 Okay. Well, since we do have, I believe, at least six of us here, I'm just counting to make sure I'm getting the right numbers. One, two, three, four, at least six. I am going to go ahead and call our meeting to order. We do have a quorum. So at this time, if you'd like to rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance, you're welcome to do so. Okay. Oh, wonderful. Hello, Kathy. Good to have you join us as well. Moving on now to 1.3 public comment. Unfortunately, we do not have anyone here for public comments. So I'm going to move ahead now to 1.4, the approval of the minutes. And at this time, would someone like to make a motion to approve the minutes from October 22nd, 2020? I still move Mary Lynn. Thank you. Is there a second? All right. It sounds like Mary Lynn Donahue made the motion and it was seconded by Kathy Norman. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. All right. Wonderful. Moving on now to 1.5 correspondence announcements and common council reports. I decided because you never really know how many wonderful citizens might be watching our meeting that I just wanted to make a quick announcement that in light of the news or information that our library director Garrett Erickson will be sharing later in our meeting, I just wanted to reinforce the fact that these last few years, our library staff has been quite innovative and creative with really researching some of the best online services that our citizens can utilize. Little did they know that they would be so valuable during a pandemic. They were just trying to do it because they are extraordinary leaders in library science. But I just wanted to remind everyone that there's a wonderful opportunities that you can download wonderful books and audio books through Libby. These brochures are in our lobby on the first floor. They are also detailed quite nicely on our website. But you can also get wonderful books. There's a whole pamphlet of incredible magazines that you can download. And because everyone has so much free time on their hands, you could learn a new language. Our library card will allow you to access the Rosetta Stone, which is a phenomenal website and really allowing you to learn a new language. So I wanted to share that. And going along with my theme that people have lots of time, we also have this incredible service that you can utilize with your library card called Canopy. And it allows you to download some incredible films and documentaries. And then finally the last two, I would just share that there's another great resource of books and videos and documentaries called Hoopla. And finally, because some of you like to be really challenged, maybe even more so than learning a new language, there are over 360 different online courses, Gale courses. And so if you've ever wanted to learn accounting, if you wanted to be just like Debbie, you could really look into these accounting classes. There's also language classes, law, writing, teaching, education. So I just thought I would use this moment as announcements to just share that there's these incredible services that Melissa always talks about at the end of our meeting. But I just wanted to bring it up at the beginning. And for anyone who's watching this meeting, please know that you can sign up for a library card or renew your library card online. So that is www.meadpl.org. I'm looking at Garrett to make sure I'm saying it correct. But anyway, so those are my happy announcements. We just have a lot of great resources. And going into these winter months, I think they will be most appreciated by your family. So take a look at them. So with that, I think I will move right along now to the committee reports. 2.1 with our finance report. And I'm just looking to see if we have Kyle on. Debbie given the report today. Okay. So, so, Garrett, do you want to Okay, Debbie's on. Okay. Okay, so Debbie terrific. So I 2.1 Debbie, if you would like to give the overview of just the finance report. Yes, I spoke with Kyle and we went over the financials and he approved all accounts table. We went through those and there wasn't anything out of the out of the ordinary because I mean, there's just not a lot going on. We did get two more donations and that I can announce that we got since I emailed out the donations, we got $300 in memory of Henry Young for book purchases and book place. And then the friends gave me the last check for their donation for 2020. So their total donation for this year was 17,000. And the financials we look to be in good shape. We're at we're at about 80%, which is about where we should be at this time of year as we have November and December to go. So that would be about, you know, we're right in there when I calculate out the percentage. So and I did send those financials out if anybody has any questions. Okay. So at this time, would someone like to make a motion to approve the payment of expenditures and accept the gifts that were detailed? Thank you, Meg. Is there someone who would like to second? So Sherry has seconded and Meg has made the motion. