uh calling to order the what is the date today monday April 14th meeting of the board of library trustees 2025 uh first order of business do we have anybody online or on the phone for public comment or in
person by the way this microphone is amazing yeah no all right uh moving on to the next order of business new trustee introductions everybody welcome Kelly
tell them I'm new hi I'm Kelly Bacon i I've met at least half of you already and very happy to be here excellent uh next next item of business is the um ACE committee update the ad hoc commemoration establishment
hello everyone my name is Taylor Gregory and I am the board library trustees uh liaison for the ace committee um I just want to start by saying for those who don't know uh Andrew Gregory is my husband just so it's a everybody was aware um so basically what's happened so
far is we've had three meetings for the ACE committee in January February and March i was elected as the chair and uh Ryan Johnstone was elected as the vice chair um we started our February meeting with a basic overview of Bill Russell and his life um we can have all that
documentation for you as well um we went we got a basic overview of and understanding of Mr russell's life and his experiences that shaped who he was as a person there were themes of racism throughout his life in various forms some overt like separate sleeping
facilities for black and white athletes and the trash can incidents in Reading and others were more covert like growing up in the Jim Crow South uh Mr mr russell revolutionized the way that basketball players play defense opting to jump and lead his feet when coaches wanted him to stay on his feet mr
russell was an 11time champion and 13 seasons with the Boston Celtics uh the committee has set up a basic timeline for the committee to ensure that we get all the work done in the given time frame in January we discussed when to um when and how to engage the family uh we
in February we identified a potential event during which the acknowledgement or our instatement of intent can happen which will be at the Junth um event that's held in town um in March we narrowed down the project scope and identified the town staff to engage with
and we also discussed what acknowledging accountability would look like and we are seeking community input throughout our meeting um during during our last meeting and during our next meeting next week um in April we will be working on the language of the intent our statement
of intent and engage with the select board for their thoughts and input uh we are looking for community input during this meeting as well in May we're going to be looking to finalize the event and engage with the select board to finalize the language that will be um used at the Junth event um in June Junth will happen
and then July through December we're going to use that time to debrief to discuss uh the lessons that we learned um discuss at the event and look at what future programming could look like and how to pay for that future programming um the the committee also discussed easy
lifts that would allow the committee to engage with the public um discuss the work of the committee and gather public input on how they would like to see Bill Bill Russell acknowledged um one of the things that was brought up was a potential book club where we would um meet weekly or monthly discuss a certain
book that um discusses black athletes back in black figures in history trying to um broaden everybody's horizons yeah that's it thank you anybody have any questions sorry just one quick question is the
Junth event actually on Junth um no it'll be the third Saturday in June I believe um it should be the the 21st okay thank you anybody else
anyone thank you very much excellent uh next item on the agenda is the Office of Equity Social Justice Update that hey cool all right i I'll be quick uh as I can i'm a talker though so I try
to make this quick um so Albert Ples uh director of diversity equity inclusion here for the town of Reading in the Office of Equity and Social Justice located right here in the town in the library um offices right down the hallway there for those who don't know
um so I'm just going to give a brief update um about kind of the where we are with our work um and um and open up to you guys have any questions so I just go to my next slide so um I always like to
just like thank you thank you thank you for um as my thank you slide comes up um thank you thank you thank you for all the above um thank you first to Amy um for her direction 18 months here um don't worry about Amy I can I I can move
through it don't worry about it i can slide through it um for her um for her leadership and supporting this work uh for those who don't know um this position was kind of placed in the
library supposed to be temporary it's been a little longer than that um my predecessor was here for about a year and a half um I've been here just about a year and a half as well and so essentially about three years total of of this work being here and um it's not
lost on me around you know how much it could be a challenge for those of on the board and others of the district work sits here because we're still trying to figure out exactly the the connection the full connection between the work of the library and the office so I think
we're still trying to work at that uh but thank you for your patience thank you for your understanding around that i think we'll get there i think we're trying to be strategic about where ultimately this position should sit but I think that um until then that patience
actually to be patient with as we're trying to still figure that out and again folks like me exist all over the state there's about 60 of us or so in municipalities and we all sit in very different places but I'm the only one sit in the library so I'm unique and special um so
what have you been up to we've been busy i've been busy we've all been busy um since we since I came on in October 2023 we completed our community needs assessment this was both on the community side as well as our workforce side we collected a bunch bunch of good data um the thing I was going to hand
out to you in a moment um we have been strategically thinking about our engagement with our town departments um that needs assessment did not come with the strategic plan there was a dollar amount to that and I didn't want to I wanted to still stay in the library and be comfortable if I put that dollar
amount you guys would have kicked me out of here and so I basically tried to do that work by engaging some uh local residents who had their own consultant businesses and we get it we got it really for a really good deal and that has allowed my office to have a
