 Okay, my watch says seven o'clock. Welcome everybody, happy holidays. Thanks for attending this special board session, special holiday board session to take care of the month of December. And with that, I'll call the meeting to order. In deference to Nicole's statement, I understand there's nobody from the public to be heard. So we'll move past item two in the agenda and go to item three, approval of minutes from November 16th's meeting. Do I have any questions or concerns to address before we move to approve the meeting? Kathy? I found there was a, at least in the copy that I received it, it's what appeared to be a typo in the, it was in the section for the library directors report, part C, it reads 89 Wi-Fi hotspots can now me checked. So it just probably needs to be changed to B. Yes. Since that was the PDF version, Nancy, should I go back to the doc version and change it and send it to you? Yes, that'd be great. Thank you. And then do we need to amend the minutes to reflect the online vote that we did? We'll talk about that when I get to the Empson fun thing, because we may end up just voting again tonight because we haven't released a check yet, so. Okay, that's fine. Thank you. Then we have new wording for the group to look at. So when we get to that, then maybe you can just roll it back in or make it part of this night's minutes. So with that correction, do I have a motion to approve these minutes? Nobody wants to step forward and approve these minutes? I'll move to approve the minutes as amended. A second. I'm gonna miss you, Katie. She's down here. I'm staying. Hey. I changed my mind. Great. Cynthia. I'll second. Thank you. All in favor, raise their hands. I believe it's unanimous. So with that, consider the minutes for the November 16th meeting approved. Okay, then on to our normal items. Nancy, you have the floor. Okay, hi everybody. We are pretty busy as I was kind of chatting before we started the meeting. Our curbside numbers continue to increase. Think our previous curbside high had been around 300. Now I think our average daily curbside is about 375. So we're up at more than one per minute and the hours were open. And I think last Monday we hit over 500. So Monday morning and Wednesday at one, since Wednesday is our late day are crazy. A lot of folks waiting to get their stuff. So people are really caught on to putting things on hold, definitely. We have added, since we don't have other folks in the lobby, we have a mishmash of added shelving now that we've put on because our hold shelves were overflowing and all of us shift those shelves just about every day. Our holds limits are still at 10 per card. At this point, we will increase that if we can later, but right now we're just absolutely overflowing with hold. So even though we've had a few patron questions about why museums just reopened and why we haven't reopened to browsing, we have a whole different situation going there. They just have folks that are browsing exhibits and not touching things and mingling and checking things out. So our plan is to stay with curbside as long as we're still in the red zone and then once things improve, we'll certainly look at opening back up to browsing. We are seeing some computer users. We do have some short stations that are available by appointment. Those have been used fairly frequently and we have a fair amount of patrons who are taking advantage of being able to print remotely from their devices. So helped a lot of people do that. For those folks who need to use computers for a longer period of time for job applications or other applications for insistence or just longer than we have available at lockup. We have now through the CARES Act funding, I think we have 223 of them so far, Chromebooks sitting in our lobby waiting to be catalogued and putting in the system. All 89 hotspots are in the system. So very shortly we'll be able to check out Chromebooks from not just the library's location but we'll have some located at, I think the housing authority and some located at children, youth and families. And we're figuring out what goes where at this point. The library will be cataloging them all and keeping track of them. So we do have some that will be located in other locations and we have charging carts that go with them. Which is all linked to providing service during COVID. Through that, we also have up and running where when patrons return a couple of secure phone charging stations, we've had some issues in the past with folks coming in and not having any place to charge their phones, sticking the money in any well out that they can find, walking away and having the phones walk away. So we have an upstairs version and a downstairs version of six cute little lockers that people make an electronic code for, stick their phone in on the charger and they can lock it while they use the library, come back and retrieve it. We've also received 20 something, I think it's 21 play that play away launch pads. Those are like smart tablets that do not require Wi-Fi on a wide variety of topics. They have preloaded software on everything from preschool learning to ACT and SAT practice tests and those can be checked out and used like I said, with no Wi-Fi connection. We've also received some rolling on rollers screens that will be used to better separate our computers upstairs once we reopen to the public up there. So a little extra barrier, assuming that COVID will be a risk for some time. Another COVID act, another CARES Act funding item we'll be receiving soon is a much better color copier printer scanner. We've been working with city purchasing with Pam and purchasing who's been amazing. We had been leasing copiers for years and years and years from a business and paying to lease the copiers and they came and emptied all the money from the copiers. And we had questioned that before Pam was working with us so that we don't plan to make money off of our copiers but we had planned to at least break even. So copiers actually taken quite a bit of money and we were not recouping any of that previously but we will be having new color copiers, printer scanners. You can scan materials directly to your email, et cetera, print things. They'll have good capabilities and people can also print to those from home and pick things up per side. So probably our last area for the CARES Act funding is from a company called Moseo and it's Textile Librarian. So I've used this product before and I don't know if we talked about this before but it is just another way for people to attend reference service and to contact and chat with the library. So pretty soon there's a chat program, you'll have a probably a five-digit number that you'll use to type into your phone and you can text real-time with librarians and get information about your account, reference service, anything by a chat. So it was popular a while back in libraries. Seeing a resurgence in popularity of the texting programs, a lot of folks now would, I know my kids never call anybody if they can possibly text them and a lot of folks do. And also a lot of people do have a phone where they may not have complete internet access. So those are some things that are piled up in our lobby that will be interesting for the public. Other than that, we're working on year-end everything. We're always balancing our budget, trying to spend as much of everything as we can without going over. So we have our internal departments that all have their wish lists. So I told people at the end of the year, here you go, stop spending on this, but compile your wish list and we'll see what purchases we can cram in. You're working on year-end staff reviews, working on our year-end salary spreadsheets. At this point, it looks like the market's rate has not moved for the next year, but we are allowed to bring employees who are below 101% of market rate up to market rate. And we are allowed to nominate a small amount of our staff for possible exceptional pay. And this was the toughest time to figure out who should be given exceptional pay because honestly, there aren't any of our staff this year who didn't go above and beyond. I can't even tell you what people have done this year that's above and beyond. And we have staff working, doing all kinds of jobs that are nowhere even represented at all in their job descriptions, et cetera, and doing it under less