in their role, they are quite similar to the retail educational support staff and social services that are offered to our citizens in the State of Wisconsin. And in my role as President of the Library Board, I am planning to send a letter to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services as well as our local public health department as well as Governor Evers, just sharing my concern that our library workers are essential workers in our community. And we have been so impressed by their courage and their dedication in continuing to offer vital services to our citizens that have been so essential during this pandemic. And we have managed to keep our library open for many months, even though other libraries in the States were not able to because we knew how important our services were to our citizens. So I just wanted to let all of you be aware that that is something that I am just going to be writing as President of this Board so that they're aware that there are trustees that are quite concerned with the decision to not include library workers in this important classification of people who can now start receiving vaccinations starting March 1st. So I just wanted to make sure all of you were aware. So with that, we can move on to, unless there was anything else, Garrett, that you just wanted to share with me. Next up would be committee reports and it looks like there's, for once, nothing listed. Oh my goodness, I think I should highlight that. So we're going to move right along to items for discussion and possible action. 3.1, the DPI annual report. And I'll take this one, Maeve. This is something that is required for us from the public library standpoint each year that we submit our annual statistics as well as financial report to the Department of Public Instruction which oversees libraries and schools. And so you should have gotten an email with the version that was turned in to our system, the Monarch system, and then they take a look at it and then it does go on to the state. However, I do need to get approval from the trustees on this. So I guess hopefully everybody got a chance to take a look at it. And if they had any questions, please let me know right now. So just looking over, any trustees have any questions or comments for Garrett Erickson? But like the report was pretty standard. It was actually unique this year in the sense there's a whole bunch of questions about how we handled COVID services. So like, for instance, on the first page, it talks about limited service and so on. That was due to COVID. So this was a fairly unique. There were several questions that were unique on here compared to past years. The rest of it is very similar though. Wonderful. So at this time we would need someone to make a motion. Mm-hmm. So, yep, Maryland Donahue has moved. Oh, maybe I have a question. Thank you, Maryland. All right, thank you. Any other questions, comments? All right, would someone like to make a motion? Oh, okay, I'm sorry. So it has been moved. Thank you, Maryland. Would someone like to make a second for this DPI report? Kyle Welton makes a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, motion carries. Thank you. 8.2, National Library Week, April 4th through 10th. Thanks, Mayf. On this one, we are asking once again that during National Library Week that we can provide amnesty for late fines to patrons that bring their materials in. So this does not cover replacement costs if they were to lose an item. It really just allows them to bring in items that are late and we would not charge them. It's a great opportunity to get a lot of materials back and to build some goodwill in the community. Who would like to make a motion for this idea? Meg Elbrink would like to move. Is there a second? Nancy, second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hey, motion carries. Thank you. 3.3, Mead Internal Committee Structure. So this was something Maeve brought up in the fall that she would be very curious to hear about how we make decisions and bring things to the library board. And so I thought about how we wanted to do this and I thought back to a book that I read. I actually have to hold up. It's called Primal Leadership from Daniel Goldman, if you've heard of him. Daniel Goldman was the one who wrote Emotional Intelligence as well. It's a very good book, a classic business book about leadership. In the book, Goldman talks about four positive types of leadership. There's the visionary. There's the coach. Another style is called the Affiliative, which is sort of a person that connects emotionally with coworkers and subordinates. There's the democratic style of that type of manager who goes out and gets a lot of input and is very interested in building consensus on ideas before following through. And so I think a lot of what we do at the library is been put in place by Melissa Prentis, our public services manager. And Melissa, to think about her and her style is very much a democratic or democracy-style leader. She really puts together committees and tries to get input from all of the people that work with her and really build consensus and gets a lot of input. And so I thought that was really positive for her. And so what you're going to see is a document that we attached to board docs. There's quite a few committees that she now has, and it's really a change from when both her and I started in 2013 and 2014 when we had a much bigger management staff, quite honestly, but the staff also didn't have the input. We didn't have the processes in place. So Kudos to Melissa, and I know now Cheryl as well is working with her on even expanding that further. So I'm going to actually let the two of them