strategic plan which I think is going to ultimately help with this bigger thing we're trying to do here with the work and so that that process started with engaging about six or seven departments on what their equity focus area would be and so we talked to DPW fire planning
you know you go down the list and that initial work was about coming walking through a process called a um resultsbased accountability method really basically kind of making sure that we understand the work is going to be continuous um my work over those last
four months or so has been engaging those departments 101 to kind of lead more into that work library sorry you want to list two came up which is libraries come up with two equity focused areas everyone else came up with one you know so we love our libraries u
but it's great um and then and finally we have been doing something I'm excited about called these listing sessions with our town department sta town staff um and that's what I'm calling our staff engagement you know I think the secret
sauce to this work um is engaging engagement engaging staff as well as engaging the community in in a very proactive way so I'm excited i'll share a little bit more about that in a moment um just to call off the presses
our next slide is um I have I'm going to be officially appointed the ADA coordinator for the town of Reading uh it's a really it's a position now that sits with our our um our clerk and that's kind of been with Laura just because someone had to have it so she's
had it for years um and we you know initially when I got here had a great conversation about like is that something that could potentially I could collaborate with her on and we've moved to the place now putting a full proposal to our town manager and that's been moved towards me becoming the
coordinator and essentially what that does in a great way is it really allows us to be proactive about engaging the community and workforce around ADA you know it isn't something where it's kind of a not just a place where we say we have this coordinator but really where
can we begin to engage those who may need services and resources like that so I think it's a great thing for the town i'm that engagement person so I think it's going to be great for what we're trying to do so more to come around that um you know I think one of the unique things about about this position just
turn it to the next page is that is you know I'm in outward facing again so my position works with our town staff you know working on kind of systems policy work but also another piece of it is working on our community i think it's really exciting piece so not to go down
all these verbatim but we've been active and busy you know so I think our pair project partners in the allies for inclusive reading we're meeting regularly i think we're engaging a lot of residents i would say they're reading residents i don't know we don't check their ID when they come in but we think that people probably would not travel
too far outside to come to our meetings um and that's just a way for us to have a hub for people to come in engage in our work on the community side actively engage in our MLK events those are things I think maybe some of you have been part of it's every January i'm really excited about that there's a lot
of residents around that team was just mentioned by Taylor before me um again this is my third year doing that this will be my third year i'm on the front end of it so Amy took off the umbilical cord she cut it and so she was doing all the work before that now it's like I have to do it all and I was trying to
figure out how that is that really is that was so I can't give back and I'm now having to plan out something again and as we go down the list again more just uh community engagement work which I'm incredibly excited about so next
page next and just leaning a little bit more to that strategic work our municipal work again our work around planning um you know I'm really uh a great fan of planning department so really I jump right in with our planning department as
part of the project which is the kind of the climate work in and reading so I'm a partner with them around that we're going to be we're just now identifying what our priority focus area is going to be soon so more to come around that again these listing sessions which we
town leadership and then now going to our third one tomorrow will be our third one with the regular staff myself um and we're excited about folks are signing up and really that whole project and um it's really about um that needs assessment which I'm going to pass out
to you now which I think is perfect tim you'll be the first to have these okay these are special so I make sure you have these this was a way and thanks Michelle for helping to help put this together this is these are my talking points my road show so I'm this is the
needs assessment this is kind of the recommendations findings from that needs assessment and essentially you know I I never want this to sit on the shelf and so for me it was really about making sure this stuff came to light action and engaging our community and our workforce
around these this is a snapshot so we collected some data as you know with data collection it's a point in time right it was important for me to say well are these things still happening and what can we actually do to actually move the needle along a little bit so my talking points is that I have a standup
um what do you call Michelle a standup um standup banner which I also take around with me for my talking points it has all those recommendations on them and the reason why I'm referencing it in this particular slide is that those listening sessions are about myself and
I have a team of colleagues that also work force uh colleagues uh having sessions for an hour talking about those kind of things talking about does this stuff still exist how can we create a sense of belonging connectivity among us as staff again for me I feel like it's a
secret sauce if people even among differences get time to spend together and talk and discuss things um we're better off so that's what we're doing doing listening with that next next page or next slide um you know I am someone that I'm
always going to do my work in the town I'm in but also I love to reach my arm outside that do work outside of the community which I think again brings uh kind of bring it kind of fullfold so there's two things I want to reference is our statewide work which is uh this
coalition exists 60 of us across the state um we created a guide two years ago for municipalities to support and onboard these positions this work as probably some of you know I said it before was very reactive four years ago right everyone wanted to have a direct
