so I'm going to call to order an open meeting this meeting has been advertised in accordance with the New Jersey open public meetings act and it's public publicly accessible in accordance with law roll call please Rocco here David citadino Dr George here
Sarah here Maria Rosemary Zab Gina here Maddie here mayor
Walker and Frank Weber I just got a call from Weber but I hung up on him so he's probably trying to log in okay um all right salute to the flag I pledge allegiance to the flag the
flag the United States United States of America and to the under God indivisible for all um all right so at this time we'll call to go into executive
session and I am motion oh okay make a motion to go into executive session I'll make the motion right second I second it thank you
all right so first I am putting our guests into the waiting room um that's going to take me just a second everyone everyone in favor of that motion oh sorry all I say I I there
Chris I'll get there I promise no problem no problem all right so I now have everyone put into the waiting room and I am pausing the recording recing back on and I am letting all of the public back into the meeting okay
perfect and then we'll go right to the minutes okay welcome back everybody thank you for your patience um jumping right into the agenda can I have a motion to approve the regular meeting minutes of January 8 2025 you you can do a and b combined Sarah and an approval of the executive meeting minutes of
January 8th 2025 I'll make a motion second oh sorry Rocco that's okay all right roll call you're M you're on mute Linda sorry very 2020 okay
Rocco yes Maddie yes Sarah yes Dr George oh Gina yes and Frank Weber yes all right um so dropping down to
Personnel can I have a motion to can I do all these or are they separate Chris um you can yeah actually unless there's any objection from the trustees you can do a through e Al together
okay um do I have to read them all yes one by one okay um so I'm going to make a motion for to accept the resignation of part-time staff librarian Adult Services Cheryl effective February 16 2025 um also to approve the appointment
of full-time staff librarian of Adult Services Cheryl at an annual St salary of $646 n427 effective February 17th 2025 then the appr to approve the appointment of PDM librarian Tammy yeden
at an hourly rate of $348 to February 17th and approved the appointment of PDM librarian Kayla Glenn at an hourly rate of $348 effect of February 17th 2025 and approve the appointment of part-time staff librarian Adult Services Lauren
Baron at an hourly rate of $ 3555 effective February 17 2025 discussion need a motion first TR uh I'll make the motion any second okay thanks Gina any
discussion uh yeah item a uh how long had Cheryl been with us and did she give us a reason for leaving so this yeah sorry go ahead sorry go ahead joh no no it's fine so um because we had um a resignation of one
of our full-time Librarians uh who went out on a family leave and has requested um going into the her position part-time and we have a part-timer which is that person who has been with us correct me
if I'm wrong Linda for about two years uh yeah 2022 yeah and she is desirous of the full-time position so we went through um the process of um advertising positions and um interviewing and that
was um submitted to the Personnel committee so essentially what will happen is Cheryl will move into the full-time position formerly held by Lauren and Lauren will move into Cheryl's part-time position they both have an excellent record of
service um and then the temporary Librarians who covered a maternity leave are uh have both worked out really well um so we're putting them into our PDM pool because they both asked to stay on
with us um in any capacity that we have all right now then the other question I have is uh the annual salary that Cheryl is going to be getting is that on a scale or is that you know where where does that
number come from the 6469418503 day yeah I mean per DM um can be anything over four hours if I'm correct Linda yes okay so um actually Frank that's a very good observation um because the having a
difference in rate between a part-time staff member and a PDM staff member um I'm not entirely sure of why we would do that because we now have people that when they were temporary in employees their salary is going to be going down
in a very minor way but it's going to be going down I think that the the work that they're doing in my opinion should be compensated equally with our um part-time rate um but I don't know if that's a matter for another
meeting yeah well the other thing is if you do if you are full-time you are eligible for some benefits that are not available to you so that's got to be considered in the uh what whatever the discussion takes okay thank
you okay roll call Maddie yes Sarah yes Dr George yes Gina yes and Frank Weber
yes you skipped Rocko yeah I'm a yes too sorry um all right so moving to finance I need a motion to action on the February 12th 2025 Bill listing in the amount of 221,50
$525 76 thank you second thank you roll call or discussion yes discussion one of the items on there is the uh $222,000 for uh I forget the name of the company
but uh I got a copy of the original a order and it was $188,800 and I'm wondering where the other 5,000 4,000 came from I think I'd need to know exactly what which um we're talking
about and just so you know the treasurer went over all of the bills and she reported to Linda that she had no questions all well I do have a question and I know she may have said she has no questions but I got a copy of the
original in invoice in other words what I'm going to suggest is on something of this nature that maybe we get a copy of the actual bill in excess of c a certain amount so here's one of the things that um this is why typically it's gone
through with Maria and quite honestly anyone um who goes through that I understand what you're saying if I can respond um so what happens is we may have approved 18,000 for a vendor for batteries for the servers that's one of
the things that's been a bigger project that's coming to mind then we may also have ordered a new cabling system for the tower so those are two different estimates so that's why I'm saying with the specifics and you know if I'm asked
