 I'm going to call the meeting to order at seven o'clock then it's good seeing you all hope you had a nice holiday survive the virus so far and prosperous new year release price right prospects for this year um so uh we have nobody from the the public for comments so i'm going to move down the agenda it's a number three approval of the meeting uh minutes from December 14th uh does anybody have any uh comments with respect to the the minutes from last meeting or can we move to approve i will move to approve the minutes get a second second all in favor okay unanimously approved okay Nancy i guess that leaves you up okay um a couple of my things will be in later in some of our later discussions but um things are moving along we worked on oh Nicole confirms no public so um we have worked to compile our statistics from last year of course our statistics from last year bear you know no resemblance to a normal year's statistics so even though we're going to report them to the state library like we always do i don't think anyone's ever going to use 2020 as a comparison year to see how we compared to other years that said i think we've done pretty admirably it looks like we've circulated about 625,000 items this past year even though we were um we had greatly reduced hours and were closed entirely for a couple months there and and had very staff intensive um delivery of services so our we hit a record i believe the year before and 2019 we're about a million one so it is little more than half of normal but considering the circumstances i'm pleased with that we also delivered in the from the advent of closing on March 13th because of COVID to the end of 2020 we delivered about 38,000 plus items through curbside delivery so um that's a lot and actually even though some days were slower or or more busy than others um we had quite a few days where and we do we continue to now where we deliver more than we serve more than one patron a minute on curbside forever for all of the hours that were open so i think that's better than most fast food establishments we're really doing a good job with curbside we started a new service this week that to our surprise and delight has been immensely popular it's called a pick a topic bag and that's exactly what it sounds like we were doing that anyway but we gave it a name and publicized it and people are really jumping on it so basically you can go through our website and click on a button or there are numbers that you can call also link to the website and basically you pick a topic you know since we're not able to let browsers in right this minute you know someone can call up and say hey i've really been into Italian cooking lately what do you have and then our library staff will find you five to ten items on on Italian cooking uh it is immensely popular with parents of young kids who are tired of reading the same things over and over and who call us up now and say oh please you know give me give me six or seven new books that have something to do with a shark or a train for example so we are ticking suggestions on what people are looking for browsing for them putting things in kind of a surprise grab bag and it's just started on tuesday and i don't know how many we've had but our table that's set up to put the bags on so that we can take them out and deliver them through a curbside is is full to bursting so that's been a lot of fun um trying to still advance our online programs we don't know how long it will be until we're able to do in-person programs again um in answer to the question of why we are not reopened yet this is a very common question we get as the covid numbers start to go in a positive direction downward um the answer is that we are awaiting our carpet our carpet is on order things were delayed somewhat in our carpeting project because we discovered as we pulled up a few carpet squares to investigate what was going around some larger cracks on our terrazzo floor we found that we have a network of cracks that look like that looks like we've had a small earthquake so we have a lot of cracks in our floor that have to be filled so it is not dissimilar from the cracking that was found next door in the civic center ours are apparently not as bad as in some of the other buildings but they still have to be filled with an epoxy substance before we put the carpet on top so we didn't fling the door open yet because we didn't want to open it up move everything close it back up open it back up because we find that our patrons are um or at least a while ago we're a little bit confused and frustrated with the open close open close so right now we are we were hoping to have a meeting with the construction folks the carpet folks and the furniture and book moving people tomorrow but they will probably not be on site doing what they were going to be doing most the day because of the snow so that may be put off till next week in the meantime our carpet's on order we can't wait to get the new carpet um the most common description of our current old carpet is dirty horse hoof prints um and that's i thought it sort of looked like amoebas under a microscope but the dirty horse print horse hoof prints pretty much fit so we will be really happy to have new carpet and new flooring um new washable flooring in our staff kitchen and our meeting room kitchen and our children's craft room but that is why we are not yet open we expect to be carpeted within the next couple weeks and be able to move back in if you haven't been around before on any sort of um carpeting project in a major building i can tell you that in a library it's a pretty complex thing to do so we have to have professional movers that are used to moving library things that come in and load the library books onto double-sided wheeled carts shrinky wrap them and take them out usually what happens is they put them in a semi um load them up so that they're sitting outside while the areas are recarpeted and then they bring them back in and put them back on the shelf hopefully in perfect order but it does take a while to as you can imagine to take all the books off the shelves and move the shelves so um we're we're glad we're not doing the whole thing at once i've done that before and we're just doing the first four so you'll see nice new carpet in the entries the staff areas the children's and teens area and the meeting room so we are happy that that project is almost underway um other