inclusion because no one wanted to be left out but it wasn't done strategically okay it wasn't sustainable and as you know it's kind of even the climate right now is going on it's because it wasn't strate so strategic this coalition created this guide we're
now working on 2.0 know we'll have that done in the fall which really kind of centers on two aspects one is what's the what we call the business case for DEI and municipalities okay what is that so that's where we're leaning into that PL into that and the other one is making
sure that we are properly telling and demonstrating to municipalities where back to my original point these positions should sit what should be appropriate budgets all those things that's the kind of stuff that's going to make it sustainable for the work so more to come around that you will have fresh
off the presses when we have that guide you'll get a copy of it electronically as well as a hard copy so you can have it um with that and thanks to Amy for allowing me to stretch my arm outside our work here and ready to do that i think it's good practice for us to be a part of it and I've been fortunate to be
uh one of the co-chairs of that work and finally I'm really a big fan of Senator Lewis who's actually our senator for this reading he's a Winchester guy where I'm at spent a lot of time with him before I came to before I came to reading and he he and I have been engaging a lot of this work around just making sure we create what we call these
welcoming communities there was an event that happened about a few months ago what date was that november really where I think we were kicked off this kind of welcome committee kind of um feel and I think but more to come around that so again St louis is a big fan of our work
and I'm a big fan of his so next two slides oh and I just want to go back to Okay that's fine so I'm a picture guy i love to take pictures right so these are two pictures where I think I really demonstrate a lot of like what I think
I'm trying to build with reading but also where I feel like we can go so the the first picture down here on the bottom are that's our one of that's one of our largest listening sessions with our leadership okay and again it's not lost in the fact that people are taking
time away from their day jobs our police chief our fire chief our assistant town manager they are taking time trusting this process coming to a listening session so I'd say and I'm a big believer if you don't have a picture it didn't exist right so that's a picture of all us and I took a picture of each
session and over there at the high school where we were doing these listening sessions we had again about 167 youth that we did over eight affinity groups those youth actually again trusted a process for us bringing them together to have conversations difficult hard hard conversations about
enga engaging in in belonging so again pictures um worth a thousand words and I want um I want to make sure that we're um highlighting that work um one of the first partners I reached out to with our superintendent here Tom and again he opened the door wide open for our
engagement in that work so next slide so again active on social media exact um all the three kind of big buckets Facebook Instagram and we have a website we're still trying to actively get up and move it it's up but we still have some work to do with it um have a couple of amazing volunteers one's a
high school student freshman here at at Reading High and the other one is a resident who just found us you know found the library thanks Megan for for for getting her through the process because she is amazing like asset for her she's uh we're going to have our our
newsletter coming out tomorrow for the municipal side as well as the the um the community so she's been really active around that so last slide so again we have some goals to kind of move toward continue to move the needles the biggest thing right now is
again staff and community this is where this work that have had a lot of great meetings had a great meeting this morning with one of the school committee members and really I think for me it's about making sure that we are um taking that information on that card and
saying and the other thing too is continue to collect data right can't let that data that we collected a year and a half ago become data so again I'm working on something that I have a proposal in place which essentially again term EI um dashboard we say
collecting some data around that um you know continue to collect data that we can begin to measure and look at you know our success so um that's it for me on my last slide um again pictures worth a thousand words for me so this was one
of our largest affinity groups that we did at the high school um and so again I would say that that when we first started that session um all those heads were down in that room they were looking at their phones no engagement 15 minutes in you have
them robust conversation people just engaging across the room and again a lot of this for me I'm a big believer i'm a men's health guy years if you ask people question engage them they will give you an answer i believe that so we engaged
them in conversations that more to come around that um I'm done i know that was a little longer maybe than you anticipate you thought I would be um any questions for any work I'm doing anything I could answer while I'm up
just wondering if you can speak a little bit more about how you're working with town HR to expand the pipeline for employee hiring yeah so uh Sean Donahghue our HR director he and I have a good a incredibly great working relationship
that was in one of the first departments I connected with and now it's here um as you know it's really um and I'll take two steps back to answer the question i answer in a short way is um you I think we have to just continue to be thoughtful and mindful about how we do that um particularly with the climate
that's happening now around maybe potentially kind of you know identifying certain people over others so I think that um we understand that there's a need and uh I say a need to diversify our workforce and that's across the
board you know that's and we heard that loud in needs assessment not just race and ethnicity but gender um so we just have to really be thoughtful about that and I think we are being thoughtful about that that pipeline i think Sean and his team do a great job of really posting things in places where multiple
eyes can see it but we know with this work it requires a lot of intentionality um again our workforce is not a very racially ethnically diverse workforce and we know that that's a lot of what we have to we have to do that we have to do it in a way I think that doesn't put a
