the-compact
Board Of Trustees Thursday, September 18, 2025 · 60 min

Bloomfield Township Public Library Board of Trustees Meeting on September 16, 2025

Summary

The city council meeting discussed various topics including library projects, budget review, audit presentation, and employee handbook updates.

  • The library shared a welcome email series with new cardholders and received positive feedback.
  • The library is hosting a furniture fair to gather feedback on furniture for the library.
  • The city council reviewed the library's finances, which were found to be well-managed and compliant with regulations.
  • The city council updated the employee handbook with changes to vision, mission, and policies.
  • The city council changed the start time of the library board trustees meeting from 6 to 6:30 p.m.

AI-generated from the meeting transcript. Check the video for anything load-bearing.

Topics

Transcript

Click any timestamp to jump the video to that moment. Auto-transcribed; expect occasional errors on proper nouns.

  1. Oh yes. Can we call our meeting to work? Yeah, how lovely. What a great idea. Good evening, everybody. Is there a request to remove anything from the consent agenda? Nothing for me. Nothing. Wonderful. So I move to approve the order of items for the regular and the consent agenda. So moved. Second. All in favor, aye. Aye. Wonderful. President's verbal report. So I guess I would tell you, I've looked through the book. We've been through the audit. Alan, thank you for being here. Thanks to Alan and his team for the audit, which I know you guys read every word and it's much appreciated. Every word, every word. He memorized it. Yeah, I know as you guys see in the budget, we're doing great financially with stewardship over our assets. So I think that's fantastic. Again, there was a lot of work done by the policy committee. Thank you for my fellow policy committee. So many members of the handbook and they all think it'll be fun with us. Great. Yeah. Karen, would you like to thank you for your book? Yes, I do have some things to mention. Well, in my written director's report, I mentioned that we shared the welcome email series. This is a series of emails that we've been giving to new cardholders and somebody at this table had the idea of sharing them with all the trustees. Yes. Well, we started. I don't think it was me. I think it was somebody else. I took the idea. Come on. Well, we've, we took that idea and ran. with it and every week in the month of september on tuesday every card holder is getting the series of emails and shana mentioned shana connelly one of our adult teen services librarians that a man came in a patron came in and had received the email about all the streaming services and the digital downloads he was very very excited he had no idea that we had any of those his card had expired a couple of years ago she got him all set up with this card to be refreshed and taught him how to do hoopla and canopy and press reader and he was very excited he was going to drag his wife in the next day and have her update my card too so that was just a really nice story yeah i like the extra credit piece of this idea yeah that's great um all right well with the fall newsletter i feel like the library design project is really out in the public now and people know about it yeah people haven't really said much i think celia said one man came in and said like

  2. So many members of the handbook and they all think it'll be fun with us. Great. Yeah. Karen, would you like to thank you for your book? Yes, I do have some things to mention. Well, in my written director's report, I mentioned that we shared the welcome email series. This is a series of emails that we've been giving to new cardholders and somebody at this table had the idea of sharing them with all the trustees. Yes. Well, we started. I don't think it was me. I think it was somebody else. I took the idea. Come on. Well, we've, we took that idea and ran. with it and every week in the month of september on tuesday every card holder is getting the series of emails and shana mentioned shana connelly one of our adult teen services librarians that a man came in a patron came in and had received the email about all the streaming services and the digital downloads he was very very excited he had no idea that we had any of those his card had expired a couple of years ago she got him all set up with this card to be refreshed and taught him how to do hoopla and canopy and press reader and he was very excited he was going to drag his wife in the next day and have her update my card too so that was just a really nice story yeah i like the extra credit piece of this idea yeah that's great um all right well with the fall newsletter i feel like the library design project is really out in the public now and people know about it yeah people haven't really said much i think celia said one man came in and said like when is it going to start she's like oh we still got some work to do yeah um so with the fall newsletter article and this thursday the furniture fair is opening up so what this means is american interiors which is the furniture dealer we're working with and jenna and chloe have arranged for several pieces of furniture to come to the library they'll sit in like the lobby slash commons area and also in the entrance to youth services the goal of this is to have people vote on which furniture they like these aren't necessarily representative of pieces that we will be getting certainly not colors or finishes so if you look at i have no idea what they're bringing but if you look at it and think it's ugly it's not going to be that color we're really looking for people to say like i like cushiony chairs or i want a chair with arms we're really looking for style utility and characteristics engagement and to feel a part of and to feel a part of it definitely and how many pieces are they going to be bringing in i don't know do you know i don't know a lot it sounds like a lot yeah and is it just um chairs and that or is it going to be tables and mostly chairs because those are the things that are

  3. about it yeah people haven't really said much i think celia said one man came in and said like when is it going to start she's like oh we still got some work to do yeah um so with the fall newsletter article and this thursday the furniture fair is opening up so what this means is american interiors which is the furniture dealer we're working with and jenna and chloe have arranged for several pieces of furniture to come to the library they'll sit in like the lobby slash commons area and also in the entrance to youth services the goal of this is to have people vote on which furniture they like these aren't necessarily representative of pieces that we will be getting certainly not colors or finishes so if you look at i have no idea what they're bringing but if you look at it and think it's ugly it's not going to be that color we're really looking for people to say like i like cushiony chairs or i want a chair with arms we're really looking for style utility and characteristics engagement and to feel a part of and to feel a part of it definitely and how many pieces are they going to be bringing in i don't know do you know i don't know a lot it sounds like a lot yeah and is it just um chairs and that or is it going to be tables and mostly chairs because those are the things that are right so finicky okay different people body types um so yeah we're going to put posters out to explain what's happening there will be some flyers there will be multiple ways for people to vote both digitally and analog so we hope that this creates some excitement some conversations some buy-in around this project all the furniture will be there for two weeks through october 7th and um yeah i hope that you guys come in too and take a look at what's happening absolutely absolutely also remember that um catherine and richard have created a page on our website devoted to the library design project so we will be using that to post updates especially when we get into the construction phases and we'll have to talk about this area is closed or whatever it might be but just remember that so if you encounter any folks neighbors friends who are wondering about it you can refer them to that um speaking of the fall print newsletter i'm not sure if you noticed that it grew this quarter yes there's the two extra pages so that was um i want to thank the administration um library assistant to laura moore for redesigning that she's at the desk right now

  4. and that or is it going to be tables and mostly chairs because those are the things that are right so finicky okay different people body types um so yeah we're going to put posters out to explain what's happening there will be some flyers there will be multiple ways for people to vote both digitally and analog so we hope that this creates some excitement some conversations some buy-in around this project all the furniture will be there for two weeks through october 7th and um yeah i hope that you guys come in too and take a look at what's happening absolutely absolutely also remember that um catherine and richard have created a page on our website devoted to the library design project so we will be using that to post updates especially when we get into the construction phases and we'll have to talk about this area is closed or whatever it might be but just remember that so if you encounter any folks neighbors friends who are wondering about it you can refer them to that um speaking of the fall print newsletter i'm not sure if you noticed that it grew this quarter yes there's the two extra pages so that was um i want to thank the administration um library assistant to laura moore for redesigning that she's at the desk right now that was a lot of work to redesign it looks great she's very talented and then my last thing to mention is that tomorrow afternoon well i guess morning into the afternoon um we will be celebrating karen efamoff karen is one of our library pages she has worked at this library for 50 years as of yesterday yeah yes she started when she was i think 16 or 17 years old and um she's worked as a library page can you ask like somebody from the news or somebody to figure oh you haven't thought about detroit news or free press they always do it like a feel good yeah feel good story i think that would be fun yeah it might still come out so you are all invited to it's from 11 to 2 in the community room it would be um a wonderful event and that's all wonderful thank you uh the next item is our monthly review of checks and the budget does anybody have any specific comments i do not uh tech logic i didn't recognize that tech logic is the vendor for our automated materials handler oh yes is that uh monthly or so that's 23 grand down the bottom of page five

  5. administration um library assistant to laura moore for redesigning that she's at the desk right now that was a lot of work to redesign it looks great she's very talented and then my last thing to mention is that tomorrow afternoon well i guess morning into the afternoon um we will be celebrating karen efamoff karen is one of our library pages she has worked at this library for 50 years as of yesterday yeah yes she started when she was i think 16 or 17 years old and um she's worked as a library page can you ask like somebody from the news or somebody to figure oh you haven't thought about detroit news or free press they always do it like a feel good yeah feel good story i think that would be fun yeah it might still come out so you are all invited to it's from 11 to 2 in the community room it would be um a wonderful event and that's all wonderful thank you uh the next item is our monthly review of checks and the budget does anybody have any specific comments i do not uh tech logic i didn't recognize that tech logic is the vendor for our automated materials handler oh yes is that uh monthly or so that's 23 grand down the bottom of page five it would be annual annual payment on the service agreement yeah that's what you say there on 24. anybody else authors unbound that was for katherine arden which we ended up oh yeah so we'll get a we'll get some of that money back and we'll get all this oh can you do that the only thing i had on page um seven this is our budget as you guys can see the budget looks pretty much like it did last month we're all within the variances other than the you know which were under on the capital outlay and of course the timing on the taxes so i thought that was fine and then if you skip forward to nine again you can see the vast majority of our funds are getting a 4.7 return on the annual yield basis which is great let's hope we can keep it going yeah so um we've got a motion then if there's nothing further on that on page there's nothing further on page five