than that staff's doing really well um knock on wood we have we haven't had any recent covid cases or even quarantine cases so we're knocking on wood that it stays that way until such time as the vaccine is more readily available to to our staff there is some discussion going on um in colorado in the state library and among libraries and depending on where you are library workers are either considered frontline workers or they're not as far as the vaccine goes so in some areas they have fit into the vaccine classification of 1b which is the same as teachers grocery store workers etc and in a lot of areas we're just kind of lumped in with all the rest of the municipal workers so i've asked public health i don't have a response yet about what'll happen with with our folks that work at the library but there is definitely a disparity we are now considered to be an essential service but our staff is not considered are not considered to be essential workers so there seems like there's a little bit of a of a strange disparity there so um that is pretty much what i know until we get into a couple of our other specific topics in all business okay any questions for nancy on that information none friends of the library report um i don't have a report yet they have not met for january they'll meet wednesday so i'll have a report at the next meeting okay uh council liaison report you probably wish i had a new report but i do actually let me just tell you the topics that you can tell me if you have any interest in tomorrow night we're going to approve uh eight hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars and in uh grants to nonprofits uh through from based on recommendations from our housing and human services advisory board we've got our short term rental ordinance changes which we talked about i think in the past there's a growing interest and concern about air quality and what our options are or what our limits are in terms of regulating or accountability for oil and gas operators who might be contributing to to diminished or toxic air toxic air what lower quality air um and then i think our our focus is going to continue to gain i know more energy uh our post pandemic future will gain more energy and what it will take for the city of lungmont to recover quickly with resilience and potentially differentiate lungmont from other front-range communities in terms of optimism and opportunities and and stability in the in the post pandemic future and i do think i know i see you're gonna nancy gonna talk about the feasibility study i do think the fees of two feasibility studies become a central part of that discussion and to that end um i've probably probed a little bit or maybe um prodded a little bit uh with the lungmont economic development partnership uh to start to get their attention on what the possibilities are between what happens with performing arts feasibility study and the library feasibility study and and what's the potential of bringing together some big ideas and a big opportunity that will come along only once for this community and what that could mean um kind of as a lead opportunity in the post pandemic future so um there aren't a lot of details until we get feasibility studies but i just think we need to start getting people primed and excited about what's coming and and see what could be integrated here in a way that gets us more than we might have more than we might enjoy and more support than we might be able to generate if we look at these two just totally independent so i'll stop that's you know if you have questions about any of that stuff i want to follow up i'm happy to do so i have one or two questions on the uh other feasibility study what is the pace of that when do you expect deliverables from that um i wish i could tell you um there have been it's interesting we have two two two pretty significant usability studies going on and for our for the for our locals both are in this case nancy in the other case it's not so much staff it's it's community members there are some there's some disappointment uh in the consultants on both both projects so the the timeline on that one has been affected not only by the virus it certainly has by the the pandemic but also by concerns with the consultants and and what they're producing so i got a pretty a pretty detailed update from uh bob bulsman who's the who's the lead in the performing arts community on that study um my guess is we'll get that one in advance of the library feasibility study but i don't think there's a date certain um and i know there's a lot of back and forth on what it is uh they're getting ready to recommend and and what we can do with that with the what the interested parties are going to be able to do it so i wish mark i wish i could tell you it's you know the end of february or to my knowledge there is no hard uh uh deliverable date to my knowledge so well i don't think we want to stick our nose in what you're doing but do you see a point in um their progress and our progress when we should be talking to one another yeah i do that's for i've been trying to single that for a while i think uh let me add there's one more little variable and not a lot of one more big variable here and that is um there's an investor group um i think they're trying to i think they're talking about their fun as the evergreen fund um that is trying to generate interest and investors uh in a fund to make investments one or more in the opportunity zone which is all that area north of uh of this of this the same brain right from the sugar mill all the way to hoover all that work we did on the steam project is all in the opportunity zone um so um that's where i've started some of this conversation is if if you're building if you're building an investment fund and you're going to look for opportunities these two feasibility studies are going to present a pretty interesting pretty interesting maybe and maybe the biggest opportunity you'll ever have now how well it's going to match up with what they're interested in mark i don't know but i know that the initial response has been to say well let's we ought to learn more about this and and see what the possibilities are and when the time comes absolutely this group friends in the library the our primary employers in town i mean there's a number of parties that need to be brought together to say look let's just explore what's possible if you want to if you