##VIDEO ID:auvcLT_brXs## [Music] this is the December 12th 2024 meeting of the kushit public library Board of Trustees we are being audio taped and videotaped and we do have a quorum our first item on the agenda today is the secretary's report from November 14th does anyone have any clarifications or questions on those minutes not we just a motion accept second all in favor I thank you next is the budget so um we are getting close to the end of the year um we had passed our Thanksgiving holiday um which gives uh union members a little bit of more of a um increase in their pay because of the holidays so as you can see for the director of the patron Service uh Services Supervisor we are right where we should be um the library technicians is also right where we should be but a little too close for comfort because we do have uh the F uh Christmas and um New Year's holiday coming up um so that is there's not much room for um to cover shortages um or a meeting or staff meeting um so that's where we are with um the salaries um for operating um I have not receive the bill yet for November for energy um and as we know um the bigger bills come in the winter so I'm expecting the energy line um to be spent a little bit more in the coming months um the telephone bill last meeting I discussed how it was going to be uh split evenly I've received two uh November's 18t Bill and Verizon and I'm happy to announce that it has been split um better um so it it's more it's fair in in terms of that um I purchased a so our flag out that's outside um was ripped in the win uh February of this year and it's been on back ordered I finally received a flag from WB Mason and the flag was out but I took it down yesterday because of the wind and so I've been spending a little so there were some some items that were spent in the office supplies and then I also bought um another scanner um for Lori because Lori um sits uh her desk is in the children's room she has a laptop but she does not have a scanner so this scanner will give her the opportunity to check out items uh to patrons if the desk is busy um it gives her ease of access to um to scan books um to check their records um you need so I am happy to announce that we now have uh full she can now check out items the only thing she can't do is print receipts but 99% of the time patrons don't even care if they don't have a receipt so that um is happening in the children's room so for material um I recently had a free trial for a a free magazine to patrons called book page so this magazine um offers book reviews author interviews and what I hope it does is that it gives patrons ideas of what to read next um Place holds on items so that they're aware of or maybe find something that they you know never or never came across an author before and then there's this author could be in this magazine so um I paid for a year subscription for it it was roughly $414 so each month we'll get 50 issues they're at the desk and patrons can take it uh we offer it to them um and the feedback that we had for the two months was fantastic um there was a lot of interest in it so I decided to to subscribe to it and um it does count towards our material expenditure when we start doing um St dat again um and that's basically it for the budget any questions about budget you know the receipts make good bookmarks oh I know you be surprised what we find as bookmarks I know we have I know we have lots of bookmarks here yes they do I it is it is budget looks good it looks right on track okay anybody have any questions okay just your motion we be accept second all in favor I I thank you and then very quickly I'm just going to go into the monthly stats um so our physical circulation is very similar to last year um and as you know these months it does decrease because of the holidays the weather and so forth um the only thing that went up was our DVD circulation which I do believe is because I've been purchasing more DVDs um and then I know I say it every month but our E Resources you can see eBooks e audio and magazines extremely extremely um they they've increased once again um Museum passes have also slightly increased so last year we checked out four for the month of November and this year we checked out seven um which is is pretty good for when it's not a um for not the summer because when it's summer they're um they're constantly check out especially the parks pass um but you can see the number in total from last year we had 6,689 and then this year we're at 6,677 so very close um once again hoopla is absolutely being used by our patrons um I think I mentioned at last meeting that I did put in more funds to hoopla because we're we're just using yet patrons are using yet um and then I just wanted to note that our computer sessions have been um pretty high so we had 159 um login sessions on our computers and we have been noticing um some younger adults coming in to do schoolwork of some sort so I'm always happy when we see teenagers in here cuz they're the hardest to get into the library but they're thinking of us or they're and they're using the computer for school purposes cuz I could see we can see so that's it quickly just about the statistics any questions about the statistics anybody no all right moving on to Old business the flower beds so the Boy Scouts came and did a great job yes and I had forgotten how fun that age group is cuz I was here with them and uh I really had an a a lot of fun so I went to their meeting um Dr to Elizabeth about this and I went to their um committee meeting and uh thanked them for coming