No preview available
HomeMy WebLinkAbout1996-11-11 MinutesBoard of Trustees Meeting Fayetteville Public Library November 11, 1996 Present: Board members: Mark Burdette, Michael Thomas, Steve Singleton, Mary Parsons, Maury Roberts, Library Staff: Linda Harrison, June Jefferson, David Johnson, Pat Schram, Lolly Maxey, Lynnaire Hartsell, and Melanie Stockdell. 1. Call to order: Thomas called the meeting to order at 4:00 pm. 2. Approval of Minutes: Burdette moved to approve the minutes of the October 11 meeting as submitted, seconded by Singleton. Parsons asked for clarification of voluntary millage and discretionary millage. Harrison said the city has 5 mills that they can levy at the discretion of the council, and they are not currently levying any of this because it was the mayor's promise that if the citizens reinstated the sales tax, he would abolish any mills. This is still an option at the discretion of the city council. A voluntary millage is separate from the discretionary millages and can be achieved through an annual ordinance or resolution of a city council, then passed on to be added to the annual county tax bills sent out to county residents. Currently Fayetteville does not have a voluntary millage such as that levied for libraries as Springdale does. All voted AYE to accept the minutes. 3. Correspondence: Harrison reported on the following correspondence:(1) a memo from Steve Singleton about a conversation with Susan Driver of the Fayetteville Parks and Recreation Commission about the library applying for some of the parks' A & P money. Singleton said he felt that FPL should try to build a broad based concensus for funding before approaching this commission. Discussion followed about the library being considered a recreational facility and the process involved in applying for different funds. Everyone agreed that it would be a good idea to ask Susan Driver to come to a FPL Board meeting and discuss the process that we need to follow. (2) A letter that was sent to the Governor's Commission on Library Laws from FPL Board of Trustees. Duree said the letter from us and one from Springdale was very helpful to the commission in understanding our position. (3) A letter from Boatmen's. (4) Three memos from Duree about the County Library Board meeting and Ozarks Regional Library Board meeting. (5) A letter to Cary Arsaga from Stockdell thanking them for providing coffee for the library. (6) Three clippings about the Celebration of the Spoken Word/Arts and Humanities Month readings held at the library October 19. Harrison said the event was a great success and patrons who attended said they would like to see more events like this. Jefferson said a total of 102 people came throughout the day -long presentation of readings by over 20 members of the community. (7) A newspaper article about the Friends Book sale which netted $1000 over last year's sale. (8) A clipping about the gift from the Lion's Club to the Library to buy books on diabetes. (9) An article about the florist's horse which mentions Maxey and the children's project last April. (10) An article from the Atlanta Constitution. (11) An article about the San Francisco library. (12) An article about the effects of fungus on old books. (13) A tip -sheet from the American Library Association. 4. Librarian's Reports a. Statistical and Financial Reports: Harrison presented the statistical and financial reports. Thomas noted that the registrations in children's were down from last year. Singleton asked if that was because of the new construction last year. Harrison said there were two new elementary schools built last year that did not have usable libraries until after Christmas, and so used FPL as their source, and that could explain more registrations last year as opposed to this year. Harrison noted that the volunteer hours were up and felt this might be due to the Friends being more thorough about reporting their hours. In the financial report, Harrison pointed out that the library is not really overdrawn, she has not had time to reconcile the check book to the bank statement yet. A CD that is in the long-term development money matures on 11-15-96 for $212,000. $200,000 of that has been designated for the automation project. A decision has to be made as to what to do with the this money. Do we want to put the $200,000 into a separate account entirely or put it into accounts that we already have? Burdette asked when we will need this money? Harrison said this month - the electricians will be finished on Friday and we already have one bill from them, and we will be buying hardware and furniture before the end of the year. Thomas and Burdette said they felt a separate bank account should be set up for this, so it will be easier to keep track of these expenses. Burdette said he felt this money should be put into a Money Market Account. Thomas said for Parsons to shop around and find the best rate for a Money Market and open an account there. Burdette said sometimes a financial institution will give a nonprofit organization better rates. Thomas suggested Parsons contact John Lewis at the Bank of Fayetteville. It was also pointed out that we need to be sure that all of the money is covered by FDIC and not just $100,000. Parsons said she would take care of this. b. Report on Automation Project: Johnson said FPL is going to have a total bid package of our own rather than what ORL did. We will be completing that bid and it will be advertised in this Sunday's paper. This bid will cover everything - including work stations, file server, all of the CD towers, and a 100 hour block of systems administration and debugging. c. Name tags: Harrison said that this was discussed at staff meeting and staff feels comfortable with a tag denoting that they are staff and what department they work in, but do not want their names on the tags for security reasons. Staff members have been harrassed by people who have found out their names. Thomas and Parsons said they would like for staff to wear name tags, but if staff didn't want their name on it, it should at least identify them as librarians. Thomas said he felt the volunteers should have tags to identify them as volunteers. Hartsell noted that on a recent visit to CALS, the staff wore tags which identified them only as library staff; no names were used. d. Report on CIP Budget: Thomas and Harrison reported on attending the CIP Budget meeting where they presented