want to make a big bold presentation to the community about how you could get that whatever this group might decide it wants whether it's that's a library district or a dedicated sales tax and keep the library inside the context of the city structure that's going to be based on what the feasibility study brings and what you all decide you want to recommend um and i'll support whatever you're going to recommend um but this is not unlike in my mind not unlike what we envisioned the possibility with uh with the pool and ice facility and putting that together with a with a with a proposed library district for the time like that didn't come together in this case you put the library together with the performing arts conference center and you have a pretty large percentage of the community whose interest you could get and i think some enthusiasm uh and you could get a two for you could get two big results with with one proposed uh tax increase so so how does this coalescing occur in your mind i think we're gonna have to put together at the time there's gonna have to be a group brought together of all kinds of things to kind of map out what possibilities are or will citizens or will the city do that oh i don't think the city will do that not and i don't think the city will do it as a as a government entity i think it's going to take it'll take council members it's going to take the leadership from this board it'll take leadership from the performing arts community and then making a connection with um i think probably through the long line economic development partnership um i think that i think they'll have a keen interest i know some of their board members are already interested but it'll be a it'll be a group that has to be brought together with opportunities laid out and in the mayor can do that the um the leadership of ledp with the mayor with friends of the library and with the leadership of this on this board okay so um this seems to be in line with some of the thoughts that came out of that envision long month discussion a couple years ago that you're talking about the steam project or master plan master plan for the growth of long month principally the main street corridor but i think it extended beyond that and it involved cultural centers and hotels and yeah extended library services and what have you um does that how does that fit in and do you think well everything that everything that we're talking about right now fits pretty pretty well with envision long month as well as what we did with the steam project a couple years ago and there's nothing that's there's a disconnect or is kind of unaligned with that and and you're right the main street corridor plan which is now being translated into actual planning documents same thing is going to happen this year with the steam initiative um all that all that is real congruent with you know what what i'm envisioning as a possibility and i know others are as well yeah i was just joking for fellow constituents you know when when the coalescing occurs of course you want to bring in as many people as you can i think to make it work it's just casting a buffer who that might be but i think i think initially mark i think it'll be leadership from from this group from the performing arts group and business leadership in town uh who are going to have to come together they'll have that somebody's going to have to trigger that um and that's where the city or the mayor could play a role you know or your elected officials could play a role um yeah well it's going to have to my there's a variety of ways it could happen at the very least it will have to be a confederation of some kind right um or a collaboration among the leadership of of interested groups and to see whether or not with some facilitation um a plan comes out of that it could be coherent and um and and um i guess i know what better we're popular enough or compelling enough with the community to take it seriously and and you think this might be a actionable item in the second quarter uh probable i don't know the second quarter yeah maybe by the end of yeah by the end of May or June yeah okay great any other questions for the councilman thanks thanks for all that councilman waters okay that that gets us through our normal um list of items uh unless there are any additional comments on any of those and with that i'll move to uh old business and the biggest item one under old business courses where it should be with you nancy so okay why don't you help us up this fits right in with what tim was just talking about so um i have spoken with multiple consultants um one at length since we last met i have finished redoing our kind of feasibility study phase two rfq our request for quotes so that is on its way off through purchasing and through karen's office and you know other city folks that will will look through that so um definitely made some some changes on what we want to see as deliverables in this second phase which is going to consist mostly of the things that we felt weren't delivered in the first phase um a lot of what we're really looking for we have a whole you know what we got from the first consultant really amounted to a big giant pile of data and so you know what we want going forward is the consultants to come in and extrapolate from this data um what makes the most sense moving forward for the library so um we've asked them to do basically you know what look at the data um what would be a low a median and an optimal level of service standard for things like um building size staffing collection size you know all those parameters so that shouldn't take too long for for the consultants to do i've talked to several who have who i've worked with before have done that very well but then to take the next step what we really need is what does that mean so how do we get there what are the different ways to get there um there's a district there's a city and there's a hybrid so we really want them to go off into those territories and say what type of funding mechanisms are available for those different entities so you know is there a dedicated tax um as a municipal library is there a district with its financial ramifications and also a difference in governance um is there a hybrid model and i know that some exist for example where you have a municipal library with a governing board which gives you more flexibility in uh policy formation um in some of the decisions