these things before the meeting I can have all of the um I can have all of the information to answer your question more effectively well um I'll talk to Maria okay okay um roll call Sarah yes Dr
George Gina yes Mr Weber abstain Roo yes Maddie yes okay all right moving to Old business a
motion to approve the quote from Envision wear and the amount of $ 22368 189 for the x25 kiosk and RFID readers can I make can I have someone make a motion I can make
it second I'll second it roll call Roo yes Maddie yes Sarah yes Dr George St
Gina yes and Frank Weber no okay moving to new business is there anything there Don um Linda if you can update me I apologize I have one of the previous agendas in front of
me was n and it's just stupid business anything you have okay so um I don't have anything for new business everything else is for director's report go go on we didn't do uh the FMLA oh I'm so sorry after we came out
of executive session so um the uh motion for approving the FMLA for employee number 1476 as has been reviewed by the board
attorney make a motion I'll second it roll call Rocco yes Maddie yes Sarah yes Dr George
yes Gina yes and Frank Weber yes and jumping to director um director's report one of the things that I wanted to share with all of you um I sent you and um the idea
Farm survey this is for a couple of different things um it ties in with March 22nd which is our maker day coming up this is a Statewide event and we're preparing for it by getting the idea Farm ready um by making sure that the
council gets an invitation to the event um and we're partnering with other groups like um the middle sex County Youth Arts um Festival week that we're going to be hosting in Oldbridge as well so that we're really making it but this
survey I think just shows you the power of what we can do on our own and it gave us some surprising um feedback so I'll just go over it really quickly just to give you highlights um so these were Oldbridge people it wasn't people coming
from other communities we had 130 people take this survey and I'm really excited about that that's a pretty decent number and in addition to that we're using this opportunity Unity um to grow our communication with the community um so
we made sure that we asked at the end of the survey if people wanted to receive updates about the idea farm so we're now going to be able to Target email blast at those people and they've asked us for it we're not soliciting people so Sarah
you know for marketing when you get people to ask for the information that's that's the win um so we have that information it's being used the majority of people who are interested were overwhelmingly our 25 to
64 age group um and that is extremely important if you look at Oldbridge demographics we have 65,000 people in our community and about 10,000 of those are under the age of 18 beyond that 12%
are seniors so the bulk of our population is between 25 and 64 and those are the people who are really interested in a maker space where people are learning about sewing and painting and 3D printing and this transfer of
information and knowledge that goes beyond books you may have heard about maker spaces and it's largely targeted at kids and we're going to make sure that they're included but this is um this is really important information so people are most interested in our digit
ization Services which have already started you can bring your old VHS tapes and have them comp uh computed to computer readable files and your old um sorry what did we used to call them when we took film pictures negatives
negatives and slides can all be digitized um sewing and Fiber Arts 3D printing vinyl cutting paper crafts um and then we've also asked what they want to see in the future and that's again Garden in kitchen Arts um and what was
also extremely important was we asked um would you pay be willing to pay a small fee for materials related to the project so that means that if it cost $5 for the materials rather than the library having
to pick up that fee people um 90% of the people who responded said they would be willing to pay any fees um that the library um did for that the other important part is that people don't want to do their training via Zoom people want to do
their training in person so they want to have the actual direct um experience and they don't want to come in and use it on their own they want group classes group instruction and demonstrations so I just wanted to give you that survey just so
you can really see what we're doing how we're doing doing it and making sure um that these directions that we're heading in we're Gathering um information to do so strategically one uh one comment on the demographics there probably 13,000 or
better kids who are under 18 because uh we have just 8,000 in the in the 13 public grades and when you take factoring the other five years that'll give you another three or 4 th000 plus whatever kids are going to parochial schools or private schools uh the other
thing in a list 20 years the average age has gone up almost about eight or nine years of the average age in the town which is closer to 46 so just so you enough yeah absolutely um I just want you to know that we are you know we're looking at that information as we we
make our plans so that you know how we're doing this um we are the requested um equipment today for our self check so the big project that we passed was the RFID that
project is starting on March 10th and that's going to be about six weeks to tag the whole collection what was approved tonight is the actual self-check machine the self check pads and um training for um for for that
program so we will not be renewing our old machine which is incompatible with our catalog software so um we won't be renewing that $500 annual fee so we're catching um all of these expenses as we
transition so there'll be savings to counter um what we're spending um Dr George you had asked before um about getting um a capacity on the garden um and I've requested that again I met with
