- This is a call to order for the Monroe County Public Library Board of Trustees meeting on June 18th, 2025. And we're meeting at the Ellisville Branch Library today. And we cannot approve the consent agenda because we do not have a quorum. So we'll have a discussion. Does anybody have anything to say about the consent agenda? Then we'll just move on to the director's report, Greer.
- Thank you. So we continue to see very strong collection use with the highest overall numbers we've seen since just before the pandemic. Digital use is particularly strong this year and continues the trend we've seen with downloads, streaming, and overall e-access since last fall. Our new partnership with Musical Family Tree is now in full swing. We were excited to receive nine new submissions from local bands in May.
- Southwest librarian Becky Craft has developed a new program series at Southwest Teaching Kitchen called Grow It, Cook It. This connects our new Southwest Steed Library with our Salsa Garden theme and includes important expertise from our partners at Purdue Extension in the way of an agricultural and nutrition educator as part of that series.
- And the Gordon Pike construction has entered phase three, as a lot of patrons have probably noticed. This involves building the roundabout at the corner of Bachelor Drive and Gordon, which means the usual access to Southwest has changed. There is a temporary detour off the utility road that connects to Bachelor Middle School from Rogers.
- There is signage at the roundabout and at that entrance, so patrons know to access Southwest Branch, you need to go down that utility road. The most important piece with this is that there are temporary traffic signals that are in place for that road. It's effectively a one-way road, so the traffic signals will stop traffic going one way, let traffic come through, and then turn and let the rest of the traffic proceed
- toward the school or the library. So far it's been going okay. We do want to stress for library patrons it's very important to adhere to the speed limit, try to keep it at 10 miles an hour.
- More importantly, they are sensitive traffic signals. Even though they are responsive, you do have to pull right up to that white line to get them to trigger. So please be patient. Don't run the red, even if it looks like no one's coming, because there's a bit of a blind curve right there. We've been sharing that with patrons on site whenever we feel needed. I do want to thank our friends at County Highway and the contractors and project managers for this part of the Gordon Pike project. They've been very communicative with us
- They involve us in the weekly construction progress meetings. They give us a heads up when something's going to change. And most importantly, this phase three has to end by August 4th for the start of the school year. So we're just going to get through the next couple of months and call it done. So, yeah, happy to answer any questions about the director's report. Any comments or questions?
- collections just a pattern of higher use from previous years. I'm assuming that's just from good stuff getting on the websites or well that would be advertising more of the Hoopla and Libby and all that. So our marketing is certainly a big part of this and I think we talked a bit last month about
- You know, our public services staff do a really good job of referring patrons to digital alternatives or digital supplements when they're looking for certain types of resources and they've been doing that for a number of years. There is also the overall trend in public libraries toward digital access, immediate access.
- sometimes in conjunction with physical access and sometimes instead of. And so we're seeing that gradual shift from sort of the analog to the digital patron and that's an industry wide trend. The other important piece is that COVID really presented the opportunity for a lot of MCPL patrons to figure out how to become digital patrons. And so we saw those numbers go through the roof in 2020 and 21.
- And a lot of those have stayed pretty high. So I think all of those factors and probably some others contribute to the fact that digital collection use is the main reason why our overall collection use is back up to where it was before 2020. And are those like Hoopla, for example, are they adding more and more titles? Oh, yes. Because you used to be able to not find what you wanted sometimes.
- get a physical copy. So that's probably part of it. Both the licensing of the content continues to grow across all of these streaming and downloadable platforms, but also the access models evolve to meet the demand. So for Hoopla, you probably saw in the report, we have sort of a daily limit that controls the cost for us as a library, but it also puts an access restriction in place for patrons. And so they have to adjust when they're going to access their
- their hoopla content and that access model changes a bit. We do sort of an on-demand or we take a different look at how our canopy tickets work, for example. That's changed over time. So there are a lot of benefits to the way digital content for libraries are presented and accessed. But it's not, we haven't seen like this dramatic sharp change from physical to digital use. It's been a very gradual thing and continues to do that.
- Thank you, Greer. For old business, we won't be doing any action, but we do want to maybe have a discussion about the bookmobile and the bid proposal and the purchase agreement. Is that you, Greer? Yeah. So I'll start us off and hand it over to our consultant and my colleagues. Basically, we've talked a little bit about this.
- more or less for the last year that this was the year we were going to commit to purchasing a new bookmobile. Our current bookmobile was purchased in January of 2011. These vehicles have about a 15-year lifespan, so it's time. And, you know, these are specialty vehicles. These are not vehicles that you can, say, choose a vendor or a dealer and say, we've got a few on the lot. They're basically custom-made.
- And they're pretty particular in terms of the specs. And because they're specialty vehicles and they have a lot of specs specific to what libraries try to provide, in our case outreach patrons, they're pretty expensive.