than optimal circumstances. So that's most of what I have. Like I said, we're just in that year-end frenzy of trying to get everything in by the deadlines. So the last day, we can pretty much spend any money for this fiscal year is the 18th. So we're looking at having to get everything in before Friday. Thanks, Nancy. One observation and one question. When you look down to read your notes, we lose your commentary. I'll hold them up here. I lose it anyway. And then my question is, is all the additional electronics you've been able to secure? Is that from CARES or is that from your end budget? That's from CARES Act funding. Great. And then you don't have to pay that back in next year's. No, we don't. And the object of it was really trying to find some expenditures that would really do something to help not eliminate but close that digital divide. And we always talk about the digital divide, but we've never seen anything like what COVID will do. So normally we definitely have the haves and have-nots with technology and the people who are more technically proficient than others. But now we have entire segments of the population that have been completely cut off that don't have internet access. So the gap's only widened. So trying to look at more and more ways to communicate with folks who don't have Wi-Fi or internet technology and also other ways to keep in touch with and provide services for people who do but who are stuck at home. Great. So that's what we were looking for. Great. Any other questions for Nancy? Cynthia? Yes, Nancy, you might have touched on this and apologies if I missed in an earlier meeting. If I notice on the website that you had an update about Prospector? Yes, that's something that's not the best news for us. We are not going to be using Prospector during this next year. And that was a consortium-wide decision. We probably could have squeaked it out on our own but we're in there as a consortium and their costs are high because we are composed of five separate libraries even though between all of us we have what eight branches I think we pay triple the amount of Denver Public of Jefferson County, et cetera. So we pay really high costs for Prospector. So unfortunately it is something that we had to let go this year. We have a lot of patrons who use it but luckily we have a really cracker jacked ILL service through our library. So we think we'll be able to accommodate our patrons through interlibrary loan. So we've beefed up, we've moved a couple of the folks that were dealing with Prospector items over to assisting with interlibrary loan. So the difference for those who don't know what that is Prospector basically gives patrons quick access to materials from libraries in Colorado and some in Wyoming as well. So it is pretty quick because it's a smaller geographic area. We have always had interlibrary loan but we're expanding that to cover this year when we don't have Prospector and interlibrary loan can come from anywhere in this country and it actually from other countries as well. So unlike some other library systems we're not charging for interlibrary loans you can really get pretty much anything from all over the country. It'll just take longer than Prospector did because it won't be a local delivery. How much of your work would you guess came from Prospector? What's that Mike? What's that? How much of your borrowings came from? I'm trying to think how many things we borrowed last year. I think we borrowed about 6,000 items total through Prospector but some of those items are available elsewhere too. So we have some folks who really, really are power users of Prospector and those folks would get in just tons and tons and tons of material and then kind of look through it or not pick up part of it too. So that could be a little problematic too if stuff is being delivered back and forth and the people really don't want it. So we're hoping that people will be a little bit more selective if we're putting some limits on this year. And I think that we'll have maybe a little leverage to do a little bargaining in the future potentially because we are by far a net lender. We have a really excellent collection and we lend out by far more than we borrow. So hopefully everybody's financial picture and our consortium will improve to the point where we'll be able to have it back at some point because it is a good service for our patrons. Thank you. Any other questions for Nancy? Okay, friends report. Okay, my report is on the board meeting that occurred December 2nd via Zoom. Membership and friends is reported at 470 members. We were reminded that patrons are able to purchase from the lobby bookshop and the gift shop using either check or cash and then they use the curbside delivery service to pick up their item. And this is all occurring now during this restricted access in December. If you want complete instructions, just visit the friends website and they tell you exactly what to do. You contact them to make sure the item is there and then bring a check or cash to the curbside pickup. The sales were reported for October were $1,418.15 in the bookshop. They had sold $374.36 on eBay or online sales and $59.90 at the gift shop. The Treasurer, Lynn Newberry, reported transferring $34,000 out of one of their CDs that was up for renewal the end of November. And this will provide them operating funds for the friends until the book sales can resume. The board will be evaluating a membership and donor database called Wild Apricot on a 30-day trial, this month. The product they're looking at it will provide member and donor management, email and letter communication and integrated website development and also a store function. So they will evaluate it and a decision to purchase it would be made via email. Excuse me, Kathy, are you aware, Catherine, that your notes are up on the screen as you edit them? Is that supposed to be Kathy's report? Sorry, I must have chosen the wrong tab. No problem, no problem. It's all over and I made it harder. Thank you. Okay, Kathy, I'm sorry. That's all right, yeah. The next meeting is scheduled for January 27th, 2021. And that's all I have. Okay, any questions for Kathy? Okay, city council liaison report, please. Thanks, Mark. Real quickly, just building on the last part of Nancy's report or a part of Nancy's report in terms of the number of Chromebooks and the electronics you, Mark, you were asking about. On the other side of town, LPC, Longmont Power Communications and NextLight are really dedicated to ensuring that we have no families, especially with young children in Longmont without connectivity. So kind of parallel to what Nancy's been able to do, Longmont Power Communications can identify families, at least eight of them this recently, with children between the ages of zero and five who have never been connected to the internet. Those families have 17 children who are now connected and can take advantage of those Chromebooks or the other electronics that the library is able to provide. So, you know, big picture, what's happening during the pandemic, as difficult as it's been long-term, there are gonna be a lot of people much better served, I think, in the long run. Because of the innovation and how we've deployed both human and digital resources under these remarkable circumstances. So that's just a bit of good news, right? In a year, a lot of bad news. So here are some things that are going on. You tell me if you have questions about them and I'll come back to them. These are the kind of out of the ordinary things. Federal court two days ago, dismissed a suit that was prohibiting progress on the construction of the Chimney Hollow's Reservoir, part of the firming project for the Windy Gap initiative. So if you have questions, I'm happy to come back to that. Number one, number two, we get information from Jim Golden, our chief financial officer, but we get reports all the time on a regular basis in terms of sales tax revenues, use tax revenues, what's happening in terms of the city's financial situation. And it's a pretty interesting story, I think, how effectively Jim and his staff and then all of the city team has managed city resources during this pandemic. We, as we approach the end of the year, it's an untold story about how good, how effective the stewardship has been and how effectively the city staff has shepherded resources