the fire marshall um because they're also going through Lawrence Harbor but that number's coming and just so you know that Garden actually has two exits out to the parking lot in addition to the four doors that go to the inside of
the library so we will be working with them and hopefully I'll have a final answer for you soon concern about that was when you change the use of that space from being a garden and not having people in it and
you talked about putting tables and chairs and activ that it's I wanted to know if the fire department told us how many people can be in there because in the past they have told us that for every space in the library I also don't know whether or not
our insurance company knows that we change the use of that and is that relevant in any way I don't know that's what I think goes into changing use and uh you know making something active the
other thing with its surveys the survey that you just quoted is telling us what people who already use the library want to see to use it more which is fine I have no problem with that but when are we going to do a survey that does the rest the majority of the people who live
and pay taxes and oage what's going to get them to the library and we're never going to find that out and we I Dr George I have to tell you we are um but we're going to have to use some non-traditional methods um as an example
when I was in Wyoming I sent staff into the grocery store with a survey in clip horts because I wanted them to go in and start to talk do you know that we have cookbooks do you know that we have consumer digest things like that but my staff was shocked to find that the
majority of people in that grocery store didn't have a library C so we're gonna have to do non-traditional things but it is going to be our Focus for Adult Services this year one again that wouldn't shock me to know
that because I live in oldridge and I talk to my neighbors and I know that they don't have library cards also there's a large group of people Elders who are looking for different things but you're not talking to them
so it's something we need to work on and the fact if you put it on your agenda that will be fine all right d is uh are you familiar with the uh the patchet work of uh a local type of uh papers uh
East brunic participates in one and so does m on Aberdine now we chose not to do it we being uh the administration of the township uh out of deference to the All America you know the guy at the funeral home who does his but they have
much wider coverage and uh as a matter of fact if you just go online and just type in East bun there's a whole Litany of things on there right now uh from one of the libraries and uh actually I looked at the one that does Westfield as well and
uh they get they have all of their activities that are going on and they get into much more much more than the Suburban does or anyos and you're not I I don't think you're paying for an ad but no just something to check with them and we really haven't tapped into that
that marketing budget so you know I have um you know our coordinator of strategy and communication working on a number of projects we're finding out how we do a print mailing so that we can do an annual print mailing to get to people once a year what the cost of that is and
also what other outlets do we have you know do we take out a radio ad or do we just do um I'm sorry Sarah what do they call the Facebook posts when you pay extra yeah like dark ads paid ads depends which way you go yeah um you
know one of the things that I saw was in Monroe um they had a program that um someone had put forward who was a for-profit entity and I I we wouldn't do that but that person took out um you
know um this increased Instagram ad and it really made a difference so we are going to be looking at these things and we're going to be tracking our numbers sgy what's the matter hello I'm sorry um my voice my voice didn't change it wasn't me no no I I
just need to ask this person to mute or I will mute them okay um moving on um sorry I'm going through to make sure I don't miss anything um the draft of the budget I do apologize was under the weather this
week and I was hoping to have it to the finance committee before this meeting I am giving myself a deadline of February 21st to have it to the finance committee so that discussions and evaluation can begin um I do apologize for that delay
have committees been appointed who's on the finance committee as I know Maria and Frank that's what I understood yeah that that's as far as I know correct so whenever you're ready I'll be
ready okay uh um all right um we talked about maker day um the other thing that was in the director's report that I want to make sure that everyone's aware of our library document station which offers a heightened experience for
faxing and scanning has been installed and it is already very popular the user can walk up and use a touchscreen to send a fax prior to installing this equipment you weren't able to send longdistance faxes at the library
and we do actually send faxes at the library so we have this here um and the other thing that I put in here um we were unfortunately sharing a f a phone line between the fax machine and the
fire alarm and I don't know how that moved ahead because that's not really allowed so now that phone line is dedicated solely to the fire alarm which puts us in um I I'm pretty sure there's code somewhere that says that we're supposed
to have that so that's good um the thing is we were charging um $2 a page for the fax um and we get included in our maintenance fee Eight Pages of faxing per day I think that that will handle um
the demand that we have so that we don't have to charge the public for faxing because it doesn't cost anything anymore for us to do it other than the electricity um it's all done online so we don't before we had to pay for a phone line
every month and now we don't um any overage is build at 25 cents per page and I would like to see if we can keep it um a free service for the residents of Oldbridge and I just wanted to bring this up because some people may not have
read that part of the director's report and if there is no question then I'll just move on um all right everything else that is in there the Lawrence Harbor branch has been the focus of a number of