talk about the document that is attached and shows all the different committees that we have within the library. Kind of manage the decision-making. That really does come from the staff members. So that's sort of the broad overview. Any questions about that? So just looking at everyone's faces, I just personally wanted to share that, you know, I think we've all recognized that there are so many steps that need to be taken to make all of the programming and all of the aspects of the library work so flawlessly, and now we've just been given a glimpse of how much work and the structure that's been put in place. And I have to tell you, leave it to the librarians to not only give us a written document that lays it out perfectly, but then they give us a visual diagram at the end. So, you know, I'm a visual learner, so I in particular just really enjoyed being able to visualize how this all works. And so I really thank you for taking the time for trying to educate us a little bit more about how you really get so many things accomplished every year. Just looking at my trustees to see if anyone else has something that they'd like to ask, or I can just tell you from the head nods, Melissa, and some of the glances, everyone is just really impressed with what you and Cheryl have put together with Garrett to try to, you know, manage our library. No wonder we keep meeting our vision and mission all the time. So with that, I will say thank you, and we can move on then to 3.4, which is a different topic, COVID service responses. Yes, and so what we actually, to step back, I guess, since October, we have closed down the second and third floor, and that was really due to some staff getting COVID and then the folks that were interacting with them, having to quarantine as well, and we really just didn't feel like we could provide the staffing levels that we needed to keep the library open. And so Melissa's compromise, rather than closing the doors and just providing curbside, was to perhaps we can go down to one floor for a while and see how everything pans out. And we've done that and managed to keep the first floor open and still provide access to all the services such as computers and so on, and it's worked out pretty well. Some people, of course, want to peruse the collections themselves, and that's understood. We're at a point now. I guess I've been asking the managers when would be a good time that we can go back to opening up those other floors with still somewhat limited hours, but when can we open up those floors? And Melissa and Cheryl did come to me a month or two ago and said, I think we should set a target date. And so they had set the target date of March 1st to open second and third floor up, and we have been monitoring everything and the staff have been really responsible at home and we've got very few cases to be honest of COVID within the staff. So we're feeling that not only are we doing the right things at home, but obviously our safety protocols at work are doing well as well. And we're ready to open the second and third floors. So I guess with that maybe, I don't know if Melissa has anything else to add to that. We're still concerned about staffing quite honestly. We're worried that if we open up that something could happen and we could have a few people out and then we'd be back to the first floor. But Melissa, do you have anything to add? Not too much just to say that. I agree it would be great if it's all smooth sailing from here on out. And I think that was one of our bigger concerns with reopening those floors too early is would we see that post-holiday surge with that impact our staff? Would we then be having to close down again? And that causes a lot of chaos for the public and for managing a schedule and that sort of thing on the staff end of things. So that March 1st date was really trying to give us enough time to see how that all played out. And then of course, having a couple of floors closed, we were doing projects on those floors like painting and moving things around. So planning to get everything back in order takes a little bit of time as well. But I can say that by and large, the staff are excited to get the rest of the library open again. It's really difficult when we know that there are things that patrons need and want to do on those other floors and to have to say no, we can't do that right now. So I think everyone's really excited about getting back to some level of normalcy and routine. And of course, I think that we've been doing this for almost a year now to some extent. I think folks are more confident too in the safety protocols that we are taking and that they're taking at home and there's a little bit less anxiety around that as well. This does still mean we're on unlimited hours and it also, we're not opening up, for instance, the meeting spaces. This would just be the main areas. The quiet study area on the second floor would remain closed, but we would open up basically a lot more computers on the second floor and people can peruse the collections themselves on second and third. So we think that's a huge benefit. And then we'll continue to watch what the health department recommends and so on to move to the next step down the road. But we think this is a really positive development for the community. Do you have a sense for how you're going to share this information to the public? Are you going to kind of do a soft opening before really sharing on social media? All three floors are now open. What are your thoughts for how that's going to be communicated with our public? I think the last time this governing body met, that was the sort of, the directive was sort of a soft opening just