and also we've got a commitment from them to come in the spring to clean it up again and also to they have a dad who's a landscaper in fact I I he played baseball with one of one of my kids and they are willing to Edge the flower beds meaning cut them but not put anything there and they'll also arrange to have the mulch put in at a cost that's going to be around somewhere $200 to $250 so they're willing to come in the spring whenever we're ready to have them come but they're not an option for long-term taking care of the flower beds for a couple of reasons um they're not a big enough group to begin with but second of all they don't meet much in the summer they're they're you know busy with summer camp and things like that and also I'll say this carefully they did a couple of Eagle projects here in town and got stuck with maintaining them and town said Okay that was very nice now please continue to maintain them and the problem is with an an Eagle project is finite it's not really supposed to go on to get forever so when that Scout completes the Eagle project and and gets passed off on it the troop has ended up getting um I don't want to stay stuck I'll say responsible uh for maintaining those and that's been a difficult process for them so they're they would be lery anyways of of doing that so I've chatted with Elizabeth probably in uh next couple of meetings we'll have some more ideas of maybe how what we can do and okay but the the kids were great they're willing to come again and um you know the whole material cost should be around 250 if we could talk uh friends of the library into paying for it that' be terrific absolutely they did it great job it looks wonderful out there so thank you very much to the Boy Scouts for doing that for us and for uh for meeting with them as well and um it sounds like a great idea to get us going in the spring um you know absolutely it should be and then like you said just to we'll explore other ideas to try to figure out what to do from there but even if you know they can get us started that'd be yeah absolutely I mean I know it hasn't been mulched for at least a year and a half so yeah desperately need that absolutely be a nice refresh that'll be good all right that sounds good all thank you thank you anybody else have anything else on the flower beds the ptical also out from the list yes oh my goodness the install Light under the foro so I I uh reached out to colie um and finally the light was installed on Friday December 6 so Tim from Old Colony and his students came in um they came in and looked at the project said yes and then on Friday they came in and physically installed it and they also I mentioned the walkway lights there was one that kind of tipped over they also ran a Stak through one of them for us so at least they're upright I went ahead and glued the tops we'll see how long it lasts um but he did mention that those lights should have been maybe pushed in a little bit more because the reason they're falling is they get hit by snow um mowers who knows all kinds of things walking yes exactly so and I just wanted to give another shout out on Monday when I was leaving I was like it's awfully dark out here so as I was driving all the lights were off on the outside so I was like oh yes so I come back in and I'm like I know they went to shut the fuse off for that area so I go downstairs look and I can't figure out so I I reached out to Tim and he led me to the fuse that I needed to switch again for some reason yes so it was an emergency and I'm really grateful that um he was able to uh talk me through and it was literally just toggling a switch for some reason it just didn't reset to where it should have been so the lights were on but it was really dangerous out there um and I was I couldn't even see in front of me as I was leaving the building so but now I know where the the switch is for the lights outside good so I just wanted to I was really pleased with they work and and and it was um you know it was a simple project for them but it was um it was good that they were here and um Tim also said that he did work in this building and he was a student all right there we go yeah so thank you well that was a good that was a good idea to reach out to the Old Colony students yes it was yes it was resource to use abely and it was great and thank you very much for coming out here and finishing finally finishing lights on too morning to go I haven't received the invoice but I guess we could say it's it's wrapped it's wrapped 2024 ended on a positive note for the library at the library thank goodness all right moving on to new business the 2024 annual report so um the annual report um is usually um submitted at the beginning of the following year um I haven't had any notification about it but I was being really proactive and I completed uh at least the wording of our annual report the statistic part I will obviously do at the beginning of next year because we're still in 2024 but that's just numbers of circulating items number of of number of programs um which you have all seen um when I did the financial report the only thing that's different is this is from January to December the state aid is from it's the fiscal year um but when I when that's done I and then when I get notification of when to submit this I'll go ahead once this is approved and submit it so so um just the first paragraph I just briefly talked about uh some change over in the children's room positions and the importance of having a full-time position um and then briefly talked about uh some of the programs