 Great. So today's meeting is being recorded. I want to make sure that everyone I see a quorum can hear and be heard. So I'm going to ask you to acknowledge that you can hear and be heard, George Hicks. Here. Sharon Cherry. Here. I mean. Yeah. And Alex Lefebvre is present. So calling the meeting to order at nine oh one. Let's see pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting can do so by clicking on the live link to this Zoom meeting. That can be found in the public meetings calendar on the town of Amherst website or by dialing in by phone. The public is able to comment during the public comment segment of the posted agenda by raising their hand. This meeting is being recorded and will be posted to the town of Amherst YouTube channel. I think that's true. Library. Yeah. Just kidding. We will be posted to the library website. Not to the town. Okay. Great. So the first item I see we have two attendees. And our first order of business is approval of the minutes of March 15th. Somebody make a motion. I motion to approve the minutes. I second it. Any questions, comments. When those meeting minutes. Okay. Hearing none. Take a vote to approve the meeting. Meeting minutes of March 15th, George. Yes. Yes. And Alex is a yes. Next order is the minutes of May 24th. Is there a motion to approve those minutes? Okay. I move to approve the minutes. Thank you. I second. Any questions, comments, discussion on the May 24th meeting minutes. Okay. See none. I vote to approve. George. Yes. Yes. And Alex is a yes. Our next item on the agenda is public comment. We have two attendees. If either of them would like to make a comment, you can signal by raising your virtual hand and we can. Bring you into the meeting to make a comment. Okay. Seeing none. I'm going to move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the North Amherst library project update. And with that, I'm going to turn that over to Sharon. And we'll move on to the next item on the agenda. And I'm going to move on to the goals. So first, I want to thank send a Jones and. Hashtag the mill district. For donating to the town. This space for the North Amherst library in the mill district, the address is going to be 81 Coles road. Yes. And. You know, my note says the 27th. Hang on. That's what I had to. Okay. So that's Monday, the 27th. So it's actually, we're closing to the public after, at the close of business on Saturday, the 25th. And then we will start being closed to the public at that point. Staff will be packing. We're going to be packing. We're going to be packing. Many thanks to Gilford and the DPW crew. They're going to be helping to move the boxes and some of our furniture. It'll be after the first of July. That's when the space is expected to be ready. It's not a definite yet, but that, that's when they're expecting to. We're going to leave the boxes in the new space and some of this furniture until we have shelving. And then we're going to be able to store it. And then we're going to be able to store it during shelving for us. And depending on how much shelving they're able to secure, that's going to dictate how much of our collection. We get to unpack, put on shelves and make available. And then if any of it, any of the collection doesn't fit, we'll put that into storage. I T is going to be installed during the week of July 11th. That's when PC. Dr. Hank. Amazing. Gets back from vacation. And then like the previous week, we'll be adding it right to the space. I'm going to be in the space at the PC. At the USIT department under Sean Hanan. We'll be working on getting our phones up and ready. After July 1st. Anyway, so, so all of these dates matter because I don't know when we're going to reopen to the public yet. It will depend on when all of these. These little pieces get put into place. George is, we do have a floor plan for the space. so nice. And the Jones staff are working on, so there are things we have to deal with regarding it to library loan and holds items that are meant to be brought over to the North Amherst Library just during this, you know, two, three week period while we're closed. Staff are going to have to figure out how to work that out, where the public will come to pick it up, whether it be the Jones or the Munson. And then the North Amherst staff, again, they'll be in charge of storing parts of the collection, if any of it have to be stored. And the library is going to have to pay the utilities during this interim period. The library is also going to be responsible for cleaning and stocking of the bathroom that's there. Side note, Petra Pendroff, our new head of branch services, she starts on July 11. So she'll, when she starts, she'll be starting in the new space. Yay, George, I'm going to hand it over to you. What didn't I talk about? I think you covered most everything. I'm working on trying to get Hank into the new space this week, just so we can have a look see, just so he can be prepared for what is there as far as technology and what the possibilities are going to be. We are in the process of procuring boxes. We have been hoarding and stashing boxes. And after the zoom, I'm going to go over to Coles, because