an what do you call it a bullseye on the back to make sure that we're you know we're we're doing things by coordinates of that we have to stay away from that stuff so not that we ever did that anyway but I think we have to be very mindful of that that's the elephant in the room well listen my door is always open
for you guys i mean again um I want to thank you for continuing to support me some of you may be looking saying "Well you what does it look like?" But I really appreciate you guys supporting me i realize it could it it could be challenging and I want to make sure I'm answering any questions that you may have again I'm I'm a email away or phone
call away or just even come by and have a cup of coffee if you want to thanks thank you just add Thank you very much Albert i just add that Albert is also doing office hours over at the town hall a couple times a week and um he's working with he he gets a room over there reserved it's different hours each
month as as the rooms are available um and so his being available is is I mean I would say my from what I've heard these meetings these updates and things are great and the large affinity groups are great but you've also had a lot of meaningful conversations of people just
knocking on the door and and wanting to have uh just really talk about stuff and um I think there's not a lot of places that you can do that in in a particularly in a municipal organization so it's it's a really beneficial for for staff and for the committee members who come to see
Albert thank you um next item on the agenda is Reading Public Library Citizen Kids collection request for the Reading Food Pantry that is actually all done and they did their work citizens Kids is a small um student group a kids group in
uh that's working up in the children's room and they did um they did a project that ended up getting donations to the food pantry so it's all done and they were they were trying to be very official and they wrote this really sweet little note and
didn't realize they wrote it right after the other the other meeting love the signatures oh it was really um yeah it was and they were they took their responsibility very seriously which is it's why it's a great program last year they did a town forest cleanup and um I
can't remember which day it was but they pick a project each year to work on um so that they can better the community excellent well thank you citizen kids uh next item on the agenda discussion and vote updates to the patron rights and responsibilities
policy which I believe we went over so we reviewed the changes uh last month there are two the first one to the rights and responsibilities changes was really just to acknowledge the change in our policy we used to have a
uh I can't remember the old name of it what was the name of it it was a children's unattended children's policy unattended child policy and last year the trustees um got rid of that policy and replaced
it with something called um policy regarding uh minors basically the responsibilities of of adults and so um we had to go through and look at all of our other policies that referenced the former policy and this is just basically
a a word change uh title change but it needs to be amended and you can um I guess we'll have to have a vote or discussion and making sure we don't forget Andrew Gregory online move to approve the policies as
presented second second roll call vote starting with Mr gregory yes no totally fine so the first amendment was always was this I remember the patrons rights and responsibilities
edits was the first amendment is that separate does it end before then or is this part of the same there were two there are two policies that are up for approval one was the first one was just addressing the title change or the policy name change the second one which is the policy regarding minors was the
addition of language regarding the tween space so I believe we're just talking about the first policy right now that's the one we discussed last meeting or two meetings ago yeah yes the unattended
children all right so now I'm just to make sure are we voting on the changes for both policies on this vote or do I need two separate votes that would be up to the move the person who made the move i sort of meant it to be both since
one of is so simple i don't think it So the move is the move is motion motion is for both policies just so we're clear perfect um I don't think we need a second we have a yes monette yes
yes yes yes and I'm a yes policy passes excellent back up to the list here um next item on the agenda is the discussion vote wait we did
both so uh financial report okay um just to report um our liaison our FINCOM leaison Joe Donna is in the room um thank you very much for for leazing with us uh the presentation to FINCOM on March 12th went very smoothly
um and I just wanted to note that um the FY26 budget does include uh FINCOM's approved use of $4 million for that for that particular budget sorry 4.2 4.26 million of free
cash for this particular budget um and I also just wanted to um I'm sure you've all heard but it's another elephant in the room which for us to talk about and just get on the table there will be a there actually will be now um assuming
all goes well with town meeting a an election on May 13th to provide to approve debt exclusions for the new Kilum school and a new community center for active living that will replace the Pleasant Street Center the timing of these projects is important because um
in addition to these assuming one or both or whatever neither passes despite these at some point in the next few years um we will based on that free cash usage eventually need to um have an
override uh vote before the town um so that we can reduce that uh free cast usage so um if that doesn't pass we're just looking at a few years a few lean years so it's just something to be aware of um the federal cuts that we've
discussed before don't actually impact our our daily operations because those are locally funded it it impacts other larger things but um it's I'm just saying that it's going to be an interesting few years there are many libraries that um are facing a lot of
budget cuts this year and we are not we are very fortunate in this town what's the time frame on the override if it's needed or the years out right because we have to use free cash for Yeah I think it's I think it's very
iffy um I would He's talking about the actual override no no no sorry so maybe 27 28 okay thank you yeah when was the last time our town had a
over 2018 18 yeah 18 and yeah it was only it was only supposed to last five years by the way so we're we've we've done really well with that so just for those of listening at home there's an impact calculator on the