  6. materials handler oh yes is that uh monthly or so that's 23 grand down the bottom of page five it would be annual annual payment on the service agreement yeah that's what you say there on 24. anybody else authors unbound that was for katherine arden which we ended up oh yeah so we'll get a we'll get some of that money back and we'll get all this oh can you do that the only thing i had on page um seven this is our budget as you guys can see the budget looks pretty much like it did last month we're all within the variances other than the you know which were under on the capital outlay and of course the timing on the taxes so i thought that was fine and then if you skip forward to nine again you can see the vast majority of our funds are getting a 4.7 return on the annual yield basis which is great let's hope we can keep it going yeah so um we've got a motion then if there's nothing further on that on page there's nothing further on page five i'm happy to read it i move to approve the monthly monthly cash disbursements in the forms and amounts in the check numbers noted for a grand total of seven hundred and two thousand nine hundred and seventy eight dollars and thirty one cents second all in favor aye motion um and then um i motion to approve the remaining items on the consent agenda so moved second oh sorry that one's passed linden i'm doing right right all right great work okay remember the call of the public jane what do you got for us all right so soc we um had bingo for people employees who wanted to participate and we made 89 we met in 64 because we gave out 25 dollars worth in prizes um we sent a check to mla michigan library association for their advocacy resource fund um those were the casual day funds from july and august and then from september to

  7. i'm happy to read it i move to approve the monthly monthly cash disbursements in the forms and amounts in the check numbers noted for a grand total of seven hundred and two thousand nine hundred and seventy eight dollars and thirty one cents second all in favor aye motion um and then um i motion to approve the remaining items on the consent agenda so moved second oh sorry that one's passed linden i'm doing right right all right great work okay remember the call of the public jane what do you got for us all right so soc we um had bingo for people employees who wanted to participate and we made 89 we met in 64 because we gave out 25 dollars worth in prizes um we sent a check to mla michigan library association for their advocacy resource fund um those were the casual day funds from july and august and then from september to october those casualty funds will go to the birmingham bloomfield community coalition good that's a good one and that's all i have you can ask this question you thank you years ago maybe a couple years ago you used to have purses that you bring in south are you still doing that bring for you guys to sell that's good until you remove yeah we'll talk about the unfinished business we're visiting the strategic plan conversation which has been ongoing so at the last meeting we decided to extend the plan through 2028 and we added this was Keith's it's on the record Keith's recommendation to add a reference to artificial intelligence

  8. advocacy resource fund um those were the casual day funds from july and august and then from september to october those casualty funds will go to the birmingham bloomfield community coalition good that's a good one and that's all i have you can ask this question you thank you years ago maybe a couple years ago you used to have purses that you bring in south are you still doing that bring for you guys to sell that's good until you remove yeah we'll talk about the unfinished business we're visiting the strategic plan conversation which has been ongoing so at the last meeting we decided to extend the plan through 2028 and we added this was Keith's it's on the record Keith's recommendation to add a reference to artificial intelligence which I thought was a really great addition so we did do that in one of the goals we added that so I just want to hear that this is okay with everyone it's great right yep then we've got a strategic plan for a couple more years great that's all for that one and we have committees on AI yep we have a staff committee working on artificial intelligence you Lyndon is actually chairing that for us. It's made up of about, what, like six or seven staff? I think there's actually eight. There's almost two people from most departments. They're in a variety of positions, so there's already a lot of interesting perspectives coming out of that, and I'm excited about that. Thank you for doing that. All right. Should I just keep going? Yeah, you're on fire. All right. We're on to the 24-25 audit presentation from Alan Panter of Yo & Yo. So let me just say that I want to thank all the staff who were involved in this, especially Kathy Robashevich, our new finance committee. She's not here today. She's not here today. She was present at the finance committee.

  9. the record Keith's recommendation to add a reference to artificial intelligence which I thought was a really great addition so we did do that in one of the goals we added that so I just want to hear that this is okay with everyone it's great right yep then we've got a strategic plan for a couple more years great that's all for that one and we have committees on AI yep we have a staff committee working on artificial intelligence you Lyndon is actually chairing that for us. It's made up of about, what, like six or seven staff? I think there's actually eight. There's almost two people from most departments. They're in a variety of positions, so there's already a lot of interesting perspectives coming out of that, and I'm excited about that. Thank you for doing that. All right. Should I just keep going? Yeah, you're on fire. All right. We're on to the 24-25 audit presentation from Alan Panter of Yo & Yo. So let me just say that I want to thank all the staff who were involved in this, especially Kathy Robashevich, our new finance committee. She's not here today. She's not here today. She was present at the finance committee. Oh, gotcha. And Erin Brzezinski, who was our temp accountant from Plant Moran. She was wonderful and helped Kathy learn so much because Kathy had not done this previously, so Kathy, that really helped. The team at Yo & Yo was really great to work with. This year went really, really smoothly. Everything just worked. Thank all of you. This is one of your primary duties to monitor the library's finances, so I thank you for your review of this. And thanks to all the library staff who follow all of our procedures and make sure our internal controls are working. I think that as a team, we do a great job of being good stewards of funds, and I think our audit shows that. So with that, I will turn it over to you. to Alan. You all should have a copy of a financial statement at your place, and he's got a presentation as well. Great. Thanks, Tara. Appreciate it. So I guess the first couple of bullet points that I have about the materials and my introduction are unnecessary because Tara's in them. Also, you know, I usually talk about how the audit went, and I completely agree and echo what Tara just said, as far as the audit went very well. We did push it back a couple of weeks

  10. She was present at the finance committee. Oh, gotcha. And Erin Brzezinski, who was our temp accountant from Plant Moran. She was wonderful and helped Kathy learn so much because Kathy had not done this previously, so Kathy, that really helped. The team at Yo & Yo was really great to work with. This year went really, really smoothly. Everything just worked. Thank all of you. This is one of your primary duties to monitor the library's finances, so I thank you for your review of this. And thanks to all the library staff who follow all of our procedures and make sure our internal controls are working. I think that as a team, we do a great job of being good stewards of funds, and I think our audit shows that. So with that, I will turn it over to you. to Alan. You all should have a copy of a financial statement at your place, and he's got a presentation as well. Great. Thanks, Tara. Appreciate it. So I guess the first couple of bullet points that I have about the materials and my introduction are unnecessary because Tara's in them. Also, you know, I usually talk about how the audit went, and I completely agree and echo what Tara just said, as far as the audit went very well. We did push it back a couple of weeks this year just to allow for the turnover, but that wasn't an issue at all. Could you give a couple of extra weeks and, you know, we could have presented this audit, you know, earlier, but we talked about it and it sounded like you guys had some things on your agenda in July and August that kind of superseded that. So we said, you know, we'll just leave it for September. That's fine. So everything went really well. And we really did appreciate, you know, working with Kathy, working with Aaron from Plant Moran. That was all fantastic. So even though you guys had a significant turnover in your business office, you know, the library didn't miss a beat in terms of its finances, which is really good. So congratulations on that. So our audit included an examination of the financial reporting process, internal controls, and also certain aspects of legal compliance. I'm pleased to report that we have no written audit findings based on that consideration. No. suggestions for improvement that is a positive reflection on management positive reflection on the door and it also tends to keep my presentations a little bit more brief so my plan for this evening is to give you some key takeaways from the audit and also to answer any questions that you might have we had a

  11. Tara just said, as far as the audit went very well. We did push it back a couple of weeks this year just to allow for the turnover, but that wasn't an issue at all. Could you give a couple of extra weeks and, you know, we could have presented this audit, you know, earlier, but we talked about it and it sounded like you guys had some things on your agenda in July and August that kind of superseded that. So we said, you know, we'll just leave it for September. That's fine. So everything went really well. And we really did appreciate, you know, working with Kathy, working with Aaron from Plant Moran. That was all fantastic. So even though you guys had a significant turnover in your business office, you know, the library didn't miss a beat in terms of its finances, which is really good. So congratulations on that. So our audit included an examination of the financial reporting process, internal controls, and also certain aspects of legal compliance. I'm pleased to report that we have no written audit findings based on that consideration. No. suggestions for improvement that is a positive reflection on management positive reflection on the door and it also tends to keep my presentations a little bit more brief so my plan for this evening is to give you some key takeaways from the audit and also to answer any questions that you might have we had a lengthy discussion at the Finance Committee last week so I don't plan on going into a huge level of detail is like we did it in that setting so and I do plan to follow the presentation that's over my shoulder here and you also have hard copies of it that I've distributed so please and please interrupt me with questions at any time all right so the first page of the presentation references the independent auditors report the purpose of an audit is to give you an opinion on your financial statements not to detect fraud and not to give assurance on internal control so it's a very important concept about what it is that we're here to do we're here to give you an opinion on your financial statements which is what this slide references so this is our opinion on your financial statements we're giving what's called an unmodified or clean opinion that is the best opinion you can get and it means a couple of things it means first of all the statements are formatted in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles so in other words everything is supposed to be there is there and also based on the procedures that we perform the numbers are good so unmodified opinion is what you want