- So in planning for this process, our Outreach Services Manager, Chris Jackson, who's gone through this process before, highly recommended are a consultant we've used in the past, Michael Swendrowski, who is joining us tonight via Zoom. Michael is an expert in this field, and as far as we understand, I believe the only consultant who specializes in bookmobile purchases for public libraries. So we're fortunate to have Michael working for us, and he is running point on working with
- the vendors, he helped us put together the request for proposals because this is a public bid. It's expensive enough that we had to go public with the bidding process. We did receive two proposals from the industry leaders in terms of the vendors that build these vehicles.
- And we've reviewed these proposals, and we have a clear recommendation for which one to go with. And as Kathy said, we won't vote on that tonight. But we do want to go ahead and walk through the process and the reasoning we have for wanting to accept this proposal and answer any questions. And so with that, Michael, if you're online, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you. I see my face.
- There's Michael, I'm not sure we can hear him. Can we flip that to make Michael bigger and you smaller? Yeah, that would be lovely. I don't think we can hear you, Michael. Sorry, Michael, we can't hear you yet. All right, let me check my side. There you are. There we go. OK, all right. Thank you all very much for the invitation to join your meeting tonight. It's been an absolute pleasure meeting
- working with the team so far, and I look forward to next steps and eventually getting a beautiful new bookmobile in your lot. We have been working on this project collectively really since November of last year. We've walked through all of the goals, desires, and constraints for the project, and we have diligently
- come up with a set of specifications and a design to shop to the nationwide vendors policies. This market is quite saturated right now with orders. I'm happy to report that outreach services are kind of the new library black these days and have been for going on a decade now. So the vendors are quite full.
- and enjoying deep order banks. But because of that, in part, that's why we only got two proposals. A lot of them are simply cherry picking these requests for proposals and only taking ones that they don't have to sharpen their pencils on. But again, as Breer mentioned, we did get proposals from the two premiered vendors in the industry.
- So I was quite pleased with that. And also, as he alluded to, the choice was very clear between the two. So there wasn't a whole lot of decision making in the process. Were there any questions for me on the vehicle itself, or? No, I just have a question. I have a question about the whole vehicle. Is that circle sadness?
- I'm not sure. Jen, Gary, you want to speak to that? I know we discussed what we would do with our old vehicle. A lot of times we look to sell it. It's just one. Look to sell it to another library who's in the market. Last time we found a person who is in the business of buying these types of specialty vehicles and reselling them. I think he was from Michigan maybe.
- But we will look for the same type of situation and sell it. Thank you. Any other questions or discussion? Just out of curiosity. What are the external speakers for? What will you be doing? What will we be doing with external speakers? Is it an ice cream truck concept?
- We'll have our librarian, Jen Hoffman, speak to that. That's a very good question. On occasion we attend parades or events in parks and it helps to draw people to our vehicle and come see us and come visit us. So that's the main purpose of the external speakers. I know some of the drivers, if they
- pull into a neighborhood that they're serving. Sometimes they turn on some music as they're entering too. It just gets the kids aware that they're arriving and have more visitors turn out. We haven't typically used it for that purpose, but it could be something that we think about in the future.
- As I said before, we don't have a quorum, so there's no action item on this. So, it's just information and discussion right now. In new business, there are no action items, but we're talking about the Senate Bill 1, and that would be the whole crew, Greer, Josh, Gary, and Becky, okay? So, going back to January, we've been talking about Indiana Senate Bill 1.
- which changes property taxes and for a public library particularly the amount of revenue we can expect to get out of property taxes every year and that's the bulk of where our operating revenue comes from. So we've had some time to strategize how we're going to adjust to whatever the impact might be.
- A month or so ago, we learned what that impact would be. It's about, I think it's 356,000 starting in 2026, and it goes up about 20,000 each year for the next two years. So that's the reduction in revenue growth we can expect to see as a result of this bill. So Gary, Josh, and Becky and I have been working for months to figure out what is the best adjustment we can make to our operations that has a minimal impact on
- public's access to the library or experience with the library, and if possible, minimal impact on staff. And we've looked at all kinds of things like
- closing one of our branches or even the downtown library for a whole day and then saving a bunch of money in terms of wages and utilities and support and things like that. Looking at our collection budget, looking at the definition of what it is to be full time. We do 37 and a half hours a week. I think the federal minimum is 35, if that's correct, Becky. So, and taking a look at some of the perks that we have, our benefits package,
- all of which has either a negative impact on staff or would really, really truncate access to the library for the public. So in considering the fact that close to 70% of our operating budget is spent on staff compensation, but knowing that we don't want to have a really negative impact on staff, what we came up with was if we can reduce the total number of staff on payroll by the equivalent of five full-time employees,
- over the next two years, then we can absorb the revenue reduction from Senate Bill 1. And we believe we can do that by way of attrition without having to do layoffs or anything like that. So we looked at all kinds of information that we have on payroll, including our attrition rates, our hiring and retention trends, and realized if we're very strategic, and we are anyway, but if we continue to take that approach to figuring out whether or not a particular
- vacancy needs to be filled, then the opportunity to reduce by five total full-time equivalent positions will present itself over two years without too much trouble. So that's going to be our strategy for reducing our operating budget.