that we regularly have here um and then the second paragraph I talked about our building issues so we have the pipes the paint and the Portico so the pipes were replaced in February the paint was certain areas of the library we repainted in the summer and the Portico was finally finished um and then I also threw a little shout out to the Boy Scout Troops for cleaning our flower beds which you know um and then in the third paragraph I just talked about the increase in E Resources I feel like that is really important um because I feel like we're switching maybe our model um I mean was still going to physically buy books but there's definitely an increase in e- resource uh usage um and then the highlights I just talked about our summer concerts you know it's very popular the support of the friends our summer reading program and um some of the authors that we had this year um and some of the uh workshops that we also had in the community room that were sponsored by the friends um and then the rest is it's just technical information about um state aid the libraries what we offer so most of this doesn't really change from year to year except the Museum passes so that was changed CU I added the um follow a children museum in the New England Aquarium um hours of operation staff I just update you know to the current staff and then State a is the requirements are still the same and that's basically Bally it for um the annual Town report so if this gets approved and then when I get the okay to submit it I will go ahead and just submit it and have one less thing to worry about um so any questions or anything I should edit add um on the town on the annual report this is what goes in the book at the town meeting yes did anybody have any edits to the to the part I think you didn't EX exellent job it was great thank you it's hard I mean I could write 20 pages of what happened this past year this was great you really highlight I think you had the key the things that was really it was really good it was really good I mean I didn't add the tent blowing yeah there's always something just just a quick question when this goes to the town yes do they choose the font and everything or yes so I sub a Word document and I believe a PDF and then they format it to fit a in the book in the book I I was just curious and it almost seems anything we could do to highlight what the state certification is all yeah I can I can V I don't know if that's possible or it went cour printed in color but I can bold percentages and and better only because frankly I didn't have a clear I got on the board and how important that relationship is for the state and what we do and what we can do and if you lose it how bad yeah and if you lose it how bad it be it really is bad only you know not a criticism but just I mean that's people will ask me about it and that's the first thing I go into it this is why it's so important no I can I can bow things I I don't believe it's printed in color um but I can bold and I can even add a I don't think if there's a part of what happens if we don't get State a no but that what you've got in terms of just highlighting it yeah just highlighting it that's a sort of a protective rather than saying well you better take care of this or we can preach that verbally right abely okay those of you only edits do we want to make a motion motion to accept o second all in favor hi thank you the FY 26 budget And So It Begins So It Begins the next 6 months or so we'll be dealing with uh the FY 26 budget so what you have in front of you is a proposed FY 26 budget um I'm going to go line for line very briefly so starting with Library salaries the library director and the patient service supervisor uh we are now in a union so those rates reflect what the next step would be uh for FY 26 which is a 2% uh increase so that's pretty straightforward um the library text and the children's room assistant their contract is expiring at the end of this fiscal year I have two previous contracts from when I was a tech and to the newest contract and I just used what the grid had for both which was 3333 and 2.5 so I calculated uh colas for uh the Tex and the children's room Services um uh children's room assistant and uh anniversary steps so what you see for those two um lines are what I calculated with um the 3% for both Cola and um the anniversary um there's only one Patron uh there's only one staff member who would be at the last step which is 2.5 and I did use that formula for that so um so I'm going in blindly with this because they're in negotiations for that and then longevity is pretty straightforward um I use the formula that is on the current contract so if any of this changes um you know we'll have to adjust um any questions on the salaries no anybody no um just a historical question somebody may or may not know from the 2023 budget to 2024 we had a significant drop did we have less technicians after that so the full the 2023 2024 what happened is the children's room assistant used to be it's a tech 3 position that was part-time it became fulltime in 2024 and then the custodian so they kind of Switched so the custodian um no longer gets paid from the the library budget it gets paid from the town hall budget thanks you're welcome anything else no okay um energy last year as you know we were it was disc it was mentioned that the rate was going up um so we prepared for a higher energy line um right now it's steady it's better than it was when the contract that they were on ended um so I don't know if that's changing that's you know it's definitely a