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Okay. So this is Maeve. I'm just wondering if someone has their mic on and they might want to mute it because we're getting some additional conversations here. Thank you. So moving on then to the committee reports of 2.2 Human Resources Committee. Kathy Norman as our chair. Okay. The main thing that we're looking at right now is our evaluation tool for it's the time you know when we do Garrett's evaluation. So we took the evaluation tool we used last year and we're updating a little bit to reflect some of the more strategic things that Garrett has had to deal with in the strange year that we're in. And then we also have modified the table of organizations lately. That's mostly updating descriptions and recognizing Debbie's, we changed Debbie's title. And so I think when it comes to that TO part of the discussion, you're going to read that. Just one moment. We're having technical. What was the question? I'm sorry. What was that last bit? Kathy, we just had some technical issues here on our end. Okay, well it's just the other thing that the HR committee has been doing with the TO. And that's an item for discussion and action at 3.1. So I'm going to let Garrett present the TO when we get to that. Sure. All right. And then it's my understanding that as Board of Trustees, we will be getting an email from you in the near future in regards to the evaluation for our library director. And with the... The evaluation tool goes out to the head of the foundation board, the head of the Friends board, all of Garrett's director's board, and then everyone on this board. So you'll be getting that shortly. And then we hope that you'll turn it around. It's going to be in a survey monkey form. And then we would like it back within a week or so after you get it. We'll indicate the due date. Great. And then the HR committee will meet. And then that is the reason why we are having a very short, but special session of the board in December, just to focus on the evaluation of our library director. So that is what... That's how we're ending our 2020 year. All right. Any questions or comments for Kathy? All right. Moving on then to section number three, 3.1, the Table of Organization. I will turn this over to our library director Garrett Erickson. So the first one, 3.1 is pretty simple. Last month, the board approved change in title for Debbie DeAmico. The problem that we were trying to solve is that there were two business managers in the city who had vastly different tasks that they were assigned to do. And so we changed Debbie's title to administrative services manager so there was no issue over at HR. And really this is just administrative that we wanted to update the TO with the latest name, the title change, excuse me. And so that's all that that has changed here. So if someone wants to make a motion and get this approved. All right. I will move to approve the new Table of Organization. All right. Kathy, it's moved. This is Chris and I second. All right. And Chris has seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, motion carries. Thank you. Moving on now to 3.2, Foundation 2021 list of approved projects. I will turn that back over to Garrett Erickson. So the 2021 wish list is something that the staff puts together or they put together the wish list each year. That's mainly Melissa Prentice soliciting ideas from staff as and the other managers. So in your attachments on board docs, you can see what we had requested of the foundation for this year. I think we may have discussed this already, but however, since the last meeting, the foundation did approve it at their full foundation board meeting. And so this is what we came up with. And so they did gift about almost $45,000 worth of materials. And so we do find that that's the foundation had a discussion about it again yesterday. And that's something that they can hopefully afford to do. The markets have been pretty good right now. So we're hoping that they hold up. I guess I can just open this up for any questions on particular items in there that we want to discuss. And, you know, once again, sort of an annual moment where we pause and just recognize this with a deep gratitude for this Mead Public Library Foundation in providing these additional funds for us to really get some wonderful resources and materials for our library. It's greatly needed and appreciated. If there are no questions or comments, would someone like to make a motion to accept the approved list of projects? This is Mary Lynn. I'll move. This is Meg, I'll second. Thank you both. I did have one question. May. Yeah, go ahead. The staff appreciation. Was that $1,000 or $10,000? That should be $1,000. I see the comma in there now. Yeah. That's it's not 100,000. Thanks. Thanks for pointing that out. That'd be a heck of a lot of appreciation. Yeah, I'm well deserved. Thank you. Thanks. If only we could, right? So at least it shows our we would love to be able to do that. But thank you, Mary Lynn. Okay, any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. And then next up, 3.4, Common Council approval of 2021. Actually, 3.3, Maeve. Excuse me, I jumped right over on the COVID. Can you tell how I feel like we've been spending a lot of time on COVID? Yes, please. 