 And no one, seeing no one from the public past the public comment piece, approval of minutes. I don't know how you want to do this, Katie. I had a couple questions on some of the minutes. I have her minutes because they're in Google, so I can... I've got a copy here too. Yeah, so we can mark up a copy. Okay, so my questions were on under the friends report, item number six. I think she jammed a few words together. Yes, it should be little FL for free libraries, little FL looking at the Hope Center. See what I mean? I hate that. Okay, and then... Flucking. Flucking? I thought we should get that out of there. Oh, that's a good one. And then under item C, the motion is in front of me. So you haven't had a discussion on this. And I guess I'm supposed to send the documentation to the city officials. I sent it to them. But you sent it to the attorney, which I think is what we... We said including the city attorney first. So I sent it to the attorney. I don't have a response yet. And I sent it on. So, if you... The director will send the city attorney first? Yeah, and I already did. Yeah, and instead, including city attorney first, so I went ahead and sent it to the city attorney. Great. And then the board chair person and two appropriate city officials. Yeah. He says we actually have to do it. Just maybe then. When he gets back in a couple of months. No, he's been good. We have a new system that's actually working. I'm sorry. That was smart. That is... By the way, the recording is on, so... I don't think I said anything on court yet. You never say anything on court. That's good. I apologize to the city. I'm going to record and apologize. And then item... Underhold item... Underhold business item E. For term limits, suggestions from the city. Somewhere in there, I just wanted to add that the board, our board unanimously approved the suggestions from the city clerk. So now we are on an official... Yeah. And what I will do is keep in my paper copies. I will keep... I will attach that. Right. We are officially on the same page. That's what I get. That's what I get, too. For Vales. I saw the flu. Sorry. For the board term limits, you just said... Accepted and suggested by the city. Unanimously suggested. Unanimously accepted and suggested by the city clerk. I don't see anything on my team's name. Do you have teams? You can invite anybody with any mail address. Yeah. I think I'll keep it on for a little bit. We did find out last time that the city has one Zoom... Which is what Zoom channel, which is what happened. And there wasn't a great way to find out if someone else booked it. So we think we... Oops, guest are waiting in the lobby. So we do have a Zoom account here. Well, I'm admitting Catherine. And as I recall, you're actually a corporate member. The library is a corporate member of LPM. So you have access to all of our tools and software. Hey, Catherine. We can hear you kind of quiet, but that's about as loud as it gets. Can you hear us? Okay, well, we'll try and yell. Hope you're feeling well or better. Yeah, we appreciate that. With your schedule, I don't blame you. No. Okay, so we were just at item number three approval of the minutes. We made some proposed amendments. And I'm just putting that... Are you okay, Katie? So do I have a motion to approve the minutes as amended? I don't have any opinions. Oh, I can't... All in favor? I'm assuming your hands up, Catherine. All in favor? Oh, yeah. Do I need to send that to you? Can you grab it from the Google Drive? You still there, Catherine? Okay. Okay, we're going to move on then, if you're okay. Yeah, I'm ready. Okay, so item number four is the normal reports. Nancy, do you want to do... Sure. We had our first in probably not ever, but a long time staff day. No one can remember when the last one was. We did a staff and service day on Veterans Day. I've been campaigning to do that for three and a half years since I got here. So we chose a day when we were already close to the public, so there wouldn't be a lot of pushback on closing, but all of our staff has not been together for a long time, COVID and other reasons. So we had kind of four different sessions besides some recognition of lots of things that have happened. Staff anniversaries, we had one staff that passed away during COVID. We had one person's husband pass away during COVID. We had one person's son pass away during COVID, so we kind of acknowledged all of those folks. We took a couple minutes to acknowledge Veterans Day, and we have one recent veteran, our security person, Jake, on staff. He spent six years in the Navy, so as a Russian translator and on submarines. Do you have a Russian-speaking security guy? Duh. We do. So he's the fastest. No fear of Putin here. But also a few minutes was fascinating just asking folks when their immediate family was a veteran, and we had everything from someone who's grandfather, literally hung out of planes taking pictures in World War II to all kinds of different military service, so that was cool. We went on to our sessions. So one of our sessions, probably our longest session, was a very participatory training session on how to enforce the rules in a good way. So we have all those standards of behavior from the city, but some things were more stickler about than others. For example, really making sure that staff enforce the rules equitably, not necessarily equally all the time. The city's standards of behavior, if you look through them, they lump a lot of things together, and some are really more regious than others. I mean, sleeping is one of the things in a public place. But sleeping, if it interferes with other people's use of the space. So if someone nods off for a few minutes, we'd let them be, we'd let them have a few minutes of snooze. If we think that they were passed out because they're potentially overdosed or due to a health issue, we wake them immediately, et cetera. So we talked about the various rules, which included quite a discussion on masking, as is to be expected. People keep telling me, oh, I'm sure you don't have any problems with that at the library. Well, we've had some interesting experiences with that, including at one point, a couple who climbed under a table and refused to come out or put on a mask. So we had one woman that called that was very upset about, potentially, she read something about disposable masks that said that the Chinese government was affecting them with something, and we were passing out these disposable masks to patrons, and did we know where they came from? I said, I guarantee China. So, well, there's writing in Chinese on the packages. So, I had to hurt a little bit to calm her down. I said, if you were to die from the Chinese government in viewing their everything made in China with some harmful stuff, as Yubi Moks is dead, so she laughed. She left or laughed? Laughed. Oh, good. Too much Facebook down there. But there's two people that we've had the question about our disposable masks are made of, which is interesting. So we finally did have to crack down a bit on the rules as far as masks go because there were some folks that delighted in having us tell them multiple times per day every single day to pull up their mask. And so, finally, we said, OK, if we reminded you X amount of times, then we're going to suspend you for a while. So, including the one man that yelled at me, you need to stop reminding me all the time. China said I'd be happy to do that if you'd actually work. So, not as bad as it could be, but still a battle. We had three speakers that came in to talk about some social services that are available in long-month that people are maybe not quite as familiar with. We had three people from L there, which is part of L-T-H-E-R-E. That is a street team that goes out and basically refers folks to services and to housing if they're eligible. We had one from the Recovery Cafe, which is right over the Presbyterian Church over here. So, for folks who are in recovery from just about anything, it could be substance abuse, it could be mental illness, it could be whatever. And then we had Andy from Hope. With two shelters, we have a very good relationship with the folks from Hope. They come visit the library often to speak to people because we are the de facto day