to make sure everything went well. And so we'll open up Monday and hope that everything goes well and kind of play it by ear and then continue to promote as it seems as though everything's going well. Thank you. Any questions or comments? The next steps for March 1st. All right. Thank you for that update. Moving on then to 3.5. DPI inclusive services assessment and guide. Thank you. We have wanted to start using and looking at this tool over a year ago already and then COVID hit and it's sort of been put on the back burner. We knew this was an issue that we needed to deal with and so hopefully everybody got a chance at least to look at the tool itself. So obviously there's like over 10 pages of different items to checklist on what the libraries can be doing and this is really intended for board as well but the staff as well. So I guess first I should open it up for comments and then as far as a process what we're thinking is that the staff could meet and sort of go through where we think that we are and then present this to the board next month to start to prioritize areas that maybe we aren't doing at this point but that's kind of how the process that I saw moving forward is for us to take a first look at it because some of these things you wouldn't as board members know what we're doing internally anyway but I guess I'll open it up just to hear comments. Any thoughts or questions on the report? Nancy mentioned. I just wanted to comment that I went through it and counted out there are 22 areas and over 300 questions so for Melissa and committees who go at answering that's really a large task and an important one too and also that board members are listed there. Number one, to be familiar with the document so we're on our way to assessing. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? My thought is that it was another example of just how well libraries just gather information and present information and I agree with Nancy. I was a little overwhelmed by the number of questions but they really ended up making me think even more so I guess we sort of look to your guidance scared of how you envision us moving forward. So I think Melissa and Cheryl and I will meet and try to figure out how to sort of do our own self-assessment and then present that to the board at the next meeting but I'm glad you guys had a chance to take a look at this document. It's super detailed and there's a lot of work to be done on it. It's a great document that they put together for us to use. I'm so happy we don't have to come up with this sort of a thing from scratch. So then the next thought I guess would be that we present this at the next... We don't have a meeting in March due to spring break but we would present this by April so we'll try to get this to the trustees as soon as we can get that accomplished and then they can start to look at that themselves and I guess I think the next step after that would be that you guys start to give us some priority areas that we need to work on that we're not perhaps doing yet. Great. All right. Thank you. Oh yes, Nancy. Nancy. I just had one more comment and as I was going through it I thought that it's also a useful document for our committees. I had the art committee in mind but this is a document that can help guide and direct conversations within our committees also. Wonderful. Thank you. All right. And then with that we'll go to 3.6 the 2021 holiday calendar and I will turn this over to our library director. Just Sydney, thank you for putting together the list of holidays and so on. So at the end of the year you can see we always struggle with holidays over the weekends. Normally when you have a Saturday holiday we bump that back to the Friday before that is taken off and the same with Sundays we take the Monday following off so you'll see a few of those dates in there. And then I guess I'd open it up to questions at this point but otherwise thank you Sydney for putting that together. Did anyone have any questions about the proposed recognized holidays for the 2021 fiscal year? Would someone like to take a motion to approve our new 2021 holiday schedule? Okay. Just trying to see. Okay. So it sounds like Sherry Speth I believe made a motion and is someone second? We're getting some interesting noises but all right. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Maryland has done a number of cooking classes at the library that have been really successful and it's something that our staff love planning with her and have missed since COVID times. So they had this great idea to basically film it like a cooking show and have the basic ingredients available as a take home kit like we've been doing with all of the crafting kits for kids since the pandemic. And we had slots available for 20 people and they filled up within two days. So I think people are really excited about it and I hope it goes well. And then we are continuing along those lines to do those take and make kits for kids. And we have one right now that we, again, we ran out of all 50 kits within a couple of days for making a snow volcano. So it's a little bit of a science experiment you could do outside with the snow. There's some food coloring and all of the ingredients you need to make a snow volcano. Very exciting stuff. For the entire month of March, we are doing our peeps diorama contest which we have done in the past. This one will be virtual this time. So we've had some really amazing submissions in past years. Usually you use a shoe box and peeps to create fun dioramas. And then we run that through spring break and choose a winner at the end. This year, we're doing a virtual version of wintergreen. So for those of you