that gets us to the end of the year in much better financial shape than I think anybody imagined we might have experienced back in March. We have an item on the agenda tomorrow night that is a letter to well county commissioners and a resolution that goes along with that. I don't know where we'll end up with that tomorrow night, but that's on the agenda. Coming after the first of the year, our short-term rentals ordinance that a number of people have some interest in, we've got an open forum on January 19th. This group will have met again. No, we won't have met again before January 19th, will we? So if you're interested or your friends are interested, we passed on the open forum in June because we could only do it virtually and we decided that we would go ahead and take a shot at doing a virtual open forum on January 19th. Probably one of the two most fun council meetings of the year are the open forums. So I'm glad that we have a chance to go back to the open forum, even if it's gonna be virtual and see what kind of interest we can generate. The last kind of what's coming in the new year would be among a number of capital projects that we're gonna start to see the construction on railroad crossings and the creation of quiet zones through the city. So if you have interest in any of those, follow up. If not, those are kind of things on the horizon for the council that may have some impact on you. Any questions for Councilman Waters? You get a break tonight, Councilman. Well, I'm not, I might weigh in on some of these other items. Well, that's fine, that's fine. Okay, then let's, if there are no further questions, let's move on to old business. One of the items that came up between meetings was a request to spend some money from the Ebsen fund which the Board had agreed to, but for purposes of, I guess, proper stewardship of those assets and to notify the public, we were going to formally pass the request tonight. And if not, Nicole, if you can put that up for everyone to see, Cathy went back in her notes and looked up how we said this sort of thing in the past and all I did was copy her information and put it out there for all to see. So I'll give you a second to read through it. And if anybody has any questions or concerns, please raise your hand, otherwise I will move to get a motion to approve. Cathy? Nancy, I just want to confirm that we have the correct number of encyclopedias. This is correct. And this is exactly the wording of the last motion and it is $1,998. Okay. One is for the children's section and one is for the adult section. Okay, very good. So with that, can I get a motion to approve this formally at this meeting? Where's Katie? I need that motion. Nobody wants encyclopedias? Okay, Cathy. Sorry, I was gonna just let Cathy do it because she wrote it up. Cathy, that's your motion? Yeah, I moved that the Board recommends that the Mayor's signature be authorized on one Emsen check in the amount of $1,998 to World Book Encyclopedia for the purchase of two sets of encyclopedias. Do I get a second? I'll second. Very good, all in favor. I think that's everyone. So would you please kindly note Catherine, there was unanimous support for that language and could you get that language please in the minutes? Can someone send it to me in text, like in actual form I can copy? Is there a way to email it to me? Yeah, this is Nicole. Yes, Catherine, I'll get it over to you. That's okay, Mark, that I send it to you. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Thank you, Nicole. You bet. Thank you, Nicole. Of course, guys. And then I thought it would be good for the Board to know how much money was in the Emsen fund. Okay, well, there's quite a bit of money in the Emsen fund. Not all of it is available at this point, but the total market value according to the last report that I had, which was September 2020, we get nice, thick reports with all the investments in there, is $2,827,119.86. That's as of September and that's the last we get quarterly report. So I can tell you what the cash equivalent is about $21,069.43. It has a million seven in equity, little over a million seven in equity. Fixed income taxable amount is $1,012,291. Real assets, $69,517. So I can send that out to people. Yeah, please, at least to Catherine so we can get it in the notes. I'll send her the exact numbers. Okay, wonderful. Any other questions with respect to the Emsen fund decision or to discussion around it? I'm just curious what it is. Oh, okay. Nancy, you wanna explain that? No, I don't know the whole history of this particular fund actually. Most of these are just are long since established endowment funds that we have. And some of the funds that we have were established for specific purposes and some of them were just general. So my recollection and those that have been on the board for a while can correct me, but I thought it was an endowment from quite a while ago. It is. We had a modest beginning, but because it was never touched and in truth was lost within the kiddies accounting records that it had prospered and it had done quite well. And it seems like it's continuing to do quite well. It is doing quite well. From what the reports look like, it is doing quite well. We do actually, they've changed a little bit the way that some of the proceeds are distributed. So we do actually receive checks, which we turn around and deposit with the city cashier monthly. But before apparently, I think to my understanding, it's similar to what you just expressed that for a long time they never saw the checks. There were direct deposits into the fund and it kind of disappeared and grew. And I guess folks thought that it would not be as much as it was because it was quite conservatively invested, but it's done very well. Well, it was originally, it was set up to be only used on reference materials. And so over kind of the years that kind of been like, well, what is a reference material? And can we use it for XYZ? Can we say that, you know, so that's also kind of earmarked for that specifically. You know. That was really typical with this type of funds. We have one fund that like this was set up for reference and then we have another fund, which we might be confusing, Marika, the other fund that I think grew more than people thought was originally set up for materials for the visually impaired. Right. But over time, when someone sets something up and then it's 40 years later and things have changed, there used to be really specialized equipment in libraries that was used for the visually impaired before we had the ability just to turn on a computer and change the font size. And that's basically what the expensive equipment did. So yeah, a lot of these do change over time, but it's always a really nice blessing when you find out you had more than you thought you did in some of these funds and... What was the name of the other fund answer? You know, I'm trying to, now I'm totally blanking out, but it'll come to me as soon as the meeting is done, I'm sure. I definitely remember the purpose of it. So there was, I think at one point, probably prior to Catherine coming on the board, some discussion about going back to the Emsen folks and seeing if we could get more latitude. I think that was the other fund. The other fund that we were talking about that was for the visually impaired, but I'll sort them out. It did make me wonder when you were saying, like, how do we define it? Because like you said, some of these materials that you've been able to get through the CARES Act are kind of a one-time only purchase, probably. But something like one of those tablets that you were describing sounds like a reference material, right? I mean, there might be some... Yeah, there's a pretty loose definition of reference material. And also, obviously when these funds were established, libraries still had giant sections filled with reference books, which now most libraries have a teeny weeny little set of shelves with reference materials if you're a public library because you can get so many more things online. So it just makes me wonder if we end up having to replace any of those, there'll probably be some wear and tear on those kind of things as they get loaned out that might be able to go to. Well, you keep most of the reference stuff in-house, right? It's all... No, I'm talking about the tablets that are