- There's a supplementary piece that we want to talk about not only with you all on the board but put out to the public and get public feedback on. And that is it will help us significantly in reducing by five full-time equivalents if we also shift our operating hours at the downtown library from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday to 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
- That is consistent with our branch operating hours. So there's a benefit there in terms of making it really simple and consistent across the entire system. But it also helps us adjust staff schedules at service points if we close the downtown library at 7 p.m. Now we didn't just think of doing this out of thin air. We looked at a lot of data including door count, public computer use, programming schedules, room reservations.
- to figure out what kind of impact might that have on the public. Anecdotally, we've observed for many years that around 7 to 7.30, Monday through Thursday, patronage really trickles off, and we see fewer and fewer and fewer patrons in the building.
- We consider it a reasonable piece as part of the strategy to propose closing the library, downtown library at 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and thereby reducing total number of hours per week by eight. But it isn't 100% without impact on the public because that's two hours, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, where people won't have access to the library when they have up to this point.
- So it's something we want to talk about. We certainly want to get public feedback on that before we make any decisions. And it's part of why we wanted to talk about this tonight and again in July before we make any decision on the hours of operation. So I'd like to hand it over to my colleagues. First, I'm going to start with Gary. He's going to walk through projected budgets for the next three years and talk about why this five FTE reduction is part of our strategy.
- Then Becky will talk about this from a payroll, hiring, and attrition standpoint. And then Josh will get into the downtown library hours adjustment proposal and the numbers that we looked at to justify that proposal. And then we can talk about it and answer any questions and come back in July and continue the conversation. In the packet on page 76 is a worksheet that shows, oh,
- and it's up here now, so. It shows budget information for each year starting in 2022. First, we'll look at the revenue data. In 2023, we see a revenue decrease from 2022 of about $280,000. Then in 2024,
- the total revenue budget increased by about $1,030,000 to get to $11,109,652 for the budgeted revenue. This reduction in 2023 and then the large increase in 2024 was due to a budget penalty in 2023
- that prevented the library from receiving the annual growth quotient. We did get the 2023 levy increase plus the 2024 growth quotient in 2024 and so that's why it increased so much that year. We'll go over the 2025 budget at the July board meeting but we can see a preview of the
- numbers tonight. 2025 is a more typical budget year where the growth quotient is 4% so the revenue from the tax levy increased to $7,966,281. Total revenue for 2025 was budgeted to be about $11,459,000.
- That's an increase from 2024 of about $349,000. 2026 is the year we will begin to see the impact of SB1. In 2026, the growth quotient will be 4%. The levy before the Senate bill number one adjustment increases to about $8.3 million.
- But the projected SB1 reduction to the levy is $358,550. The SB1 adjustment takes away most of the increase from the growth quotient. The result is that the budgeted increase in total revenue is about $110,000 in 2026.
- Are you? Yeah. In 2026, our goal will be to keep cost increases in line with the projected revenue increase. The bottom section of the worksheet shows spending budget data. The growth quotient for 2022 to 2026 is 4% each year.
- It's a little complicated because the 4% increase for the operating budget, well, the 4% increase is the limit for both the operating budget and the debt fund budget. In 2026, the debt fund budget will decrease by about $250,000. So we can increase the operating budget by more than 4%.
- The spending budget increase for 2026 is about $617,000. We want the budgeted spending to be as high as possible even though we plan to reduce actual spending on staffing. By having the budget as high as we can make it, it means that we have surprises or
- or unexpected events, we're less likely to have to go to the county council and ask for an additional appropriation. So just try to keep cushion between what we expect to actually spend and what we budget for spending. Now that the southwest branch is operating,
- The actual spending since 2023 is much closer to the actual revenue. In 2023 operating revenue was more than operating expense and we had a surplus of about $438,000. In 2024 we had a surplus of about $803,000. So before I move to the next worksheet are there any
- on this one. Okay. Now we'll look at the worksheet that's on page 75 in the packet.
- This is a look at the projections for budgets out to 2028. So looking at revenue for 2027 and 2028, we're using an estimated 4% growth quotient. The 4% increase for 2027 is based on the 2026
- levy reduced by the SB1 adjustment. So for 2027, the levy amounting to 8,243,438 is a 4% increase from the 2026 levy after the SB1 reduction. So you can see that revenue increases drop from about 110,000 in 2026.