Reading website for both of those projects library ends this summer it's paid off yeah so it's good thanks Joe excellent thank you we we mentioned it as being the Kllum and the senior center those are one project right the two two
okay oh it's the rise is what's going to be included in the killum school yeah yeah and the killum I mean not to go too deep into the weeds but that's been going on for like four or five years and then the recal has been also at least
three years i know um so these are not um these are projects that have been in the pipeline for a while and they've mentioned at town meeting and they've been presentation and um but it's a tough time to have a lot of growth amy can you speak a little bit to
cuts at the federal level um yes so there are I included Did I include any of that in my report yeah so um there I I included some some uh web links if you don't mind moving on
to the I mean or blending our director and financial report the funding cuts um you can visit the Mass Board of Library Commissioners directly and get um the how the impact of cuts to the Institute for Museum and Library Services will
affect them there are certain things um that are very vague because things that are statuto statutoily required must continue to go forward but um there's some of those things are it's a little unclear as to how much needs to
be funded etc but the state does pay for a lot of databases it pays for an ebook program it pays for the talking book program it pays for the center um center for the book um so there's a number of programs that are statewide
that we all take advantage of um Massachusetts is a little different than other states other states have more county systems and they can leverage larger populations for their contracts so Massachusetts we do everything by town and we try and get into consortium and we can get a little leveraging on
some of those contracts and then we rely on the state um for even larger contracts which get us um reasonably priced content so ultimately um it would really um and we also get grants from
them so they have I think I can't remember how many million dollars of grants they get per year but I did include over the last 20 years um we've taken advantage of those grants pretty much every other year and whether it's $5,000 or $20,000 it's money that we do things that we just can't do on our
operational budget so all of that goes away things like our Rooted and Reading grant that goes away we've already been paid for that but um future grants like that um could could be lost and those are um they're smaller than federal
awards for you know building a highway or or other large infrastructure things but considering most libraries are 1% of their municipal budget $5,000 is an incredible um gift the ability to do things that you just can't do with a
regular municipal budget so those small dollar amounts are really really meaningful the Institute of Museum and Library Services the IMLS is 0.0046% of the federal budget it's about
87 cents per person so it's a very you know very very small part of the federal budget that um it's the only thing that supports museums and libraries um I guess two things one this is helpful on the federal side i think the
bigger question is if these are permanent changes then the impact on the state side budget because the states are going to be absorbing not just library expenses but a lot of other things that federal so I think we need to be aware of that i will also say just to to
anyone you know that the MBLC and others have a lot of data on their website we do get regular emails to them into the bolt mailbox uh we don't typically send those around because it's it's literally a couple a week with resources but I
guess if there are ever resources you're interested in um you could let me know or let Amy know or just kind of go to the website i just I don't want to start forwarding like more spam um but if there's ever a
moment you're like "Hey what's the story about that?" They really are very up to date with with data and information in some cases excellent are there any other questions about the financial um implications i
will note there has been litigation started um against to block the executive action but it's in its infancy there's nothing else in finance i'll go ahead and uh um there's a quick gifts report and we did receive our money from
the cult reading cultural council thanks that was Albert's grant so um going on to the director's report um I just included a headline stonum Finance and Advisory Board met on April 3rd and it included a proposal to eliminate all eliminate all funding for
the Stonem Public Library in the upcoming budget year i believe Ston is considering a second override attempt for a smaller amount of money and the hope is that they'll have enough to keep the library open at least at um kind of you know in some sort of
um waiver state I think is the best way to put it when it comes to certification i've never actually seen a library that just closed which is a little bit different than being descertified it's just not gone i don't know what happens to that and I think Noble is working
with that so it's a little unclear what's going to happen in that situation if they're able to have enough money to maintain um their membership in Noble which is basically all of their data all of their catalog records all of their patron records um and if they're able to have
some sort of a a building and some sort of a staff even if they're not certified they they can apply and get a waiver or they can lose their certification but they would still exist as a library they are not the only library in Noble facing these um budget cuts i think I mentioned
that earlier and I think there are other um municipalities throughout the state that are also facing some severe budget cuts this year um to that end I did include some information about our current policy
on access to or by people from communities with descertified libraries i think it's really important to review that um we don't have to do anything about it but in the event that one or more of our local libraries are descertified andor
you know someone from the Boston area so our community from Western Massachusetts if they want to come out and their library is not certified we do have very specific rules uh a very specific policy the policy is based um
and backed up both by Massachusetts law and by the MBLC regulations and it is meant to um help municipalities be responsible and and good stewards to their to their libraries so our policy just says that
if a library is descertified not if it has a waiver if it has a waiver we can still provide services I believe um but if it's descertified then they cannot borrow our materials and that would translate to anything that they would
