AADL Board Meeting - October 24, 2022

Wed, 11/02/2022 - 12:34pm

When: October 24, 2022

Watch the October 24, 2022 Meeting of the AADL Board of Trustees. Select an agenda item below to jump to that point in the transcript. For more information, please see the Board Packet for this meeting.

22-195 I. CALL TO ORDER Dharma Akmon, Vice President
22-196 II. ATTENDANCE
22-197 III. APPROVAL OF AGENDA (Item of action)
22-198 IV. CONSENT AGENDA (Item of action)
CA-1 Approval of Minutes of October 3, 2022
CA-2 Approval of September 2022 Disbursements
22-199 V. CITIZENS’ COMMENTS
22-200 VI. FINANCIAL REPORTS Eli Neiburger, Director
22-201 VII. LIBRARY REPORT Eli Neiburger, Director
22-202 VIII. NEW BUSINESS
22-203 A. RESOLUTION APPROVING CONSTRUCTION BID FOR ELECTRICAL WORK AT PARKLAND PLAZA Len Lemorie, Associate Director (Item of discussion & action)
22-204 B. RESOLUTION APPROVING CONSTRUCTION BID FOR HVAC INSTALLATION AT PARKLAND PLAZA Len Lemorie, Associate Director (Item of discussion & action)
22-205 C. RESOLUTION APPROVING CONSTRUCTION BID FOR GYPSUM BOARD ASSEMBLIES AT PARKLAND PLAZA Len Lemorie, Associate Director (Item of discussion & action)
22-206 D. RESOLUTION APPROVING CONSTRUCTION BID FOR PAINTING AT PARKLAND PLAZA Len Lemorie, Associate Director (Item of discussion & action)
22-207  E. RESOLUTION APPROVING CONSTRUCTION BID FOR FIRE SUPPRESSION AT PARKLAND PLAZA Len Lemorie, Associate Director (Item of discussion & action)
22-208 IX. CITIZENS’ COMMENTS
22-209 X. ADJOURNMENT