preloaded with materials, like learning materials. Yeah, those will be, I'm sure, obsolete before we know it, just like everything else. But I will say our biggest challenge with this Emsen Fund request was trying to find where the Emsen Fund checkbook was because we haven't used it since Debbie was there. And we found it very safely locked in the bottom of one of our three safes. So finally after looking everywhere, high and low and every locked door, we're like, it's in the safe, it's in the safe, we never go in, so. Well, Councilman Waters, hold your ears on this, but there was, when we were talking about this before, there was concern that with this amount of money that it would be rated by the city for the general fund. And we were concerned that then that resource would be lost to the library. And so far, we've been lucky in that regard. Well, we'd like to rate it, as we talked about before, we'd like to rate it for, you know, and finally now that we're past, or when we are past dealing with mostly COVID all day, every day, we would like to resume our electronic sorter search. And installation. So that is something we're talking about. Well, the board at that time will look forward to getting that request. We're talking this year, Mark. I'm with you. Mark, I think it was the Mosier fund, the Mosier family. It was the Mosier fund, thank you. And my recollection the last time I checked, I think there was like $576 of spending authorization. Yes. And the concern was that if this board exercised that option, the city would then pull back that amount of money, right? That's the way it would be rated. Right, right. I have to tell you, I seriously doubt that it would happen. I know this group, and I think the Friends of the Library, and I personally, would take great exception. I would make it so painful for the city to do that. They'd never want to do it again. I can promise you. But that money wallet, the fund was dedicated for the purposes of servicing the visually impaired. It was. My understanding from my conversation with Jim that this board had the authority to redirect that. And it could be that we would go back and you'd need to make a recommendation to council, but I don't think so. I don't think there's anybody left in the Mosier family to go back and confer with. This is like, this has been for so long. So I do think you have those degrees of freedom, and I'm happy to follow that up in any way that might be helpful when the time comes. But you've got that in your back pocket, right? And- On behalf of this board or a future board, it might be good to know that if we were to pull that trigger that we wouldn't legally complicate the life of the city or the library. Specifically if the board was to take that sort of action. I'm happy to follow that up if you want me to. Yeah, if you don't mind it, unless somebody else has an objection to it. I guess it's only in our best interest to know what our prerogatives are because this board won't stay the same, nor will council stay the same and the dynamics can change. And you'd like to have some thoughtful management on the distribution of those monies. I'll follow it up, please. That would be really helpful as we have several ideas for how we could make some space planning and technology improvements to our current building to render it a little bit more modern than its 30-year-old self. Very good, well, let's do as suggested, let's understand what our prerogatives are because I'm sure there's plenty of needs out there and how we thoughtfully meet those needs will be a challenge for this board and any others. So that's all I have on that unless there are other questions or concerns. Okay, the next item on the agenda was a follow-up question to the councilman's question on the role of his liaison ship or whoever else would come on from council as a liaison. Did you get any additional comments? No, Mark, I got your input and I appreciate it. And I'll just say again to the members of this board, there is nothing in writing. There's no suggestions, there's no job description, there's no checklist, there's not a set of bullet points, there is nothing when people come onto the council that would inform how they approach the role of liaison. So you're told or assigned, you're gonna be the liaison to fill in the blank for the library advisory board and then you make it up as you go along. And maybe that's okay, but we certainly don't, we don't say that to you, right? To the members of boards and commissions, we've raised the standards the council has. We've set attendance requirements. We've created a little more rigorous interview process even though it's only five minutes for most boards and commissions, now it's 10 minutes longer for some and there are higher standards for getting applications in on time and those kinds of things. But as a council, we've created more accountability for you and never addressed. So what's our role in all that in terms of making certain what we're doing adds value to what you do. So I raised this question with the council and there wasn't much interest, but just for the boards and commissions I'm liaison to, it would be helpful to know. And to the degree that any of that's generalizable to other boards and commissions, if I got feedback, I'm gonna share it and maybe others would take a look at what it is that we should be doing. And if you're making it up as you go along and it's okay, that's fine. I'm not looking to criticize anybody. I just think we ought to have a, at least a set of standards with which to start when people come onto the council to say, here's what you deserve from us. Because we're pretty clear about what the city deserves from you, so. So is there anything, has there ever been anything or is there anything in the works by this council that says we want to address this liaison relationship across all boards? Like I said- That's what I was suggesting we do. And there wasn't much of an interest on the part of the rest of council. Okay, so. And on your other boards, have they produced anything usable at this point that we could take advantage of? Not yet. Okay. But I have a meeting Thursday night, I haven't had a chance to ask this question yet of the neighborhood group leaders and the Long Island Economic Development Partnership. I have asked that question, don't have any feedback yet. Katie. Yeah, I just have a, because prior to you on this board, we actually didn't really hear, I mean, the liaison of course came to the meetings, but they didn't participate that much in the meetings, they were mostly just there. And if we had questions, that we had to be more proactive about it. And I just wanted to mention that I think, Al, I don't think it's probably a part of every board's minutes that the liaison actually has a section where they talk about things that are pertinent to that board. So, I mean, I think that in particular for us has been very helpful. Like the city council meetings are very lengthy and they cover a lot of topics and some of it's related to library, but certainly not all of it's related to library. And I do think it's very helpful to have that part of the meeting where you specifically talk about what's pertinent to that board. So, I think that's been helpful at least for our board. I'm certain it's not across the board of all other boards. So, I just thought I'd mention that. Well, if any of you individually or collectively have additional comments for the councilmen, I would encourage you to send them on because it's not often you have someone that's receptive to hearing advice and concerns and criticisms. This is a great time to get that out in front so we can all try and figure out how to build a better model of this arrangement. So, if you have to please send them on. If there's any reticence, like, yeah, I have a really strong opinion. You wanna do more of this or less of that and you don't wanna hurt my feelings. You'd have to go a long way to hurt my feelings based on what we kind of input we get from the public. But if you could share that with Mark because Mark has no qualms about hurting my feelings, he's just gonna tell me that. Or to Nancy. So, if it's easier to do it that way, I just think if we could build a collective understanding across boards and commissions, what is it that we should be doing that adds value to your work? Cause that's