  12. the audit and also to answer any questions that you might have we had a lengthy discussion at the Finance Committee last week so I don't plan on going into a huge level of detail is like we did it in that setting so and I do plan to follow the presentation that's over my shoulder here and you also have hard copies of it that I've distributed so please and please interrupt me with questions at any time all right so the first page of the presentation references the independent auditors report the purpose of an audit is to give you an opinion on your financial statements not to detect fraud and not to give assurance on internal control so it's a very important concept about what it is that we're here to do we're here to give you an opinion on your financial statements which is what this slide references so this is our opinion on your financial statements we're giving what's called an unmodified or clean opinion that is the best opinion you can get and it means a couple of things it means first of all the statements are formatted in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles so in other words everything is supposed to be there is there and also based on the procedures that we perform the numbers are good so unmodified opinion is what you want see okay all right the next slide deals with the balance sheet and this just shows the general fund it does not show the gift fund but it is a snap or no pep trust it's a snapshot as of March 31st 2025 and what I would like to talk about here is fund balance so in the the one column there second number up from the bottom total fund balance 19 million 1 75 to 19 that is as you can see the fund balance is broken down in a few different categories there's non spendable that corresponds to the prepaid you see up above there's committed that's cash flow what that basically means is you guys levy your property tax in December and by March you've collected most of it there's some delinquents there but you've collected most of your taxes by that point so you're you basically got all the money that you need to go into the next year so that is seven months of operating capability there that's that's set aside for the operations of the upcoming year so that's what that committed for cash flow is and then the assigned for and it says OPEB compensated absences and capital improvements so

  13. see okay all right the next slide deals with the balance sheet and this just shows the general fund it does not show the gift fund but it is a snap or no pep trust it's a snapshot as of March 31st 2025 and what I would like to talk about here is fund balance so in the the one column there second number up from the bottom total fund balance 19 million 1 75 to 19 that is as you can see the fund balance is broken down in a few different categories there's non spendable that corresponds to the prepaid you see up above there's committed that's cash flow what that basically means is you guys levy your property tax in December and by March you've collected most of it there's some delinquents there but you've collected most of your taxes by that point so you're you basically got all the money that you need to go into the next year so that is seven months of operating capability there that's that's set aside for the operations of the upcoming year so that's what that committed for cash flow is and then the assigned for and it says OPEB compensated absences and capital improvements so that assign that 5.4 million dollars is that's basically an assignment is a statement of purpose so it's just communicating what your intentions are to to use that money so that is an assignment that covers the entire compensated absences liability so everything that you could potentially owe to employees should they depart the net OPEB obligation so you have you offer OPEB that's post employment benefits other than pensions to some of your employees and so that entire liability is part of that assigned fund balance and the remainder which is about two point seven million dollars is is assigned for capital purchases so I imagine a lot of this can be used for your redesign project so so that's your and then there the unassigned is is what's left over so we measure the adequacy of fund balance so how much fundamentals do we have how much should we have how much how does that compare to past trends and potentially other governmental units as a percentage of annual expenditures so this year the library is at about two hundred and forty one percent of annual expenditures last

  14. assigned for and it says OPEB compensated absences and capital improvements so that assign that 5.4 million dollars is that's basically an assignment is a statement of purpose so it's just communicating what your intentions are to to use that money so that is an assignment that covers the entire compensated absences liability so everything that you could potentially owe to employees should they depart the net OPEB obligation so you have you offer OPEB that's post employment benefits other than pensions to some of your employees and so that entire liability is part of that assigned fund balance and the remainder which is about two point seven million dollars is is assigned for capital purchases so I imagine a lot of this can be used for your redesign project so so that's your and then there the unassigned is is what's left over so we measure the adequacy of fund balance so how much fundamentals do we have how much should we have how much how does that compare to past trends and potentially other governmental units as a percentage of annual expenditures so this year the library is at about two hundred and forty one percent of annual expenditures last year is about two hundred thirty six percent so went up a little bit we'll talk about that on the next page so this library has a very healthy fund balance that allows for effects flexibility and a cushion against bad economic times money for capital improvements funding of employee benefit costs and all of those other things next page statement of revenues expenditures and changes in fund balance you Again, this is just the general fund, shows how fund balance changed. So I'll kind of skip to the bottom line, which is actually the third line up from the bottom. Net change in fund balance, $2,562,050. That is how much your fund balance increased this year in general fund. How did we get there? Total revenues, the first total there is $10,386,000. That is up about $723,000, about 7%. Most of that is, $600,000 of that is property taxes. That's just your normal increase in taxable value times the millage rate. And $142,000 of that is investment income.

  15. library is at about two hundred and forty one percent of annual expenditures last year is about two hundred thirty six percent so went up a little bit we'll talk about that on the next page so this library has a very healthy fund balance that allows for effects flexibility and a cushion against bad economic times money for capital improvements funding of employee benefit costs and all of those other things next page statement of revenues expenditures and changes in fund balance you Again, this is just the general fund, shows how fund balance changed. So I'll kind of skip to the bottom line, which is actually the third line up from the bottom. Net change in fund balance, $2,562,050. That is how much your fund balance increased this year in general fund. How did we get there? Total revenues, the first total there is $10,386,000. That is up about $723,000, about 7%. Most of that is, $600,000 of that is property taxes. That's just your normal increase in taxable value times the millage rate. And $142,000 of that is investment income. So as Shane referenced a little while ago, you guys are doing really well on your investments and that's reflected here as well. You can see that investment income is very strong. It was strong last year and even stronger this year, so that's a good positive trend there. And on the expenditure side, you can see total expenditures, $7.9 million. That's up this year by about $853,000, about 12%. Sticking into those numbers, there was about $376,000. That increase that was more on personnel, most of that was increased contributions to the pension plan and about $381,000 of additional spent on capital this year. So, um, so that accounts for the increase. So, um, so that accounts for the increase. Thank you, so that accounts for the increase in terms of $381,000. That counts for the increase in $381,000. So, um, so that accounts for the increase in terms of $381,000. And that accounts for the increase in terms of $382,000 without any additional amount of $1,000. expenditures. Okay, next one is I have a little graph here, a little historical graph. I'm going to show you a little bit of a trend in the general fund. So this is a five-year graph of revenues, expenditures, and fund balance in the general fund. So you can see the revenues are increasing a little bit every year. Expenditures tend to bounce around with significant capital projects, which you haven't really had a big one since 2022, which you'll see on the next page too. And fund balance has gone up four out of the last

  16. So as Shane referenced a little while ago, you guys are doing really well on your investments and that's reflected here as well. You can see that investment income is very strong. It was strong last year and even stronger this year, so that's a good positive trend there. And on the expenditure side, you can see total expenditures, $7.9 million. That's up this year by about $853,000, about 12%. Sticking into those numbers, there was about $376,000. That increase that was more on personnel, most of that was increased contributions to the pension plan and about $381,000 of additional spent on capital this year. So, um, so that accounts for the increase. So, um, so that accounts for the increase. Thank you, so that accounts for the increase in terms of $381,000. That counts for the increase in $381,000. So, um, so that accounts for the increase in terms of $381,000. And that accounts for the increase in terms of $382,000 without any additional amount of $1,000. expenditures. Okay, next one is I have a little graph here, a little historical graph. I'm going to show you a little bit of a trend in the general fund. So this is a five-year graph of revenues, expenditures, and fund balance in the general fund. So you can see the revenues are increasing a little bit every year. Expenditures tend to bounce around with significant capital projects, which you haven't really had a big one since 2022, which you'll see on the next page too. And fund balance has gone up four out of the last five years. The only year that didn't go up is when you guys kind of spent down the fund balance in 2022. And I think that was your roof was the big thing. It was actually the LED lighting. Oh, right. Okay, good. Can I make a comment there? As you can see, the fund balance is growing and that's not, our mission is not to have a huge bank account. But if you look back at a, I pulled from a recent meeting, our projection going forward is that that will go, and this will depend on timing on the design and the parking lot. But it goes from the 18 million, then the 15, then the 12. So again, this hopefully is temporary while we, you know, it all depends on how fast we can get these things done. We have plans. Yes, we have plans. Great. Perfect. The next page is a graph that shows expenditures. And what we've done here is we've grouped the expenditures into five largest categories and we're showing a historical trend. So for personnel, you what you're looking at there is a five-year trend for personnel and then the same thing across the board you can see that the personnel costs as you would imagine have grown steadily over the years and you can see that library

  17. see on the next page too. And fund balance has gone up four out of the last five years. The only year that didn't go up is when you guys kind of spent down the fund balance in 2022. And I think that was your roof was the big thing. It was actually the LED lighting. Oh, right. Okay, good. Can I make a comment there? As you can see, the fund balance is growing and that's not, our mission is not to have a huge bank account. But if you look back at a, I pulled from a recent meeting, our projection going forward is that that will go, and this will depend on timing on the design and the parking lot. But it goes from the 18 million, then the 15, then the 12. So again, this hopefully is temporary while we, you know, it all depends on how fast we can get these things done. We have plans. Yes, we have plans. Great. Perfect. The next page is a graph that shows expenditures. And what we've done here is we've grouped the expenditures into five largest categories and we're showing a historical trend. So for personnel, you what you're looking at there is a five-year trend for personnel and then the same thing across the board you can see that the personnel costs as you would imagine have grown steadily over the years and you can see that library materials facilities equipment show pretty much the same trend maybe maybe a little less dramatic in terms of the increases there and then the capital outlay you can see the spike there in 2022 but really you know nothing else that's that big since then so I would imagine that that portion of this will look quite a bit different next year all right last slide is deals with the governance letter and that's the stapled letter that's tucked into the into the financial statements that I passed out it's distributed with the audit it's a address to management and the board of directors most of it's a form letter but it doesn't have to be it just depends on what we find in our audit and it would communicate any significant issues that we run into the letter discloses any estimates that are used and preparing the financial statements any new accounting standards there was one this year and that was GASB 101 deals with compensated absences so that increased the library's liability by a significant amount I want to say