they've been saving boxes for us as well. We've been working on clearing out the basement of North with all of the clutter and labeling stuff that is going to go to the new location and stuff that is going to come back to the Jones. So yeah, I think that's where we are right now. We're just gearing up and getting as prepared as possible. So when they do close, we can be ready to hit the ground running. And I'm going to dedicate as much time as possible to helping out the branch staff to get things ready. Like you said, I made up that floor plan. I sent it to you. I sent it to the branch staff to get their feedback. Everybody seems to be pretty happy and enthusiastic about it. So yeah, hurry up and wait. Thank you, George. And I have to say, Cindy left both branches in a really good spot. You know, all the staff know each other and they're ready to work together. And it's we're ready. It's a good, we're in a good place. Thank you both. Sharon, how many people are going to be in the space? Like how big is the space? Is it a little over a thousand square feet, George? It's just under 900 square feet, which isn't much bigger than the existing space. But because it's a square, it is so much more rectangle. It's so much more efficient. Yes. We like rectangles. Yeah, this planning was a joy. Yeah, so they're actually seeding. There's going to be sight lines. Be nice. Art, did that answer your question? I was just curious how many people were going to be staffing it? Oh, two. Two people at all times. Yeah. Yeah. Two questions from me. One where is the, do we know, do we have an estimated cost of utilities and is it similar to what we would normally be paying? Or is this a bump to the budget? It's an awesome question. I have no idea. Okay. You know, it's a brand new space. I'd like to think it's going to be cheaper because it'll be more efficient than what we've got going on, you know, in the 200-year-old building. But George is shaking his head, yes. Yeah, I agree. I can't help but think that the utility costs will go down. Okay. That was my suspicion, but I wasn't sure. But that will be good because now we're going to have to supply toilet paper and paper towels. Right. Right. So hopefully that'll be a wash. And the expectation is that we'll be in the space for like minimum 10 months, we think. That's what they said. You know, they started with three to six and now 10 to 12. Who knows? I don't know. I can't imagine that this is going to last longer than a year. And then another question is about hours. In terms of what hours we have in our current North Amherst library, will that be different? No, the hours are going to stay the same. So, you know, most of the staff that are manning the space have second jobs and so their schedules have to stay the same. So it's Monday, Wednesday from 3.30 to 7.30, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 to 2. Yeah. So that's kind of nice. That's easy to remember. Yeah. And then I know that, so I think they're from folks in the District 1 neighborhood, I think there have been offers of, you know, volunteering to expand hours. I have no idea whether, whether we're even allowed to do that or what that means. I mean, I assume we always have to have an employee on site. And if we don't have an employee on site then having volunteers doesn't change our hours or our ability to offer more hours. And so I guess I just wanted to sort of understand, I think it's incredible and I love that people are offering to volunteer, but just maybe understanding the logistics of how that can or can't work. I don't know. Yeah. So there are lots of reasons and, you know, for the same reason a business would not run its business using volunteers. The library is not going to be running, expanding hours using volunteers. The hours that are in place work for the staff, expanding the hours, training volunteers, the confidentiality of patron records, those kinds of things can't be left to volunteers. Volunteers are awesome, but you can't rely on them. When push comes to shove, volunteers get sick go on vacation and now you've got to find new people to fill in because you've already promised these, you know, bigger hours and the staff that I have can't take those hours, which would mean that then I've got to close because I don't have a volunteer coming in. It's a... Well, I'm wondering from a liability perspective because that's of course where I always live, like can we even operate a building without a town employee in the building? No, it would always have to be one staff member, one volunteer. And so start the logistics of just starting to reschedule the staff, that in itself is a nightmare slash not possible because they've got second jobs and I can't. So, you know, these staff members, for example, on Monday, they come in from 3.30 to 7.30 and now if I have to take one of those people and find another time slot for them, they might not be able to work another time slot. And does the introduction of Petra starting on July 11th potentially change that? Do they have an impact at some point while it's open once Petra's up and running and like, is there a possibility, I guess? So, the reason