shelter. So, that will come up a little bit later, but we are partnering with Hope. We have amassed lots of books for them, for the equivalent of a little free library. And we have six of our Chromebooks that we sent over there as an experiment, and that's going really well, just to have them available for folks to use while they're in the shelter. So, folks need internet access, or maybe they wanted to do something while they're in there. So, that's been a good partnership. It was just good. I'm really trying to compile a more user-friendly, short handout of services in my mind, because what we had before was this giant community services brochure, which just had names of organizations and phone numbers and email addresses, which to the person who doesn't know what's where doesn't do anything. So, we're making a small sheet of paper and also a business card-sized thing which says, here's where I get food, here's where I get overnight shelter, here's where I get clothing, here's where I get a shower, and really giving people the basics of what they need. We don't need to hand them a brochure with websites on it for folks that mostly don't have internet access. So, trying to improve our referrals. We also had a session that was run by our staff who are fluent in many languages on how to help patrons with limited or no English language skills, which we do get sometimes, and sometimes it's not just Spanish. It's other languages that we don't have anyone who speaks that language in there, and so there are various options available to us. Anything from Google Translate to the city gives us access through the city to a language line, which is amazing. So, you can call this language line, put it on speaker with the person in front of you, and it does so many different languages and hooks you up with the translator. So, it's a really cool- Is that a general city service? That is a city service. It's linked from the city website. It's linked from the website. It's pretty darn cool. Is that a live person? Yeah, you get a live person, and they do help you. So, we've had folks on rare occasions who do not speak, and we have folks that speak a lot of different languages, but sometimes we'll get someone who doesn't speak. Sure. So, that was really useful. And then we had our last long procession before we did some updates there on serving teens in the library. Since we have an expanded teens space, we used a couple of humorous things that were disseminated by other libraries of just how to welcome teens and how to kind of expect teens to be teens, which I think we do with a pretty good job of anyway. So, not expecting them to necessarily be miniature adults. So, we're happy to have that extra teens space where they can play video games together and be loud sometimes and not disturb anything. So, in-person programs and story times have started up pretty much across the board. We're using lots of little web websites again for story times, which in turn are very appreciative of that. Our prospector service, which allows our patrons to... I'm signing this in the library. But we are limiting to registrations, we don't normally register for our story times, but sometimes we'll get 100 people that way. So, we're limiting it to 28 at a time, but we're adding story times. Are you recording? I don't know, let me ask Cliff, because we should. Yeah, we love them. They're very popular every morning. We have our little movies for the online story times, which is very cute. Some of the moms and dads will come in and say, my son watched Miss Valerie 11 times. So, they will re-watch it for sure. Yes. We're 20 kids or 20 people? 20, I think it's 20 kids. But, we've still... We've been able to... This week, since it's so nice now, we've been able to do several of them outside in that renovated keyhole opening, which is nice. We still try and space people out as much as we possibly can. Let's see, staff is really excited. We are bringing prospector back in January. We put that as a funding request in case the consortium didn't do it and was going to do it on our own. That's the system by which our patrons can order materials, which arrive very quickly from anywhere in Colorado. And, I think a little bit of my homing is a couple other smidgen. Yeah, a little bit. But, it's something that, apparently, some of the libraries that did without last year in our consortium didn't miss it much and our patrons were very, very mobile. I'd say, if I were a patron, I'd be one of them because it's great. There are very few things that you can't get from basically every library in Colorado and I'll order something one day and in two days I'll have it from in the public or somewhere downstate. So, that's coming back. Our sorter bids all came in. We had five companies bid, which was really good. We've gone over the bids. We've narrowed it down to two. Costs are about what we thought they would be that we're not sure yet how much the cost of the cutting the holes in the wall and even the wiring will be. Do you want to say what range they're in? No, not really. It depends. I don't have a good single number for you though because we asked them to give us several different scenarios. Let me ask it this way. Is it in line with the numbers you gave the city do you think? I'm not sure we'll have enough if we count in all the construction that has to be done. I don't know what the cost of the wall is. It might be that the amount the city gave us will cover the sorter and the group rules but I don't know if they'll cover all the construction part. But really we've narrowed it down. We haven't had our official meeting to go over our bid reviews but there were really two companies out of the five that were really on top. They're very similar. We may have to talk to those two again. We have some questions for them because they're just, I think, anecdotally from what I've talked to the other folks who are doing the ratings they just had them. Mine came out the same. Different things in different categories but mine came out with the same number. One of them is a little bit more of a well known but it's a little more innovative so I know I lead one way and some other folks might go for the safer route but we have asked them to give us bids for 9 bins, 11 bins and 13 bins and one of them did a really creative designing and could give us up to 16. So bins. What the bins are is that here you have this conveyor belt segmented conveyor belt machine and you program these bins which are like big they can be canvas, they can be metal, whatever they are and it shoots the materials into these bins. It sorts them according to the RFID tags and then figures out, oh this is a children's picture book this is supposed to go in bin 6 so it shoots it off into bin 6. So from those bins when a bin is full you can take the bin away and it's all the same thing. It's all checked in and sorted. So it's all children's DVDs in one bin so all the person has to do is put them on a cart and go shell them. And right now we have multi-staffs. Do you have to go back and label your collection with those codes? No. Sort of dramatic. So no. We have things that are location codes and item types and those type of things that are already embedded in the online catalog by whatever parameters we choose. So the more bins the better the machine is because that's more categories than we can sort. So for example, if we had 16 bins we could have bins assigned like folder could have a bin of its own because we get so much stuff that we exchange with folder. So the more it's pre-sorted for us the less we have to do afterward. And right now we get stuff in. People hand check in two, three thousand items a day and you always miss something because the machine beeps and you check it in whether it's checked in or not so you have to rub it into the screen which is hard to have to hold. And then they pre-sort those materials onto shelves and then they put them on carts and then they go shell and then this cuts out multiple steps. And also these bins these conveyor belts and things going into the bin can sort about 2500 things an hour. So it is a huge difference. If you feed in like things that we bring in or big giant bins that are inside of our book drops for example you bring them in and