- to about $20,000 in 2027 and 2028. The spending budget increases by a little over $500,000 per year in 2027 and 2028, and this was calculated based on a 4% growth quotient. We plan to keep actual spending in the operating fund under budget and under the annual revenue as we go forward.
- Are there any questions? Any comments or questions for Gary?
- So as Greer had mentioned, our main tool for meeting the budget adjustment is to decrease our overall headcount by five full-time equivalents, or FTEs. And we're confident that we can achieve this through natural attrition, meaning our normal turnover as staff members naturally leave the library, and we'll be able to avoid looking at anything like a layoff. We proactively started a hiring freeze when SB1 was first in the news.
- And since then, Greer and Josh have met with each department individually to share our plan and answer any questions that staff have so that we're confident staff are comfortable with what we're doing and know that they're not going to have layoffs. So you'll see on page 80 of the packet, there's a table with our annual staffing numbers since 2020. This summarizes our average headcount, number of hires, internal job changes, and turnover.
- for each year. This data captures what we normally see in an annual year and helps guide what we can expect. By looking closely each time a position becomes vacant, due to turnover we can and will carefully consider if it's a position that could either be reduced or filled with an internal job change rather than filling it with a new hire. In some cases, we'll reassign a staff member from one department to another.
- to best cover the staffing needs and ensure that we have appropriate staffing to serve the public. In other cases, internal job postings will provide internal staff with opportunities to move up or into another position. Historically, we've done a fair number of internal job changes as well as reassignments, so this is not new for the library or our staff. We will be carefully considering each open position and having conversations with department managers
- to determine if the vacant position scheduling needs and staffing needs should be filled with a full-time position or could be reduced to a part-time position. For example, if a full-time position is vacated, we'll look to see if a reduction in hours for that department position to a part-time position would be appropriate or if we need to maintain full-time hours. Page 78 and 79 in the packet,
- You'll find our current staffing numbers by department, and it's split out by full-time and part-time. We do have four different hour statuses. So, as Gura mentioned, we have 37 and a half hours as our full-time, and then we have three part-time classifications. So, we have 25 hours per week, 20 hours per week, and 15 to 18 hours per week. Those are all indicated as part-time on that table.
- But these various levels grant us the ability to properly staff our departments and allow opportunities for a wide variety of employees and their scheduling needs in the library. It also provides us with multiple ways to meet the decrease of five FTEs as we have the ability to look at full and part time in a number of options.
- This also allows us to assess each opening and ensure that we're not putting any department in a shortfall where they have fewer hours than they need. Also, the strategy aligns with our strategic goal number five by maintaining our employment practices and offering current and prospective staff a steady and reliable job, the opportunity to advance and change positions, and a careful strategy to manage our budget and impact on focus on the future.
- Before I turn it over to Josh to talk about our specific programming impacts and our hours of operations, do you have any questions? I just want to clarify that it's five staff over a period of three years, correct? Two years. It's two years, and it's five full-time equivalents. So that means it could be multiple part-time positions and a few full-times. It could be five full-times. It's just in the commons. So over two years. Over two years, yeah.
- Oh, well, I'm going to change the subject slightly from what you were just asking. Okay. I'm just curious what some of their questions were. They seem to have patterns when you went to the meetings of particular questions or concerns. Sure. I think the most common one was, what are we going to do if we don't achieve five FTE reduction by attrition?
- So in other words, will layoffs eventually possibly come? And we were careful to say we cannot ever guarantee that we're never going to do layoffs. But we do have other things we can look at in the budget and kind of go back to that original drawing board and say maybe now we're going to take a hard look at say the collection budget and some other things and see if we can reduce enough to still meet that need without having to step into the realm of doing actual layoffs. But that was a pretty common question.
- I'm pleased that I think in almost every department meeting everyone felt a sense of relief despite the uncertainty that's built into this situation. And we acknowledge that. We talked through a bit of that with everybody. But there was a pretty clear sense of relief that not only are we not going to do layoffs and people are walking around wondering, am I next? How secure is this situation? And so on.
- that we're thinking through all of the what ifs and we're trying to be really upfront and transparent with everybody about our thought process. And that we'll turn around and give updates as we sort of follow this path toward a five FTE reduction. So sometime probably in October, September or October, we'll say, hey, here's where we are on that path. Here's how far we've come so far. Yeah. The other thing I was wondering about, the Friends of the Library, I know that
- I think decades ago, Friends of the Library was to support. Has there been dialogue or discussion with the Friends of the Library maybe picking up, you know, like instead of reducing, you know, I know we're probably going to have to reduce, you know, purchasing of materials and stuff. Can they step in or what's the process with that? So what we've talked about with our friends group and foundation is that
- Now is the time we really need them to refocus on fundraising for us. And that can support things like endowments for collections for sure. But that's the big role that they can play. And I do want to clarify, we're not at the moment looking to reduce our collection budget. It was something that was on the table. And we may have to go back and look at it. We spend about 14% of our operating budget on the collection. So that's a sizable amount of money.