  18. would imagine have grown steadily over the years and you can see that library materials facilities equipment show pretty much the same trend maybe maybe a little less dramatic in terms of the increases there and then the capital outlay you can see the spike there in 2022 but really you know nothing else that's that big since then so I would imagine that that portion of this will look quite a bit different next year all right last slide is deals with the governance letter and that's the stapled letter that's tucked into the into the financial statements that I passed out it's distributed with the audit it's a address to management and the board of directors most of it's a form letter but it doesn't have to be it just depends on what we find in our audit and it would communicate any significant issues that we run into the letter discloses any estimates that are used and preparing the financial statements any new accounting standards there was one this year and that was GASB 101 deals with compensated absences so that increased the library's liability by a significant amount I want to say $500,000 or $600,000 was that increase. Discusses any difficulties or disagreements that we had, which of course there were none of those. Any misstatements we noted, none of those. And if we had any management letter comments, those would be here as well, and we have none of those. So, with that, that's all I have. Do you have any questions? I don't have any questions. I actually do. On the little chart where it says other, what would other be? What's an example of that? Travel? Basically, yeah, what we're doing is we pulled out personnel, library, the ones that you can see there and other is just like everything else. It's like hosted, no, that goes under facilities and equipment. Hostage, lawyer, legal fees, auditing, travel, staff development. When I was 2023, that was a bump in other. Was there anything significant? I don't know. It could have been auditing a temporary account. Because we had a lot of FOIA. Oh, you know what? I'm sorry, Judy. You guys, if you look at the budgetary comparison schedule, which is on page 4-1 of the

  19. $500,000 or $600,000 was that increase. Discusses any difficulties or disagreements that we had, which of course there were none of those. Any misstatements we noted, none of those. And if we had any management letter comments, those would be here as well, and we have none of those. So, with that, that's all I have. Do you have any questions? I don't have any questions. I actually do. On the little chart where it says other, what would other be? What's an example of that? Travel? Basically, yeah, what we're doing is we pulled out personnel, library, the ones that you can see there and other is just like everything else. It's like hosted, no, that goes under facilities and equipment. Hostage, lawyer, legal fees, auditing, travel, staff development. When I was 2023, that was a bump in other. Was there anything significant? I don't know. It could have been auditing a temporary account. Because we had a lot of FOIA. Oh, you know what? I'm sorry, Judy. You guys, if you look at the budgetary comparison schedule, which is on page 4-1 of the financial statement, you guys actually have a category for other. Yeah, it's in our budget. So that's your category, not our category. Yes, right. 4-1. 4-1. Thank you. Yeah, that's your budgetary comparison schedule. Or if you look at our, the general fund report that's is in the board packet that has it doesn't have every single thing that's in other but it has quite a few the only thing i can think of for that 2023 could have been no that doesn't make i was thinking maybe it was when we had temporary accounting services that's what i was thinking too that would be that would have been like 2022 and nothing with personnel no because others is like you know that i'm talking about the issue no that would have been like 2020 or 2021. that was your first year yeah okay 2021. we're not going to go over the financials right no that was all i was going to do yeah i just had one question you guys made all the changes we talked about thank you for doing that except the building depreciation is still 60 years why is that because i missed it okay that's good enough yeah um and then the other just what do you want to change it to

  20. schedule, which is on page 4-1 of the financial statement, you guys actually have a category for other. Yeah, it's in our budget. So that's your category, not our category. Yes, right. 4-1. 4-1. Thank you. Yeah, that's your budgetary comparison schedule. Or if you look at our, the general fund report that's is in the board packet that has it doesn't have every single thing that's in other but it has quite a few the only thing i can think of for that 2023 could have been no that doesn't make i was thinking maybe it was when we had temporary accounting services that's what i was thinking too that would be that would have been like 2022 and nothing with personnel no because others is like you know that i'm talking about the issue no that would have been like 2020 or 2021. that was your first year yeah okay 2021. we're not going to go over the financials right no that was all i was going to do yeah i just had one question you guys made all the changes we talked about thank you for doing that except the building depreciation is still 60 years why is that because i missed it okay that's good enough yeah um and then the other just what do you want to change it to no it's just a typo oh um there's a there was something else if you when you if and when you get to it there's a description of how our results have gone year over year and tara and the rest of the team did a great job of noting the contributions of the friends and that they've been instrumental in providing success to us and they're great partners and i thought it was really well done and if they ever see it they'll be appreciated maybe i should share with them all right we're prepared to highlight that here's the 100 page audit yeah you should eat it i'm actually going to read it aloud part of your next meeting i don't see a motion is there any action that we need to take just one just one class one last question is it where no on page um it's on page 27. i think you just have to say i accept the audit and file it could i just ask one question before we do that sure on the personnel costs they tend to suggest that they're going up rapidly quickly almost exponentially um is there any reason to believe that that trend will fall off at some point i don't think so nothing gets any cheaper for people and they so is this a reflection of raises or raises it's increases

  21. okay that's good enough yeah um and then the other just what do you want to change it to no it's just a typo oh um there's a there was something else if you when you if and when you get to it there's a description of how our results have gone year over year and tara and the rest of the team did a great job of noting the contributions of the friends and that they've been instrumental in providing success to us and they're great partners and i thought it was really well done and if they ever see it they'll be appreciated maybe i should share with them all right we're prepared to highlight that here's the 100 page audit yeah you should eat it i'm actually going to read it aloud part of your next meeting i don't see a motion is there any action that we need to take just one just one class one last question is it where no on page um it's on page 27. i think you just have to say i accept the audit and file it could i just ask one question before we do that sure on the personnel costs they tend to suggest that they're going up rapidly quickly almost exponentially um is there any reason to believe that that trend will fall off at some point i don't think so nothing gets any cheaper for people and they so is this a reflection of raises or raises it's increases in health care it's increases and the contributions to the um retirement fund and we also adjusted salaries yes when did we do that with the coffin class we did that you know that would be from 2023 that was in um that might have been the 20th hiring of the consultants for that could have been that yeah so yeah i mean that would it's also right here in the governmental um requirements now to sick sick time and paid it has gone up a little bit more in the last couple of years mean we're fully stacked now and retention is important so we want to try to retain people but i always try to keep our personnel expenditures around 70 or under of our total expenditures so i watch that really closely okay and if you see yourself maybe going close to that or over that do you have levers that you can pull to control that or um i would have to start we wouldn't be

  22. any cheaper for people and they so is this a reflection of raises or raises it's increases in health care it's increases and the contributions to the um retirement fund and we also adjusted salaries yes when did we do that with the coffin class we did that you know that would be from 2023 that was in um that might have been the 20th hiring of the consultants for that could have been that yeah so yeah i mean that would it's also right here in the governmental um requirements now to sick sick time and paid it has gone up a little bit more in the last couple of years mean we're fully stacked now and retention is important so we want to try to retain people but i always try to keep our personnel expenditures around 70 or under of our total expenditures so i watch that really closely okay and if you see yourself maybe going close to that or over that do you have levers that you can pull to control that or um i would have to start we wouldn't be able to give us big raises we might not fill positions that become vacated um we might have to look at reducing hours in the schedule those would be the kinds of things that we would have to do okay thanks well i did go through a period of time where we had i did you know sundays were closed and yeah yeah but also just we had some significant positions that weren't filled oh yes yeah so we had those vacancies to account for yeah but i think jerry you had a comment about staff were generally happy but they were interested in knowing how they could be promoted uh-huh yeah that in terms of cost of personnel that kind of jump out yeah just pulled up our budget and you can see if you go back three years it's mostly salaries and wages two eight to three three but then Social Security's up fifty grand employee insurance is up two hundred grand

  23. do you have levers that you can pull to control that or um i would have to start we wouldn't be able to give us big raises we might not fill positions that become vacated um we might have to look at reducing hours in the schedule those would be the kinds of things that we would have to do okay thanks well i did go through a period of time where we had i did you know sundays were closed and yeah yeah but also just we had some significant positions that weren't filled oh yes yeah so we had those vacancies to account for yeah but i think jerry you had a comment about staff were generally happy but they were interested in knowing how they could be promoted uh-huh yeah that in terms of cost of personnel that kind of jump out yeah just pulled up our budget and you can see if you go back three years it's mostly salaries and wages two eight to three three but then Social Security's up fifty grand employee insurance is up two hundred grand actually we're not it's flat so it is a couple of things but I think your points a good one which is just if we get to a point where we need to there are there are things we can do as if we see that sort of exponential behavior continue another year then thank you any more questions for Alan thank you for preparing the fiscal year 2024 2025 audit report is presented and placed on file second we had a lot of meeting at our library last night thank you so much really appreciate you guys oh that's nice thank you this is how many years don't you serve

  24. actually we're not it's flat so it is a couple of things but I think your points a good one which is just if we get to a point where we need to there are there are things we can do as if we see that sort of exponential behavior continue another year then thank you any more questions for Alan thank you for preparing the fiscal year 2024 2025 audit report is presented and placed on file second we had a lot of meeting at our library last night thank you so much really appreciate you guys oh that's nice thank you this is how many years don't you serve Do you have the Clarkston Board? I do. Yeah. Clarkston Independence District Library. Yeah, I'm on board. Were we the impetus for that? What? That would be like the library. Partly. Partly. Yeah. You get an insight. Yeah. But it helps me understand more about really what you guys are dealing with. Because I sit in your chair. Yeah. Exactly the same. Good for you. How large is your board? There are seven of us. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So we have an odd number. And is it elected like we are? No. We're appointed. I'm an appointee of Independence Township, which is where I live. It's a district library, right? So it's a district library. We're a district library. Yeah. So we have appointees from Independence Township and the city of the village of Clarkston. So, yeah. Yeah. But it's great. The funniest town name. Yeah. The city of the village of Clarkston. The city of the village. Well, they have their traditions, right? You know, it's very traditional. They have their historical, you know, downtown and all that. If you've ever been out to Clarkston, you know, it's very, it's very pretty. It is. How many physical locations do you have? Just one. Just one. Yeah. We just have the one, the branch of the one, one location. So yeah, we're not quite as big as you guys are, but that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyways. Thanks, Ellen.