you run through the sorter. It's so much quicker. So it's more accurate. When would you like to get in and online? Well that's on you know that's a little bit it's in next year's budget not this year. So we're not in a huge hurry to do this. You know we expect that the process will start as soon as we can start it in January because we'll have everything finalized with the city and the contracts by then. You do think you'll have to finalize with the city? Yeah I do. I think purchasing has been really good. They're on top of it. So I think that they've given us different somewhat different time frames but it looks like the time frame is between the time we order it and the time that it's fully implemented is probably about a hundred and twenty days. And part of that is due to COVID. So these have a lot of metal in them, etc. Those have been anything with metal, shell paint, anything like that. But really happy with the responses. They were very different. I tend to always like people who think outside the box a little bit and you know don't just look at this and say let's just make this a straight line and see what people can do with our space. So this is something that you know obviously people aren't going to lose their jobs to a sorter but no one's going to miss that road checking in of items. That means that they can be finally caught up and they can be off doing other things. So one of my previous libraries where we had a sorter every day we have something called a pick list in the library. And that is all the things that everybody has on hold for us and you're looking anywhere from voting to 60 pages of stuff and you're going around the library and you're trying to find all these materials and check them in and send them on their way to people with goals. And at that library sort of like this we almost never finished it. So you always have stuff rolling over you know it's like yeah this isn't this thing it's just like the rocks coming. So at that library we never finished it and after we got the sorter every single day it was finished beforehand. So it was just a big difference in the amount of time that things took. So you know that was my one concern I guess when I interviewed at this library was it's back of the house operations were very behind what I'd seen at other libraries. And so I think I feel like we're getting into the current century now. We've also begun pre-processing some of our items which we're starting with fictions we're not a big enough system that we would choose to have a vendor catalog our non-fiction items because we're pretty specific about where we put things but fiction there's no reason for us to be putting on mylar covers stickers, labels, RFID tags by hand when the vendors can do them like this and it's really cheap. So our labor costs more than what we pay to vendors. So that's begun and it's gone really well. So things arrived before the release date for people our patients know release dates they look at Amazon and they say this is coming out December 1st and I'm number 12 on the list and you have this many copies and where is it which we like. So that's going well so we're recognizing the back end and we have purchased new self-checkout machines which were grant funded so we had several from one particular company who I won't mention that they were not particularly old but one of them was dead as a doornail and unfixable in less than two years and the other ones have had a lot of problems so we replaced all four of those without a different company's product. We do do around 75% of our checkouts on our self-checks. Folks prefer to use those. They will come to the desk if they have anything that doesn't check out or some of the folks that prefer to not check out self-checks but most people do. Some of it is efficiency and some in a lot of it's privacy. A lot of it is just that folks want to check out their own things. Compact shelving has been a saga upstairs. We did have a person who did and won the bid. I have no idea how much the bid is. It doesn't go to us with that compact shelving that we were getting rid of upstairs. The one that we no longer wanted but we were told by the company that had installed the shelving it would cost but we paid them to disassemble and take it away it would cost about $18,000. So we thought that was a lot but someone did pay on the shelving and with the condition that they would come take it away they spent, there were three or four people they spent eight hours, nine hours two weekends ago and they got three shelves down out of that. So apparently it was rather tough so the city is now trying to figure out if we have to put the rest of it up which is like a partial step so I don't even know if it works on the tracks anymore or if we can pack it to pieces to get it out of the bearer so this is very unwieldy shelving and it is bolted within an inch of its life to itself and to the ground. This is stuff on the second floor. This is where you had your magazines or other stuff. So we're still working on getting that out. That's where our computer lab is going to go instead of its temporary portable space. So we're looking forward to doing that and Jason was climbing all over the top of it and he thinks that we can probably do it. So it's just behind us. Oh wouldn't he have already gotten junk? Probably. I'm not kidding. Try it. They don't take away anything. This is on the city but yeah they would. It's expensive from the individuals perspective but it would be cheap for you. Probably would. And then my only other thing is the Friends Book sale friend during a frenzy the Friends Board has had almost a complete turnover in the last year and a half or so so I don't think any of the folks maybe won who are doing the book sale have ever done one before. So they're a little nervous because they're just nervous. But they're doing fine. Starting with the 18th is Friends Night. My friend membership night and then it's the 19th and the 20th is right at the book sale and then the 21st is like the bag sale where you get big discounts if you take it away from that. So we have a ton of those. So once we opened up donations again I swear people were ordering during the pandemic. So lots of stuff going on but we're looking forward to it. People are very excited about the book sale as are the friends. We're excited for them to have a book sale and start to make money again. So they're doing a good job. We're just trying to help it out. I had well I guess I had one question on what would be covered off. So you mentioned something about Chromebooks to the Hope Center. Have you found that there's a relationship between giving access to the homeless and the number of homeless you get in the library? We've always given access to everybody who wants that. No I know but let me say it a different way. So by giving the homeless if that's the right way to say it access through the Hope Center do you also see them come to the library? So it doesn't impact your traffic and it's just more convenient It's just more convenient and also it's if you go to the shelters it's pretty boring and it's pretty stressful for folks who are there. So we're trying to give them reading material or a computer so things that will make the time pass a little bit more easily. So we recognize a lot of the folks that use the shelter and like I said some folks come in regularly to talk to folks to talk to them about temporary improvement shelter housing etc. So I imagine that we'll still have our same amount of folks We're starting to see a lot of new folks of new people and a lot of folks who are experiencing some mental illness and homelessness and some other issues that are critical as it starts to get colder I think because of that COVID break we're used to seeing the same people all the time for a long time and then a few new people but we're seeing a lot of new people that bring their own issues and problems in One thing that we've noticed though because we do have access to some of the weekly police reports and arrest reports and things some of the folks that do tend to get in trouble around the community behave very well in the library so I think it's because they need to use the library and they need to use the computers and I think we probably