inspections lately um the uh the recycling inspector said that we needed to have five recycling bins if you've been to that Branch I I recommend that you do so that you can see the size of it I'm not sure we could even fit um but
we are working with DPW to make sure that everything is done the way it needs to be done um and the fire inspector is recommending that we may not be able to use some of the shelving um because it blocks an exit sign but I'll be working
with them next week to make sure that everything um is is safe out at the at the harbor um if if the residential people only
have to have two one can or two you know they pick up they pick up Plastics and things like recyclables and everything else goes into the regular can uh it seems a little unusual that this person is expecting us to have five cans so
there yeah they're not talking about outside so we actually don't have any refu pickup at that Branch the custodian brings it in the van back to the main branch where it's sorted and dealt with they're talking about inside the
building buing um but as I see it having five people in that branch is quite full so that would be one recycling container per person so but we're going to work on it to make sure that we're meeting with what's required of
us did he did he demand the size that you have size of the can no no but do I have to tell you I really appreciate um I just want to give um a shout out to Casey lenning and our whole department of Public Works team they come in and
installed some shelving for us um that had been um waiting to get done it's it has to hover above the floor so safety was particular they did that for us and um Casey is making sure that we're compliant with uh the recycling um
inspection for the town and I believe that that is all that I have with uh until we get to the committee reports unless somebody wants me to do just do that
now uh don yeah you can talk about what we discussed at our committee meeting uh with Gina and row and myself um last week if you'd like to bring that up now so we don't have to do then excellent um so I met with um The Architects regarding the renovation of
the bathrooms and I Frank I was thinking of you the whole time because they pointed out so many things uh features that we don't currently have that are just more modern um that are with regard to safety
and maintenance and Longevity that um I I thought everybody would appreciate it so the things that um they brought up is that currently um ceilings are no longer made with drop tiles particularly in bathrooms um they are made flush so that
people cannot hide things in the ceilings when they go into the bathrooms that's been a problem in a lot of public libraries with people um using those spaces um for drug use and while we haven't had a problem it'll be really
nice to know that we won't have a problem in the future um we also have the opportunity to create um it's popular in libraries now to have family restrooms that go beyond Simply Having um you you know a a changing table and
there are lactation spaces there's a big movement for that so I'm working with the architect to give you a couple of different options um with what we're doing but to make a space for our our parents I think is is really going to be
nice in that area overhead towards the children's area the other thing is the finishes that we have you know one of the things with the with that sweet bathrooms is for instance tile was only brought up six in up the wall which
means that you're going to have a lot more maintenance issues than we would have if we had tile going all the way up the wall so some of the finishes um we're going to look to make sure that they're reducing the amount of
Maintenance while also um increasing how long we anticipate the lifespan of the next round of um bathrooms to be so um I met with them about that we did discuss the logistics um on
RFID which I believe um I've told you we starting March 10th um and then Rocco is there anything else no I think that was it okay um yeah so that was what we had for buildings and grounds and just to
take a look at the agenda um unless there's anything else Frank for finance um I've I've given myself a deadline for getting the draft budget out okay as soon as you get it send it to me and Maria and uh I'll start
working on immediately okay okay U moving on to committee reports so we just did building and grounds nothing else Roco right yep nothing else we're good okay uh Finance Maria is not here do we skip Chris then
is that okay well one question about Finance um yeah I believe our Capital amount that was reported is not really reflective of uh Capital funds that we have so I I tried to reach out for Maria but she
hasn't return my call so I'll try and uh talk to her and find out what the story is because I thought the number was considerably higher uh because she's got I think 1381 million this was the last year of capital available so um that's important
for us to have an accurate number and if something's not being classified um so uh that's it for finance okay um Outreach and marketing so I I went over the the
things that we're working on and with um the Outreach and marketing committee once we get a couple of pieces together um then I I think we'll be ready to have um a a meeting outside of the board meeting okay perfect um Personnel Don I
was going to do your review in person today but obviously it's virtual so I can I'll email you separately I can come in this week or next week or something we could do it together that sounds great okay perfect um policy anything nothing to report okay
and Technology no update okay uh moving on to public comments Sarah could we have a listing of the current committees for this year because I don't think it was ever
announced if who's on what uh yes so we just need a you say you're going to have a committee meeting but I don't know who's on the committee so if we could just have a listing of who you've appointed I would appreciate it Y and I don't know why the finance
committee doesn't have three people on it okay you know why is it why is it kept to a three man committee when it's supposed to be a Forman committee including Sarah I don't know and I had volunteered