- but that's not something we're changing starting in 2026. But we do have endowments managed by our foundation that are specific to our collection and increases in those endowments can certainly help, particularly if we do have to go back and reduce the collection budget. But that fundraising piece is a big support piece that we do get from our foundation and we need to continue to get that from them for sure. Okay, thank you. Any other questions or comments? All this seems very
- thoughtfully done, so thank you so much for that. I want to ask a little bit more about what the staff, in addition to like their feedback about feeling relief about the sort of natural attrition approach, maybe this is more for the next piece, but what concerns they had with other pieces of this? Like were they feeling like the natural attrition was the right way to go in order to keep all of the other programmatic budgets intact? Would be curious about what the feedback was there.
- Sure and also about staff feedback about hours. Maybe I missed that part. I'm very sorry That's what Josh is going to get into next and there was some there is some staff feedback on hours So Josh you can speak to that very quickly one other thing that was asked a couple of times was
- Do we think there will be other laws passed or other changes to the structure of our budget that are going to make this worse? And, of course, we don't really know. This is a pretty significant change to the way we get our revenue. But we can't say. That was brought up a few times. And correct me if I'm wrong, but we don't get a lot of federal grants. Correct. Yeah. They're here and there, but we don't rely on them for operating.
- Thank you, Becky. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, we have had discussions in the department, those department meetings that Greer and I went to, but also additionally with the department managers and in frontline staff just even while I'm working on the desk and stuff. We are not overstaffed currently.
- So the impact of five FTEs, particularly ones that come into public services, will be visible. We pride ourselves and have for a long time on the level of service that we provide and the quantity of the programs that we do, the diversity of the programs that we do. So some of that will be noticeable. Less staff means less off-desk time.
- less time to develop programs and less time to work on those projects. Fewer staff on the desk could also potentially mean longer wait times, which we have a real problem with in our culture at the library here. We don't like to keep people waiting. But we have already begun to talk about workarounds. We know how to plan for programs on the desk when it's slow. We know how to
- repeat content over a program cycle, over a year. We're really already talking about, even not knowing for certain where those gaps will emerge because it'll always be situational and conversational depending on who decides it's time to move, ways we can minimize that impact. We're not gonna cease to offer story times or book clubs. Our flagship program series will remain intact.
- some of the experimentation that we do or some of the wilder things we may have to think twice about. So that's something that we're planning for. But the question about the hours and the hours reduction, I want to, before I talk about how that will benefit us, just take a little bit of a look at the data that we kind of looked at as we were looking at the different models to help us
- with the staff reduction, if you go to page 81, near the very end of your packet, there's a series of tables that we have. The first one is our door count data, average door count data for the day Monday through Thursday. If you look at 2024, 2025, for the day it kind of fluctuates between 1200, 1300,
- And then right below that is the average seven to nine visitors. And it's pretty steady, around just 100 people downtown over the course of the two hours. And there are similar trends with some of the other data fields that we looked at, people using our public computers.
- 2024 and so far average 2025, the last two columns there, around close to 300 for the day, but only 24 or 21 for those two hours. So we think that'll be a much more minimal impact. Our program data for those two hours of the day during the week, we average between about five to eight attendees per program with a couple of anomalies out there.
- Our program coordinator put some kind of tease through that to get a better look at it. You can see here's an event that actually brought in 70 people or a special event we did that brought in 40. But generally speaking, our attendees during those two hours tend to be in the single digits. So we don't see a great impact there. And then finally, the reservable spaces. If you look at the bookings from seven to nine,
- They're either in the single digits or around 11%, 13%, 19% for meeting room reservations. They're pretty low and even lower if you go down through those charts and look at study room reservations percentage of study room reservations for the whole day. It's 3%, 1%, 4%. Those numbers are low. I will say that
- I was trying to minimize how many tables I was putting in here. These are reservations for the meeting rooms and study rooms that are strictly from seven to nine. If you look at reservations that start earlier at like 430, 530 and go to maybe 715 or 730 even, those numbers go up a little bit. They're up to, they can be even in a couple of places as high as the mid 30s, I believe.
- So those were the main data points. We had a sense that that was it. Those of us who work in the evenings see that a lot, but we really wanted to look at the numbers. So the staff are pleased in answer to your question at the possibility of that for a couple of reasons. One, it's hard to sit on the children's desk from seven to nine when you're not getting a lot of folks and you start wondering. If you get a couple patrons, you'll start chasing them around the room and bothering them to find out.