that you make moving forward so we really want them to take all that giant pile of data that we collected a lot of community input and say okay here's what we've heard from the community surveying about how people want just to um see us move forward but what does it cost and what are the mechanisms and you know break that down into the graphs and charts of this is what it looks like for your average taxpayer moving forward um the original consultant survey pretty much said you know that you can't pay for what you're going to need in the future with with the city's general fund budget which i think tim i've heard you say it like 37 times and i agree with you because i've probably said it more often than that so so looking at what funding mechanisms are out there looking at what the budget is that we need to provide these updates to services technology space etc that information is pretty readily available and the consultants that i spoke with did not think that this process would be nearly as lengthy as the original consultants took to compile data um so i think tim we're talking only about a couple months for someone else to come in and and put together what we need so and i have found several consultants who are interested and available so um trying to line up our ducts so that when this is ready to when this is this rfq is ready to go out we will have a definitive date by which it has to be returned and reach that i that i hope to know pretty shortly so we we're making progress ready to move forward great questions katie do you think that there's any change given the pandemic i mean i know yeah ideally we're coming out of it but not for a little while at least there is and you know i think that that is a a portion of information that i've added to the request for quotes and said you know here's what we envisioned pre-covid and you know some things so we have a little addendum of basically the changes in library service since the advent of covid you know for example you know we have a lot of patrons asking us to even when we are fully reopened continue some of our you know more of our online services so we've had some of our online programs and services that have proven immensely popular so there's going to be i think a sustained demand for those for example bilingual story times you know so many people have said can we please have these online um you know even when covid is is hopefully done so um and just just kind of the way we do some things um the fact that we've been talking about the digital divide in libraries for more than 15 years and that that it's only now really with the advent of covid that people are taking that seriously and really understanding that people who don't have internet access really don't have internet access and and even folks who have internet access you know maybe they're doing work at home and they can't print they can't do things so you know seeing things where they were used dropping by the library um so i think the way we use our space our concept of how we use our space has changed and just seeing how many folks have really been just um at their wit's end during covid during this period of unemployment etc and recognizing that this is the you know this is the first library i've worked in in 15 years that doesn't do computer classes just about every day of the week we will do that um post covid you know we're we're already looking at basically how to rearrange the furniture and and you know drop power so we can make a different computer lab and and teach classes so i think that it has changed our focus moving forward so i have a question so when these the uh consultant whoever that is is ready to percent findings um will they um well let me back up the first set of consultants we had had a series of report outs to brian um gain acceptance or communicate the findings of the report how do you see the these new sets of consultants gaining that same communication channel to the community i have expectations of a totally different product and i guess the product that i am looking for from the second consultant is um quite similar to the product and product that we ended up with when i was in belligham washington and you know the consultants um came out they talked to the board but they also did the presentation to council and you know they they did a lot they had a lot of visuals they had a package of so it was um i think a lot more cohesive and a lot more visual you could see you know graphically here's where here's where our library is here's where it should be here's where it is compared to your libraries here is what someone who owns a house with this value would pay in taxes to get a low median or often the level of service it's very um it's not as much just a compilation of of statistics and community input as it is output this is what this translates to so i would thoroughly expect them to do a professional presentation or presentations that sounds great i hope they're they're um able to do all that because i think that'll really help i think i think i know a couple of them who have told me that they have availability and who are completely capable of doing so good okay any other questions for nancy on this one very good nancy i look forward to to getting the uh final final me too yeah i bet okay i uh asked to have this discussion on the mosher and the empson funds added i mean we talked a little bit about this last meeting of course i guess uh i have a couple questions uh before just some general discussion i assume that uh two thousand dollar check was cut loose and you're good with your recent reference material right okay good um i um went back in my notes and in addition to what we said was in the empson fund in september back in may 2018 there was almost a million two hundred thousand in the mosher fund so between those two funds there's close to four million dollars the the fund but it's not all accessible i understand that but some of it there is some of it's the corpus and some of it you can exactly although some of the information that the councilman sent out suggested that you can council can rewrite the rules so they can dip into the body of the fund as well it's it's there i mean they can do that i think is it might interrupt anyway so um my my point and all that was that's a lot of money four million bucks and um like this is the discussion part is there a role for our group in in terms of making