the whole reason for science liaisons. And we just never had a conversation about it and it just seemed to be like it we ought to. Given the fact that we've raised the expectations for you, we ought to be setting an example of how to raise expectations and meet them. I have one thought that just occurred to me but you've been great about encouraging that communication from you to us. What other boards do you see come to you through council that administer their function more effectively than this board does? Yeah, that's a good question, Mark. I don't honestly, I would not, I don't think there is a better example. I think you've done a terrific job as chair. I think the input this board is, this is a fun board to be a liaison to, both because it's the library and because you all bring your own passion about the library and you value it as much as any patron in town. That's part of what makes it fun that you're not reticent about providing input to one another. You take on responsibilities as volunteers outside of this meeting. I wish there were some other boards, I wish were as active as you are in terms of helping to move an agenda or consistent with mission of the library. But I wouldn't say, yeah, take a look at at the Parks and Rec Board or the Historic Preservation Committee or any of the other boards and commissions that I'm familiar with. You ought to feel good in my opinion about what you do, how you come at it. And I think, Mark, if you've been, I think chair for as long as I've been the liaison and I think your leadership of this group has been terrific. Well, thanks for those words. You have my condolences for our time together. And the invitation is open. We're all interested in learning and figuring out how to do this. Well, that's what it's all about. We have to learn our way forward. And I just, we haven't been quite as intentional enough about it in my view on the council side of this. Okay, very good. So did we address all that bullet was intended to address or are there additional items out there that we went for on the table? Hearing none, I'll move on to the next item here. Status of activities regarding phase two of the feasibility studies. Are there any update on that Nancy that you'd have for us? There isn't much at the moment with us trying to fit all the year-end stuff in, except that we are, I have dredged up the original consultant RFP. I don't have it with me at the moment, but we're going to be looking for that consultant to do the financial modeling portion of the feasibility study. So if we have one or two members of council that would love to proofread our newest version that we're coming up with of our next phase, we will be discussing that at an upcoming board meeting as well. So we're in the process now of looking at this RFP for the next phase and we'll be obviously talking with our wonderful purchasing department about what that RFP looks like. Do you want board support on that? I will. Okay. I mean, do you want feedback or? Well, I'd love to know. And if anyone is against us continuing with the study and figuring out what that data extrapolates into for the different options moving forward to fund, some of those things have been laid out in the consultant's results. And if you want to do a formal measure of any kind of support for us moving forward, that would be awesome. I didn't have anything specific in mind, but you had mentioned that you were going to have council take a look at it and- Yeah, we're just not there yet. We're not done with- If it's in that form, I think some of us would be happy to take a look at it as well and provide feedback as you felt and it was needed. So I'll leave that as an open. So what we're doing with that is a couple of different things right now that we're starting to pick at really is to look at what exactly we're looking for in a consultant moving forward. We know what the original consultant had intended to hire out to a second consultant, but we would like to have more say over that than them passing it on to someone to do the financial modeling. So really just considering what it is that we want them to do with all the data that the first consultant gathered. And really want to be pretty stringent because I think we expect a little bit more out of the first phase of the feasibility studies. I want to be a lot more stringent this time about what kind of analysis we're really looking for and what kind of presentation we're looking for. That's where we are right now is just trying to work that. And also I've been making some calls and reaching out to some contacts to try and find a list of names when we have this prepared to send it to some of consultants that we feel have experience doing this. From your background, and this is really part of the next step from your background, do you have experiences or recommendations that you would put in front of the board that says this is a good way to interact with counsel over the results of this? So there's some senses that- I do have some experience with this, but it's a little bit different because my experiences in working with this type of a project have been with an advisory board even though the libraries were not with an advisory board, we're rather with a governing board. Even though the libraries were city and municipal libraries, they had a governing board rather than advisory board. So the role and the responsibilities were a little bit different. So I'm gonna have to think about that one. Well, if you have any recommendations from your past, I would love to hear it because I keep turning this over in my mind and I'm sure the other board members do too is that, okay, we're gonna have these results. They're gonna come to us from the consultants. Counsel's gonna see them. The board's gonna have an opinion based on just the interactions that we go through monthly. Counsel's gonna have an opinion, but it's not clear whether the two opinions are gonna be the same and that the potential to have this thing drop into a whole mind, never come back out again is real. And I don't want to see that happen. What typically happens and what I would expect to happen and I would build into the provisions of this second set of responsibilities for this consultant. And the one that I worked with last in Bellingham was that they came on site and met with the board pretty extensively, went through everything prior to presenting it to counsel. And the consultant were the ones that took input from the board and various other entities and then refined their presentation and presented it to counsel. Well, that's having the board's viewpoints on their study presented as part of the study, but it doesn't close the gap between counsel's state of mind and the opinion of the board and the study that would be presented to counsel. And I'm just trying to find mechanisms to keep the process going. So I mean, we're spending $50,000 plus thousand dollars on this to try and find answers. And you would like to think that the money's not wasted. And that we have some sort of consensus that both groups agree to and that that creates the path forward kind of thing. Well, I guess I've been lucky because it's worked out okay in the ones I've been involved with in that the counsel, the counsels that were involved took in the information as presented and asked a lot of questions and then proceeded in a way that benefits the library. I'm sure it doesn't always. That's, I have to think about that. But what happened, that doesn't happen. I think you've got a wealth of hard won experience that you can keep us safe with. And I'd love to hear it. Do you have any thoughts on this councilman? Well, I have a couple of thoughts. Is it safe to say Nancy that you're disappointed in the consultants or consulting firm? You know, it's not, it is not what we expected it to be. And I think, you know, the thing is we started out with Kimberly Bullen and Associates. And it was a husband and wife team and he had the expertise in compiling data and doing those type of things. And she had the library experience and the two of them split up personally and professionally possibly even before we hired them even though that's not how it was presented, I'm not sure. But you know, I felt like something was missing because we never saw Kimberly Bullen from Kimberly Bullen and Associates after the interview. So I