that are familiar with that program, I believe this is the fourth or fifth year. We've done it and that is really it's a day of programming around the end of winter and the beginning of spring. Even if spring doesn't really come here until May, we do it in March anyways. Just see it beat those winter blues a little bit. So there's going to be a number of virtual programs that day on seed starting. Marilyn will be doing another cooking class for us, urban homesteading, environmental stewardship with the Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership. And then a few virtual STEM classes for kids. One on measuring sunlight with a photo resistor using an Arduino and another Arduino based program as well. So we're excited about that. There's been some good registration for that already. The Optimus Club is doing a spring break activity make and take kit with us as well. That will be available starting at the end of March. And then I mentioned last time the new racial justice book discussion group that Judge Natasha Tory is facilitating for us. We had our first session a couple weeks ago and it was really successful. Thank you, Meg, for that suggestion of doing breakout rooms in Zoom. That worked really well. We ended up doing two breakout rooms of 12 people each and that was just the right size to get good discussion going. And then we came back in and shared all of our thoughts as a group. The next one we'll be meeting in two weeks, just a little less than two weeks, the second Tuesday of March. The book we'll be discussing is Homegoing by Yad Jassi, a fiction book but really excellent. There is still some space in that one but it's filling fast. And that's all I have unless there's any questions. Any other questions or comments? Melissa, did you want to mention the radio show too with John? Yes, I haven't mentioned that yet because I know there's some debate on the go live date for it. But I think that we've talked about the launch of this Meade radio project with the board in the past, maybe a few months ago. John Tully is a fairly recent hire. He's been with Meade for about a year now. And he has experienced, years of experience working in community radio. So he had this fantastic idea for, given where we're at with the pandemic, to launch a community radio out of Meade. And it's actually surprisingly, especially if you have someone who already knows what they're doing with that kind of thing, the tools out there make it really easy and relatively inexpensive to basically create your own web-based radio station. So right now we're in the process of developing a whole slate of programming for that. And we'll be working with people out in the community, some of our community partners, to be creating radio shows around that. But right now, John and Jeannie Gartman have been working with Lisa Veehose, our poet laureate, to create a poetry on the air show. They've recorded three shows so far. And they're going to start airing those, I believe, next week. So look out for some information from Josh on Facebook about that. And then we also have, for the times that we're not going to have on air shows, we'll be streaming music that's part of the Meade Library music collection. So we're really excited about it. There's a lot, I think, a lot of potential. And I'm really excited to see where we go with the radio project. For those of you who have gone from the main floor down to the staff area on the bottom basement floor, John Tully is also the artist who put the mural, the Elson Wonderland mural on the wall. It's amazing, so very talented guy. Moving on, then 4.2, Cheryl did not have a support services report. They've kind of been working on the same things since last time. And then I'll move into 4.3, which is building projects. That's maintenance, which is under me. Just a few things that Greg wanted to point out. There's a document attached to board docs. But if you go down to numbers five and six, we are hoping that the vendor will be able to install the fencing in early March that we've been talking about for about four or five months now. Maeve, you had requested, especially we get that generator covered up in the front area that's not the most attractive thing to look at as you walk into the library. So we hope that that project will be done within the next couple of weeks. And then the other big thing that we're looking at right now is furniture replacement. We have some pieces of furniture that are worn out. We have some others that we're having cleaning issues with. And we also have further the friends that had purchased a couch about four or five years ago were sort of moving away from furniture where you have a lot of people sitting close together in close proximity. We don't think that that's going to anything with COVID is going to change over the next few years. So we needed an update anyway. So we're going to be moving through some of that furniture and we'll be talking to the board as we get through that as well as the foundation to fund those projects. So those are things that we're sort of inventorying right now and trying to figure out what we're going to do with. So and then last on the director's report would be monthly statistics. I think everything is sort of going in the same trajectory that it has been. We still have another this month and one more month that we're sort of in this COVID state. And then COVID unfortunately becomes the norm where our stats have all been sort of deflated compared to normal times. I guess any questions about our statistics that we've kept? It looks like there are no questions. Okay. So then moving on then to the early eighth on reports just turning this over