recommendations to council as to how to broaden or change the equest guidelines so that it's more practical for use by the library when the library has a appropriate and approved project for for instance i think the empson fund is tied to research material and i think the moser fund is tied to uh learning disabilities that may not be the most the mosher fund was originally tired to tied to um visual enhancements etc but there is a belief that you know since it is so old and no one from the original mosher family or mosher trust is alive from what i have been told um that should be able to use be used for other things and we had talked about that for some of those um for an electronic sorter which is automated materials handler we had talked about doing some of those improvements like um moving some things around creating a computer lab doing some of those type of things potentially with that money as far as the empson funds that originally was for reference material but i need to do some digging and see what the background is and if there's still someone around that has any kind of say in how the empson fund is spent because i think that usually what my experience has been that when you have these funds that that date way back that you're no longer tied to the original um purpose of those funds to be really hard to spend that amount of money on audio on visual materials for patrons that's you know way before patrons could enlarge a font a font on a screen and see things and you had to have your readers and and um devices but well my guess is you're more right than wrong i mean i i would guess that whatever um governance was there through the estate is is passed because of the passage of time and that um there are those protocols that are out there that came from the original request and it seems to me that um if we're allowed that made maybe that it should be an activity of the advisory board to at least put together some language as to how to um suggest that those funds be looked at going forward and what kind of governance goes on i don't i don't think um it would be in the library's best interest of the city's best interest just to throw it open and say whatever you need take take from time to time i think there's there needs to be some oversight there but there needs to be some rules surrounding that oversight i mean we're right now we're actually going out to our group we're actually working on a concrete proposal of how to use at least a good chunk of the motor fund um we are we have appointments with four different vendors of automated materials handlers which are sort electronic sorters um this month the beginning of next month and we also we're getting some estimates on some of the things that we would like to do um as far as changes go with some of the areas in the building so so we wanted to come back and and talk to the board about that and see i think you're right mark i think at that point you know i'd rather i'd rather come in with a concrete list and say here's what we'd like to do with at least some of it here's how much it costs um at that point propose deviating from the original you know visual materials okay well i i would just say that in conjunction with that the board needs to think about in addition to that request how it should manage future requests i mean it can't be just a carte blanche it can't be like the friends where you come in and say hey i need a you know an x y z and they write you a check there there should be some parameters around what's suitable and what's not suitable does that make sense sort of sort of i don't want to screw with your prerogatives but i just think this stewardship role here for the board you do but on the other hand we we never have you know we have some large ticket items that this library should have had years ago that would not fit into a friend's request or our funding no doubt no doubt it would be my hope that the city would step up rather than dip into this money but that may not be the case well not so i mean my um gut feeling is that they'd say well you have all this money why don't you spend this on it instead so that's another reason why i'm proposing that we do what we do so there is some governance to this so that it doesn't get rated well if we spend it on some things that we need it won't it won't be there to raid so that's right yes that's right but you can't spend it all so mark i see chin's hand up the uh i don't think there's any way the city could raid this i guess the council i guess the council could you know somebody could put an item on the council agenda for council action to change the the the limits of the constraints or purposes of the mojo fund in the in the in the first correspondence i had with jim golden about this now almost three years ago i think at that time there was like five hundred and seventy three thousand dollars that had accumulated i'm so it's north of that because it's now several years later um that was that was um uh that was growth over the original you know kind of principle um that was was available to be spent um and it was my understanding at the time that that this board could decide to change to redefine the purposes of those of those funds and then in the in following up from the last meeting with jim then i got then that email looked to me like well it would be a council action but based on the recommendation of this board but one way or another right um the the opportunity exists to broaden the purpose right or redefine the purpose of the funding um i don't know uh your comment a few minutes ago about about going spending down the principle um i'm not certain where that fits in all the you know that language but certainly broadening the use of the earnings right from the time that it was it was the fund was created and i think probably the most the smartest approach would be um to to assume that you would formulate a recommendation i think then the work that nancy was talking about would be the basis for that recommendation to the council to spend x of the 500 now in 80 000 or 90 000 or 600 or whatever it is um at least of the earnings if um if you wanted to recommend that you spend down the principle i think that's a different conversation with jim that we ought to get clearer on whether or not that that's the prerogative of the council yeah this is just me i'm not speaking on behalf of others on on our uh board but you know i i strongly agree