question I need to ask um the accountant or the town administ tror um because they would know what the contract is for our energy but that being said um I I do keeping it um at 15,000 and um I think that it's a good median between the high high number that I had last year and where it is this year um and then um building and grounds Remains the Same office equipment Remains the Same Tech support which is our contract through sales for tech support that I get a um an estimate um every year so that is uh what you see there and not negotiable basically um Telephone um a little tricky um I think we went in too low last year um so we are increasing it again now that we have uh a better idea of the bill um and I I I will admit I thought we were getting rid of a line when we got the wireless phones um the Wi-Fi phone I shouldn't say wireless phone cuz that's a different thing they're Wi-Fi phones right but we still have AT&T and Verizon so I was wrong on that um so this year we're probably going to run short on our telephone phone and maybe that's why I've been really picky with the telephone bill um but so that's why it's increased again uh for FY 26 um education Remains the Same sales expenses like tech support is a sales contract so that's non-negotiable um office supplies Remains the Same um children's room supplies Remains the Same materials I upt it by a th000 in the event of um the cost of things going up um you know especially to purchase E Resources um when you purchase something like an audio book or an ebook you can either pay by use or just pay for like a month or or 12 months um but the Publishers jacking up those prices so and that's no fault of us or anyone it's need to make money so and then um travel Remains the Same so that um in total we would have a budget of 308 527 and then just as a reminder the mar for FY 26 will be 30378 so in total it would put us at a 3% uh increase from last year which most of it is coming from contractual things uh so I believe this is a good start um I will be meeting with the Town Administrator tomorrow to discuss the FY 26 budget um and I'll see what he is going to to tell me about the budget so this I know this will change again and this just the the nature of the beast when it comes to budgeting so any questions that I might have missed or there's something that looks off um I think it's a great start I think yeah it's a good place to be y okay absolutely okay and if you see something you know I don't know if you would look at this at home when you're not here you can always shoot me an email well you feel comfortable about the numbers where we are and what so as long as you feel comfortable about things staying the same and we being able to manage just like you said with the telephone okay hey we thought that was going away that's why that's increasing but now going forward it it won't be increasing again it'll just be I mean if you know I could keep it you know the the splitting of the bill that wasn't unfair we know this is going to take a while to make sure that it's okay right right right so but you know we're we're going to be coming up short this FY but um but everything else you know everything here I have my reasoning behind and I feel confident behind it okay um L last year it was my first time doing it now I know what to expect now it's going to change again yeah good so okay but you know our favorite number our most important number is here and we are slightly above it so which is good yes okay yep do we want to make a motion to accept the draft make a motion to budget I'll second all in favor I I thank you great [Music] job and the director's report all right so November was pretty busy here uh we had uh laen Bole a well-known local author um who deals with True Crime especially with the highway killings was here um we had over 35 people for that event so this place was pretty busy and then this past Saturday we had um an Alfred who presented his book The French of new befet it was well received we had a believe close to 40 people that were in here wow that's good yes he sold about 50 books wow um and people were really enjoying it he has ties to he grew up in in the christianet so he thought of us and um he this was the first place he had his author talk and he's actually I think this weekend he's going to be at seeing anon's in new Buffett so we were excited um that he was here patrons really enjoyed it um and um we will have a a copy of his book um we also had a a watercolor class uh with Lana Quan that was two Mondays ago that was completely full so we had 20 people in here and all those events were sponsored by the friends um I just wanted to give kudos to Lori a children's room assistant she went to the school twice this uh past month she went to um the first PTO meeting for herself she went there and then she last Friday she went to read to the first and the fifth graders at the elementary school um I guess it's an annual program where the the fifth graders read to the first graders and then um there's guest readers and then they collect pajamas um so and then she's also going this Monday to hand out library cards to the first graders and I believe believe she's doing a little story time there so she's been very busy very you know she's doing the community outreach and I know part of this position the full-time position was to get out there and to do it and it relieved some of the pressures on me and I am so grateful for that especially right now um so uh let's see another thing that has happened but I kind of haven't mentioned it um so in our