treat them really well compared to how we use the trade so sometimes I read those reports and I think wow this person is really soft-spoken and very polite in the library that's fascinating it's happened over and over again it's just on the surface and then I had another question I don't know if this is the right time to bring it up but I found this article I think it was in the camera it was on card requirements okay okay we'll pass you around we'll pass you around I got you now I was explaining that I picked up this article I think it was in the Boulder camera it was back in October the end of October we talked about local libraries partnered to provide student database access you do that right we are negotiating that right now so Boulder Valley already did it with the other libraries in our consortium Boulder Valley School District we are working our way through this all the legal staff with Safe Marine Valley and I expected to work fine what it is is a system by which the kids in the district can have access to all of our subscription databases without necessarily having to have a library card but using their student numbers so we don't have any identifying information on them it's like a student privacy thing there's a problem with requiring a library card in some cases maybe parents don't come to the library and sign their minor child up real hard this article suggests that it might include students who come from families that are undocumented yeah it does so you also have some folks who are from families who are experiencing homelessness who don't have a permanent address who would normally have just limited use card so we're trying to give access to every student in the district and it will increase we're already paying for these databases we're not paying per access so it will increase our access there's so much good stuff in our databases that if they were educated on what's in there it would really help people yeah there was another point in this article that I found surprising I don't know if it's true for Safe Marine that they charge $1,000 to $1,500 annually to have access says this is according to this article there's not a similar system in Colorado in Boulder Valley she said school libraries especially in elementary middle schools often can't afford $1,000 to $1,000 annual fee it's more than that actually some of them are very that's a very cheap database we spend thousands and thousands of dollars on databases and they can afford access many of the schools can afford access and if you just look at the just about any magazine you could possibly think of not a lot of encyclopedias a lot of other these are full text resources it was a lot of teacher training they first started doing this several libraries ago they used to send kids and say you could have this many online sources but you still need a print source and we had to convince the teachers this is a print source it's just access online this is an actual scholarly journal it's journal of the American Medical Association it's whatever we have tons of academic journals other things that are available so it should help kids with their homework it should help you if you're laying there not sleeping and you have to buy a lawn mower you need consumer reports at 2.30 in the morning you got that so oh that's great so do you do this on your own or do you do it in conjunction with the school district? we are working with the school district to give the kids access but you have a gallery we have not yet, I think it's still somewhere in legal land so I'm just moving this up so she can hear me soon so the answer is we don't have it yet but we're working on it although Katherine has a card and she can access all of our databases yeah I understand that so the Lafayette Library Lafayette is in Boulder Valley school district I think so I guess I need to clarify my question there so do we have access at our library for a standard patron to these databases yes you just have to have a library card that's the only real difference okay got it and students are we're trying to make sure that we don't have we're trying to separate or bring together rather than the have-nots so that some students with proactive parents have access to our databases and some don't that's where we're going with that to make sure everybody has access when teachers assign things great thanks for clarifying well do you have anything else at this point Nancy okay I'm going to set you down Katherine friends of the library report friends haven't met yet we're going to switch to our timing the friends haven't met yet so it's the 24th the friends normally meet no the friends I think I said it to you the friends normally meet the 4th Wednesday but they're doing a combined November December meeting on December 1st I'm pretty sure okay I thought I said it to you but anyway I think pretty sure that's what it is can you send it again just in case well I'll help you out here so December 1st I know I'm the one who's covering that so so I'm going to jump ahead and Cynthia put together the list of the friends of the library attendees for for signatures signatures that's the first month your subscription well signature means I'm like committing hardcore to something so far boy I think it's okay but it's got to go on a piece of paper but Scott you got it too first I just have one so it's all watery because otherwise you would have been right in front of Christmas or New Year's and Thanksgiving whatever the holiday so maybe you can send that out with the minutes when did I think she definitely sent it out last meeting she sent it to me in the interim because I think I was hoping to get some responses on the other months when do they usually meet 7 7 7 in the conference room of the library but she wants us to sign it she has months to do yeah I know we just I don't think they know that I don't think they know that I don't think they know that I don't think they know that but I think we should maybe regroup okay I know we hear from the city and we do not know who our counselor is and Tim did not know we sent me something yesterday very good whole business budget update we don't have much of the budget updates I just passed so is that we had asked for three different positions. We received one, and we didn't have a choice of which one that we asked for. So not unhappy, but we did receive authorization to hire our bilingual outreach coordinator, which we need. But that left us without a computer lab coordinator person for an expanded computer lab. So we are taking two positions that have just been sitting there because they're un-buildable. We had two positions that were 20 hour benefited, a category which no longer exists in the city. So 20 hours and less is part-time not that thing. So we weren't able to hire them several years ago. And they didn't sit there. So I said, well, but they're sitting there, but they're actually still funded. So I said, OK, so can we take this one, which is a lower salary rate than I would pay someone to coordinate a computer lab, and the other one, which is more at the rate, and combine them in a 30 hour benefited position, which we need. So I got the OK for that. So we didn't get a full-time computer lab person, but we got three quarters of it. Once again, I feel like it's the library creatively making you. So we were just wrote, library got created. Well, it's like there used to be a financial analyst at the library, and then the library gave that up to get a PR and marketing person. Now, we haven't had a PR and marketing person since last April because they're redoing it on a city level. So we have salary savings there, but anyway, that's just it. I know this is way premature, but when it comes time to do 23,000, do you think you'll be allowed to put in all the things that you need, or do you think you'll be still sort of in the same situation? I can put this in, but we all put in a lot of things, and then they are prioritized by it's been caring up to this point, although she'll be retired by then, so I don't know who will be doing it. But we put them in to the hopper, basically, and then we don't have any control over the prioritization of those things. I got the impression this year at the beginning since the library's been shut out