3.3 COVID service. I think we're all sick of this one. But so just to kind of let the board know what's happened in the last week or so. So we did have one. We've actually had two staff members test positive. One person, the first person though, sort of worked in the evenings by themselves more on the maintenance and cleaning crew type of work. So they didn't have a lot of exposure to other staff. However, we did have a staff person that's in one of the common areas test positive last week. And this person got it from outside the library, we believe, fairly certain of that. However, they, Melissa Prentice went back and did quite a bit of internal tracing, since the public health department really is not able to help us with that sort of function at this point since they're overwhelmed. So Melissa traced back at least three other staff members that had over 15 minutes of cumulative contact with this person, which is what the CDC calls a close contact. So we had to ask those folks to stay home in addition to the person that was positive. Starting on Thursday of last week now, I think everyone, I believe at this point, most of them are, I think all of them have come back negative. So that was a good thing. At the time that we were notified of the positive test as well, we did go back and contact everyone that was in contact with this person, even if it was under 15 minutes, but we allowed them to continue to come to work and just, they just needed to monitor their symptoms. So I guess the hard part for us was just learning, first of all, we're doing our own contact tracing, but then also when a person gets this, it's not just the one person that gets it, it's everyone that they have contact. And that's the hard part is we sort of wiped out one area of the library. It was one of the floors. And so it hurt us. And so we decided to do the managers. We were hoping to talk about this at this meeting, but actually we decided to take action. Melissa really felt that her team was in jeopardy of not being able to carry out services with such a reduction in numbers. And so we decided to pair back the number of floors that we had open. We really struggled with wanting to still allow people to come in to self serve to grab their own holds. If everyone needed us to deliver holds, it might be quite intensive outside as curbside. We also have the homeless to think about. We also have folks that come and need to use our internet service, which has been pretty much busy every day. So we had quite a few reasons. We wanted to keep part of the building open, but at the same time pair it back so we could run it with a few less staff. And so that's sort of why we made the decision that we made. We talked to Maeve about it and she was in agreement that this was a good sort of compromise solution to keep the building open as well as make sure that the staff could do what they needed to do to help the public out. So that's sort of where we are right now. I do anticipate we're going to stay in this status for a while since there is such a surge. I just hate to one of the things Melissa stated over and over, she hates to have us go back and forth between opening back full service to cutting back and depending on staffing issues. And it really becomes difficult for the public if we're really inconsistent in our hours. So we would likely stay the way we are for a time anyways. So that's my thoughts right now. I guess kind of open this up for discussion if anybody has some comments or questions. Would anyone like to any comment or question? And just to talk about just how quickly decisions need to be made. It's also the reason why I kind of sent out a group email to you alerting you of these changes and how things are going. And I think they're going as well as as well as we can expect. So looks like there's no questions or comments. So I think Gerard you can take that as a confidence from the trustees that you and your team are continuing to make very good decisions about keeping library staff safe as well as keeping our patrons safe. So let's just hope that our community gets a little bit better with this contagious virus so that we can continue to provide more opportunities for people to access all three floors of our library. Moving on then to 3.4 where I tried to go too earlier. And this is just an update. Nothing to be decided but the Common Council did work through their final stage of the approval of the 2021 budget. Nothing has changed for the library that was presented since last time. So take that as a good thing. So and then we'll start over for next year soon. So yeah. All right then we're moving on to the directors of a port. I should say the more official directors report 4.1 update on services and programming. So although we don't have a lot of programming going on right now I'll hand this over to Melissa to talk about some of the things her team are doing right now. Melissa I'll give you a quick update on what some of our programs are looking like recently. I think last time we met I mentioned the drive-through comic con that we were doing. That was quite successful. We had 85 people come through and collect three comic books and other swag from our program partners including gaming generation and the game board. We also had a hands-on pop art workshop last weekend that was quite successful as well. 40 people participated in that and that was kind of a new setup that we're trying for some of our virtual programs where we have a kit of material that people come to the library to pick up and then they use those items during the online workshop. So that seems to be really successful. People like that hands-on element while also having that interaction with folks during the workshop. And then looking at things both in progress and coming up we are doing the Wizard Academy as a partnership with Dare to Dream Theater that has been wildly successful so far. It's a series of six sessions on Saturdays where kids and teens can sign up to do basically STEM type learning activities that are focused on the Harry Potter world. So for session one we have 50 participants and session two had 42 and looking ahead to things we have planned in December. We're