 Okay. So, welcome to today's meeting of the Jones Library Board of Trustees as is our custom. I'm going to ask you to signify your presence vocally. Alex? Here. Tara? Here. Tammy? Here. Bob? Here. Lee? Here. And Austin is here. Okay. No changes or additions to the agenda that I know of. Next item of business is the approval of the minutes of September 20th. Is there a motion to approve those minutes? No moved. Thank you. Is there a second? Again. Thank you so much. Okay. Corrections to the minutes. Okay. Voting to approve. Yay or nay. Alex? Yes. Tara? Yes. Tammy? Yes. Bob? Yes. Lee? Yes. And Austin votes yes. Okay. Thank you for that. Next item is a public comment. Looks like there are four attendees. Thank you all for coming. Anybody wish to make a public comment if you would raise your virtual hand? Okay. I see no public comment. Item five, the president's report. I don't know how much I can say thank you that would be adequate to the Friends Development Committee for the John Lithgow event. It was I guess we should say a smash. What a wonderful event to have him come and take a tour of the library and actually see the facility and then come to that event and talk about our library project. It was just phenomenal. And of course his engaging speech was again just warm and wonderful. Did you all have a chance to go? What do you think? He was fabulous. I loved when he did his Churchill voice. And the manatee counting you know in his fingers. When he rhymes that was really fun. It's what all times for manatee. Well it was just a wonderful event and another moment to celebrate the library and its meaning for the town. That's what I felt. I felt we were in a little bit of a love fest and much deserved credit to the Friends for organizing that event and much deserved praise to the library director and the staff for all the love that is directed their way. Could I ask one question? Did people actually write out those questions? Yeah. They did. Okay. I didn't know there was a place to put a question. There was like a basket. I didn't see it but I thought maybe he made up those questions but they were real questions. Great. It's fun. I can attest I can attest to the fact that there were he was reading from the cards. Good. Okay. So that's my that's my report again much much gratitude. Okay committee reports library building committee. So there's I think considerable good news on the library building committee front. The committee hasn't you know we're not meeting as regularly as we met. We meet when we need to meet to approve things. We had a chance to see the flooring material that's going to be used in the library in person in the in the in the Woodbury room. We had a chance to look at the brickwork that's going to be on the outside of the building. The committee was pretty clear in its choice about the brickwork and I think there was much good discussion much helpful discussion about the floor the flooring materials. The final Alexander is just submitted to the MBLC. It's the 75 percent of their progress on their construction documents that will be discussed with MBLC staff. We are in the midst as I think I might have mentioned before of going through various town committees. We've had again productive meetings with the design review committee and with the Historic Commission we'll go back for more conversations with the Historical Commission and be talking to other town committees. Other important news good news we have obtained a plumbing variance which will allow us to go forward with our plans for the restrooms in the renovated expanded library. We are waiting the results of the various reports that are going to be forthcoming about sustainability in the library. We are on the cusp of an RFP for alternative sites which will require again that's going to be run through the town and will require a lot of planning and logistical work which the library director has already begun to do. Alex is there anything that you'd like to add about the building committee? No just super happy that we got the variance and that the library is at the forefront of gender neutral bathrooms so yay. Okay any questions or observations about the building committee? Okay thank you. Next is buildings and facilities Alex. So we haven't met since our last meeting trustee meeting there were two meetings the notes from our last meeting are in this packet but we discussed that during our last meeting. Our next scheduled meeting is on the 17th and so we'll report at the next trustee meeting on that meeting. Great thank you. Any questions for Alex? Okay next Tammy. Yes you have in your packet draft of assurance evaluation which the PPP has approved and I make a motion that we approve the director's evaluation dated October 2023. As I explained it's a little later than usual as I explained in a comment in the in the evaluation. So let's wait wait for a second Tammy and then you go. Okay second. That's okay thank you so much. Okay Tammy do you want to say anything else about the evaluation? No I did make some comments in the report that due to the timing which was delayed this this year I think we had fewer responses because they were in August and so many people are away in August but for those who submitted evaluations as I said Sharon got very high marks and there were a few comments here they are suggestions and I will be discussing them with her at a meeting and she gets copies of all of the evaluations that were submitted which ultimately I think go in your personnel file is that correct? Okay yeah so are there any comments? Questions or comments about the director evaluation? So I have just a question Tammy if it's in the report please forgive me but I don't think I saw it. We have 17 total evaluations can you tell us how that broke down how many from library users how many from library staff how many from okay is that possible? Yeah let me see if I can find it. I think there were five public comments seven staff comments four trustee comments and Paul Bachmann okay right that's as I as I remember it and I will as I said I