that that the fund should be repurposed because they're not satisfying much use right now the um the reason i asked the other questions was because you sent out an email to nancy and i that that was from jim golden back in in may of 2018 that was talking about the moser fund and it it has a bunch of information and it and it's it says in section three it addresses that it can only be used for the benefit of the library it can be used pursuant to the advice of the library board city council has has to designated shoes let's see city council has to designated shoes it indicates by resolution and appropriation ordinance would also be required notice that it also does allow city council by ordinance to authorize use of the corpus as well for the library so it has to go to the library but they could spend it down or you could spend it down if you chose i would i would argue against that because then i think it depletes the asset and then there's there's you know there's nothing in reserve for for your rainy day but um that's with respect to the moser fund i'd like to get something on paper that we recommend is a board as to how council should approach the use of this funds and um let's say the cards should be in place so that they they remain there for the use of the library going forward that's my recommendation and i see a lot of blind faces so that's your recommendation to the board right that's not a recommendation to the council no that's that's my recommendation to the board is that we put something together as a recommendation to council yeah so like i said we have multiple things that we have considered um so you know i can put that together as a recommendation to the board and i think going in with a recommendation of how we want to spend some of the spendable part of the fund at the same time as is making sure that we can spend it is probably a good idea so that it's not just this loose amount hanging out there i like your idea of having some structure to that you know god forget something something happens and and you're no longer director nancy we don't want the new director coming in and saying oh gee i got this pocket full of cash i'm going to spend it all down and then you know then we don't have anything for that's oh i wouldn't suggest i wouldn't suggest spending spending that part of it i would just you know suggest spending a portion of the whatever it's up to you now close to 600 000 and leave the rest to gain interest in the future well i'd like to combine them both combine empson and motor yeah and and then put a put a common purpose to both and then have some sort of fiduciary response going in the very loose of terms where the board is responsible for at least looking at the monies once a year to see what the heck's there because i know for years and years and years just that or my observation the board didn't have a clue as to how much money was there and what it was doing tim do you think this is a good conversation to have with jim golden yeah i i don't know i mean jim ultimately i i suspect jim's going to say to you well if you have put together a proposal or recommendation and you know and and you'd want you know it's going to have to come from the board um but put it on a council agenda and you know we'll go from there uh as new business and come back as a resolution and and then it would show up as one in the you know in the you know funding ordinance which we do on a regular basis i just think it might be helpful for us to bring him in on the conversation and he'll he'll yeah he'll know the specifics of what we actually should be doing and and how things should be termed etc well i'm wondering if if we can't put together a subcommittee of the board to just look at it and make a recommendation to the board overall um and maybe nothing comes of it but i i think there's a lot of money there and i think it would would be physically or responsible for the board not to at least try and put some sort of policy in place to demonstrate that we are trying to manage it in a responsible fashion so can i can i get a motion to put together a subcommittee to do just what i said can i get a motion to do something else uh i can try to reword it um i move that the board puts together a subcommittee to look at how the how how the library i don't know uh how how various funds are utilized by the library in the future is that what you're thinking or you want do you want it to be these specific funds um let me try i i i move that the board puts together a subcommittee to consider a more a more flexible means of managing the monies in the moser and empson fund for the future use of the library how does that sound second second all in favor four five four out of four okay so can we get that in the the notes please catherine now we need the subcommittee do we have any volunteers do we have any financial types out there so and we're actually looking at the funds i thought this was more of the use of the monies in the fund the the governance for how the monies get used mark can i ask a question sure is the is is when you use the use of the term manage the funds suggests that you you want to have fingerprints on how it gets invested or where it gets invested as opposed to how it's utilized right um i i think what you're interested in is broadening the potential use of the funds and and and how the library benefits from the use of those funds as opposed to how the how the fund is managed is that yes yes yes yes and also i think if you were going at it the other way like what tim said if you were making suggestions as to how the funds have managed i think you'd have to be a governing board in order to make that type of recommendation instead of that's that's beyond where i wanted to take this exercise i just i just wanted to you know there's a lot as i said there's a lot of money here um we would be irresponsible as a board if we didn't try to put some broad parameters on the procedures by which that money gets used and that and that's what i'm proposing is that that just like we did the bylaws you know we put together the bylaws and we said this is how we were going to act as a board and then we kicked it around and we got concurrence and i would see that as this the same exercise here is we put together some broad statements as to how we think this should be addressed as a board not not as necessarily as how Nancy would use the money but just how we would