  25. Do you have the Clarkston Board? I do. Yeah. Clarkston Independence District Library. Yeah, I'm on board. Were we the impetus for that? What? That would be like the library. Partly. Partly. Yeah. You get an insight. Yeah. But it helps me understand more about really what you guys are dealing with. Because I sit in your chair. Yeah. Exactly the same. Good for you. How large is your board? There are seven of us. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So we have an odd number. And is it elected like we are? No. We're appointed. I'm an appointee of Independence Township, which is where I live. It's a district library, right? So it's a district library. We're a district library. Yeah. So we have appointees from Independence Township and the city of the village of Clarkston. So, yeah. Yeah. But it's great. The funniest town name. Yeah. The city of the village of Clarkston. The city of the village. Well, they have their traditions, right? You know, it's very traditional. They have their historical, you know, downtown and all that. If you've ever been out to Clarkston, you know, it's very, it's very pretty. It is. How many physical locations do you have? Just one. Just one. Yeah. We just have the one, the branch of the one, one location. So yeah, we're not quite as big as you guys are, but that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyways. Thanks, Ellen. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. We'll keep going here. Yeah. All right. Take care. Thank you. Bye, Ellen. Nice to see you. Okie dokie. Page 83. Clip and Wait a minute. Here we go. Thank you. Could you just remind me? Do we have a... No, I can't expose this. Oh, there you go. Thanks. Do we have a contract with Yo-Yo or a specified amount of time? No. No. Three. No. We used to do every three years we would go out for RFP. And is there a best practice with that? There's a concept of auditor rotations. Yes. Maybe you should have somebody else come in and look. Right. We've had the same auditor for 22 years at my company, so I don't take it too seriously. Okay. I think they do a great job. They're responsive. They explain. They're flexible, which can be very helpful. Yeah, I feel confident that they're doing a great job. Who do we have it for? I can't remember. It just came to me. It's very big. I can't remember. So we sent out the RFP and they almost doubled in price.

  26. Thanks, Ellen. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. We'll keep going here. Yeah. All right. Take care. Thank you. Bye, Ellen. Nice to see you. Okie dokie. Page 83. Clip and Wait a minute. Here we go. Thank you. Could you just remind me? Do we have a... No, I can't expose this. Oh, there you go. Thanks. Do we have a contract with Yo-Yo or a specified amount of time? No. No. Three. No. We used to do every three years we would go out for RFP. And is there a best practice with that? There's a concept of auditor rotations. Yes. Maybe you should have somebody else come in and look. Right. We've had the same auditor for 22 years at my company, so I don't take it too seriously. Okay. I think they do a great job. They're responsive. They explain. They're flexible, which can be very helpful. Yeah, I feel confident that they're doing a great job. Who do we have it for? I can't remember. It just came to me. It's very big. I can't remember. So we sent out the RFP and they almost doubled in price. Oh, really? Yeah. And so it's... Yeah, I can see the building. Lightroom. Yes. Thank you. How did you know? Whatever you want. Yeah. But if we ever felt like we wanted to just sharpen our pencils and get it, we would do a whole RFP process and we would, yeah. Personally, I think that Alan's fantastic. I think that he does a great job for us. I think that he mowers a little bit of... how libraries operate and he has a you know good understanding of this library and we have had some big changes yeah you know especially in the finance department so um i appreciate that he's been flexible and that he could see that we had these changes and still he's been a great consultant too through those changes i called on him to help me you know advise me on things yeah yeah great all right moving on to the employee handbook oh another 100 pages or so for you guys to read and i know you read every word um well this really is an important document that we use constantly

  27. So we sent out the RFP and they almost doubled in price. Oh, really? Yeah. And so it's... Yeah, I can see the building. Lightroom. Yes. Thank you. How did you know? Whatever you want. Yeah. But if we ever felt like we wanted to just sharpen our pencils and get it, we would do a whole RFP process and we would, yeah. Personally, I think that Alan's fantastic. I think that he does a great job for us. I think that he mowers a little bit of... how libraries operate and he has a you know good understanding of this library and we have had some big changes yeah you know especially in the finance department so um i appreciate that he's been flexible and that he could see that we had these changes and still he's been a great consultant too through those changes i called on him to help me you know advise me on things yeah yeah great all right moving on to the employee handbook oh another 100 pages or so for you guys to read and i know you read every word um well this really is an important document that we use constantly here at the library i refer to it a lot all the department heads refer to it a lot the finance coordinator refers to it um we give it to every employee upon them signing an offer letter so we use this document frequently the last update was in 2021 and even though only four years have passed there have been a lot of changes both inside this organization and from without that have precipitated a need for a change in our employee handbook many changes really um so i like to go through those changes just at a very high level view and if there are any questions that you have along the way please don't hesitate to ask um Well, but first I have to thank a lot of people again. Catherine was instrumental in going through the handbook and revising the gendered language to non-gendered, and she made capitalizations consistent and found a lot of typos. That's one of Catherine's superpowers, so I thank her for that. Lyndon helped out with this too, because Lyndon uses this employee handbook all the time as well. And then, of course, the Policy Committee of Shane and Joy.

  28. i know you read every word um well this really is an important document that we use constantly here at the library i refer to it a lot all the department heads refer to it a lot the finance coordinator refers to it um we give it to every employee upon them signing an offer letter so we use this document frequently the last update was in 2021 and even though only four years have passed there have been a lot of changes both inside this organization and from without that have precipitated a need for a change in our employee handbook many changes really um so i like to go through those changes just at a very high level view and if there are any questions that you have along the way please don't hesitate to ask um Well, but first I have to thank a lot of people again. Catherine was instrumental in going through the handbook and revising the gendered language to non-gendered, and she made capitalizations consistent and found a lot of typos. That's one of Catherine's superpowers, so I thank her for that. Lyndon helped out with this too, because Lyndon uses this employee handbook all the time as well. And then, of course, the Policy Committee of Shane and Joy. And Judy actually started this process, because we started this a year ago, a little over a year ago. So thank you all for your minds on this as well. So there were some really obvious changes we needed to make, such as updating the vision and the mission, because we changed those slightly in our last strategic plan. We condensed the library history section. It was a narrative of a couple of pages, and we condensed it into kind of a bullet point timeline. And we added our latest accomplishments of the 60th anniversary and the millage renewal in 2024. As I mentioned, we incorporated non-gendered language throughout. We used capitalizations consistently throughout. We made a lot of changes to department names and job titles, so we had to update those. We updated the protected classes that are part of the hiring and discrimination. through the joints and non-therend and the mocking donations. section so there's just some added classes to that and I can look at that in more detail in a second we added the paid parental leave that you all approved last October and that was just added wholesale just copy and paste it

  29. And then, of course, the Policy Committee of Shane and Joy. And Judy actually started this process, because we started this a year ago, a little over a year ago. So thank you all for your minds on this as well. So there were some really obvious changes we needed to make, such as updating the vision and the mission, because we changed those slightly in our last strategic plan. We condensed the library history section. It was a narrative of a couple of pages, and we condensed it into kind of a bullet point timeline. And we added our latest accomplishments of the 60th anniversary and the millage renewal in 2024. As I mentioned, we incorporated non-gendered language throughout. We used capitalizations consistently throughout. We made a lot of changes to department names and job titles, so we had to update those. We updated the protected classes that are part of the hiring and discrimination. through the joints and non-therend and the mocking donations. section so there's just some added classes to that and I can look at that in more detail in a second we added the paid parental leave that you all approved last October and that was just added wholesale just copy and paste it in likewise with the whistleblower protection policy and then earned the Earth Sick Time Act or ESTA precipitated a lot of changes in giving all employees sick time so we had to add the stipulations that are from ESTA we also had to make a distinction between employees who received that sick time and employees who receive other kinds of time we use the term benefited versus non-benefited so we had to incorporate that throughout so let me just go through the handbook really quick and I'll call out the pages that have substantive changes on them I use that comment feature so I'm page nine good I'm page 92 which is a reference to the page number in the PDF not in the handbook that's where we added our accomplishments of the last couple of years I was scrolling forward to page 93 that's where we added the mission and vision updated scrolling forward to page 95 that's our employment philosophy and that is one of the