need to use a library card for basically um it's a little at the time these policies were written things like your overdrive your overdrive account were linked it's like an basically an electronic card they didn't exist so there's still some questions about how to deal with that and can we
cut them off um can we block certain cards um but it is about materials um our policy does not address any other services such as programs um it specifically says that we welcome people you're welcome to come in and use all the materials you can read all the materials you can use the
computers you can pay for prints you can do all of that ask a reference question it really only pertains to the circulation of our u purchase materials what does a waiver mean how do they get what is that a waiver usually means you didn't meet your musical appropriation
requirement and it's usually a small amount like I think reading law had a waiver in 20 2008 maybe or 2007 somewhere around the the recession and it was it was short by like $10,000 so we received a waiver so it says that the town has
made a really good effort haven't quite met it and we expect you to come back to that number we expect you to be able to recover i also had a question about descertification and I don't remember if it was you that told me or if I read it
but if Stoneum and or other libraries that become descertified miraculously come up with the money the day after the descertification happens they can't be reertified right away right they have to wait until full I actually don't know the answer to that question I do know
until the next fiscal year yeah the um process is not a short process you file you file all of your um previous year expenditures and then your current year budget in like October
and then there's a committee at the MS board of library commissioners that assigns them but there's two rounds and um some the first round is like late November early December and then the second round is closer to January or February so I guess if you were to
resubmit something I think I don't know the answer to this what I guess would happen though is that Massachusetts wants communities to have working libraries so um it's not meant to be wholly punitive it's meant to really be
more a carrot than a stick so I think they would try and I know Noble is trying everything they can and the executive board has been meeting and the members have been meeting to talk about um ways to help support communities that are losing funding i just wanted to understand what's the
difference between descertified and your library closes well descertification you can be descertified if you're just not open enough hours if you didn't make your municipal appropriations requirement if you didn't meet your materials budget requirement you can lose certification
but you're still being you're still open and you're just if you lose certification you're not eligible for state aid you're not eligible for LSDA grants so you it's it's a slightly different thing if you were to I don't
understand and actually I can't wrap my head around um what would happen if you closed your library because I don't know what happens to your physical plan i don't know you know I don't know what happens to your staff that are you know pensioned and have union contracts you have a building full of materials like
what happens to that um the noble membership which for us is around 60,000 55 to $60,000 a year pays for all of the ILS It pays for Overdrive it pays for EPCO
it pays for a lot of different things um if you're unable to make that if you're unable to maintain your ILS you have no catalog you have no patron records you have you know the library cards all just go away so again Noble I think is trying
to figure out a way that if that hopefully if that were to happen it would be a temporary thing so um if we were to withdraw from Noble I do know if we were to withdraw from Noble we pay a fee you pay a fee to join you pay a fee every year to maintain it and then there is a cost to withdraw and if we wanted
to join the Minute Man or MLC if we wanted to join a separate consortium there are fees for processing all of our data and getting it into a new system and things like that so okay okay so what what I'm trying to figure out
is across the Commonwealth I hope this isn't true but I'm thinking it must be that there are towns that exist today that don't have a public library there's 370 well there's 370 public libraries i think there's more municipalities than
that i don't I think it's pretty close to every single one are they all certified not necessarily right but I was just looking on our website like if you're going to get a library card from us what are we actually saying on here and so if you aren't a resident of Reading you can still use your hometown card at the Reading Public
Library so a descertified library is still physically exists and you would have a hometown library card if a library actually closes you have a hometown library never saw Never seen that happen before so maybe this should be a future agenda
agenda item for us to think through if we have an influx if this happens yeah stone or another community near us and we're going to have an influx of patrons who are not from reading but are from a town that no longer has a library right what do we think about that right
right it's and and you're talking about just people physically walking into the building and sitting down yeah walking in saying I want a library card or Yeah yeah isn't it true that anyone can get a Boston Public Library card and maybe Yes yes they would and I I think that that's considered a Commonwealth card yeah so
but they that's fedally state or federally funded so yeah i'm not sure i think it's I think it's a little um unclear how that would go and I think Sus was descertified what was probably over a decade ago yeah and they I think they may be looking I think Sus might be having issues and Lynfield might be
having issues that was pretty bad at the time yeah and the library card we go into the noble system and we say anything with this prefix or prefixes doesn't doesn't run becomes invalid here yeah and they cannot check
it out so they can come in with their library card but it's they can't do anything with their library card so they can read the newspaper and read the magazines that raises a question of do we need to look and modify that language if you've come in with a card
for a certified library or something like that just to to wonder I think if we're papering it but also I mean I like our policy but my worry is if you play out worse worst case scenario uh and the only place I would think this would be
an issue particularly on the service side is the um children's hours that sell out very quickly and at that point to have something that would prioritize right uh reading residents so you would have the you know you can't borrow