continuing with our story time kits, our craft kits, and we're also working on a New Year's Eve party pack for kids so they can come to the library and get a package of fun stuff to do craft bubbles. We'll have a dance party mix on our YouTube channel that they can tune into as well. So that's fun and exciting. And just to follow up a little bit on what Garrett mentioned about our changes from COVID. This is our first week at that reduced service level and the first couple days were a little wild to be honest because we were doing things totally differently and with significantly less staff and we were pulling in staff from other floors and work areas that had maybe never worked circulation desk or hadn't done it in many many years and we really have seen a surge actually in usage of our computers. I believe a lot of that is connected to this being the open enrollment period for ACA. A lot of folks coming in to complete that sign up. Also lots of folks needing assistance with unemployment filing and things like that. So the computer service is absolutely essential. That's become very clear to me. Faxing and printing as well. So regardless of what form our services take in the future that is going to be something that we have to always keep in mind that that technology access is something that our community is very much in need of. Now that we're almost through the week and we have some staff coming back to work things have eased up quite a bit. I would say our total gate count is overall up from where it was last month which is sort of surprising given where our infection rates are but again I think that speaks to the need in the community to access some of those resources. The good news is we Chase has set us up with this gate counting software where we can get a real-time capture of how many people are in the building at any time. So while our total gate count for the day might hit 500 we're never it doesn't appear that we ever have more than 30 people in the building at one time. So that still feels reasonably safe to me given the other precautions that we have in place. And that's all I have for updates unless there's questions. It doesn't look like this. I'm sorry Chris go ahead. Yeah I was wondering if you're going to be sending anything to the school district about the New Year's Eve thing. Yes we do keep regular communication with the school districts. I can't remember the job title but we call her there Josh who does the communications. She does help share some of our programming information with the school district. I think that's Nicole Fondalli maybe. I think you're right. Yes it's right it's Nicole. Because I am back in the district and I'm subbing again virtual so I don't know if you had a contact person but you do so that's great. Yeah thank you. Okay so we'll move on in the director's report. Cheryl did you have anything from the support services team? A couple of things. So in most of this is from our technical services department or catalogers. They've finished reclassifying our poetry collection and we are hoping to move that collection down to the first floor depending on a wish list item for some shelving. We're also working on adding additional items to the library of things catalogs from Arduino kits. The third floor is also working on some cool stem kits that that we'll be adding. And I just wanted to mention that we will be most likely pulling staff or some of our cataloging staff from tech services to come up and help at some of the service desks in the the coming weeks just to help out with the staffing. Thank you Cheryl. So kind of going back to that first thing we've been debating where poetry should be for years whether that should be on the second floor in the non-fiction area or in the fiction area. So when you go back and have to relabel a whole section it it takes quite a while and so we've been the technical services staff in between the normal acquisitions process has been trying to relabel different titles and place them and make the labels easier to read as well as placing them in different areas and so on. And so it's a lot of work so I appreciate them doing all that work. I think it's we've had some really good feedback on the things they've done so far. So then moving on to update on building projects 4.3 just a few things going on. The biggest thing right now at the libraries we're doing an update of our office furniture so getting like cubicle in place. In the past we've had a very very old furniture in fact you could go down the line and you'd see something from the 50 something 60 something 70s and so on when we look at the dates on them and so it hasn't really been done throughout the whole building at one time and now with COVID we think that this is really a time that we can help staff say stay safer with having a little bit higher profile desks as well as there's ergonomic pieces that we were looking at even before COVID where now you have those sit to stand desks and so we're putting those in place now this is something that the foundation helped us with as well as the the while the 850 money that we used. So this project right now we've gotten through the technical services staff in the basement as well as admin I believe they're very close on finishing the children's area on the third floor and they've started to work now on the second floor staff so and the final piece will be on the first floor area all the staff in there so it's a very big project and it makes people clear out their their desk area