library calendar we used something we used to use something called Vent keeper which was based out of Plymouth the company went under they yes so they um basically were they just stopped support no refunds they just fell off the face of the Earth and this is a company that sales has been doing work uh has been in contract with for over 15 years wow so our calendar we use it quite frequently cuz we need to know what's going on that's how we schedule things so there are a lot of options out there expensive options you know we're a tiny we're a small Library we don't need anything fancy so sales did pull together some different softwares um so I started a trial with Hui um which sounds kind of funny but so Hui um basically took our calendar and imported it into huat and then we've been using it for a free trial so I decided to keep it because it's the one it's the cheapest option and two it's nice so they are going to send us an invoice but it's going to be prated from January to June um and then and I think it probably be like around $ 350 and then yearly it's $700 when we had event keeper event keeper was uh 400 and $10 um we use or historically the libraries have the library has paid for a vent keeper using state aid so I'm not too worried about the funding for it um but we don't we didn't need reservation systems for rooms and and we you know we can manage this on pen and paper um so that um if you do use our calendar align it does look different so you can actually there's more options you can narrow down let's say you just want events for kids 5 to 11 you could click on that and it will just show you a cal so like in the summer it would be nice you know cuz we have a lot more programming and um if you want to see when all of the meetings are for uh the trustees you can just select the board of trusties so it's a little bit more um user friendly it's color coordinated um it was a little bit of trial and error to learn to use it but I I'm happy with it and we decided to I decided to to keep it um I mean our opt we were thrown into this you know we needed a calendar so um and there's only so much that Google Calendar can do and it just it would have been a mess so I also have some news to announce we received are are going to receive our first uh state aid award um so I am pleased that all the work that went into doing the survey over the summer um went through so we'll be receiving that I believe in January and then the second one is either in March or April and that one I don't know um the cost the the award amount um so for Action items through the town so it uh November 18th I attended a meeting about the master plan inis is um going to do their ma redo their master plan their last master plan was from 2008 so um they're in preliminary um they're in the preliminary steps so they're you know they desperately need Community out put uh input um of what kush residents want so you will be seeing a lot about that on the Kush on the town of a cushion at web page um in probably I did say I would post on social media for them um they did reach out to me and asked if we could I offered you know we do have a space if you wanted to do something or put a table out I did say in the summer but unfortunately the summer is too late for their research because you know we could have up to 300 people out a lot um so I did say that we do have some events coming up in January if they wanted to set up a table and then they also mentioned if a program maybe they could have like what is your ideal town like for little ones so I'm like we're open to anything know our space is available so we'll there'll be more um I'll have more information about that when they get back to me um and then just a couple of announcements so next Wednesday we have Cam shave here for our holiday jazz concert and that's at 6:00 and that's Wednesday December 18th I hope you'll all be here they're really good and then on Saturday uh December 2st we have a drop- in craft with Lori and they're use they're creating icicle be U icicles made out of the really really pretty uh glass beads um well not glass but they look like that yes sparkly yes they're absolutely beautiful so they be there'll be icicles you can make a wreath um and then um there will also be some holiday treats and this is sponsored by the friends of the Kush public library and then my favorite one is on Monday December 30th we're going to have New Year's crafts so Lori we got some nice really pretty um um thicker paper like contact paper so so they can make hats and crowns and then we have empty pill bottles so they can make noise makers nice so and that is also sponsored by the friends so um because it's a school vacation week you know we having it in the afternoon um so we hope people can attend and um make some notes all right any questions about the director's report you've been busy you've definitely been busy great stop all right does anyone have anything else that they want to talk about no okay can we set the next meeting date which is always a favorite I'm just going to say if you want to keep Thursdays that's okay um do we like Thursdays better than Wednesdays time and date is fine with me yeah do we is 11:30 okay Everyone likes 11:30 that work for you 11:30 all right so let me see um yes so Thursday January 9th at 11:30 perfect excellent okay we can do that perfect okay that works if we have no other business motion to adjourn second all in favor hi hi this December 12th 2024 meeting of the chrisan public library Board of Trustees is officially adjourned it is 1210 thank you [Music]