unless you've got a card in a certified library so if they're not certified okay but they may want to come in and kind of use use it while they're here that under the current policy that would be fine but if all of a sudden we're seeing an influx that's boxing people out I just
be curious if other libraries I've seen a lot with our language but if other libraries had curtailed there's a bunch of um on the NBL um what do you call it nlc that there's sample policies for Northampton East Long Metal Ipsswitch i
believe all those went to the lending aspect yeah there there's one library at least that says and services and it's a little vague because um it would depend on whether you use library card for program registration not all librarians libraries do that some libraries use
your library card to register for a computer which we don't do so it depends on how you lock down your services um we do require registration for a lot of things but we don't require a library card that is different from community to
community um and um we used to have a few programs that on paper we would say priority was given to um running residents but that we haven't had that since well before CO um
and that was for things like the Mother Goose Lapsit that would fill up and you'd find six families that none of them lived in reading so um it would be you know you'd be automatically put on a wait list if you were in Reading um so those are definitely good issues
to think about programming is so much a much bigger part of what we do than it probably was when we in 2002 or whenever it was that we wrote this policy um it at the same time we also understand that
our goal is to reduce as many barriers to service as possible but we also want to hold our our neighbors accountable for their libraries so it it is a tough and heart-rending issue at some point um so just something to be aware of say I
know Cathy circulated it um to me but um the uh Stonem kind of page has facts and and to to get to your point it says "Well could we go to writing in Wakefield that said well no." when it cites the mass board of library commissioners rule
about this but then has a note at the bottom about um so they are providing that but I do think it's very important to say you know there here are the rules and if you if you can't follow it there are going
to be consequences um unfortunately but so I'm happy with that we have our policy personally Okay I'll just move on to hopefully happier stuff can I ask a quick question so MDLC has um explanation what
descertification means basically it says you have to be a certified participant in the state aid to public libraries program that means you're certified so if you're not you are descertified so you can still remain open you just don't get state aid is that what that means
you don't get state aid and you're not eligible for the presumably the LSTA grants that we get from the IMLS basically the town where this library would open or reopen or reert would have to fund everything themselves they get nothing and then according to this it
says that they have to meet the standards after they re try to reertify for one complete fiscal year um before they can reapply so it could be quite a while if this does come to pass thank you for
that quick processing and reading analysis um okay um in the meantime our statistics for March are up there uh we did we had perfectly fine March it's like everything else we see a little bit
of our physical circulation going down but our overdrive circulation goes up so it's nice we we still have a very strong reading community um I just wanted to call out our our um meeting room rentals went way up this uh last month which is exciting i think it's great to see more
community members was it a bunch of new meetings or new people or I think some of it was actually we hosted a lot of town meetings as well um there was some work being done I think in the select boardroom so over the town hall so I think we absorbed some of those meetings but um no we have other groups that are
coming in and using the the meeting room um which is great um and you know next month could just be 17 i don't know um the other thing is we had a a great increase in our volunteer hours and I'm just going to shout out to
Megan particularly but also Michelle we do a lot with trying to get people in here doing meaningful volunteer work um there's a lot of busy work we could make up for volunteers but we try to make it meaningful work so an example is Lonnie
who's working with Albert um she's doing she has incredible skill set michelle was able to get a volunteer in to help us with some tech inventory stuff um and that's what she does for a living and so it's very organized and it really helps us do our job and a lot of them are are
just things that we don't have enough staff to help us do and so um we also had um Megan McCabe working with a high school student uh she ran a series of programs STEM with Cali and the high school student Megan worked with her and
mentored her on how to plan a program how to do the how you know how are you going to engage the teenagers once they come into the room what kind of activities are you going to do how are you going to market it so um that kind of mentoring where it's giving a student in this particular case a student like
basically life skills um and leadership hours and things like that so um it's great to be able to make sure that the the the volunteer program that we have is is meaningful um so I just was it's not always easy to make that fit of
people who want to volunteer and fitting them with their their skills and their time with someone who has a task that needs to be done um I won't go through the entire list of everything um but we had a very busy
very happy month um we have a new friend up in our children's room we have Shelvis the turtle i'm sorry the tortoise the tortoise um and we had some great we had some really great programming including
the the craft swap and um we've had some great exhibits so we had the 350 girls um came in uh which was an exhibit showcasing historical artifacts from American female veterans and in the studio we've also had two exhibits we had a family um of artists that that
displayed their work in March and now we have if you want to stop by we have a beautiful rug hooking display um the May Mayflower chapter of um that group so um I encourage you to stop by and look at all those things we're going to have a
student display in May and then we have another art display coming up in June i really like the name Shelvis i'm sorry well we It was I'm still trying to determine whether it's one L or two because I've seen it spelled both ways