will be passing copies of those to Sharon yeah Farah Farah I can't remember if I asked this at the last meeting Tammy but have there been more responses in years past? Yes as I well I don't know from Chris I'd have to go back to the some of the the but as I said on this one we had 17 this year and that's six less than last year okay so that's the timing yeah last year I I was able to get everything out in July and Tashi helped me with it in the library but Tashi was on vacation so John filled in they put out boxes and in the past a lot of replies have ended up in the boxes this year none did Matt Barubi puts puts it online for both the staff this sends it out to the staff that form and then sends the public one out and I usually send it to the head of the friends of the public comments I don't know if some of those were friends or publics only one person identified herself in the past the staff usually identify if they're full or part-time and only of the of the staff only less than half identified if they were full-time or part-time so it's harder to judge some of the suggestions or comments a lot of people put unable to judge on things which is understandable um but uh I think if we can get it approved a little we didn't meet in June so that was the the snafu we didn't approve it till July 25th I think and I was able to get it out um do the 18th of August for some but um in the library they really wanted it extended another week which went into my vacation so so that there were a lot of um but uh you know it's still a very positive review from a wide group of um respondents okay other questions about the director's evaluation so I'll just say um in particular to Tammy uh how grateful we are for this work it is uh it is a tremendous amount of work um that goes on for a very long period of time getting the approval of the form getting the forms distributed and digesting the forms producing a report and meeting with the director uh it's a huge it is a huge amount of work and we are incredibly grateful uh to Tammy well it's been interesting to take over from Chris I had didn't work with him and that was the little but I I did get in touch with him and he gave me some good pointers so well again thank you for that um I do want to just add the following note and uh I added um uh I think that the library director has done an extraordinary job for a very long time but uh the extraordinaryness if that's a verb of the work that she does seems to me to kind of multiply year by year and um as we've gotten further into the building project Sharon has had to take on an enormous um set of responsibilities beyond the most important work that she does which is day to day to make sure that the library provides the most excellent service um to the patrons but uh she's done it unfailingly and with incredibly good spirit uh that means being involved in fundraising being involved in providing various reports being involved in countless meetings with the opm the architects mblc and um and others I mean it's it's as if she has a job over here and another job and she's doing them both and she's doing them um I think incredibly well anybody that's that's had the that's dealt with Sharon about anything having to do with the library knows that Sharon has incredibly high standards for herself and her staff and anybody who's had to deal with Sharon knows that Sharon is an optimistic positive can't do person and that optimism and can't do spirit I think serves the library and its users very well so in my view just as one person an extraordinary year of dedicated service and of high quality performance here here okay all right are we ready to vote okay so voting to approve or not approve the library director's annual evaluation summary is uh dated october of 2023 alex yes bob yes tammy absolutely yes uh far yes li yes and austin votes yes okay back to you tammy okay um there are a couple things on the agenda that the um the jedi committee are working on um um the um patron you're muted tammy sorry um the uh jedi committee is looking at um a patron behavior policy and the staff has reviewed reviewed it and it will come to ppp for our consideration at our next meeting um which is early next month i believe and similarly um the jedi committee is working on it looking at the action plan and farah do you want to report on the survey that's gone out i can't really well we're our next meeting is is next week so we have not met since our last trustee meeting but we do have a lot of responses coming in for the survey they're extremely favorable so i'm just going to figure out like i'm i think we have to do a little more outreach and mia was going to get in touch um with the with the school uh to get it out on the school the superintendent's uh weekly blast instead of the individual pgo so she's gonna do that and um i guess we'll discuss some of the results at our meeting next week so i hope to have a little more information next month okay any questions on that farah i think it might be useful just to remind us and uh any of the people who are uh attending the meeting could you just remind us the membership of the jedi committee just who the folks just who the folks are just name the folks oh okay um uh well from the library there's mia cabana um there's from from the community there's rafael rogers who's from clark and does de i work there melissa giro who who runs embrace race with her partner uh andrew grand thomas um jenny hamilton who's on the capital campaign but she's there as a community member walter um sharn i'm blanking on his last name loid right he's a high school student and i'm hoping he'll still be there next next year he is a freshman in college now so all right right i totally forgot that so i'm i'm thinking he'll still stay on right so that's one two three four and uh and that's it and me and sharon well sharon's at all our meetings and in case anyone didn't uh just to give some background the survey is we were trying to kind of craft together a sense of or trying to find out from the community how they if they