manage the the communication that that goes to council to say that this is a good idea and that we think they should do it does that make sense some yes i don't think you need to be financial to do that that's you know i mean financial is like you're like investing it which no no okay that's uh that's uh too far a leap i think and we don't we don't really have that nor can we envision future boards having that expertise i mean i can put something together i think it's probably like an annual state of the funds right like something along those lines i would say that and like like when so nancy comes up with a great idea it's going to take a couple hundred thousand dollars and we're going to dip into the funds does that does that carry with majority consent of the board do you need super majority do you need unanimous consent to the board something like that do you you know does does does it not go forward unless it goes to council first and council approves it as well yeah just stuff like that you know how how do you how do you demonstrate to the public that yes we were responsible when how we manage this money can i ask what happens to the funds if the library becomes a district and a singular entity normally nothing i mean normally funds that are tied directly to your to a library when a library separates from a municipality and comes to district go with it but you know once again that's there's a lot of stuff involved and looking at looking at those so i'm just wondering for future because if if the library separates then councils kind of like do they need to approve it still does it need to go to council probably nah it's the library's money at that point right well it probably transfers to the governing board of whatever that district becomes right well i'm just forward thinking if we put together these guidelines they should probably include some thought into that right i think that's a great idea and i you know this is i don't see this is uh you know a one and done kind of thing i think it'll take a couple iterations to everybody feels comfortable when the entity feels comfortable tim feels comfortable that we put something together that's both responsible but also workable and we don't want to handcuff the the library in this process but at the same time we want to i think we want to be responsible as a board i think it will take some mulling through because there there is that fine line too between the responsibilities of a advisory board versus a governing board when you handle this so i think that i think it's it will take a few meetings probably well no god and and i think i think by the way the the estates set it up they felt that there was a role for the the advisory board because there probably wasn't anything else to you know sign it to so there it is i mean it's you know it's there's there's the lap that it's in so take a shot at it katie and you know we'll kick it around say anybody want to help katie do you want to help katie i mean i can put the first rough draft together and then i think we can go from there okay that sounds great thank you thanks thanks for bearing with me on this i'm going to move on unless there's other questions number c under old business little free libraries i have a little bit of info okay great and we were talking about looking for some spots to maybe create an indoor space so that we would not continue to have the issues that we had with the other ones in the park and i'm not and i made a delivery this week to the suites which is a long month housing authority affordable housing facility and they had requested to have some books on hand for their residents and we were withdrawing a whole bunch of stuff so i so i put the load over there and they may be one spot that's interested in future in having a they have bookshelves but it's a little free library and we've had several other suggestions for some staff that i'm looking into um some are city facilities some are not one person had on our staff had been approached with someone from salud the healthcare clinics who um take care of a lot of our folks that are english second language and they had expressed some interest in having some children's books there that they could hand out to their patients slash clients so we are we have been looking into several different possibilities so far of kind of an indoor free library location so we're not saying that we couldn't put a little free a cute little free library somewhere but but you know after the third time when they were smashed to death it was a little bit disheartening so maybe maybe if they didn't have a me that's all great but maybe if they didn't have a meeting or the friends didn't have a meeting we were going to throw something in front of them as to whether they wanted to take ownership on this and they and they still could they could but i mean we haven't been broached on the subject of this no they haven't had a meeting yet i was going to bring that up as part of my director's part of the friends meeting on wednesday so okay great but we have been like we have been looking for some some indoor locations for both adults and children's materials we were able since the friends have not been able to sell the lines to their materials this year and we had accumulated quite a few donations even though we were ostensibly not taking them for a while people still left them on the doorstep pretty much so we passed out for example a ton of children's materials at the free lunch programs that were both by st vrain school district and children youth and families so so definitely looking at some some maybe different ways kind of outside the box little free instead of just the traditional you know cute box understand little free libraries because i think that there are still places that could use some free books very good my goal of this was to try and get the library out of the management of it i'll pitch it to the friend and you didn't i mean you didn't let me try this again you are not the original recipient of the books they are the friends so if they were up to it then they would be a great source of books for little libraries if they chose to take on that role well it's all kind of the same pot i mean we were taking we were taking books before to put in the little free libraries that were given as donations or that were discarded library books before they ever hit the friends you know people people donate materials