tomato tomato still good i will say all my seeds from the seed library germinated every one of them died no no they all germinated oh good i couldn't hear what you said so I got to pay it forward yeah um you will
think I think you may I don't know if it was in this warrant or in the upcoming warrant we have started our work with our plant management company Envirro Greenery we're very excited yeah beautiful on the side of the building inside outside oh no that's outside that was That's us that was last fall oh the
plant management company inside yeah so um and they've already um so they for the plant management company for the indoor plants um they we purchased some new plants from them and then while they were here they discovered a couple of our larger
plants um were suffering and they will replace those for free so it's a really you know and then they come in every two weeks and they water and clip as needed and they have um so it's just a big um it's a much better use of our our
time staff time um is to have someone who's professional come in and take care of some the indoor plants because many of them are very um unusual like the fishtail palm and the whatever fig is i can't remember all of their names but um so we're very excited to have that going
on um also we had a lot of um nice anniversaries this year i just want to call out Lisa Ang who's been here for 21 years and then Eileen Barrett who's a substitute sort of retired but still comes in she's also been here for 20 years so a lot of longevity
there um as usual we have a ton of professional development um oh and congrats to Megan yes a lot of anniversary this year um month i know
yeah i I I was you know just wait till they get those meeting i know just also um Michelle's just coming off her past presidency um and Andrea is still on the intellectual freedom committee as you saw olivia has been asked to stand on a national committee um we really do try
to support um our staff getting involved in local and national um leadership positions so we appreciate your support because we know it's sometimes it's hard to balance that um and then just some trustee dates and that's pretty much all
I have unless you have questions anyone any questions excellent thank you Amy um we can move on to the approval of last month's meeting minutes does anybody have any questions updates
not a motion do I have a second i hear a second thank you man i'll start with Mr gregory online i missed what the motion was can you repeat it oh uh approval of the meeting
minutes from last month yes uh yes thank you yes kelly yes pat Andrew yes and it's a yes for me um future business or future meetings scrolling scrolling scrolling future
agenda items um doesn't look like we have any for May for June we have summer programming update election of officers that's June right yeah June and then the trustee meeting dates and the holiday schedule anything else does anybody just
just to remind you because it's better that you think about this now we will have a proposed schedule for FY 26 and it always includes a open to cancelling your August meeting should you decide to do so why do we do that just for fun for
summer fun times excellent okay uh does anybody have anything else to add any questions this evening can we um I don't know if it's May or June but to keep a close eye on the
Stonem Library and yeah I we'll we'll be in fact I don't know if that'll wait till the meeting i'll probably send you any updates as we get them i'm still waiting to find out if they have if they have an election another election date scheduled yet prior one was April 1st right yeah
so you know re I think it sounds like maybe we want to have a conversation about the policy absolutely i'll put it actually we'll put um descertification policy on lending to descertification libraries on the May agenda i will I
will Oh and just I just want to make sure we're connecting to what Pat said as well is are we going to re-evaluate not only borrowing materials but attending events just kind of looking at all of that if we want to reconsider how our wording okay that's that's good and
Megan's getting all this down and what I think we can do in the meantime is um I will speak to staff programming staff specifically i will also talk to our technical services staff who have a better handle on what we need library cards for and what we do access for um so for example we have something called
overdrive advantage that we pay for um certain materials on overdrive that reading people get first dibs at and there may be a way we can block you know we would have to block that so we can come back with a little more information on the techn like the logistics of how we might make something like that work
and then um possibly give you a sense of how that's landing with with staff um if that's helpful to you it is helpful yeah and then um just maybe come up look at some other policies around around the state i will
say because I I thought the ones I'd looked at were only about uh lending but the BB policy applies to borrowing privileges and library services so they decline much they have broader language
to your question what does that mean oh that's probably why it was on it is a little broader that makes sense um oh um just for I guess we can add this to May too do we know as far as services
today when people sign up where they are from in Noble for example do we know the percentage of let's say a Saturday morning program how many Stonem residents no okay we don't because we don't really ask for that information i would I would assume so i just didn't
know if it was tied to the library card audit yeah and that and to your point I mean the question of why we don't ask that for information is that um our decision is to not collect as much any to not collect any private information if we absolutely don't have to this board could decide that we absolutely do
have to collect that information and that's that's a decision that the board can can make um but we do have anything like if you have a sign in or whatever and short of public record we delete those records we try not to collect that information we might collect your email so that we
can let you know if a program is canceled but the data privacy thing adds sort of another layer of complexity to I didn't even think of that thank you clarify makes sense appreciate it um other than that do we have any other additions questions concerns
thoughts if not do we have a motion we have a second second um I will start with Monette to mix things up yes kelly pat yes andrew yes
i'm a yes and Mr gregory yes yes excellent thank you um we are returned as of 8:03 p.m thank you bye Andrew take care Andrew enjoy whatever country you are in do my best what country are you
in um one that's in Europe there we go