  30. approved last October and that was just added wholesale just copy and paste it in likewise with the whistleblower protection policy and then earned the Earth Sick Time Act or ESTA precipitated a lot of changes in giving all employees sick time so we had to add the stipulations that are from ESTA we also had to make a distinction between employees who received that sick time and employees who receive other kinds of time we use the term benefited versus non-benefited so we had to incorporate that throughout so let me just go through the handbook really quick and I'll call out the pages that have substantive changes on them I use that comment feature so I'm page nine good I'm page 92 which is a reference to the page number in the PDF not in the handbook that's where we added our accomplishments of the last couple of years I was scrolling forward to page 93 that's where we added the mission and vision updated scrolling forward to page 95 that's our employment philosophy and that is one of the where the protected classes were updated the two that were added were gender identity and genetic information and where did this language come from our attorney Scott Patterson at Butzel okay moving forward to page 97 this is the section that talks about our orientation period we have a 90-day orientation period during that time folks are restricted to using paid time off in a very limited way and the ESTA stipulates that the orient people have to be able to use their sick time at least within 120 days of the hire so we had to update that just a little bit further down the page is where we updated all the job positions that changed and then I think it's several pages speaking of the company class yeah yeah all right page 105 we added access to employee files I think that was a shame suggestion we also updated the lost property section to be a little bit less detailed and we just refer to the fact that we have a procedure for handling lost items in our circulation department and then we scoot

  31. where the protected classes were updated the two that were added were gender identity and genetic information and where did this language come from our attorney Scott Patterson at Butzel okay moving forward to page 97 this is the section that talks about our orientation period we have a 90-day orientation period during that time folks are restricted to using paid time off in a very limited way and the ESTA stipulates that the orient people have to be able to use their sick time at least within 120 days of the hire so we had to update that just a little bit further down the page is where we updated all the job positions that changed and then I think it's several pages speaking of the company class yeah yeah all right page 105 we added access to employee files I think that was a shame suggestion we also updated the lost property section to be a little bit less detailed and we just refer to the fact that we have a procedure for handling lost items in our circulation department and then we scoot forward to page 110 where this is where we had to update the discrimination section or the protected classes again um next page 111 same thing um 23. is that where we add the paper oh that's the whistleblower protection act or policy so that has been added and then paid parental leave this in here 141 oh page 141 is where we um explain what we mean by benefited and non-benefited and then the esther information is incorporated under using paid time off especially under the sick time section so we added the very specific reasons that people can use sick time

  32. procedure for handling lost items in our circulation department and then we scoot forward to page 110 where this is where we had to update the discrimination section or the protected classes again um next page 111 same thing um 23. is that where we add the paper oh that's the whistleblower protection act or policy so that has been added and then paid parental leave this in here 141 oh page 141 is where we um explain what we mean by benefited and non-benefited and then the esther information is incorporated under using paid time off especially under the sick time section so we added the very specific reasons that people can use sick time because people need to be aware of their what was the difference between the yellow highlighting and the red it's just the red is where i made a comment oh gotcha and then the yellow is just um highlighted okay yeah there's a big section yes um the yellow under the employee needs is what also came from scott right okay what 25 is paid currently thank you that's the directly out of the esther law you and then page 155 is the paid parental leave which we've where somebody is on paid parental leave right now so they keep in handy so those are the changes that we made um of course we updated the table of contents and then i will distribute this um to all employees and we'll have them sign an acknowledgement that they've received it um which i will count as their conflict of interest acknowledgement as well so as i mentioned we have in here that we do we review the conflict of interest statement annually um and you all are supposed to disclose if you know of

  33. because people need to be aware of their what was the difference between the yellow highlighting and the red it's just the red is where i made a comment oh gotcha and then the yellow is just um highlighted okay yeah there's a big section yes um the yellow under the employee needs is what also came from scott right okay what 25 is paid currently thank you that's the directly out of the esther law you and then page 155 is the paid parental leave which we've where somebody is on paid parental leave right now so they keep in handy so those are the changes that we made um of course we updated the table of contents and then i will distribute this um to all employees and we'll have them sign an acknowledgement that they've received it um which i will count as their conflict of interest acknowledgement as well so as i mentioned we have in here that we do we review the conflict of interest statement annually um and you all are supposed to disclose if you know of any conflicts of interest so we have that oh you've already got yours done i did you should have a a piece of paper at your station um and if i can collect those at the end of the night or give them to linden so any comments or questions on the employee handbook anything you think we missed so interesting some of the changes are so interesting things you just don't think about yeah but this is so important to go through this and it can only serve the staff better right you know right right thank you for some tedious work a lot of emails. A lot of red light copies. May I move to adopt the employee handbook as revised and presented? Second. All in favor. All right. Great. Thank you so much. It occurred to me that you're filling two of your main duties tonight, reviewing finances and policies. I didn't have to prepare at all for this meeting because I've read all those things already.

  34. the conflict of interest statement annually um and you all are supposed to disclose if you know of any conflicts of interest so we have that oh you've already got yours done i did you should have a a piece of paper at your station um and if i can collect those at the end of the night or give them to linden so any comments or questions on the employee handbook anything you think we missed so interesting some of the changes are so interesting things you just don't think about yeah but this is so important to go through this and it can only serve the staff better right you know right right thank you for some tedious work a lot of emails. A lot of red light copies. May I move to adopt the employee handbook as revised and presented? Second. All in favor. All right. Great. Thank you so much. It occurred to me that you're filling two of your main duties tonight, reviewing finances and policies. I didn't have to prepare at all for this meeting because I've read all those things already. All right. Well, now we're on to item C, proposed library board meeting start time. Were you surprised by this? Yeah, it was interesting. I don't remember the discussion in June. Oh, that's why I was surprised. Okay. Shane had noticed that the- Oh, thanks for that. One of the board members. It starts with the S. The Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees proposed moving their meeting start time in July to 630. But that's what- Say again? Bloomfield Townships. Oh, they're up there. Yeah. Oh, okay. Did they- Yeah, they're up there for hours and hours. So I'm ready to be corrected then. Or did it say- It says- Bloomfield Township supportive did they actually move it yes they passed it last Monday the 8th oh okay yeah now we are not tied to them we don't have to change our time but um it was proposed that we consider it it really doesn't make much impact on us as library staff or the building

  35. It occurred to me that you're filling two of your main duties tonight, reviewing finances and policies. I didn't have to prepare at all for this meeting because I've read all those things already. All right. Well, now we're on to item C, proposed library board meeting start time. Were you surprised by this? Yeah, it was interesting. I don't remember the discussion in June. Oh, that's why I was surprised. Okay. Shane had noticed that the- Oh, thanks for that. One of the board members. It starts with the S. The Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees proposed moving their meeting start time in July to 630. But that's what- Say again? Bloomfield Townships. Oh, they're up there. Yeah. Oh, okay. Did they- Yeah, they're up there for hours and hours. So I'm ready to be corrected then. Or did it say- It says- Bloomfield Township supportive did they actually move it yes they passed it last Monday the 8th oh okay yeah now we are not tied to them we don't have to change our time but um it was proposed that we consider it it really doesn't make much impact on us as library staff or the building i mean we have to do some work to get the word out but it's completely doable i just had one question when i read that um and the only one was the month that we have our um uh grants that we get not grants but my scholarships yeah because coming at six as you know i got here so early because i i saw the traffic as i was coming south um how busy it was so that would be the only thing that i would be concerned about but other than that i didn't know does anybody not want to do it again as tara said there's no religion here it's just something i was i was okay with it but then when i heard that it was jane's idea i would prefer we didn't but if the if the majority want to change it so be it and i thought the um board members who work would not want to come at 6 30 because you're in a rush from coming from your jobs no it's it's not it's not it's not a concern of work oh okay okay i mean i can come anytime i'm hearing a lot of ambivalence

  36. that we consider it it really doesn't make much impact on us as library staff or the building i mean we have to do some work to get the word out but it's completely doable i just had one question when i read that um and the only one was the month that we have our um uh grants that we get not grants but my scholarships yeah because coming at six as you know i got here so early because i i saw the traffic as i was coming south um how busy it was so that would be the only thing that i would be concerned about but other than that i didn't know does anybody not want to do it again as tara said there's no religion here it's just something i was i was okay with it but then when i heard that it was jane's idea i would prefer we didn't but if the if the majority want to change it so be it and i thought the um board members who work would not want to come at 6 30 because you're in a rush from coming from your jobs no it's it's not it's not it's not a concern of work oh okay okay i mean i can come anytime i'm hearing a lot of ambivalence I don't care either way. I would, I would actually prefer starting earlier. Yeah. Okay. Early, early. I'm early, early. You want to put the coin? No, if the majority of people want to change it, I'll, I'll accept that. So I'll just bring dinner in. Actually, I'm thinking more about my dance schedule. That's so selfish of me. So I'll work something out. Are you sure? Yeah. We can table this item to see if you can work something out. I'm sure I can work it out, I could. Well, I took the, well, Lyndon took the liberty of trust information. Well, we won't ask any three-ish. You can phone May. To approve changing the start time of the library board trustees meeting from 6 to 6.30 p.m. I'm starting November 18th, 2025. All in, oh, this is the motion. That's the motion. So you're moving that. Yes. So somebody needs to second that. I will second it. All in favor? Aye. All right. All right. We're changing it. Yes. November 18th. Tell us. Big headline. 6.30. Yeah. Yeah. So we will, this, I suggested that we make the change in November.