which hasn't been cleared out maybe in a long long time so it's been really good in some cases. So that's probably the biggest project going on we're also very near to starting to redo our staff lounge there's very old furniture in there and and the appliances in there haven't worked very well for a while in fact when our maintenance staff and I believe Debbie were in there for the to show what we're looking for when they pulled the oven door open to show them the oven the inside the door fell off so I guess it's time that we get that updated as well and then finally the third thing that we're really kind of focused on is now that we're closed again for the upper floors the maintenance staff had painted a bunch of the third floor when we were closed earlier this spring they're going to try and attack the second floor while they have some time without the public being in there so it's a great opportunity for them to try and add some other colors and update the the second floor area so those are some of the major projects going on right now does anyone have any questions on those okay thank you for the update on the building projects 4.4 the monthly statistics is there anything of note that we should pay attention to in this very unique year of COVID it seems like it's sort of followed the same path that we're on again I mean we're looking at the gate count we're almost at down about 50% so very near to 50% from last year and so again e-content is up and as you've stated our our holds and so on seem to be like bumping way up I guess as Melissa pointed out the other interesting thing on here is just this last month or so we've noticed a real uptake tick in the use of our internet's workstations so perhaps that is as well as Melissa pointed out the ACA applications again for the year that would make a lot of sense as well as job continued to job applicants coming in and I know through Melissa and some of the staff that the people coming in some of them to sign up for jobs have very little experience and that's the struggle is that we give them an hour but yet they they may just need to set up an email account and they haven't done that before and so maybe someone that lost their job and doesn't have that skill set so our staff have to walk them through how to set up an email account and so on so it's it's quite a bit of work so just a thought on that just because you know we all look at the monthly statistics is it a value to sort of have a a tally or just keep track of you know the number of citizens we're helping with a gmail account with job search I mean is you know it's it's challenging because I think once we allow that you know give them the access to the internet we're not really monitoring you know what job but I don't know if there is any value in trying to keep track of that particular service that we're providing at the library maybe to tell a story to you know the council if it was needed but I know Melissa you've done a lot of work on our statistics over the years is that something we've done before we have actually done some tracking of customer service interactions by kind of topic or type to get an idea of we did that once when we were still doing guest passes for computer access as opposed to library card access so that's probably something that we could do kind of a moment in time capture how many of the computer interactions are related to job searching or filing for unemployment health care that kind of thing and share that information yeah I just think that data is just so valuable because it shows a whole different facet of service that maybe people are not really aware that the library really provides for people who really have no other place to get that service and it's critical for their full participation in our community the struggle right now is the job center is not what it once was they've got their clothes down in the office for my as my understanding as well as their staff have been repurposed to really help out with unemployment application forms rather than helping people search for jobs so that that means we're trying to pick up some of that slack all right well thank you um moving on then to uh 5.1 the monarch library system and in looking I don't think Nancy is uh has been able to join us unless unless that is the person who's waiting for the name and a so um so I think we will just hold on the liaison liaison report from monarch until uh the next time we meet in uh January 5.2 the Mead Library Foundation we did meet yesterday uh and uh the highlights that uh I can I can share is that uh the foundation um uh decided that instead of having the annual um luncheon for the advisory committee these are members of the foundation that have uh since stepped down and are longer part of the foundation we have uh for the last couple years invited them once a year to really kind of get an update of what the library is doing what the library is considering in the future to really get their feedback and also to provide them with more information of how they can really be ambassadors for Mead Public Library out in the public uh so we could not do the luncheon uh that is always beautifully put together by Marilyn Montemayor um this year due to COVID but instead we um Jim Williams coordinated a lovely a box of cookies uh that was also uh contributed to by Field to Fork uh so Stefano and Whitney Vigiletti uh participated in a donation of the labor and putting together these lovely cookies um and uh several of us delivered them to various