- they need any help, but there's a practical aspect to it as far as scheduling goes. Currently with the nine to nine schedule on Monday through Thursday, we run two shifts and they'll go like 8.30 to five and 12.30 to nine. The overlap time is in the middle of the day, 12.30 to five. So you have thin shifts in the morning and the evening. When you're short staffed or whether it's illness, vacations, whatever it is,
- you have to cover half a day with that thin shift at either end. This reduces those thin times to two hours on either end, two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon. So if somebody has to stay longer and flex their hours out, it becomes much easier. If somebody has to, the exempt staff, the managers who can just do it more easily, it allows them to cover that. And we know this from experience and we've,
- learned a lot by doing here at Ellisville, my colleagues do that, and at Southwest as well. So that will give us a lot of leeway, and that's the real practical aspect because, you know, we're not laying people off at the moment that we cut these hours, which is what a lot of agencies are forced to do, but it gives us that flexibility to absorb it for sure. And the point that Greer made about the consistency among the branches can't really be overstated.
- I've been in this business for a really long time, and I've learned that you cannot expect the public to remember the different hours among the branches. And it's usually just a minor annoyance. They show up as you're closing, and they've just set everything up. But it can be really bad when kids are left here, because their parents thought you were going to be open till 9, and you can't get a hold of them, and you can't leave them. But yeah, that can be rough at times.
- We've for years talked about that, just having that consistency one way or another for sure. Yeah. Sorry about the beginning, but Ellitsville and the Southwest branch close at 7 in the evening. That's correct. Okay. Yeah. Monday through Thursday. Okay. And the Sunday and Saturday hours aren't going to change? No. Those are the same as they will be at the branches, and the closing time is 6. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So all library and branches are the same hours on the weekends.
- sense that we should do that during the week too. Yeah that was what that was our thinking. And so all library branches will have the same hours all of the days of the week. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for sharing that. Thank you. Thank you. Were there staff concerns about the downtown library closing earlier?
- I'm sure there were, can you share a bit about what those were, even if there was pretty broad consensus that this is a good direction to move for lots of reasons? Absolutely, yeah, there were a couple. The numbers being low from seven to nine, it's true they are low, they are very loyal patrons, and we know them.
- And sometimes, even if there's just one or two in a very large space, we know every Wednesday, for instance, they're going to be here. This is going to affect them. And many of them are patrons we've known for a long time. So if this goes through, we will need to get in front of that and really talk to people about stuff. That was a concern I heard more than once. How we do programming in the evening. As the data shows, the numbers are not high and the attendance isn't high.
- But we've already begun to have conversations. Our downtown programmers have begun to have conversations with the programmers here at the branches. How do you do that? How do you make sure you're planning a cycle of programs that essentially have to end by 645? We could just take all the time in the world before. So that's just a matter. It's just gonna force us to reconsider how we do that.
- Offsite programs will continue past that time as they do now at school open house, books on tap, things that are elsewhere, that won't change. So what you might see particularly among adult programmers is a shift into more offsite programming in the evenings just because we don't wanna lose those numbers that we do have. So that's been a big one that we've been thinking about, yeah.
- that we heard and have admittedly been thinking about as we've been looking at our options for the last several months is, number one, conventional wisdom suggests that you try to stay open after school and work hours as much as possible because that means a lot of people who can't otherwise access the library have that time. The other is you never want to reduce operating hours. If you can help, you want to increase them. And so this is a move in a different direction and no library likes to do that.
- But in doing kind of the cost-benefit review of all of this, if it boils down to this allows us to reduce total number of staff more effectively, adjust schedules accordingly, and we look around the downtown library and we see we just don't have the people in the building after 7 o'clock to justify being open, then this seems like the moment where, okay, let's go ahead and do that, make those hours consistent across the system, help us adjust to fewer staff on payroll,
- And the impact, although it's not nothing, because as Josh said, we do have loyal patrons and we have programs that sometimes go later and we have room reservations that can go later. But on balance, the impact is less severe than in looking at some of our other options. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Josh. Thanks, guys.
- So the last thing I wanted to share about this is that, as we kind of mentioned before, and Nancy, with your question, we got into this a bit. It's worth keeping in mind that we are continuing to see an increase in digital patrons, not a significant reduction in what we think of as analog patrons using the buildings or accessing our print collection. But that trend is continuing. And COVID, again, really did help a lot of people figure out how to be digital users of MCPL's resources.