did feel like at least initially it was quite disjointed and not organized the way I would have liked it to have been. I did feel like our staff did a lot of the front work on this project and, you know, I'm not opposed to doing that but I'm sort of opposed to paying someone a lot of money to do it and having us do it. I think there were some areas that were they excelled. I think that the community surveying, the paper survey and the analysis of that was very good. I think the first part and the last part of the consultants project are very well done. I do feel like they were pretty good at synthesizing things at the end. I didn't feel that they were as proactive as some folks I've worked with before in that, you know, for example, we have several spots in the survey data where it notes what percentage of our population is Spanish speaking but doesn't extrapolate anything saying, well, you need to serve people more and this is a significant percentage of your population and here's how you might do it. So I felt like there were some of those things that are open-ended and what I would expect from this second phase would be to take this, a lot of this raw data from the first phase. And, you know, a lot of times, you know, I've had consultants that do all of this but in this case, I'd like it to move in a more definitive direction than I feel like the other one was a little bit loosey-goosey. So I would like to have a consultant's results presented in the way that I've had them in the past with some really great data and, you know, data extrapolation and charts and graphs that show the different funding possibilities going forward of, you know, like you've said, you know, it's not like you can build this library system of the future for a growing population with nickels and dimes. So if you're gonna need funding, here are the different funding mechanisms. Here's what they cost overall. Here's what it costs for you, the taxpayer to do these different, you know, options for funding. It's funding at its governance. You know, it's funding, it's taking into account the raw data, what does this look like for a library district? What does this look like for a municipal library? You know, what are the advantages and disadvantages? And I was hoping they would get more into that in phase one, you know, because there are distinct advantages to disadvantages and there are hybrids. So they did mention, yes, there are hybrids, but they didn't say what the hybrids are. So like for example, in my last city, which is very similar to this, definitely a municipal library, not a district library, but with the governing board, which actually gave us more flexibility when it came to things like contracts and policies. So, which we struggle with occasionally here. So that's one option. You know, there are multiple different hybrid options. And you know, maybe it's one of those things where you don't ever want to do the consultants work for them because you want an outside opinion, but I sort of want to go and talk to the next person and say, you know, here are options that we have seen. We want data on how these would work, plus what else do you know? Yeah, so for me, it's like, you got the what, that's the data, you didn't get the so what. We didn't get the so what, no. Which is what you'd expect from a consultant. So, hopefully, I know a couple of consultants that I've worked with before, and I'm sure there are others out there too that can take what we have, which is considerable amount of data and make it into a so what. So as you do that, I would suggest if you haven't had any conversation with Tony Chacon, you know, was Nancy Rizak, was the point person on the performing arts and comprehensive feasibility study, that with Nancy leaving that got shifted to Tony. I don't know how much of a role Tony's playing. I'm told that he's just kind of the point person that fields the questions or whatever. Now, that's not, there are different views on how that's playing out, but I've been in a series of recent conversations about that feasibility study. And here's what I think you should be concerned about. Mark, this goes back to, you know, what the gaps in understanding or how much bandwidth the council would have. You're gonna have two feasibility studies. What I think you'd like to do is have them come in about the same time, right? And there ought to be a real thoughtful coordination in terms of when and how the results of both get presented to the council. I think there should be some really strategic conferring between Mark and you and this board and Elliot Moore and Bob Spalsum and Lapai. Because at the end of the day, there is a, I think a unique opportunity because of both feasibility studies to bring this home in a way for both studies and the interest for all the groups involved in a way that will never come along again, right? Not any of our lifetimes, but it's gonna have to be timed and thoughtfully integrated in terms of how it all gets presented to the council and to the community. But there's an opportunity that shouldn't be missed and I've got a phone going off in the background here, buzz. But so I do think, check it with Tony on the timing on the other, using that to kind of calibrate what your deadlines would be for your consultant and then making certain you're in close proximity or in close collaboration with the Lapai group and the other staff members who were involved in that feasibility study. You don't wanna, how that gets timed and how they both get presented to the council and then what we might be able to do in the community becomes real important. That makes a lot of sense because there's so many overlaps though that are possible there. So. Can I verify the name of the other feasibility study, please? It's the arts. It's a performing arts and conference center feasibility study. Yeah. And the truth is, the folks who are the interest of parties of lawnmower who have been working with those consultants they're not real happy with that consulting for me either. So it's a little discouraging to find out we got two feasibility studies that were disappointed I think in both consulting efforts. There's nothing to do about that at this point in time except make lemonade out of what otherwise might be lemons. But I do think you ought to have an eye on their deadline as you said it deadline for the modeling and then think real hard about how do we bring these together? And I'm happy to get through with you on that. How and when they bring them to the council so that the bandwidth the council has available they get a chance to get the gestalt of this and understand if there's strategies that need to be employed between the two studies and what we eventually would want to put before the community. Well, I think that's something we really do want to look at and the consultants had spoken with, for example, with museum staff, et cetera before but then they didn't really do anything with what we talked to with them. And that is definitely another option moving forward. And if we were to look at some type of a district there's no saying that it would have to be a library just if you're a library district there are library and museum districts there are library and cultural arts districts there are all kinds of different hybrid options. So we just didn't get those hybrid options out of this. I think we have really good library data which can contribute to that. But I think we definitely need to talk to them about any options that may involve a greater entity than just the library. Well, you know, there's a keen interest in the community. Yes. In how to move this forward and how to do something big, right? Like go big or go home? Yeah. We'd like to do something big. Is anything bubbling up through Envision Longhorn? I mean, are there any different visions that would work against the direction and the flow of what this is tending to suggest? No, I don't think it'll be through Envision Longhorn. Not that there isn't work that doesn't get done but that's the comprehensive plan. It's not static but there's not a lot of active visioning in the context of Envision Longhorn. I think where it's likely to happen, Mark, is we have money in the budget to reinvigorate the STEAM initiative. I think it'll happen there, right? And it's in that context, I think that we need to bring all this together