to Nancy mentioned for any updates on the Monarch Library system. Thank you, Maeve. The Monarch Library trustees met on February 9th. A strategic planning session is going on using a tool. And we have been asked for input into that. So that's forward thinking and assessing. Also the job descriptions are being updated for Monarch. And that's also happening. Monarch Library, the library system I should say published its annual report. And I thought as Meade is one of the 23 libraries and Sheboygan County, one of the four that you'd be interested in seeing in addition to what Meade does, what's happening in that larger group. Circulation last year, 2.4 million items that's very good among the children. We had in the system over 1 million minutes of reading. And that so that's a good statistic to know. There were very close to 500,000 items shared between or should be among says between. But among all the libraries, also the digital collection over 300,000. So applause to Meade and the other 22 libraries for what they've done. A comparison of statistics from 2019 and 2020. In one perspective, statistics of course have dragged because of COVID, but in the other perspective services have continued and done very well in spite of the fact that we had to deal with the COVID. So that's it for the Monarch system. Great, thank you Nancy. Anyone have any questions or comments for Nancy? I remember, you know, when I first heard about the whole plan for how the Monarch system board would meet. And because we're now 34 libraries, there's a lot of travel that used to be part of these meetings. And I think one of the benefits for you Nancy is that you've been able to really be able to do some of these meetings virtually. Because once upon a time you were like on the road for a couple hours before showing up for a meeting. So that's one of the benefits. It'll be interesting to see as time goes on whether or not they will continue the option of virtual. For you, I hope so. So. Well, I have to say that I always enjoyed before we weren't meeting in person going to the different libraries because, you know, they all have their own personalities. There's wonderful artwork. The people who are working there are so hospitable and helpful that I miss that part of it actually. Well, the fingers crossed and toes crossed that you can get to that point again. Maybe by the end of this year. So thank you again for representing Meade Public Library every month on that board. It is so good to get your input and we know that you speak very strongly about the wishes and the needs of Meade Public Library. So thank you, Nancy. Moving on then to the 5.2 Meade Public Library Foundation. It did meet last, actually yesterday. And I just wanted to share an update with all of you that Kathy Norman who's also on our trustee board. She was elected president of the foundation in the previous meeting. And then yesterday, because she had been vice president, we elected John Donovan as vice president. Some of you may know him in the city of Sheboygan. So that entity will now have some, a good team to lead it forward in this new year of 2021. The other highlights from the foundation meeting is the fact that there is a lot of interest in trying to have an in-person Wisconsin Academy event perhaps sometime in the fall. And then if, you know, things with public health seem to suggest that that's not a wise step, the foundation will look into an alternative option for that type of programming. And the same for the Yuletide reception in December, there's great interest in having that wonderful tradition come back. But it will kind of depend on where we are with public health issues. I'm just looking over at our library director, Garrett, to see if there's any other key detail that I needed to share from the foundation. But I think those were the main highlights. Next up, 5.3, the friends of Meade Public Library. And I will turn this over to our, to Sydney, Meade. I think she's, there she is. The friends actually did not meet this month. There wasn't a lot of business. And so they decided not to. But I will report, because it just happened today that the friends have agreed to host a furniture sale to kind of help us with offloading some of the excess furniture that we have at Meade right now, as we've had a replacement furniture put in. So that will be a nice way for us to be able to open up all of those meeting spaces. That's all. Sydney, also, wasn't there a book sale scheduled for April? Yeah, so the book sale is scheduled for April. They have dates selected and are moving forward with that. But in the possibility that it's not able to go forward, they have backup dates of May selected as well. Any questions or comments for Sydney? If you could also just share with the wonderful friends that the additional signage in their bookshop, right at the entrance, seems to have garnered a lot more interest in people stopping by and purchasing some of the books. So, or maybe it's just everyone's feeling like spring is really here and they need to stock up on a more personal collection of books. But it looks very active. The last few times I've been going into the library. So with that, our upcoming meetings, we have no meeting in March. So our next meeting will be April 22nd at 3 p.m. And at this time, would someone like to make a motion to adjourn? Don't move. Yeah, Meg, Alvin, has moved. Is there a second? Then I'll second. Mary-Lindon, you second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I don't think anyone's going to oppose. So thank you all for a very good meeting and maybe have a wonderful rest of the afternoon. Thank you. Thank you, Mae. We'll adjourn. Thank you.