so many times that you didn't even bother. No, it's not that you don't bother, but you have to be somewhat realistic. And if you put in too many things without having a lot of influence on what those final choices are, I don't want to put in things that I kind of want and have those chosen over things I really want. So does that make any sense? So. You know, we can work this. She can't, but we can. That's why I'm asking. We usually have. I'm hoping that maybe this year we'll have a little more time, because normally we get the budget info with a very short period of time until the deadline was due. So I'm hoping that we have enough time to actually give it to you. A reason for that. So. Now, that's actually been something that's been the same everywhere I've worked. It's just like, it's a lot of stuff to do. They have to do your fiscal year budget cycle. They do a lot of wrapping up a last year's budget and then going right into the next year's budget. I feel it. That's pretty typical. The only thing that's different here that I've had at my other libraries is that we don't have any, is we had a mid-year budget adjustment. So you couldn't redo your entire budget. But like my last few cities, they did have midway through the year. You could say, you know, we didn't put in for this. But because these things have changed, we really need something. We were able to ask for some things mid-year. And we don't have that here. I just thought that was a thing everywhere until we had it. Yeah, I think this is the time to pick up on Scott's influence that we need to think about those so we can work on the library's behalf, hopefully, to change it. So I think we're more activist, more peaceful. That's what it's supposed to be for. Hopefully, that will be appreciated. I'll bet you get results. Just for experience. I'm sure you'll be appreciated. From the king of the activists. OK, well, thanks for that. I know we had kind of talked about that, but I appreciate the feedback. I'm going to move on, Catherine. Update on the feasibility study. This is the one that went really. Not a ton of updates, except that Annie pretty much has the situation analysis done. It's a long 30 to 40 page thing. I'm supposed to get it this week. After that, the rest of the folks who are on our internal committee rather will get it. And then it will be we're deciding how to disseminate this. Annie was waiting to get. And she did a series of community stakeholder interviews. Thought she was almost done. And then it was suggested by folks in the city that she make sure that she asked all the city council members for their input. And it was crickets when she was the first. I think she asked everybody three times. But she did finally hear. She was just about ready to give out the situation assessment, which is kind of the big report. And then she did hear back from Joan Peck. So she had a long conversation with her. And she heard from at least one other person. So she is folding their input in. And then I said, we had a good chatter about this. And I said, it's time to cut the rope forward on this. So she said that she was she's very interesting. But she said, this was one of the more interesting ones of these that she's done. Because no one is noncommittal that she talked to. They all had very definite opinions on what should be done with them. What we need for a library and what should be done with a library. So she said that was interesting. Because it just kept going that way the more people that she talked to. That can be good and bad. It's good to have people with passion if that's what it is. But also it can be difficult if some of the options that look like viable options aren't whatever the person said that they were looking at. So it'll be interesting. OK, we just see it. So I should have this in my hot, cold hands in the next few days. And we'll go over there. So we'll make plans for her. We'll talk with her about how she's going to present this to Council to come here in person. We need to see it first. Yeah. That was for my head. Yeah, good for her. We need to see it. Do you have a sense as to how she's going to roll this out on an order? Like Scott says, I think we would like to see it before it goes to the city. I will. That's not a problem. It goes to a little internal committee, which is like me, Karen, two other people, two other departments of my staff. There's a couple of Kim from the museum. There's a little smaller committee. And then it will go out to the board next. And then some of the internal stakeholders that we talked to, that Amy talked to about this. So he will definitely, oh my gosh, he will definitely see it before the meeting. And hopefully have input on it before it's presented. So yeah, some of it's cut and dried. I mean, some of it is, here's your square footage. Here's what you're here to compare it to. Here's what you shouldn't have. Here's so much of cost. But then there are the recommendations of here's how much of cost. How do you do that? So some of it is a little, some of it, some of the categories are less cut and dried. You know, technology, that comes with a lot of stuff. But the square footage, the staff FTE, things like that are. You expect that kind of to be in line for the first study? Yeah, I do. And then it's just more of a foreign government situation. Yeah, it's more of the financial aspects of it. Here's how much it costs to, if you have this level of sort of standard in any of those areas, here's how much it costs for a low level of delivery of services. Here's how much it costs for a median level. And here's how much it costs for an optimal or aspirational level. So, and then she asked a question point blank, basically, of the last city council, I worked with her and she said, what do you want to be? This is your choice. And we were lower than low and all of them there were a little bit higher on some of them here. But she says, you're in a low level for a community that values its library. So, are you gonna work, are you gonna try hard for median or do you want more? And they went for, they went for more. So, it depends. Here we're in trouble. There, my last, my last back, which we almost fell over. Just acting as like immediately, which was not typical. But they've done quite a bit since I left. They haven't, they did not look at a district model, but they did, they chose instead to put up a, they have different kinds of stuff in Washington, but it's a different kind of tax measure, but they chose to put up a dedicated measure to put the library and still have our mega city library. So, because they chose not to join with the county that was, that was a district, so. So, you may not know this yet, but when do you think we would see it? I don't know. I don't know, I mean, I have to get it in my hand. Okay, so you don't know that, okay. When would you guess it'll go to the council? You know that? I need to get it first. Okay, so it all, all the time. I expect to have it this week, and then, you know, I can't wait to get my eyes on it and kind of see what's going on. So you guys aren't, so this preliminary board that sees it as a small group of people has no real say where it's in. You just get to see it first, right? We see it first. We can, we can let her, we can definitely let her know if something is not clear of the way it's expressed. We don't change results or change recommendations. But we can, you know, I redlined some of the ones she gave us before and just said, you know, she's very, very smart and she uses some, some terminology that I think I'm fairly smart, but some of it I went, huh? So, and just, you know, there's some of it that we just need to, to make sure that we. Done me down for our group. She uses these lovely expressions like council manic decisions and things that I think this is the right person to look at. Are you gonna do it? Of course you do. It's our purpose. So, so, so I just, you know, I just, we just reread it for our readability. Do we understand what this means? But no, we do not change. Yeah, but hate to think that somebody in the city is going, let's not tell people about this part and stuff like that. No, I think, you know, that, yeah. I can't imagine, can't imagine the city would do that. Can't imagine that. No, I