we're having one head of brand services is so that the head of brand services is not going to be working the desk. That's not what you pay somebody at a department head level to do. This person is there for the big picture thinking, the long range planning, managing IT and building issues and trustees and all of that. She's going to be managing overseeing two branches. And so when she's not at the north, she's got to be at the south. And when she's not at those two spaces, she's going to be serving as a reference librarian here at the Jones. So she's got lots of things to do. She's, her time is not going to be available to add open hours either. We were asked if we could pay people a dollar an hour. That way it would put people on the town's payroll and the town is not legally allowed to pay anybody less than minimum wage. So we can't do that either. Yes. Are you had a question? Yeah. So Sharon, sorry, just to backtrack. So these are the same hours that you've always had at North Amherst? Not always, but in the past. So COVID? Let's say since COVID. Yeah. Yeah. And just to go to Alex's point, have people offered to have people offered to help out before? Alex, do you know? I mean, while it's amazing that these people are coming out and saying that it's maybe this is something long term. If there are people in district one who are so enthusiastic about supporting the library, you know, there could be something long term that they could look into in terms of what you were saying, training people, Sharon and all that. But it seems like a big load on the library. There would have to be a large chunk of money exactly donated so that we could actually hire people at, you know, the 17 plus dollars an hour so that we can have actual employees that go through a training process who can be trained as to how to deal with patrons who are experiencing homelessness or mental illness challenges and employee. Yeah. Maybe down the road, the anonymous donor could offer to put that bill too. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I think it's an interesting, I think, I mean, it sounds like it's not realistic to be able to just magically open the library for longer hours. But it sounds, I mean, we know the more library hours is always something that people want to see. And if there is some way to partner, you know, it's not like 100% of our employee costs are paid for town anyway. I don't know. I mean, maybe there's some creative solution in the future about how to staff that for longer hours. And so I guess my comment, and I just think what I hear from far is like, let's, let's leave the door open to possibilities, but know that it's certainly it's not going to be happening on July 1 or 11 or whenever we finally open. Well, one of the things that we did say is, you know, working with volunteers to offer programming that we can knock it out of the park that way. You know, so if there are people out there, if there are people out there that love story that love to do storytime that can can be a part of social media. And who knows, sky's the limit with that. And that way the staff can work with the volunteer in order to either do a one time program or a, you know, something that lasts for four weeks or who knows. So programming is a beautiful space for volunteers. Great. Also, these volunteers could offer to transport people to one of the other libraries if they had a book emergency or something, right? That's sweet. That's sweet. You know, one of the other, one of the other big picture things that we're always looking at is the equality between the North Library and the South Library. So we've got the same number of staff, we've got the same number of hours. And so what we do in the North affects what we do in the South. And it's really not good for community. It's not good for the community as a whole to be pitting one branch against another branch. So that is another reason for not extending hours in one branch if I can't do it in the other as well. Because right now the hours are the same in both branches. Yeah. Gotcha. That's a good reminder. Okay. Good. Are there questions about the North Amherst Library? Okay. I think that was the totality of our agenda. Happy to check back in with the public again before we adjourn the meeting to see if there's any questions, comments that people want to contribute at this point. So another opportunity for the public if you'd like to say something or provide a comment. Okay. Not seeing any. Great. Okay. Well, thank you, George and Sharon and everybody who's been working on the North Amherst Library. I can't imagine that's a small amount of work getting all of this together, especially since it's a timetable that we're not in charge of. So we're a little bit of hurry up and do what needs doing, you know, with not a lot of notice. So thank you. We really appreciate you and the staff for just being flexible and responsive. So thank you. Thank you guys. Okay. Wow. These meetings are super short these days. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and call the meeting adjourned. So everybody have a very good day. Thank you. And thank you. Members of the public who came.