have feel that they belong in the library so it was a very short um just like four i mean we spent months trying to craft the perfect four questions and we're not a hundred percent sure if they're the most perfect but it was just to get a sense of if people feel like they belong in the library and whether they feel like the collections reflect their interests or their who they are um i don't think we had any questions about race or ethnicity right sharon we we were gonna save that for the we just wanted to see what this first survey what the results were so this was sort of a starting point to to do more outreach in the community right just that yeah sharon could you remind us uh how many different languages are represented in our collection oh gosh uh between eight and ten twelve twelve maybe i think it's more i thought it was more than that but it's so individual languages i want to say i want to say twelve but we have a collection in the kids and a collection in adults so there's like two Spanish collections for example okay and could you say a word about um work that has been done to diversify the staff oh i don't have the numbers in front of me but i want to say so people who identify so so the town can only rely on on people who are self identifying as from being uh a protected class or from uh you know not white um and so we went from when when we started the baseline was we were was it nine percent and now we're up to seventeen percent i i'd have to look but it's over the past five four years uh the the numbers have improved quite a bit and and the numbers that the town are able to the town is able to give me um they also give me the town's figures so we can you know over time see how the library is tracking in comparison to to the town overall town employees so we're on we're definitely on the right track um we work very very closely with the town's HR department um which is very diverse uh they for the past year they've they've been struggling that a couple staff members have left but now they're back on board so i don't want to say effort stalled but they're because we've been hiring some people but um they have a new HR team uh as well as the DEI department uh which has been in existence for a little over a year now and we work very closely with them um so you know we're we're not at the we're not at the beginning um we have not maxed out we're somewhere in the middle so here's an interesting anecdote we the the town has been offering DEI training to each department so the DEI department is going from police fire DPW library rec offering DEI classes kind of to get us all to a the same level and um based on the experience with with the library training it was it was very basic for us like we had we had learned what she was presenting so um which was i felt really great about um um and because we're kind of boom boom i don't know further along than others and and so it continues right so i'm gonna tell me whether this is correct staff diversity is improved from nine percent to seventeen percent in twenty twenty two seventeen roughly seventeen percent of jones library employees self identify as a protected class or two or more races and that compares to fourteen point two percent of amherst employees that identify in the same way is that reasonably accurate it's it sounds like if you're reading from the the figures yes yes i was thank you uh so i just wanted to you know again acknowledge the work that sharon's been doing to try to make sure that our staff is uh diverse in the ways that it can it should be okay anything else tammy from ppp no i think that does it and thank you for proving the evaluation of sharon any other questions for tammy and ppp okay all right next is um development committee thank you you're welcome i just want to echo or reinforce uh everything that austin said oh the one thing that austin didn't say is that he was a fabulous mc he could have a a whole second career or third or fourth whatever thank you and i'm more cheerful one um yeah you were great thank you and the other thing i want to say i'm not again i want to reinforce what a pleasure it was to be there yeah with the library being celebrated it was in a festive mood absolutely and it was just it was just great that's all i want to say about that all right so now all right so don't i have this well i oh no here here all right i thought i had all the figures for the let's go event but your peers i don't but uh we filled the hall we had something like 524 confirmed uh reservations or acceptances or whatever we called them and we you know we deliberately made the event like the library free and open to the public uh and so and i'm told that it's very unusual for an event to fill johnson chapel and you know and we did it um we raised just on that night uh slightly under $15,000 which includes $2,500 from the wonderful new mass five college federal credit union but i think this will be a gift that keeps on giving and that other gifts will come in whether they get attributed to the let's go event or not it scarcely matters uh and we um um we have over 100 new members of the friends which if you've ever worked for a non-profit well is you know to have 100 new members is is excellent so there's that okay so um the annual fund going as of this moment continues as it was the last time i reported to be slightly ahead of where we were this time last year in terms of both the amount of dollars and the number of gifts so we have 14,561 dollars and 61 cents no matter how much bob doesn't like how i report the pennies 71 gifts compared to 13,089 dollars and 44 cents with 63 gifts then again i would say partly in relationship to discussions we've had here and in the budget committee um Sharon undertook yet another one of her labors to investigate what other libraries in our situation which is to say libraries who have an annual campaign annual fund campaign and who also have been building doing a capital campaign but who are a little ahead of us in the project have discovered and what she's discovered is what we have