uh former foundation members and it was uh uh very happily received we brought a lot of joy uh as we literally put cookies on a porch rang the doorbell and like stepped away like I felt like I was doing a the child thing of uh you know running away after ringing the doorbell but uh I did wave to people and chat with them from a distance um so that was well received uh the other component that the foundation um is is working on is the recognition that the way we recognize our renaissance society members and their lovely levels of giving uh on the wall that's on the wall where the elevators are it's it's run out of space for names which is a wonderful wonderful problem to have that we have so many members uh but we are now looking at how uh how can you know what what is the next step how can we recognize and yet communicate and celebrate what the foundation has done to the library so the development uh committee is looking at the criteria and then will be exploring some different options and providing that to the board to consider and then um and then the uh the other piece was that we also uh went through and uh several members of the foundation were uh up for potential renewal of their term and we are grateful and thrilled to report that everyone said that they wanted to continue on so uh we have lots of wonderful talented people continuing on to support the foundation and then Kathy i didn't know if you wanted to share anything in particular in regards to the finances but um i thought overall our meeting went quite well and and i think i mentioned last month that uh due to covid we are not having a uh a yuletide reception and we're hoping that we might be able to have something next year um uh when it's a little bit safer for everyone to gather so yeah i will just add a couple things so yeah the the the finance committee of the foundation board has met and just recently and we went over the finances and we're really um uh having a good revenue stream which is what enables us to uh finance the wish list so the investments are doing really well at the foundation level um but i thought i would let you the rest of you also know that Bernie Markovich who is the board chair of the foundation board um is ill right now and he's at St. Nicholas Hospital and he has covid so everybody just keep burning in your thoughts um and hopefully he'll get better quickly we just got a report but during this meeting um Carol Coles uh checked in with him today and apparently he gave her permission to share the news that he's um at St. Nicholas Hospital but he doesn't want anyone to call him because he you know doesn't feel well enough to talk and and i'm just i'm just yeah i'm just going to jump in yeah i he has requested that we not sure that at this meeting because it's a public meeting so uh so uh so i will follow up with everyone via email and a little bit so um whoop goodness uh is there whoops so uh with with uh that i believe the next uh foundation um meeting is uh the foundation meeting will be meeting next i believe in january correct Kathy i i think it's i think the foundation will meet next in jan in january yeah um and uh moving on then to um friends of of me 5.3 the friends have not met um since october and um they will not meet for the remainder of the year they're going to have a social in december um hopefully if that works out okay but they're for the most part really just kind of putting away at book sales right now both in the bookstore as well as um really focusing online and trying to get sales that way and i think that most of the friends are doing um pretty strenuous social distancing right now so i haven't seen or heard from a ton of them um but the email flow has gone around so definitely everybody's getting a little stir crazy but is doing okay all right any questions or comments for the friends all right um the last thing that i would just say is we will be having another special library board meeting sometime in december so i know that sydney is expecting i think she just needs to hear back from a couple of you uh from the doodle of what works for you uh the only item on the agenda will be our evaluation of our library director which we do need to do prior to january 1st of 2021 so stay tuned for that future date otherwise uh i will look forward to seeing all of you uh on the computer screen uh uh january uh 28th of 2021 i don't know about you but that just sounds so futuristic but i i guess that's where we are so um any other uh thoughts otherwise uh would someone like to make a motion to adjourn i have a question uh to sydney um i didn't get the minutes for last meeting in october till about five minutes before this meeting so sydney are you still having trouble with the late email send yes we've had troubles with it all week um so what i think what had happened was i sent out hr minutes instead of board minutes even though i labeled them board minutes they were hr minutes so i did send those out um and i apologize about that and i think that the issue with the email is resolved now um but i'm nervous about it so if y'all are nervous about it you're welcome to email me at my personal email address too um the issue is solved and it's been working okay all day all right all right so at this point would someone like to make a motion to adjourn our meeting second okay move and say all those in favor please say aye hi hi great uh stay safe everyone and i'll see you sometime in december and i get to see the hr committee before then so see you later