really can't actually. Scott may be the only person that I know that's more suspicious to me. But anyway, that should be very shortly forthcoming. And I can't wait to get it. Okay, well, we're all on board with you. So, you know, we're rooting along with you. Yes. Okay, and I think you already mentioned. And then we're going to answer in front of the legal board. Sent through the queue to the legal department and has been received by them. They've been, they've been, they've been very quick. They did start a new kind of help ticket system in the city called Legal Star, which is similar to the way we do our, our facilities maintenance stuff. And it's really helped. So this is, you've done with Mosher. That's some fun. Yeah, so I sent that, I sent the board document with the policy and said, basically, is this kosher? And, And just to refresh, the policy basically says we decide what's better for the board. You do. You know, to me, it looks exactly like what the policy, the Mosher fund actually says. Was it intended? Intended. But just, it's always good to run it past. Yep. And we usually get, we look and it's pretty good. It also says that the money moves to the library. It does. Which I think it would be. So it's, it's a nice, it's actually a really nice sort of document. It's pretty clear. We agree. I mean, it was designed to create. But it cannot hurt to have it run past. The visionary framework in a system of approval. You know, it's a lot of money and we're paid late for it and we should be managing that. Yep. Older library district update. I don't know if I have anything new. I'm gonna talk to, to David Farnan from Boulder Public Library a little bit. And I just said, you know, we thought your lines were a little interesting and he said, oh, nothing set in stone. Well, that's, that's good to hear. Yeah. So. That you know about our, our, our lines when we were thinking. I told him, I said, I said that the lines that we were thinking, well, I said we, but I said, you know, that, you know, yes, it is looking at drawing are a little bit different. He didn't seem to pretty proud of that though. Sure. So. Yeah. I mean, the only thing we talked about, of course, was things that we've already talked about here, which are, you know, if you want, if you want hygiene to pay you money, they're gonna want to bring us, which we already do. So, and the people who are paying nothing for library services now, and you want them to pay something, they're gonna want something to return. So. So I had seen an article in the paper that I guess is local papers and I don't know. And they alleged that they had a couple of meetings at the time of the writing, which was probably a couple of weeks ago when the first meeting was on geography. Mm-hmm. District geography and the second meeting was gonna be on funding. Okay. So, and I think they have like two a month or something like that. My gosh. Yeah. And the other thing to look at, of course, is that, that Birthing's measure went down and did not pass, which is too bad because they've really upgrown a long time ago there. They're tiny little library. So that didn't pass. And so. Well, yeah, cause we had talked about Birthing's potential to the joint. I think it's, I mean, I still think if the district is what happens, I think, you know, looking at Birthing's lines would make sense. Because there are little bitty in there, you know, they would have access to some of the materials. So, you know, the only thing you really have to add is a career that drives out the land between them. But, if we, if we have to. If we need to branches apart, that's all. It does, but as a director in Cone County, we've had 25 branches for over 8,000 square miles. So, it's not, it's not that far. And actually, if we end up having, adding branches in a long, long, we'd already need to have a van and a driver to take these back and forth between the global branches. I've never, I've neither discussion on advising me of something to circle back on one that's still about feasibility study. So, do you think that when this is all done and it gets reviewed and counseled and all the rest of it, that the library or the city has a mechanism to get information out to the community about what the feasibility study says? Is that something that would go through the marketing department? Is that something you really have to do? I think a lot of it would go through the marketing department, except that, like I said, the marketing department has been ramped and centralized. And we haven't had a marketing person since last April, although we're at the brink of actually being able to hire one. So, I would think that because they've gone to somewhat more centralized model or heading that way in the city, it actually, for this type of project is probably better because we would have the entirety of the city's marketing team to help get this information out. To my mind, this study is gonna say a lot of interesting things that hopefully the community is interested in hearing. And doing this study is only like half the battle. The other half is getting the message out and how do we, as a group, think about how to get that message out? I think that comes through the city or does it come out? I think the city can actually, you know, print or put a link to the study. I don't think that's good enough. But that's not all. But that's the one thing that they would do. But I do think that working with local media, too, I mean, I would love to see something that's not just a squeaky little article, but maybe something that has several parts to it. And still video on. The video would be awesome. So, you think it'd be good? On my public media. There you go. But, you know, I think that is something that we need to start thinking about, though. It's something that we would disseminate. Feeding articles to the leader and stuff like that. Times call is good, too, they. Times call. They will do that. They will do that. And maybe this courier newspaper. And what? And I won't. But this is also. And whoever birthed uses. Oh, hey, look, look, look, look, look. Yeah, I'm still. This also, we used me and other libraries down and my other libraries. And we started talking nonstop to community groups about, here's what it was. Here's what happened. Here's the study we did. So, even some of those, like when I got here, I started talking to those, I don't think anybody's heard of TVO groups. It's like a philanthropic women's organization. Yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a, you know, there's 11 of them in one month. So I went to some of these people's houses. And they have like. Just a lot of rich ladies, I guess. Well, I went to people's houses and they had like 60 people there. So we didn't really know much about the library. So they were very welcoming to their other groups. They made speakers available to put talk to them. I really think that's something we should really think about. Yeah. And that tells into this next, I mean, activities of the board of post-visibility studies. And kind of ask you to take a look at it. Scott, there's something like this on, you know, I think, you know, pitching and trying to figure out how to communicate this. Yeah. Well, I mean, you just need, you need things to do, right? So, some of them, yeah. I think video is a good idea though. You're showing it? Yeah. The library show, or the library district show. Ha ha ha. Call it whatever you want. How about that? We do it as the library show. But it's what goes on with the library. That's right. What, what, how many things are happening? Well, we have stuff happening. And the ongoing programs that are there, the resources that are available, kind of going over that. So more than just your board. And I'd like to introduce some of our new employees. We have some new staff. We're being very purposeful in our hiring as far as trying to diversify our staff, have more folks who speak Spanish and more languages to have in. Migration. We don't know for that, but, no, but we're trying to get folks, I mean, libraries and not just us. Small island, white clay. And more than the city will. You know, libraries are trying hard to look at things in different ways. It used to be that all libraries looked out when they were hiring