discovered is that you know your annual campaign is less robust than you might have hoped as your capital campaign um takes up a lot of energy and other libraries have in fact suspended their annual fund campaigns which we have not and uh i'm optimistic that you know that we will go forward we will i think we haven't i i think last year's numbers will be achievable maybe we'll continue to do better which would be quite amazing um and so and my assuming as i do that the renovation and expansion project is going to happen there'll be less need for some of the activities that the annual fund has usually gone to support so we can use that to um backstop what i think will be an explosion of activities once the project is complete when the campaign report uh you know for the month we took in forty two thousand six hundred and one dollars there are several larger contributions or pledges but we don't report anything until we get it in writing and so i'm hopeful that by next month we'll have a few more in writing and that's my report for the development committee but we're very you know we're very charged up by the success of the event and we're looking forward to having another splendid event to celebrate both the beginning of the project and the closing of the building so get your glad rags ordered haha farah i love you okay uh i think that's you austin i think that's the first time that the phrase glad rags have been used in a trustee meaning in a long time so that's i thought it might inspire you to sing not not now not not presently so any questions for the development committee okay thank you lii thank you for the work that you're doing you're welcome okay next is um budget mr pam um believe um sharon did you include the september report a um i sent it separately the bit the minutes okay then in case um we met yesterday and had discussions about a variety of things lii has already told you that that the friends raised 14 500 and change for the annual fund through september 30th i am hoping and expecting that by the end of the calendar year there will be a major effort to get more money because we have included in the budget a substantially larger amount than what we have so far and so in general the end of year contribution is what makes the big difference in the annual fund lii you have a question yeah i think i think the let's go money is going to the capital campaign yes and the annual fund is what i'm talking about now i think so yes i'm hoping that there will be a letter or so on uh to raise money oh indeed indeed but i thought you said that the 14 000 was going to the annual fund if i miss her do i'm sorry he did he was referring to the annual fund which has raised about 14 000 he was not referring to the the let's go money sorry there were amounts but different funds okay so anyway we we continue to need to have annual fund funds in order to keep the budget in balance yeah i raised a question at the budget committee meeting about the fact that what we have used is essentially a placekeeper for the second half of the year basically assuming as that that the expenses will be the same this year as they have been in the past but if we end up being in a different building for three months or four months or six months of this year we will need to have a very different kind of budget which will reflect the changes that will occur whether we will have to pay separately for yes and electricity whether you know the cost for for some of the maintenance expenses will disappear and what other things can be then included all of these are things that belong in a budget document that we can look at for the second half of the year Sharon's response has been that until we know what the terms of leases might be during the time that we are away it's hard to project all of those things that is true but we still need to be thinking about it in addition just from a budgetary perspective questions of how to maintain services when we are both setting up and in different locations suggested to me that that might be a good idea to think about renting a van and setting it up as a bookmobile or doing other kinds of things which will allow us to to maintain our visibility when people aren't sure where we are a simple thing like some kind of cart or you know the the dropbox that we currently have in front of the library in some expanded way or maybe in the same way just so that people can go to the location where they've always gone and be able to drop things off or or pick things up at certain hours you know there are a variety of things that we can do which will make this period of transition easier for people to deal with so I'm just thinking about what are the things that we can do which might allow us to maintain services and maintain some continuity while things are somewhat in flux during construction so those are our questions that I had raised at the time obviously there is no clear resolution on any of those and some of those actually are questions for this full board to think about but I don't know how yeah yeah when we are planning to do that so yeah and we'll be working on some of those questions in the Jones Library Building Committee but I think you're right that this will be a conversation that the whole board will have to have okay um so that that is where that is um with respect to the other assignment that that the budget committee has received from the board which is to think about ways to cover any gap between the amount that it must be provided to the town and when that may actually be raised that obviously would require us to be able to borrow and I've been working on one piece of it which is simply what a presentation might look like and we will be going over that in the near future the second piece of that is coordinating that with the capital campaign so that when we go someplace we at least know what the capital campaign people have done in terms of discussions with those same folks the probable lenders for us in any plan where we borrow would be one of the financial institutions that that we