- And so in that sense, again, in thinking of cost benefit, reducing by eight hours a week at the downtown library during the hours where we just don't see that many patrons seems to make a lot of sense. But as we said at the beginning of the meeting, this is the start of the conversation. We need to talk about it this month, think about it, come back in July, ask more questions, talk about it some more, hopefully get some public feedback on this.
- and then look to make a decision after that. If we do decide to close the downtown library at 7, Monday through Thursday, we will need at least a 90-day lead time because we already have room reservations in place. And so then the question becomes, are we going to do this
- in 2025, or do we wait until January 1 of 26? There are pros and cons to doing it either way, but we'll need to decide on that and then move pretty quickly on preparing for the hours change, if that's what we do. Any more questions or comments? I'm just processing the meetings, having to end early. Are there any groups who meet regularly, a community group that
- I don't know who all meets, I guess. Is it random people kind of scheduling, or are there regular groups that this would affect? Yeah, it's all over. Certainly, there are long-standing groups every hour of the day, almost, that have used us on a regular basis, and once a month,
- some even more than that. It's ironic, actually, because we had to reschedule this meeting for next week, and Mara and I were just looking at, oh, where are we gonna find a room? Of course, it's all programs, but there are a couple of groups that do. So we'll have to get in front of that. We haven't, what I'm encouraged by is that we haven't received a lot of feedback since opening at Southwest that, oh, if only you guys were till nine or that, but there are certainly. So there will be,
- A lot of conversations about that, yeah. But it's the whole gamut, and we have folks who've been meeting in our spaces for honestly decades. I don't know that any specifically will be upended by that, but certainly, yeah. Trying to visualize an exit that there could be someone still there until 7.30 if need be for that. Yeah. But there's no way to keep people out of the main part of the library that way.
- Yeah, we talked about things like that too. We had been trending towards more after hours programs for our younger patrons, particularly team services. And we're going to have to reel some of that in. Thanks for considering everything. The staff is very happy about that, to hear that it's not just
- we're gonna just cut staff, and that's the way to do it. And one of the main, the five, boy, I don't remember what you call them. The strategic goals, yeah. Strategic goals, I'm sorry. No, you're right. That's an important part that you told me whenever I first came on here, that was one that you were really trying to work on now. And I think they should feel valued by that.
- Well, we can say this is a real test of our commitment to goal number five because there are easier ways to save $300,000 to $400,000 a year. But I'm glad we have that in our plan and we're committed to it. Okay. And next we have a department update and the presentation is going to be by Chris from the Aultville Library.
- Good evening. Tonight, I'm going to take my time with this update to talk about some departmental, we're calling it a revamp, not a renovation, but I'll explain a little bit about that. This has been in the books for a little while and we're going to be starting on it probably towards the end of the year here. So we renovated this building in 2019. We added this wing that we're in right now, the meeting rooms.
- We added a preschool room, which was our former meeting room, and a teen space, which we didn't have before. But it has been since 2020, or sorry, 2005, that we've done anything with our non-public areas, our staff areas. So they have not been renovated since then. And at that point, we had taken our former front porch and made office space
- materials return room and the atrium, the front lobby.
- Since then, the population in the Altsville area has grown quite a bit. I think it was about 8% from 2010 to 2020. And it has continued to increase as people choose to move out here or settle down out here versus the more expensive properties in Bloomington. And I don't believe there's anybody who would say that that trend is gonna change in the next 10 years.
- Our staff size has increased to accommodate that change in demographics in this part of the county, and the public's expectations have also changed to include new technology for regular usage and in conjunction with the programming we do out here. So you have more staff than we had 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and more stuff, and that makes for tighter workspaces.
- And so the need to use our non-public footprint that we have here to be more efficient in our back-of-house work is a result of that. So, last year and early this year, we have had many staff conversations here at the Ellisville branch, and those culminated in a list of
- priorities for addressing those non-public areas, and there are three major points to that. So the first is need for a program preparation area. Many of our programs for children and
- some of the adult programs that include crafts. They require a hefty amount of preparation of physical materials, and often that spans the course of several work days. So we currently don't have an area where preparation can take place and kind of be left overnight if it's not finished in a single day. We are planning to address this deficit by adding a large
- table, hopefully collapsible and mobile, that will be placed in the area between the staff office space and our circulation desk. Second point that was identified is a desire to relocate the circulation desks closer to the non-public area. So if you think about how they are now, they're kind of out there.
- And our current location in the solarium with all the beautiful light and high ceilings, it made sense at the time of the former renovation, but we've come to find out that those high ceilings are very echoey and they create an ambient noise that makes it difficult sometimes to hear your coworkers or your patrons that you're trying to help at that place. So what we've kind of talked about
- is moving those desks kind of back to where the whole shelving is now, right under the lip of that solarium. And we're hoping that will reduce the noise both from the desk to the rest of the library and from everybody who's there at the desk. And it will also put us closer to a lot of the stuff that we would have to
- physically get up and get in the back for patrons. So thinking about possibly longer wait times with SB1, this would in a small way address that because there would be less time walking back and forth. We are also considering new furniture, desks and chairs for the circulation desk area.