  37. I don't care either way. I would, I would actually prefer starting earlier. Yeah. Okay. Early, early. I'm early, early. You want to put the coin? No, if the majority of people want to change it, I'll, I'll accept that. So I'll just bring dinner in. Actually, I'm thinking more about my dance schedule. That's so selfish of me. So I'll work something out. Are you sure? Yeah. We can table this item to see if you can work something out. I'm sure I can work it out, I could. Well, I took the, well, Lyndon took the liberty of trust information. Well, we won't ask any three-ish. You can phone May. To approve changing the start time of the library board trustees meeting from 6 to 6.30 p.m. I'm starting November 18th, 2025. All in, oh, this is the motion. That's the motion. So you're moving that. Yes. So somebody needs to second that. I will second it. All in favor? Aye. All right. All right. We're changing it. Yes. November 18th. Tell us. Big headline. 6.30. Yeah. Yeah. So we will, this, I suggested that we make the change in November. That will give us some time to update all the places and for the public to adjust to that time as well. Actually, I won't be here in November. Oh. Well, that works out. and can you update the the calendar yes we will do I just try to but I and to the I can't either Marilyn and yeah public would need to think I need a lot of reminders yeah we'll update it for the public and but I think we're talking like the township is yeah moving it up to I mean you're fine I we haven't asked yet okay yeah okay right who's the other group we've talked about well as oh I'm sorry we're just talking about this for the meeting somebody else we would have to I I know the Bloomfield Township puts it in their newsletters doesn't have it on our website in the schools so well we'll call for places

  38. So we will, this, I suggested that we make the change in November. That will give us some time to update all the places and for the public to adjust to that time as well. Actually, I won't be here in November. Oh. Well, that works out. and can you update the the calendar yes we will do I just try to but I and to the I can't either Marilyn and yeah public would need to think I need a lot of reminders yeah we'll update it for the public and but I think we're talking like the township is yeah moving it up to I mean you're fine I we haven't asked yet okay yeah okay right who's the other group we've talked about well as oh I'm sorry we're just talking about this for the meeting somebody else we would have to I I know the Bloomfield Township puts it in their newsletters doesn't have it on our website in the schools so well we'll call for places it's in this room is secured yeah okay you don't have a late you can all right well that's that's that's the thing that happens that's why all right last time I'm on the agenda you is great you guys we're gonna be less than an hour rancid big things the last one is we have to update bank signatories due to Catherine's changing up her last name I don't have any other paperwork for you to sign tonight but we're just gonna pass the resolution and then I'll reach out to those who I need to and we'll we'll figure it out from here it'll be fine so again we have to do this every time there's a personnel change or name change or a position change and there's a motion on page 166 if anyone would be interested in reading I move to approve the resolution authorizing signatures including

  39. doesn't have it on our website in the schools so well we'll call for places it's in this room is secured yeah okay you don't have a late you can all right well that's that's that's the thing that happens that's why all right last time I'm on the agenda you is great you guys we're gonna be less than an hour rancid big things the last one is we have to update bank signatories due to Catherine's changing up her last name I don't have any other paperwork for you to sign tonight but we're just gonna pass the resolution and then I'll reach out to those who I need to and we'll we'll figure it out from here it'll be fine so again we have to do this every time there's a personnel change or name change or a position change and there's a motion on page 166 if anyone would be interested in reading I move to approve the resolution authorizing signatures including facsimile signatures for banking services on behalf of the Bloomfield Township Public Library is presented effective September 16, 2025. Second. All in favor? Aye. Now it's official. Thank you. Yeah. Federal government, whatever. Not my Social Security license. Why often do facsimiles come up these days? Well no that's so we can use electronic signatures, facsimile signatures. Yeah. That means electronic. I was thinking what you would like to do. Medical officers. And oil pads. Yes. And oil pads. Yes. Yes. Yes. We don't do that very often. comments um that's um discussion of no we don't have any items um and we don't have to do the motion i think we're at other you want to go i don't have any other i want to talk about that call that that's right you wanted to talk about in the comments um in the comments packet there was a complaint about a patron looking at inappropriate oh yes material all right so let me tell you the whole story um a patron was in the computer center he was using a computer

  40. I move to approve the resolution authorizing signatures including facsimile signatures for banking services on behalf of the Bloomfield Township Public Library is presented effective September 16, 2025. Second. All in favor? Aye. Now it's official. Thank you. Yeah. Federal government, whatever. Not my Social Security license. Why often do facsimiles come up these days? Well no that's so we can use electronic signatures, facsimile signatures. Yeah. That means electronic. I was thinking what you would like to do. Medical officers. And oil pads. Yes. And oil pads. Yes. Yes. Yes. We don't do that very often. comments um that's um discussion of no we don't have any items um and we don't have to do the motion i think we're at other you want to go i don't have any other i want to talk about that call that that's right you wanted to talk about in the comments um in the comments packet there was a complaint about a patron looking at inappropriate oh yes material all right so let me tell you the whole story um a patron was in the computer center he was using a computer right next to a study room and um a tutor was in the study room with five or 16 girls the tutor came out and spoke to a staff person and said that the man was looking at material that was inappropriate and the girls had seen it and so the staff person went to the person the man using the computer and asked him to stop what he was looking at stop looking at what he was looking at which he did and then he left a few minutes later um the person the tutor alleged that the staff person pointed out the tutor and the girls in the study room as the ones who made the complaint to the man and so the tutor was upset that um you know they had been identified to this person who was doing unsacry things in the library and then the one of the girls went home told her mother about it and as you saw from that comment the mother kind of sat on that for a couple of days and then um reached out to me by email um we that patron has was a regular i don't

  41. let me tell you the whole story um a patron was in the computer center he was using a computer right next to a study room and um a tutor was in the study room with five or 16 girls the tutor came out and spoke to a staff person and said that the man was looking at material that was inappropriate and the girls had seen it and so the staff person went to the person the man using the computer and asked him to stop what he was looking at stop looking at what he was looking at which he did and then he left a few minutes later um the person the tutor alleged that the staff person pointed out the tutor and the girls in the study room as the ones who made the complaint to the man and so the tutor was upset that um you know they had been identified to this person who was doing unsacry things in the library and then the one of the girls went home told her mother about it and as you saw from that comment the mother kind of sat on that for a couple of days and then um reached out to me by email um we that patron has was a regular i don't think that he's been back since this incident happened he was identified to all of the people who have person in charge responsibilities we were able to use our new security cameras to great effect um throughout this incident so everybody is aware of who this person is everybody's aware of the behavior um we had two people looking at inappropriate material that week um i was able to i responded to the the mother and and let her know all of this that we had filed an incident report we had identified the person we told him to stop we had no reason to believe that he um identified the girls or the tutor or was going to do any retaliatory activities um that set her at ease we had a couple of emails back and forth she was fine with the outcome i don't know if the tutor and the girls have been back but they all seem to be fine with it all as well that end wills ends well i guess so that is that story and my sense is the the woman complaining is not wrong i wouldn't want no i'm sure she's wrong at all that guy yeah but i also bet that's maybe not what really happens yeah exactly that's what it happens

  42. couple of days and then um reached out to me by email um we that patron has was a regular i don't think that he's been back since this incident happened he was identified to all of the people who have person in charge responsibilities we were able to use our new security cameras to great effect um throughout this incident so everybody is aware of who this person is everybody's aware of the behavior um we had two people looking at inappropriate material that week um i was able to i responded to the the mother and and let her know all of this that we had filed an incident report we had identified the person we told him to stop we had no reason to believe that he um identified the girls or the tutor or was going to do any retaliatory activities um that set her at ease we had a couple of emails back and forth she was fine with the outcome i don't know if the tutor and the girls have been back but they all seem to be fine with it all as well that end wills ends well i guess so that is that story and my sense is the the woman complaining is not wrong i wouldn't want no i'm sure she's wrong at all that guy yeah but i also bet that's maybe not what really happens yeah exactly that's what it happens sounds like from what you're saying when i watched the video recording um do we record sound also okay no he was sitting if the study room was like right there if his computer was here and the tutor and the you could see that the girls were like giggling about it and probably making some noise those rooms are not soundproof i'm sure he was aware of the commotion and then the tutor came out of the room a couple of times so she was pretty conspicuous herself i never saw the staff person say like go like that or anything like that but i assured the mother that we spoke to the staff person and we talked about maybe better ways of doing this in the future we did as much as we possibly could to to train everybody and i was just a guy who's got a background in this but is that okay do they have some ability to do that or must do they have to have one of those hoods is there do we know i don't even know what do we know the rules we don't have filters on our computers right and so that gets me to wonder like what does this mean that it was inappropriate that's a great debated point because nobody else saw it i think maybe the staff person saw it but we've heard