people as a piece of paper. And we're looking for folks now, especially when you're trying to diversify your staff. We are looking at people who don't necessarily have library experience, but who have other life experience, who can relate to more people in the community. So customer service experience translates beautifully. We can teach you the library stuff, but we're just looking for not a bunch of oldies like me with a bun, hey, I have a bun. Just trying to make sure that we are going behind beyond the stereotypes and having more folks. You know, your own time is up to you. You want to wear that bun, that's fine. I've never thought of you as a typical library stereotype. I think that's a good thing. But a lot of folks that work in the library successfully don't fit that old stereotype. So we're actively recruiting people who don't fit that old stereotype because we want people who are not change-a-verse and who are willing to change and move in directions that we want to go. So we have a different philosophy that we've already implemented there. So we have some fun, mostly other, but not all people that have come in that are incredibly enthusiastic and do not have a library background. Well, if I'm recalling this correctly, Katie has said in the past that when you talk about your programs and stuff, like you've got a lot of things going on. We do. But it's how you communicate those things. That it's a communication issue. It's not a management or programming issue. It's how do you get the message out so that people understand what we're talking about? I think video has been underused by us at this point, though. Because I think showing people some of the things that are going on at the library as opposed to just telling them about it. You know, kicking some snippets of clips from our ablamos groups that meet the Spanish speakers, English and then they say hello to folks who are, no, those are already English. We have two different groups, one learn Spanish and one learn English. But just the excitement of the teens when they're playing video games, you know. So the interesting thing is that the tools that are available now are to do this kind of thing are pretty amazing. So right now what I'm doing is I'm doing a cinematic shot. And it's completely automated. And when I'm done, what I'll have, what that is, is that is a 30 second commercial for our board. So I mean, the... Should I buy a small? What does it say? See how it stabilizes it? Does it slow motion? It's really awesome. We do some music and we do a... You don't have to let us know ahead of time, actually. We do some talk over and on. You know, the people that are reading the library. But it can be whatever you want. And speaking of... We have so many things in our picture, really. I mean, the story times, oh my goodness. The reading with the dogs and... Yeah, you could use some... I have a neighbor that's fascinated Gary. That's fascinated me about this reading and the dogs program. It's awesome. He wants to know more about that. Yeah, we have a lot of them. We have great bilingual story friends and yoga story friends. And then a lot of folks, you know, you've been to a lot of our adult programs because of filming the leaves were really interesting adult programs that we do about them. So, I find it quite a human end. See, I think all that... That's actually a good... If that all gets communicated after the feasibility study comes in and that creates a positive impression, of course, in the community, but also starts to cause people to think about what a library could be like and what it should be like. So then you get into these comments on what a 21st century library and people have already started to percolate up some ideas. Well, looking at like, you know, once we have this new computer lab space, some of the things that we want to do and part of it is open lab and part of it is classroom space, which we haven't had before. So, we want to do the online citizenship classes, for example. There are other things that I've done before in libraries that are awesome. So, some of those things, you know, we did practice tests in my last couple of libraries, real-time practice tests for SATs, ACTs, GREs. So, and we were all distressed, but it was a good experience because, you know, it's different if you're doing it by yourself, home alone. You can cheat a little bit, you can get out and get a drink, use a bathroom, all those things, but maybe try to give a real testing experience. So... Anyone on this may be perfect because, you know, you may be seeing a little more freedom within your organization if you move into next year. Maybe some. That'll allow for more of this. But just some of the changes that we've been able to make somehow. Yeah. Following the construction crew around like a dog. So, and we'd like, it would be really nice if this walk could come down. So, and walk in there with me. It's like Jericho, isn't it? I don't know if you can see it. So, yeah, I think that would be awesome. Okay, we get a... We'll start brainstorming about some of those things because, you know, whatever happens to feasibility study, we want people to know what it says. So, I'm pretty confident that it'll say things that we want to hear it say. I mean, it's hard for me to believe that it won't land down in five key apps, but it will. It will. I mean, part of it is, you know, a big part of it is a gap analysis. So, if I could ask you to identify somebody, who is it that is, that signed up for the membership here, the library? So, because you're a member of our public media. It was probably me. But maybe it was somebody, I think it was somebody in adult services, but I told them to. I think it was probably Josie or Penny, somebody in adult services, because they went, it was the, it had to be somebody from the group that's doing the podcast over here, I think. So, that's what we should get involved in. So, we have a member meeting every other woman's hand. And we should, I mean. Let me find out who that was. Because I'm pretty sure it's one of, it's one of the ladies in the podcast group. See if you can get somebody to start participating in that member meeting. Because that's where you get resources. That's how you get volunteers to help and stuff. That's how you get cameraman and producers and sound guys and all the stuff you would need to put a show on. Okay, that's good. And yeah, and I can kind of direct that. But I need some backup from you. If I do it all by myself, it'll just be me doing it all by myself again, so. No, I think these ladies and gentlemen in the adult services area who started out kind of shy about the whole thing, they really enjoyed doing the podcast and they would get into more stuff. So, that definitely was a good COVID event that came from that. Because a lot of our staff became more comfortable with online programming. So, which is good. And that's the trick now is that I would like to continue to do a lot of virtual programming along with the in-person programming. Because obviously, we have folks who don't come out at night or who don't. They don't. You know, there's a lot of seniors who don't like to drive at night when it's dark and we have other folks that just, it's so much more convenient for them to do the programming. And you have capacity issues on your program. Yeah, but. You still have capacity issues. So, this can help with your programming. And like, Boulder has done a bang up job with that and they have such huge numbers that they have not been working on that. They have such huge numbers for their programs and they said that people really loved the fact that they weren't always missing out on the programs because they couldn't get tickets. Do they have something like the museum? It's not as big as that, but they do have an auditorium. They have an audit board. It's nice. A lot of things. It's a nice one. But we have a better one? Yeah, the museum. They have a nice maker's face. They have a nice library. So, as you go past the main library part, you go through kind of an atrium lobby and there's a nice playground for kids outside and there's a lot of seating with windows on either side and they have a nice little coffee shop that also does sandwiches, salads, that kind of stuff. So, it's