currently deal with or which are domiciled or have facilities in Amherst so those are the two pieces that that will determine when we can do this but it is clear that we will need to be doing this very soon because as I understand it the council will be required to vote on the amount that they are essentially guaranteeing to to the mblc that amount is currently set structured at 36 million dollars and so they will need to do that on an updated number but they will be doing that perhaps if they do it in the next two and a half months then it will be based upon an estimate rather than the actual bid number which would not come until probably three months or four months from that well I don't know how that will be played out but one way or another I think we need to have a statement to them in a progress report which they can at least consider as they vote right may I ask a question bob and lee is it possible that one could go to a bank and ask the following I'm going to call it a hypothetical question if we were to borrow now which we're not going to do if we're going to need to borrow now given our assets collateral uh uh how much would a bank be willing to lend at what rate understanding that we're not going to borrow now but it would give if if a bank would do that I don't know that a bank would but it would give us the trustees um uh a sense of what the possibilities are are so I'm just wonder whether or not you and lee can think about that possibility of going to these lending institutions and saying you understand we're not going to be borrowing for a while but if we needed to borrow in dollars maybe given whatever three scenarios what would your reaction be what would the rates be and what would the terms be those are correct part of what we've been thinking about correct so you can get that information pretty quickly right in the sense of that if you're asking them as if we were borrowing now that's information that you could get in the near future we would hope well I wonder if you would try so I know you are trying but I wonder if like you might try and see whether we can get that information let's say over the next three or four weeks that would be really helpful understanding that it's hypothetical it's going to be revised that would be great okay any other questions for the budget committee yep dallas yeah I just I know we're going to be discussing temporary locations and decisions in the building committee the jones the town building committee but I guess um I mean bob you threw out a couple of things and I certainly appreciate the desire to keep services going I don't know whether you and I guess we'll have to discuss this is a I mean a lot of the things that you're saying like I'm thinking about you know if you're keeping a book bin here so that's somebody driving to that book bin multiple times per day like like every suggestion you made is lovely but every suggestion has an exponential cost attached to it and an exponential strain on staff and so I guess um I guess all those things are going to be discussed I mean all those things are going to be discussed and we can decide what we're going to do but I guess I just want to sort of put out there that I appreciate where you're coming from but I also want to since this is the budget piece want to say that all of these ideas are uh come come with come with costs um that would be in addition to you know renting facilities etc as well as increasing staff costs so those are just all things and sort of tuck into our brains as we decide what it looks like that you know when when we have ideas that we're making sure we're attaching the cost with those ideas so we can do some sort of cost to value some some valuation of like where do we get the most bang for our buck depending on what our budget is so yeah I just wanted to throw that out there thank you um power don't like what's second bob yeah far just to go back to the you were talking about the book mobile bob shan question was more to you I know a couple of summers ago I don't know if it was last summer didn't we have like bookmobiles going to um it was part of the outreach piece of the building committee but was it just a van that we have that's or was it another van that went out as a bookmobile so staff have taken uh collections two parks uh for example to the schools uh linda does a traveling cart which goes to town cultural events so um as alex once said you can have a bookmobile without actually having the van um and that's and that's integrated into the whole outreach piece and and um uh yeah so I I agree completely with alex with what you said all of bobs and and those kinds of ideas are awesome um and it's going to start with you know finding out where the locations are staff will have to they'll be spending a lot of time figuring out just the logistics of how to get a book from point A to point B um as well as patrons returning all of the work that's going to have to go into the catalog you know there are items right now that just says on the shelf but some of our items may end up in storage so they all have to be converted it's all just a lot of time and then there's the programming that will have to happen off site because we're not going to be paying for interim space for that and and there is staff have begun those relationships beautifully um but a lot of those spaces are outside and a lot of the year is is not favorable for outsides we're going to have to find some indoor places to do programming so so all of those things are are balls in the air that the staff uh have to think about and they're they're they're nervous about it they're not they're anxious about finding out where the interim spaces are going to be so they can start the planning process because it's going to be a boatload of work but thank you okay and um we're going to spend a lot of time on this interim location question and I'm going to make a suggestion of course we can continue to talk about it now but my suggestion is that we actually not continue to talk about it now that the library director be charged