  43. sounds like from what you're saying when i watched the video recording um do we record sound also okay no he was sitting if the study room was like right there if his computer was here and the tutor and the you could see that the girls were like giggling about it and probably making some noise those rooms are not soundproof i'm sure he was aware of the commotion and then the tutor came out of the room a couple of times so she was pretty conspicuous herself i never saw the staff person say like go like that or anything like that but i assured the mother that we spoke to the staff person and we talked about maybe better ways of doing this in the future we did as much as we possibly could to to train everybody and i was just a guy who's got a background in this but is that okay do they have some ability to do that or must do they have to have one of those hoods is there do we know i don't even know what do we know the rules we don't have filters on our computers right and so that gets me to wonder like what does this mean that it was inappropriate that's a great debated point because nobody else saw it i think maybe the staff person saw it but we've heard it was topless women we heard it was scantily clad women we heard it was young girls it it's they don't have anything there's a big difference between that when you go back no there's a big difference between that so yeah we don't have filters on our computers we do not have privacy screens if somebody's looking at something inappropriate we tell them to stop we say hey what you're looking at is not appropriate for this place this venue stop but you don't ask them to leave at that point if they don't stop if they do it again then we would ask okay and if it was clearly underage to your point yeah we would call the police right yes because that is illegal right correct right is everyone trained in that river because those are very awkward conversations super awkward yes we talk about it we'll be talking about it at the next pisc meeting tomorrow we have a refresher okay good well done okay any other others i will say on a different happier note um i am duly impressed with um because you know i don't know directions but when you're heading south on telegraph um taking out those shrubs even though i would like to have lower shrubs or something put in there with a little color makes such a difference

  44. great debated point because nobody else saw it i think maybe the staff person saw it but we've heard it was topless women we heard it was scantily clad women we heard it was young girls it it's they don't have anything there's a big difference between that when you go back no there's a big difference between that so yeah we don't have filters on our computers we do not have privacy screens if somebody's looking at something inappropriate we tell them to stop we say hey what you're looking at is not appropriate for this place this venue stop but you don't ask them to leave at that point if they don't stop if they do it again then we would ask okay and if it was clearly underage to your point yeah we would call the police right yes because that is illegal right correct right is everyone trained in that river because those are very awkward conversations super awkward yes we talk about it we'll be talking about it at the next pisc meeting tomorrow we have a refresher okay good well done okay any other others i will say on a different happier note um i am duly impressed with um because you know i don't know directions but when you're heading south on telegraph um taking out those shrubs even though i would like to have lower shrubs or something put in there with a little color makes such a difference i mean it just looks so much better it makes the building look so interesting yeah yeah and you see the architecture and um so yeah um if nothing else from all the things that we went through those months and months and months taking that out i would like to see a little more color in there because i know we took out the glade of daffodils um the undulating glade we'll do something there yeah we um yeah more to come on that right okay but i just when i was stuck in traffic today i looked at it i wanted to come because the light was just hitting it correctly and it looks so nice so i'm glad because i was nervous i think i was nervous too about judy i know i was nervous about judy too they were ripping her babies out because those shrubs that were there were really interesting too weren't they no no they were coming yeah no they were but the glade of daffodils were quite beautiful so but yeah i i thought it looked really pretty yeah it looks so nice yeah and the grass has taken some yeah clean um i'm sorry i didn't ask this when we were on the finance the charnoff gift i see that it's maturing i thought it matured a couple of months ago and

  45. i would like to have lower shrubs or something put in there with a little color makes such a difference i mean it just looks so much better it makes the building look so interesting yeah yeah and you see the architecture and um so yeah um if nothing else from all the things that we went through those months and months and months taking that out i would like to see a little more color in there because i know we took out the glade of daffodils um the undulating glade we'll do something there yeah we um yeah more to come on that right okay but i just when i was stuck in traffic today i looked at it i wanted to come because the light was just hitting it correctly and it looks so nice so i'm glad because i was nervous i think i was nervous too about judy i know i was nervous about judy too they were ripping her babies out because those shrubs that were there were really interesting too weren't they no no they were coming yeah no they were but the glade of daffodils were quite beautiful so but yeah i i thought it looked really pretty yeah it looks so nice yeah and the grass has taken some yeah clean um i'm sorry i didn't ask this when we were on the finance the charnoff gift i see that it's maturing i thought it matured a couple of months ago and are we we've just been rolling it over into okay i have well i have the plan of turning part of it into a cfsem endowment okay and part of it um i thought we could use in our library design project toward i mean it would just go into a pot i guess but um that was given with the hopes of buying literature and book club books so i was thinking it would be nice to say that part of that and built the program room for adult and teen services this is isabel right yeah so yes that's coming up to you in a couple months and isabel was a board member right and she had Yeah, I worked with her on the personnel committee, directors, evaluation, and she's a lovely, yeah. Very artistic, too. Yeah, so, okay, thanks. May I ask a question about the Katherine Arden event? What happened? Yeah, what happened? I think that she just didn't resonate with the community.

  46. the charnoff gift i see that it's maturing i thought it matured a couple of months ago and are we we've just been rolling it over into okay i have well i have the plan of turning part of it into a cfsem endowment okay and part of it um i thought we could use in our library design project toward i mean it would just go into a pot i guess but um that was given with the hopes of buying literature and book club books so i was thinking it would be nice to say that part of that and built the program room for adult and teen services this is isabel right yeah so yes that's coming up to you in a couple months and isabel was a board member right and she had Yeah, I worked with her on the personnel committee, directors, evaluation, and she's a lovely, yeah. Very artistic, too. Yeah, so, okay, thanks. May I ask a question about the Katherine Arden event? What happened? Yeah, what happened? I think that she just didn't resonate with the community. We started pitching that in, like, August? Yeah, registration opened at the beginning of August. We did press releases, put it in our circulation notices, newsletter, and at the time it was canceled, it was, I'd been open for registration for over a month and only had 15 registered attendees with a capacity of 400. Was this going to be at the school? Is that what it was? For a larger capacity, yeah. And it wasn't part of a tour for her. She was going to make a special trip out here for it. And where is her home? I think on the West Coast. Mm-hmm. She's a YA? I know. She's done YA, I think she's done books for several pages. Yeah, I don't, I don't think I've read anything. But I, um, yeah, I think I looked at it and thought, well, I don't know, you know, does everybody know? I think everybody felt that, yeah, yeah. It was really disappointed to me. Yeah, I'm sorry that it didn't work out. But that's okay. We've been talking that up as something we tried and it didn't quite work. Trying to, yeah, instill an atmosphere of trying things that you might not always want. Was the school in any, there wasn't anything of cooperation or like, we weren't doing it with the school.

  47. with the community. We started pitching that in, like, August? Yeah, registration opened at the beginning of August. We did press releases, put it in our circulation notices, newsletter, and at the time it was canceled, it was, I'd been open for registration for over a month and only had 15 registered attendees with a capacity of 400. Was this going to be at the school? Is that what it was? For a larger capacity, yeah. And it wasn't part of a tour for her. She was going to make a special trip out here for it. And where is her home? I think on the West Coast. Mm-hmm. She's a YA? I know. She's done YA, I think she's done books for several pages. Yeah, I don't, I don't think I've read anything. But I, um, yeah, I think I looked at it and thought, well, I don't know, you know, does everybody know? I think everybody felt that, yeah, yeah. It was really disappointed to me. Yeah, I'm sorry that it didn't work out. But that's okay. We've been talking that up as something we tried and it didn't quite work. Trying to, yeah, instill an atmosphere of trying things that you might not always want. Was the school in any, there wasn't anything of cooperation or like, we weren't doing it with the school. No, just a place. Okay. Thank you. And next time that we meet, the library will also be hosting trick-or-treaters and food trucks in the U.S. Yeah, so it'll be happening. What day is it? Tuesday and 21st. Yeah, I see it right here. Are you preparing for your costume? I was originally not. I'm guessing Shane's going to bake for us. You're going to bake? Again, not with anything, I mean, I'm good. Are you preparing for your costume? Oh, yes. Do you get a lot of trick-or-treaters? Yes, I'm glad you brought that up. I have fun of trick-or-treaters. Do you get away full-size candy bars? That's why. Yeah. I do, too. I get eight. I stopped. I doubled. Maybe get two. Because it's silly. Oh, they're all coming on. It's literally there and back. Nobody's got time. No. Just live on the dirt road with no lights. Right, that's great. Yeah. That's okay. None. Any other? Other? Other? Other?

  48. Was the school in any, there wasn't anything of cooperation or like, we weren't doing it with the school. No, just a place. Okay. Thank you. And next time that we meet, the library will also be hosting trick-or-treaters and food trucks in the U.S. Yeah, so it'll be happening. What day is it? Tuesday and 21st. Yeah, I see it right here. Are you preparing for your costume? I was originally not. I'm guessing Shane's going to bake for us. You're going to bake? Again, not with anything, I mean, I'm good. Are you preparing for your costume? Oh, yes. Do you get a lot of trick-or-treaters? Yes, I'm glad you brought that up. I have fun of trick-or-treaters. Do you get away full-size candy bars? That's why. Yeah. I do, too. I get eight. I stopped. I doubled. Maybe get two. Because it's silly. Oh, they're all coming on. It's literally there and back. Nobody's got time. No. Just live on the dirt road with no lights. Right, that's great. Yeah. That's okay. None. Any other? Other? Other? Other? move we adjourn eight o'clock it took a couple hours not bad I know I'd be here 129 PJ's in the cup so moved thank you