last year to fill in the position if there was nobody else interested in it and of course that was I was not acceptable and I have not volunteered this year but I think our committees would have the number of people that they should have and whatever maybe they
have it I just don't know about it so thanks and I appreciate as much feedback as I can get from the board um when we are doing the the budget so that you know it it just helps me to make sure that I'm I'm doing my absolute best for
the full board so that that feedback um I'm very appreciative of that when we're forecasting for our spending for the upcoming year Sarah what used to be that isn't I mean Sarah dor we used to get
projected actual and difference for the last five years when it was reduced to three three years and now it's nothing that help you do a budget because all you have to do is adjust your figures based on your experience if you have it
but you don't have that information so I don't I don't so justang it or just so you know I I we did put that on on the the draft of the budget for last year what was previous year and what was UND spent or overspent you're absolutely right that's extremely important but
that is exactly the information that I use in forecasting the budget and you should have it and I also would appreciate in all honesty if the directors of committees were at meetings so if we have a question about what
happened we can ask them this way you just save it for next month but okay well whatever Sarah is could we like revisit committees just to see if you know maybe
someone wants to switch or join a different committee is that something we can look at why don't I send an email after this board meeting to all the board members and just maybe ask people to volunteer to what they're interested in then I can at least get a starting
list to see where we are Sarah I think when you uh shared the information about joining a committee or whatever it was not during the actual meeting and some of us may not have heard it but whatever you know in the past it was
send the director whatever committee you're interested in serving in and uh people did that or didn't do it or whatever so I think that that that should be done okay if it hasn't been but whatever
whatever you come up with just let us know yeah we had a question so uh one other suggestion I would make is uh the current Finance report that we get
um I'm I'm half legally blind in one eye since I've been born and the other eye I think I'm trying to figure out what si uh type this is is it 6.8 point I can
you can barely read it and my suggestion would be uh we could probably do it on a uh 11 by4 turned it into a landscape and just if you'd have to print front and back but you certainly would make it a lot easier to
read maybe you know again I don't have the best eyesight so maybe it's my problem but I don't you get that by email you can make your email font loger H yeah but when I'm reading it I'm you know no I can read I can read it
with the the glasses the powerful glasses I have but then I couldn't drive over there so it's it's the other thing is just look give it a quarter inch margin roll around you could probably go up one or two points make the spacing between them
columns now you know I I I will bring that up yeah and how are we doing on the uh uh situation with the postal you know the process we
discussed to try to find out how how many people are actually in Ward five and six that are actually coming here and not going to Monroe or east FR so um what we've actually done is because we keep revisiting this and not coming up with the results that I'm entirely happy
with we actually have a meeting scheduled next week where we have supervisors from Technical Services circulation myself and we are sitting down and we are going to go through line by line on all of our collection
categories because I don't think that the Consortium has things labeled clearly this is when I said I don't trust our data because I don't think it's clean but we and I spoke to the director um from another library in the Consortium today and she felt the same
way so I am going to go through with those supervisors line by line on the collection reports and the circulation reports anything that's not completely clear to us the questions are going to go to to the Consortium and we're going to make sure that we get explanations on
all of those so that I'm able to give you an informed report um the other thing is I I didn't see anything on here for how many people came through the doors this month or did I miss it
um I'm sorry I don't know did and that's they normally put that in the department reports because it's not typically a part of my report well it was we've always had it for years and I you you know you changed something a while back and I think we
should look at it we used to get figures as part of the uh report I don't know whether it came from Felicia or not or whatever but what what we were what we were handling uh traffic in traffic out yeah and I can tell you that's something
that we're monting monitoring very carefully I've been waiting to quit it together um because the board does need to know that we are seeing an increase um circulation is getting busier foot traffic is getting busier you know several days a month even without
special events we're going over um 700 in the library which shows you the impact of our efforts and the board does need to see that so um and also state report is coming up in March so um I'm going to be making sure we're going to
be calling all of that data and pulling out insights for the board so I would think probably April we would be ready for that but I'll get you some more statistics before then for our monthly numbers until then I'll give you a little bit of my high school Latin W
Esra to see is to believe okay there we are then okay okay um public comments if anyone from the public wants to make a comment we would need you to um unmute
yourself okay will make a motion to adjourn until next month so moved second roll call all in favor all in favor I I I
all right have a good night everybody thank you everyone have a great night yes you too bye bye good night everyone