more lunch than just coffee. Then you keep going and then there are several public meeting rooms, a fairly big auditorium and a big maker's face. So, you can go. You can go a lot with an eight to 10 million dollar budget. Well, I think that they want plenty of it. Yeah, you can. Maybe more with that. Yeah. Check. Good discussion. Longmont Library District Committee. I'll just pass along a couple of things that have been happening here. It's still meeting. Picked up a few members, which is encouraging. Hopefully, they'll stick. These people seem to be good activists type people. So, we'll see how all that goes. We're working on how to engage the community. So, some of this discussion that we just finished having mirrors some of the discussion that occurred last meeting with that group is how to get good things out about the library community and good things out about the benefits of the district to the community. So, it all goes kind of hand in hand kind of thing. I think I mentioned to you, the emcee, that we're trying to reach out to both Lyons and Barthet and I would get like an icebreaker call. That would be wonderful. Hand in hand. Hand in hand. Hand in hand. Hand in hand. It's just to let them know that you were going to reach out to them. So, it's not a cold call. Yeah. We like just basically the meeting. Okay. I just want to know that there are these guys who want to talk and when they call, you should give them a little bit of time. And then hopefully, you know, they'll show up at one of these meetings and give us their feedback group. Tell us to go take a hike. And we'd like to do something similar to that with the city, you know, with the election and all that transition's been, I don't want to say too exaggerated, it's been a little bit exaggerated, but there'll be conversations with Maripek and others to see if we can get them thinking about a district as well. So, you don't have to put all that in there. We'll rework it after this. Well, basically we need to figure out what politics is now. That's what it comes down to. Boulder is very much behind a library district. And they weren't. They weren't, they were not. But they have a lot of turnover on there. I see, I haven't looked that up in my nature because that's one thing that the director said that there was a lot of, they were supposed to have a lot of turnover on their city council. Oh, you mean in the elections? And I did not look at their election results. So, that would be good or bad for them? We don't. That's interesting, okay. It all depends on. And we don't know either here, but it's exactly what we're saying. Because they had, you know, when they started this in Boulder, five plus years ago, they had one set of folks and then they had some new people come in and then the pendulum kind of swung and then they don't really know. Where's that now? Yeah. You know, we started three years ago and it was very much, you know, they were against it. So, it's probably some key members of the council were against it. And today, we don't know. I've heard both sides of, some are against, some are for, but I don't know, that's what we're at. Your meeting with John? It's the 24th, I'm sitting down with her, trying to update her on hopefully what some of the feasibility studies says and mentioned some of the other things going on in the community and try and get your interest. And this is gonna have a big impact on how successful we think we can be, it's right next to us. Because do we want to go against the city again? Because that's what I was doing before when I first started this. And that did not go well. So. It was better for everybody who wants to go and say, who do I have? So. That's right. So, that's what we need to start is to figure out where the city council's at and work this out in a community fashion. Not to change the subject because I agree with that. But something else I recall reading about with respect to Boulder's process is that they went out and they submit an application to be a trust, to be part of this IGA group. And of the 37 that they received, they picked 12. But what I also read was that come somewhere around April or whatever, the city gets to figure out whether they want those people wanting to be the best part of the trustee. They also get to pick the 12, right? The city staff picked the 12. I believe they did. They picked the 12 and in two were from the, well, I've never been aware of it. One is a realtor and one, I think, will be there. Yeah, so they, you know, they have some method to their madness, so to speak. You should do as well. Having a reaction to that, and I'm not gonna say anything right now. Disgression. We have a great city staff, but I don't know how much a city staff should direct this kind of stuff. And I don't know. I've never done one of these before, other than I want to fail the term. So, you know, maybe you should try something new. Maybe this is the way that it works. I don't know, let's figure it out. I'd say practice makes appropriate. I think you're getting better. There you go. All right. You're learning what you got. Library Foundation, other than the fact that this group has kicked it around a little bit. Yeah, anything going on. Do you get anything on that? Okay, I think that wraps up our old and new business since we've covered all the leads on this issue. Anybody have any comments? Any comments, Catherine? You still there? That's all right. Katie's putting, you know, laugh here in the minutes. Trust us, it wasn't that joke here. If you want to review the meeting again, you'll be able to on longmopublicmedia.org. There's no fixed. Wisely so. So, when will we know our new leads on? We don't know. Kim didn't know either. Yeah, it's whenever they wrote on it. We thought it would be, Karen originally said she thought it would have happened already, but she was surprised that, because she was the one that let me know that it hasn't happened yet. They really went out, I just thought part of the last meeting, they ended at 9.30 and they're making a point of not running these four hour meetings anymore. And are they gonna maybe go every other? Or not every other, they said like three a month. So yeah, they want to do less meetings and they want to do less time in the meetings. So I'm not quite sure how that'll work, but. So do you think tomorrow night they'll, if there is a meeting, do you think they'll be resolved tomorrow? I don't know. I mean, me too didn't know, Karen didn't know, I don't know. New mayor, new agenda. So be it. I don't know how that'll work, I don't know how the choosing who is picked for the groups works. Oh, they just meet. I mean, I know you get to express a preference or preferences. It's usually in a study session. And they just, yeah, that's what they do. They say, I want to do that, you know. And it's usually more than one of you. And if nobody volunteers, they say, well, I think it's a sign. So, but if more than one wants to, they like fight out in the moments, you know, verbally, like, I want him, here's why. So, but that's, that's some. That's interesting. That's why I love it. Yeah, it's pretty, well, it's public. So, but yeah, it's pretty simple. And they kind of shoot through it really quickly. They all kind of know what they want to do. You know, and they're all, they like we asked each other pretty quickly. Well, I mean, they all know what people's interests are. And they've got shots at multiple organizations. I mean, they may trade them off. They say, okay, we do both, I'll do the library or something like that. We're going to have the most interesting board though. Well, we're going to say historically, the library is not in top on the list, but it's going to be here, it'll be here, it might be. And then it just seems like there's a lot more. I'm just like, I don't know. See if here, once you're approached, why shouldn't you do that sort of thing? Weakie will. You're just being so politic. I'm watching her, she's like, her tongue is bleeding. I can see. I have educations in my organization. All right, I have nothing more. Does anybody have anything they want to add at this point? All right, I will call this thing over at 823 by my watch. All right, thank you. Bye, Catherine. Feel better. Thanks, Catherine. Good luck.