- This will, of course, because we're moving the desk back to where the holds are now, necessitate that we relocate those hold shelves. So we have some good ideas for where those might go. We are sunsetting some of our collections, compact discs and books on CD at some point in the next couple years. So this project might dovetail nicely with that, freeing up some real estate in the stacks to move some of the holds.
- for where they currently are to a different location. And storage space is the third issue that we have run into. You can never have enough of it because we collect stuff over the years as librarians and programmers particularly. So we're taking a look at the existing cabinetry that we have in the non-public areas. They tend to be underused
- simply because they are not deep enough to really hold a lot of the larger tech items like a 3D printer and the big bins of children's materials that we use for those craft programs and just day-to-day materials. So we are looking at existing storage spaces to determine what and where we can gain more usable space, either through reorganization of what we currently have or purchase of new shelving cabinets, filing systems, et cetera.
- So those are the three main parts of the project. In addition, there could be several other items that we might address during the same time frame of this revamp. These would include replacement of an aging and very user unfriendly fire shutter that goes between our children's room and our audio visual section.
- and we've been thinking about that for a while, replacing some carpeting and repainting in some of both the staff and public areas and possibly adding a wall that would divide the staff office room from the circulation desk that would help to cut down on the noise because people are gonna be closer to our offices, the noise coming out of the offices into the public area, the noise from the public area into the staff offices
- And it could also create more wall space for storage. So that is generally a brief update about that project. And if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them, whether it's about that or anything else. Yes. Forgive me if I missed this. The staff office space, which I've been back there a couple years ago,
- which is basically, if I remember right, on both sides, just desk after desk. Is there a plan? Is there anything to help you all with that? Because it is packed in there. And it's not like you don't all take care of it. It's just I was astounded. I brought a group of high schoolers over who were considering media, library media. It was a very small class. And one thing we talked about when we went back
- to the school at Edgewood, the kids said, wow, how do they do all of that? How do they have all those desks in there? How do they get their work done? Because there's no privacy, very little space. So is there any, that's what I thought maybe you were going to talk about. So that's interesting because when we started talking about this, we kind of expected that the staff would be asking about things like cubicle walls that would divide things up.
- And that's not a priority to them. They're fine kind of being as close as they are to each other. Getting all the stuff that's not people, but the stuff for programs that is piled up everywhere, that is a bigger priority for them to make the most use of the space that they do have. So you're doing okay?
- Yeah, we make it, yeah. Okay, because I remember just the desks were very close. They are, yeah. I thought, and I probably need to look at it again with that perspective, but when I thought, oh, they're going to be doing some stuff with the space here, I thought that would probably be your very first priority, but I'm glad to hear that it works. Yeah, that was. It would be hard to find more space for people to have offices.
- That was my expectation when we started these conversations with them. But it was not the thing that they were focused on. Yeah. All right. Well, good. That means the staff likes each other, too. Yes. Yes. I mean, that's a good thing. That's golden. Yeah.
- Now is the time for public comment, either present or online. Yes, please come up and state your name. Hi, I am Anne Bunger, and I am a volunteer in the Friends of the Library Bookstore.
- And so I wanted to bring up one other really minor consideration that has to do with closing the library at seven o'clock. And that is that on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the bookstore is open until seven. The way that the hours work is that it usually closes an hour or two before the library closes to give the bookseller time to finish up what he needs to do.
- and make sure all the patrons are gone, or the customers there. And so it closes, when the library closes at six, the bookstore closes at five. When the library closes at nine, the bookstore closes at seven. If the library closes at seven, I think just think about what time the bookstore would need to close. I think that if we closed at six, we would lose some end of the day, end of the day shoppers. But again, very minor.
- Sure, yeah. Well, I guess it's a question to the whole group. Does the library set the hours of the friends of the bookstore or do the friends set their hours? I don't know the answer to that. The friends set their own hours so they can't operate if hard. Right, right, yeah. Okay, gotcha, okay. Can you say again the hours, like if the library closes at nine and the bookstore closes at, it closes two hours before?
- So on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the library closes at nine, the store closes two hours before. Presumably, there aren't a lot of customers after seven o'clock. And then when the library closes at six, the store closes at seven. So that's Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So the bookstore operates every day that the library is open? Not Mondays and Wednesdays, but every other day. So it would only affect Tuesday and Thursday, it sounds.
- Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. Any public comment online? Okay. Seeing none, I offer a motion for adjournment. So moved. Second. There we go. I guess we can do that now, can't we? We are adjourned.