around land acquisition, land aggregation and what is it we want to ask the community and where are the partners in terms of the private sector? Because I think both through the friends and from those with deep pockets who support the arts, there's an interesting public-wide partnership to be created here. The change in our charter enables this in ways that were not available before. All the thinking that's gone into the STEAM project, what's gonna happen with turning all that visioning into planning documents this year, I mean, along comes now this opportunity with these two visibility studies that's gonna happen one time, right? And we need to seize that opportunity. So... No pressure. Well, that's a hell of an opportunity. It is, I think it's great. So the timing of our phase two, what do you think the timing would look like for our phase two? Me or Tim? Well, since you probably know more, I'll ask you. Well, we can set parameters. I think that since I kind of know what we want to come out of phase two, and I've worked with consultants doing this before, but since we did have a lot of the raw data and community surveying done by our first consultants, I don't think the timeframe will be particularly wide in this case. It's not gonna be as long as if we were starting from scratch. Would you guess second quarter, first quarter? I would assume we'd hire somebody hopefully in January, if that's not too optimistic. And I would say it would probably take him a couple of months to complete this, depending on what... Second quarter, likely. I'm hoping so. I would think so. Okay, and I guess you'll find out through your conversations with the timing of the other studies gonna look like. So... We will. See where it goes. Okay, any other thoughts on this topic? This is gonna be something we're gonna have to continue to grind away on, but I think this is good stuff. I mean, this is exciting stuff if we can pull it off. Okay, I'll move on to new business then. We didn't really have a topic for little libraries on this agenda. And I didn't add anything under new business because it occurred to me in the interim. But I was driving around town and I was looking at all these private little libraries that are popping up everywhere, which I think is really great. And I just wanted to throw out a thought or two about maybe an alternative way of trying to skin the cat that we're trying to skin here. You know, we built the couple little libraries that the library sponsored. We funded them with books. We had a flow. We had a workforce that would take care of them and all that. But I was wondering if we were able to put something out either through the friends or through the library that said, okay, if you have a little library, we're willing to work with you in terms of making sure that you have enough books to be in that little library. So that kind of gets the board out, gets the library out of the day-to-day stuff, maybe intercedes the friends instead of the library from an administrative standpoint. But when all these books come in and they get segregated for sale or whatever, there's always some that are leftover that don't get picked up. And maybe at that point in the process, we can say those DD little homegrown little libraries, we're willing to help you. What do you guys think about that? Is that Councilman? Councilman. I just would suggest you think about the Neighborhood Group Leaders Association. You get like 56 neighborhoods, right? Or 66 in Longmont that are all part of NGLA. And where you'll find the private small libraries are in their pocket parks or in somebody posted in somebody's front yard where they have eyes on it. And they police it more than the ones that were posted in public parks, right? Where nobody, and if you wanna make it kind of a seamless way to do it, I talked to Wayne about getting this in front of NGLA. My guess is they'd love to work with the library before. I don't know. I mean, I contacted them multiple times. I contacted Wayne about the problems we had with our little free libraries before and I never got a response. Well, there's a meeting Thursday night. And I get time on that agenda. I'm happy to think that part of my agenda, if you want to ask that question. I'm kind of intrigued by Mark's idea though, because we do always have a plethora of stuff that's not quite good enough for the book sale, but there's a bunch, I passed like four of them on my way through a long month driving home. And all of a sudden we'll just go to a vendor that turns around and does whatever the vendor does with them, so why not keep them in the community? I think that's kind of intriguing because I think there's a lot of them that people have, they probably struggle a little bit to stalk them. I think it'd be worth talking to the friends about and see if we... You think it should go to the friends before it goes to the NGLI? Maybe, because they'd be the ones that I think I could see this working really well through the friends because they were fabulous through COVID at pulling a ton of books for us to give away at the free lunch giveaway spots, et cetera. So I think that they have some really great volunteers that work on the sorting that would look for a good assortment of materials to be sent out to these folks or put aside for folks to come in and pick up for their free libraries. I think that's an interesting idea. Well, would you recommend mentioning that at the next meeting? No, I would love to. And see if there's any interest at all, I'm sure that's... If there isn't, then we go to plan B. Put the puzzle together. Mm-hmm. Some libraries even put them out at their... I've had them at my library branches before. And it seems weird, but we're not open 24-7. So we did have a few issues with people putting library books in them, but the idea was to be somewhere accessible with cameras. Well, I won't mention it again, GLA. Not yet. But thank you, thanks for the thought of... That's ultimately a good way to spread it if we can get the mechanism to be the back-end side of distributing the books. Another item I had under new business is the member appointment. And I didn't know whether you were kidding early or not, Katie, are you staying with us or is there a new... You are gonna stay with us? Oh, great. So then this will be the board going forward for the next year or so, great. So then next meeting, we should have an officer vote. So get your campaign slogans and your ads going and your placards and all the rest of it and your supporters and we'll do the officer vote in January, that's great. I mean, there's no new blood to voice the secretarial duties onto. Well, we'll work at that on the next meeting, actually, it's the 25th. So we'll give you plenty of time on the podium to make the case. Vote myself to please. But I'm thrilled that Katie is staying because I think this is a really good board. I think you're a really good combination of a lot of great qualities and passion for the library. So I would, since there is a lot of stuff that's gonna be going on in the next year, year and a half or so, I'm very pleased that you're all still with us as a group, because I think I see great things coming in our future. I'd like to think so as well. Makes me really happy. I think it's been great for me to work with such supportive people over the last year or so. And I think we're moving the ball forward. So from my perspective, it's been wonderful. Do you wanna send along your thoughts, Cynthia, in terms of what you might be interested in going forward since you're not gonna be here? I'll do that. So I can email, I guess you would make the most sense Mark. Is that right? Well, I'll get it in front of the group or you can get it to Nancy and she'll get it in front of the group. But at least when we nominate you for all these jobs and you end up with them, I'll have a say in it. She'll be lucky if we don't make our baby the secretary. Has experience. Mark, can we go back briefly to the free little library conversation? Sure. One comment I did wanna make during that is my new singing part of the original idea was to get out to some more underserved areas of the community. So I'm wondering if there's, I think the idea is really exciting of reaching out to people who already have these setups but I'm wondering if there's a way to also make sure that our efforts are to areas