Carbondale Reporter

Carbondale Public Library Board of Trustees met April 8.

Here is the minutes provided by the board:

Call to order.

Called to order at 4:30 p.m.

Roll call.

Introductions, audience and visitors. Visitors are asked to introduce themselves at this time and present any issues they wish to discuss. Visitors wishing to address specific agenda items will be granted two to five minutes at the discretion of the President, not to exceed a total of twenty minutes. The Library Board may cut short any comments that are irrelevant, repetitious, or disruptive. (Id. at 1425-26).

Present.

Barbara Levine, President (2; 1 excused) 

Susan Tulis, Vice President (2)

Roland Person, Secretary (1 excused) 

Julian Pei, Treasurer (5 excused)

Philip Brown (1)

Joyce Hayes (1)

Don Prosser (2)

Harriet Simon (2 excused)

Absent.

Chastity Mays (3)

The number following the Trustee’s name indicates the number of absences this fiscal year.

Visitors.

None.

Staff present.

Diana Brawley Sussman, Library Director; Gwen Hall Grosshenrich, Finance Manager

President’s report.

President Barbara Levine thanked the staff for innovative programs and hopes we’ll get back to normal sooner rather than later.

Secretary’s report.

1. Approval of the March 11, 2020 minutes. Harriet Simon made a motion to accept the minutes with the correction of one typo. Susan Tulis seconded. MOTION passed unanimously.

Correspondence and communications.

None.

Financial report.

1. Approval of bills payable up to and including bills due April 16, 2020 to May 15, 2020. Ordering of books and materials has gone down quite a bit since the COVID-19 closure. Databases are being renewed. Some bills may not have come in yet. Philip Brown made a motion to pay bills payable. Joyce Hayes seconded. MOTION passed unanimously.

2. Set Finance Committee meeting near end of April. Joyce Hayes, Don Prosser, and Roland Person serve on the Finance Committee. The committee will meet via Zoom on April 29, 2020 at 4:30 p.m.

3. Authorize the finance committee to approve all bills to be paid by the last day of the fiscal year, not to exceed budgetary authority. Julian Pei made a motion to authorize finance committee to pay bills due at the end of the fiscal year within budgetary guidelines. Roland Person seconded. MOTION passed unanimously.

4. Acceptance of the financial report for March 2020. At end of year we will not have spent all of our budget due to being closed, delays in mail, etc. Payroll will be normal. Materials will be underspent. Roland Person moved to accept the financial report. Susan Tulis seconded. MOTION passed unanimously. 

Librarian’s report.

1. Building and grounds maintenance. Discussed security cameras and alarm system.

2. Adoption of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act Paid Leave Entitlements for 2020. Don Prosser made a motion to adopt the act. Julian Pei seconded. MOTION passed unanimously.

3. COVID-19 procedures. Discussed COVID-19 services (e-books, virtual programs, virtual new cards), plans for protecting the public and staff when reopening, different summer reading program models, removing some chairs and disabling some computers in order to ensure social distancing, and what partial opening might look like. Staff are working from home and will continue to be paid. The Director is planning for potential economic threats, though in the library’s case those threats are still speculative. The library does not face the financial emergency that businesses and municipalities face because the majority of library funds come from property taxes, which have already been levied. Those funds may be delayed, but that is not unusual. We might anticipate a possible reduction in Corporate Replacement Tax as business revenues will be down. Perhaps the state could potentially withhold or reduce state and federal grant funds in response to this emergency, though we’ve seen no discussion of that.

4. Other. None.

Committee reports.

None.

Unfinished business.

None.

New business.

None.

New business.

None.

Other.

Patron behavior. None.

Adjournment.

Adjourned at 5:05 p.m.

https://carbondalepubliclibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/April-2020-MINUTES-April-2020.pdf