to come up with a plan and make recommendations and uh anybody wants to communicate any ideas should do it to the library director and we'll have a chance to review those recommendations uh ultimately what we do about the interim location is going to be decided by the trustees it's our it's our decision uh I assume that the library director's plan the recommended recommended plan would be vetted first by buildings and facilities since this is a building and facility question um and then brought forward for discussion as to its budgetary implications as personnel implications but I think we're a little way off from this and so Sharon just remind us about when you think you might have a plan to recommend to us gosh uh so if responses to the rfp are due let's say mid-november I don't have that date in front of me um I don't know how long it takes for the town to agree or disagree what happens if there are no responses is another uh thing but let's say something rises to the top beautifully and we're like oh that's great um then the staff well it's going to take a good let's say month uh to to start working out those kinds of just the staffing plan alone you know we have the two branches in play we also are very interested in a center of town location um and right now there's a place at cottage street that we would like and that's separate from the rfp so that people can drop books up uh drop books off uh pick pick up holds and so just all of these intricacies um you know with our van going back and forth between all of these different locations all of that needs to be worked out so I would guess a month to have some kind of you know skeleton of an idea but then it's going to it's going to take a while so at least a month after the date which interim location has been chosen and may be a little longer as you work out okay all right any questions other budget questions bob just one quick comment which is yes I'm aware that there are costs that are involved with all of these things the word exponential is the in in exact description of that that's all okay so how about we talk about investments okay well um the endowment value as of uh september 30th was eight million two hundred and one thousand eight hundred and fifty seven dollars I am rounding pennies I do not deal with that when you're talking in millions the woodbury fund was six hundred sixty three thousand two forty seven these are both lower numbers than the previous month but nonetheless they are still within our normal range it goes up and it goes down and I'm not particularly worried about that at this moment we have normally had vanguard come in report to us on the september 30th report usually not in october because it's not available at that point but in the november meeting we have moved our november meeting to november 28th dan dan voss said that he may be or may not be available since his wife is due to give birth on that date or thereabouts third child so we will have a a substitute come and report to us but it will continue uh as always contain a report which will review where we are and what's going on and any recommendations that he might have but that is where that is so um I have been setting that up and they are aware of the new date right okay any questions for investment okay thank you bob uh I don't I don't see Lou and I'm not sure that we have anything from the friends so the next item would be a report of the library director so um yes so so things are are a bit crazy right now um I I expect that they'll you know start to calm down once we actually have our construction documents done and we're going out to bed but right now um yeah life is crazy and it's so crazy that I didn't even have time to use uh subjects and verbs in my director's report it's like it's just a list of stuff that we've been doing um some of the highlights so the viewpoint filming happened a couple weeks ago it was really lovely the people people were wonderful to work with jenny kept everybody you know this is what this is what we're doing and um and we had so many program participants willing to be in the the recording so I think the the final product is going to be really fabulous and and whatever doesn't end up in the final product we will be able to get um those those shots as well the block party I have to give a shout out to all the staff who go along with the friends and table at the block party the staff do a lot of tabling between Janet and Mia and Cecilia and Linda going to all the town's cultural events any uh bit or chamber events the the colleges the university uh it's we have quite the presence out there and and the friends more and more have they're in it it's really cool how excited they are to raise funds for the annual fund as well as to be a part of of this building project and what they just accomplished with the let's go event was not insignificant that's a boatload of work and they pulled it off spectacularly um it's all that's going on the north amherst library project we are still waiting for a certificate of occupancy until we get that I can't have the staff there um so unfortunately the staff need to know where they're working and and what their schedule is so for the next couple of weeks I'm going to have them working at the jones um and we'll just sit back and wait gilford was hoping to get the um the permit last week and it didn't come through and so just this is all that all of a sudden certainty is very difficult for staff so I will let you know when when things get rolling um the new england library association conference this year is in springfield so that's so great we have seven or eight staff that are going friends are funding that it's awesome library journal is has invited me to Texas um yay uh in november to discuss the library's relationship with the crest department and um this is really exciting it's uh really quite groundbreaking believe it or not not just the crest department but public libraries um working with uh non police organizations whether it's a social work or or something like crest so I'll be