where people may not be frequent library patrons. And so I'm assuming that that could be part of the conversation with the, I forget what's called the group, the neighborhood group association. But I think that would be an interesting and important thing to keep in mind during that conversation. Point well made. Can we get that in the notes please Catherine? So we remember that that's the game plan. Thank you. Thank you for that. And I'll look forward to your thoughts on officer positions or you can send it on to Nancy if you feel more comfortable. Can I ask a question of just following up on this? Have we ever put little free libraries inside buildings like in El Coby K's office or do we have one in the youth and family? We put it inside the youth services and it's still there. So that one's still inside the youth services building and is there one inside sandstone? I think it's inside sandstone. I don't know where, where is it at at sandstone? I thought it was like a little community area when it was there or did they change it? Well, El Coby K and the hour center would both be places you could put little free libraries inside a building where you didn't have to worry about vandalism and they would be accessible to populations that are typically less well-served. Yeah, I had mentioned the hour center before Tim because we had had a couple in our equivalent to that the hour center in Bellingham and it worked out really well. You know, folks are doing a lot of sitting around and waiting sometimes and you know, having reading materials is really beneficial. I'd say the whole offices, you would put that on your list as well. That's a good idea. And I would propose that when you folks bring this up with the friends that you might inquire of their interest in sponsoring. And I think, you know, we can, I think it's- I think it's a structure inside of something. Yeah, I think this could be a great combination because I think, you know, we could put something inside one of these buildings that would serve some folks that would probably liken it and appreciate some access to these materials but at the same time, you know, it's not putting it on their staff in these buildings just to stock these stations. So I think the friends could stock them. Yeah, I mean, if they wanted to put together the initial library and stick it in the hour center as an example and we had a mechanism either through the library or through them to keep it funded with books, I think that's a win-win for the community if we can- That'd be really simple too. I mean, that's, you know, we walk over there all the time for meetings, et cetera, three blocks from us. So cut through the parking lot. There are typically folks looking to do service projects too if we needed help with construction. That's a really good idea because I know there have been some, I've seen Eagle Scout projects and some other things like that that do a lot of work with those. All good ideas. Okay, great. That's all I had for new business. I did want to open up the library board comments for some thoughts from Catherine on her project on the CUDA boards, but do we have any other items for new business before we move along? I don't see everybody's hands up. So would you mind spending a couple of minutes, Catherine, if you don't mind updating? I mean, it made the paper, so congratulations. It was a nice article. It's a good pad on the back activity and I applaud you for your efforts for pulling it all together. Well, thanks, yeah. Young kids are so techy. Yeah, I'm used to being the oldest one in the room, so it's kind of nice to have that perspective. No, I certainly don't want it to be about me at all, but I'm pleased that it got some traction in the community and Nancy, you said that you felt it was well received with your staff and gave them a little boost, which I think we could all use right now. So I was just approached by the Longmont leader reporter and I reached out to Nancy and Mark just to let them know. I think that was sort of the protocol we had agreed to. So it was a very brief conversation and he took down a few of my thoughts. I did try to put a plug in for the fact that the staff makes do with so much less funding than most of the library. So just trying to lay that groundwork there for us, but mostly the board is still open, so I hope it will invite more people to share their love and appreciation for this team that has really gone above and beyond. And like I said in the article, just probably doesn't get a lot of direct light shown on it all the time. So it made me feel... It was really nice for staff and among us we recognized most of the patrons who made comments because we know and love our patrons. So that was actually the community, outside of a few cranky folks, we understand they're under a lot of stress now. We love our patrons and they actually express their gratitude often. The ones, especially since we went often to the dangerous red zone, et cetera. I know the long went leader had put what was a correct article, but their headline when we went to the red zone was library closed. And what it then explained in the article was that it was closed for browsing, but a lot of folks didn't go all the way into the article and they totally can it. We had so many calls and so many people coming up saying, you're closed, we can't get materials anymore. And so they were so relieved that we weren't closed, that we were just taking a step back to curbside. So actually our patrons have been incredibly appreciative that in and continued to have a ton of seniors that use the library. We thought that it would be mostly the younger folks and the seniors would be, you know, holed up away from COVID and instead a lot of them have told us that this is their outing. So to come to the library. So we're just, you know, we're grateful that we can provide at least some of what we have, but it was very, very beneficial to staff and it came at kind of a tough time. So I really thank you for doing that. That's a great idea. At the friends meeting coming up, do you think it's worthwhile mentioning this at the friends meeting in case they want to get on the board and express comments or whatever? Yeah, I think Kathy was gonna forward it. I'm not sure if you ever had a chance to do that. I know I sent it to you at one point, just to everybody. And I think you might have already forwarded it to the friends. I didn't forward it specifically to the friends, but I did forward it to other of my friends. Actual friends. Actual friends, yeah. But I can certainly do that. Yeah, I mean, you know, they're obviously big boosters of the library and you would think the library staff as well. And you know, they're a bigger organization in our board and they have tentacles in the community that we don't have and maybe with their backing and their individual comments that'll give an added boost to the staff if you feel comfortable bringing it up. Yeah, I'll do it. Thank you. Very good. Okay, that's all I have. Are there any other comments or concerns or... Oh, wait, I have one more. Happy holidays, everybody. And I hope you have a wonderful one in this age of the virus and that you all socially distance in a responsible way but party the hell out of the holiday and we'll see you after the first of the year. And good luck, Cynthia, if we don't. If we don't see you again. Hopefully not in January. What's happening to Cynthia? So you're gone. Oh, you missed it. But I'm having a baby in early January, hopefully. In early January, maybe sooner or later. Didn't you tell, January 9th? Was that when you told me? January 9th, yeah. No. So I really hope I'm not at the next meeting. I'll be filming after the next meeting. That's very exciting. The nice part about these virtual meetings is that you can show us the ability of the virtual meeting. You're working on your future students, Catherine. Future free-loop user. Hopefully. That's exciting news. Very exciting. Did you have something? No, I thought your hand was up. Okay. Well, great. Well, we'll see you all after the first of the year. And what is our next meeting date, just to clarify? It's January 25th. 25th. Thank you. Okay. I'm just so excited for it to be 2021. Take care. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye. Thanks, Nicole. Bye, Nicole. You're a trooper. You're welcome, gang. Take care.