to the library and also um the friends generally in their book sales don't tend to sell as many of the actually press of the x library books as they do some of the books that don't have the library markings and jackets on them so the kind of things that we like to donate elsewhere potentially that end up going to a wholesale hauler after the friend sales when they don't sell are the things like like you know james patterson has a new book out and we buy 15 copies and then after a few months you know we might need to keep three of them and we have multiple copies of these materials so those are the kind of books that we tend to we do talk to the friends first we don't just you know take the books but say hey can we can we appropriate some of these donations for these other purposes and this is pretty typical in libraries i've given to invite to teach programs to books for africa to medical clinics etc because we always have more books than we can then then sell at the book sales in the friends okay well yeah i it wasn't my intent to get in the middle of any of that i was just hoping that the friends would take a greater role in supporting the little library so and see what they said okay folks this is what everybody's been waiting for election of officers for the coming term do we have anybody that wants to make a floor speech does anybody have a platform that they want to put forth say anybody have any recommendations i would say don't nominate sent for synthia in absentia because she's probably busy synthia did write me um she had indicated that probably in in deference to catherine's sufferings that she would take secretary but she's not but but she's not going to take it till she comes back about by the way does anybody know if she had her baby i sent her a note and i haven't heard back from her yet and there was a way message that said she was going back to work at the beginning of may i don't know i can try and find a i can wrestle up her phone number and text her well there seems to be a relief for whoever gets the secretarial position that is very gracious of her i i was going i was also going to volunteer to do the secretary i made it that obvious i'm so i've done it i don't i nobody should do it twice in a row um but i can't do the i can't do the friends like i can't commit to two meetings so do you go to the friends and take minutes there no but if you're if you're the friends liaison you have to go to their meeting which right that's it's usually the same week so it's just not for does it doesn't necessarily work for me necessarily so that's why it's going to volunteer to be the secretary again it is actually a little bit easier because you can be typing on zoom it is a little easier yeah it's true so should we just wait and i'm fine doing it until we hear from synthia and kind of you two could decide between you what is preferable and i can i can manage for a while here for sure i i also probably can't commit to another meeting unfortunately i i can still be the i'll still be the friends liaison yeah i'm happy nobody wants to be president you're a person you're doing a great you're doing such a great job have that presidential air well you could be vice chairman i will share that i have decided to go to law school so my life is going to change dramatically in the fall so i can take on something maybe until august but after that i'm probably going to have to scale back you know i want to stay on this board but i don't want to commit to anything additional time wise you should do the vice then yeah that's the least commitment what does that say think of vice presidents what do they usually do so it takes exception to that usually what happens is the vice chairman steps in when the chairman's indisposed well i could probably manage that so um so let me see if i can sort this out so kathy still wants to be with the friends katie's willing to be secretary until synthia shows up katharine's willing to be vice chair and i guess that means you mark that leaves me so um we have a motion for that slate of officers are you okay being the chairperson in all seriousness well uh i know you guys backed me up so i'm okay with it uh i will move then to to move forward with the elections of the officers as stated second second all in favor okay so that's the officers um next meeting date is february 22nd and um i have an announcement for the vice chairman i'm going to be absent that day okay for you to go in there and cut your teeth i'll start doing my homework now i hope you're doing something fun at least how i've done it you know it's it's not all that top so i wouldn't say that uh any other comments or questions from the board council nope nope nancy no i'm talked out it's been a long day all right then uh i did want to mention that we did the craft bag nancy oh it's adorable this is our children's department and some other library folks while they're doing other things put together hundreds of take-home craft bags every week and as many as we put out we started out with like 25 and then we went to 50 then we went to 100 then we went to 200 and people specifically to pick them up because people i think are just really looking for hands-on activities that don't involve more screen time absolutely we look forward to them awesome that one's particularly cute yeah that is i know super cute it's cute it says that emperor penguin panache and there have been some of them not as frequently but there are some that have been aimed at adults as well so nice so we've had finger knitting and a couple other things kits put together for adults but try to find some things that that aren't just screen time is a good thing absolutely hey i was wondering if we might want to send a card to synthia do you have an address here i do okay i don't have it right at hand right here but i have it i can send it around tomorrow okay okay good you got great we want baby details we want pictures so she was due the night so hopefully she's hopefully the baby's a few weeks old oh yeah let's hope so okay i'd like to move that we adjourn at 808 and with the exception of the of me we'll see you all next month yep where you going mark back to florida oh nice safe travels safe travels yeah see how much virus i can get done i hope you get your vaccine before you go but why or get tested anyway oh yeah it would be good well have a safe trip all right take care now bye bye bye bye thanks everyone