on a panel of the crest I don't she may be the interim director her cat cat newman uh who is lovely she'll be going with me and we will be on a panel along with some folks from Illinois um anyways so this november 7th and 8th I'm really excited about that I have to leave here this meeting by 545 because there is a candidate forum tonight for town counselors so I'll be giving a presentation just it's just a quick snapshot about what the jones library does that's tonight the f y 23 audit is going on now library tours weekly um it it's fabulous and it's really fun again to see people who you know okay Sharon this is a library big deal that's that's their you you see their attitude um when you know when they walk in and they shake my hand but by the middle of the tour every single time you see the light bulb go off and they're like oh wow yes no brainer so that's that's very enjoyable and then the building committee uh holy cow so we've met with ever source uh the fire department the dpw shade tree committee was last night they were really lovely um uh side note the fine gold alexander did another rendering for us on their dime from as if you were standing in the cvs lot looking at the building um so to give people a sense of not not only the massing but also the straight line of sight that that will have um so we yeah it's fabulous and when I get it I will share it with you all and the designs we have met with f a a there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that goes on before it gets to the level of the building committee it's almost daily that I meet with them along with George we've met with them over acoustics you know where to put the ceiling tiles uh the ugly ceiling tiles um security uh you know the it and and av and security equipment uh signage that is going to be a big deal uh starting with the staff um and we're talking about so there's you know major signage like the john lithgow children's center a person can dream that you know the children um down to uh you know here are some bookcases that that people have have donated to so the signage everywhere um fire suppression that's really important between the special collections storage space as well as the the civil war tablets room um the artwork we met with the architects today over where to put our art you know we have a certain number of very large pieces that have to be on display because they have been preserved by cpa funds so finding just the right spots um and as a prime example the uh unnamed nobleman um which historically has had a very prominent space in the library no longer does but it has to be in the library because the frame was preserved using cpa funds but so we'll be finding a place for it on on on a load bearing wall because it's a really big heavy thing uh but it's not going to be the first thing people see when they come into the library um lots of discussion about the landscaping we met with the rfid um company uh over you know placement of the the conveyor belt and and tagging and things like that we talked already about the interim spaces and the staff planning that goes into it um and again thank you be be kind is my note to be kind to the staff um because it's going to be it's going to be a lot of work and and I just I appreciate you letting the staff um uh take a lead on it and then and then bring you their plan that all leads up to so my evaluation I just have to thank you all you and the staff and and the friends so every year when it comes time to do this you know I go through I keep a journal of all the things that I've done the the good and the bad um I don't use a lot of verbs in my journal either it's you know a lot of subject headings and so I list all okay this is the stuff we did and because of the building project you all and I we're in this together so like there's nothing that I'm doing that you guys don't know about um our committee our committee uh structure is actually quite brilliant it just works so well it's also fun for me because I'm old and and and because I've been here a long time I just celebrated my 12th anniversary and on the one hand it feels like 12 years on the other hand it really doesn't it has gone by very quickly because of the building project and it's been a lot of a lot of great stuff and again going back to the staff I could not be doing contributing spending this much time on the building project if it weren't for the A number one staff they're run in the place they are providing excellent customer service they are answering the questions they're working with police fire DPW on all sorts of things they're working with the schools and the chamber and rec they are amazing and that's why I am able to do what I do because of them the friends again remember when hey Austin you and I were here 12 years ago and that then the friends in the trustees didn't talk to each other but now they're so great the relationship is fabulous and they are just they're just working so hard and I really enjoy watching them get into it um right and then you guys uh yeah so it makes me very emotional I love you all and um it even with all the hard stuff this is the best job I've ever had and I'm truly blessed and thank you for your time thank you Sharon thanks for that report any questions for the library director Farah did you have a question not a question just a comment I just want to stay Sharon I just love your enthusiasm and and your sense of calm in the face of not so calm moments in the last few years so thank you for the amazing job and to the amazing staff thank you okay any other questions for the library director I don't have a question I just want to reiterate a big thank you to Sharon I love that the public comment person said thank you Sharon and I reiterate that from the bottom of my heart we so appreciate you and your the cheerfulness and the enthusiasm which helps all of us do our work more happily okay other comments or questions okay so um we next uh meet on November 28th at five o'clock on zoom and uh I wish you all well stay well and this meeting is adjourned