our request to reinstate $3000 for the library into the CIP Budget. Harrison told the attendees at this meeting about the patron survey where 91.5% of the respondents said that they wanted more books, and this $3000 is for more books. Johnson reported on the next CIP meeting where the first thing Ben Mayes said is that the $3000 for the library has been reinstated. e. Report on Pay Matrix: Harrison said that the $5000 transferred to us by Kevin Crosson to implement the pay matrix is on this financial report. Jefferson said the pay matrix for 1996 can be implemented in November for November and December. Harrison said the budget request contained a request to maintain this pay matrix in 1997. Thomas said that the first time this comes up in city budget meetings that we can attend, we should be sure that they know how we feel about this. Schram noted that if the city gave us the money to implement this, the intent should be to provide for this in the future. Singleton said we need to have a clear presentation to make to the City Council as to exactly what the money we are asking for is for. Thomas said we need to be very clear about the points that need to be covered. Harrison said she would like to start working on this now, so we don't get surprised with a meeting on 24 hours notice. Harrison said staff would work on information on the presentation that needed to be made. 5. Trustee's Committee Reports: a. Alternative Funding: Singleton reported on the fund raising committee meeting of October 16. One of the goals of the previous meeting was to approach ad agencies to design a new logo for the library free of charge except for the publicity they would get. Four of the top ad agency design firms were approached and they are competing against each other for this project. At the next meeting the committee will choose which of the designs will get the project. The chosen agency will provide this for us free as a public service. Singleton said he had drafted some copy for a general fund-raising brochure. A graph is being made of where the funding for the library comes from. The committee made a list of accomplishments of the library. Some goals for the next meeting include (1) find some cheap printing, which Singleton said he did, (2) determine fund raising mechanisms, ie. define fund-raising contacts and responsibilities within the library, (3) coordinate our activities with the Friends (4) need to earmark some money for plaques to recognize people who do donate to the library, and (5) look at the logos and decide on the best one. Singleton said he had a tentative OK for someone to fund the changing table for the Children's section bathroom. Thomas suggested that the chairs in the magazine section need to be recovered. It has been at least 10 years since this has been done. He said he had just had some upolstering done and the man that did it did good work and had very reasonable prices. He said he charged $40.00 a chair plus the material. Thomas suggested to Singleton to approach some fabric stores to see if we could get the material donated. We would need 25 yards. Stockdell suggested we approach some interior designers and get them to compete to create lovely reading spaces at the library. b. Long -Term Planning: Roberts passed to Parsons to report on the seminar that she attended on Boards of Nonprofit Organizations led by Keith Vire. She passed out packets that she got at this seminar for the other board members. Parsons said Mr. Vire offered to donate 2 hours of his time to come and talk to the board. c. Volunteers: Johnson reported on the Lending Hands program. There has been a change in who we contact at the Meals on Wheels. The new person is Charity Hansford, and he has not gotten in contact with her yet. Genie Donovan has gotten 15 volunteers to help with this program. We are now creating a flyer to distribute among the Meals on Wheels participants and determining the costs and procedures for this program. A person from Meals on Wheels will come and talk to our volunteers and tell them what to expect when going into these homes and how to approach these individuals, and then walk the volunteers through the procedure. No date has been set for this yet. Harrison said the date the staff wanted to have the Appreciation Party for the volunteers is January 10. This year we have 114, 15 volunteers for the Books on Wheels, 30 staff members, and junior helpers. Thomas suggested that Harriet Nieman and David Mersky at 40 North Crossover be approached to cater this party. Another place to ask is the old winery on Hwy. 112. The Board will pay for this party. 6. Other Business: Harrison reported on Harold Dahlinger, the City Building Supervisor, who has looked at several places at the library that need to be changed to meet the new ADA codes. One is the step at the back dock. People in wheelchairs cannot get to the Book Return because of this step. Upstairs in the magazine area the double doors that go out on to the deck is the only fire exit. He is going to put in a railing from the right hand door as you're looking out across the deck and back to the other bridge so that people in wheel chairs can get out of the building in the event of fire. The left door will have to be sealed because of the way it swings open makes it inaccessable to a wheel chair. He also looked at the leak problems in the atrium in the annex and is working on that. The ADA problems with the building the City will pay for to be corrected. Harrison reported on the A & P Grant for genealogy. Johnson delivered the presentation and they are scheduled to meet at 2:00 on Wed. to decide. Johnson will attend this meeting. There was a brief discussion of the items on the agenda for the upcoming County Board meeting. Duree briefly outlined the problem with the Winslow Library and their not funding automation there. Jefferson said that there was a lot of support among the citizens of Winslow for the automation and the library, and they are going to appear before their city council this evening to try to convince them to support their library. The other item was the librarian that does the regional children's programs. Duree feels that the position pays more than it should for the amount of participation in the programs. She is proposing making the position part-time. 7. Adjournment Burdette moved to adjourn and Singleton seconded at 5:50 pm. All AYE. Respectfully submitted by Carolyn Diemente.