Transcript

• [00:00:09] DHARMA AKMON: I'm going to call this meeting into order. Do we have attendance?
• [00:00:11] KAREN WILSON: Yes, we do.
• [00:00:11] DHARMA AKMON: Excellent. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda?
• [00:00:17] KERENE MOORE: So moved.
• [00:00:18] MOLLY KLEINMAN: Seconded.
• [00:00:20] DHARMA AKMON: Moved and seconded. All in favor say, yes.
• [00:00:24] BOARD MEMBERS: Yes.
• [00:00:27] DHARMA AKMON: Great. Moving on, can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda?
• [00:00:31] MOLLY KLEINMAN: So moved.
• [00:00:32] KERENE MOORE: Second.
• [00:00:35] DHARMA AKMON: Excellent. All in favor say, yes.
• [00:00:37] BOARD MEMBERS: Yes.
• [00:00:40] DHARMA AKMON: Do we have any Citizen's comments? Then we will move on to Eli to present the financial reports.
• [00:00:50] ELI NEIBURGER: The financial reports begin on Page 17 after the check register, just a couple of highlights from here. Our cash on hand did increase to $6.3 million in the month of September because some of our major payments from taxing authorities came in. Cash on hand has increased from $11 million to $17.3 million as of the end of September. That brings us to 95.8% of our annual budgeted tax receipts which is pretty good for this time of the year which means we are likely to come at maybe 100 or 102% by the time we get to the end of the year which is expected because we tried to anticipate that very conservatively because you never know how much exactly is going to come in over the course of the year. That is to be expected. Our fund down was extremely steady in that the decreased from $5.9 million to $5.9 million down $8,000 which means we spent in that month just about the same amount as the accrued revenue. You can see that line is flat across there. Moving on to Page 18. Our revenue so far, that is accrued revenue of $4.6 million, which is most of what we would have expected to have accrued at this time of the year. If you skip to expenditures, our year today's expenditures are $4.4 million of which about half a million dollars has not yet been paid meaning there is a prepaid or accrued or paid in advance as we go, subscriptions things like that. Our total actual cash spended is $3.9 million so that means two year to date, our revenues have exceeded expenses by about $300,000. Our current revenue is 24% of the approved budget, which is just about right because we're 25% of the way through the fiscal year rather. As we said before the actual cash receipt is 95%. I just wanted to make a mention the Friends donation fund has a balance of $10,681, so it's been I did have a meeting with them last week where they are getting ready to start making contributions to the library again which has not happened before 2020 and so they are working through their processes, they are in pretty good shape financially and getting ready to start making donations to the library for library operations. We'll have more information about that as we get closer but I did communicate to them that the ideal situation is that they tell us in January how much they are going to give us in July so we can include it in our budget revenue projection, budget for the expense as well are budget for revenue so they'll be planning that annually. They assumed we wanted some money every month and I said it really doesn't matter to get it every month it's much better for us to have a good sense of how much we are going to receive when we start a bunch of process. Just looking quickly on Page 19, I mentioned last month we were having an issue with accounts payable reporting that has been resolved so now that the accounts payable number is correct, they are on that line for liabilities. Then on Page 20 again you can see we're 20% way through the year. Looking at some of the things that are outliers, Grants, and Memorials did receive already $5,000 which is what our budget was for the entire year. We got more donations than we expect so we are 110% of that revenue. It's a very small line item. Fines, fees, and others you can already see we are at 80% of the annual expected revenue and that we've already received $15,000 out of the $20,000 we expected, and non-resident fees is also running way ahead which is something that we've been noticing with some of our stats, is that we have a lot of cardholders right now, a lot more than we normally do. I think some of that is attributable to people who signed up for first-time during the pandemic. But for years and years, we always floated right around 45,000 active cardholders. Now, that doesn't mean that's the number of borrowers, because in many cases, people use one card for their entire household. That's a very common thing to do. However, we now have 75,000 active cardholders. It's up substantially over any number that I've seen in my years here. That's great to see lots of people using the library. We'll see if that's some a bolus related to the pandemic or if it's a new normal, will see is that as time goes by. Then looking down at the expenses, anything that is over 25% in that last column means it's running ahead of where we would expect for the year. You can see it benefits a little over there are some beginning of years startup costs that I would expect to see there, but it's something that we will have our eye on. That's a very hard thing to estimate precisely. We'll look at that as we go through the year. Accounting and audit that's to be expected because we paid most of our audit fees that come up at the beginning of the year. Material is a little bit ahead again, because of subscriptions, mostly subscription databases that get accrued at the beginning of the year. Copier expense running a little bit ahead, we had some new devices come under that contract, which is to be expected. Again, library programming running a little bit ahead because of summer programming, which is when a lot of that happens. All of that is to be expected to things that are running ahead. The one other thing is purchased services, which is already at 47%. Again, that's the thing where most of those expenses happen early in the fiscal year. That's to be expected. But overall, you can see 25% of the year we spent 22.9% of the budget, which is where we'd like to be. Just one more note is that next month at the regular board meeting, you will be receiving the audit report from Yo and Yo. They will be meeting with the Finance Committee in mid-November, two weeks before the meeting, so the finance committee can review that and talk privately with the auditors and get their feedback. Also, this is the last year of our three-year Yo and Yo contract. After we're done with this audit process, we'll have a discussion among the Finance Committee about how to proceed. We can go for an RF fee, we can extend the contract. There's multiple options available and we'll discuss that in the Finance Committee, but we will have the audit report at the November board meeting. That's the financial report. Any questions?
• [00:07:08] ELI NEIBURGER: Thank you very much.
• [00:07:09] DHARMA AKMON: Thank you. Eli moving on to the library report.
• [00:07:13] ELI NEIBURGER: If you guys can bring up the screen there. Here's our monthly report for October of 2022. For a start of the month, I wanted to look at checkouts a little bit. What we did here is we pulled the number of system-wide meaning across all locations, checkouts, and renewals. Now just to set the stage on that, when the state and federal governments collect circulation statistics, they always want you to include renewals in there because most libraries only allow one renewal. It's a common thing to get one checkout, one renewal, that thing. Because we have unlimited renewals. Many of our patrons renew all their things every day. We've got a lot of numbers in there, but these are the numbers were required to report, so we tend to look at it that way. You can see 2018, the blue section is print checkouts. The green section is AV checkouts, meaning DVD, Blu-ray CD, and books on CD. I'm dating myself. [LAUGHTER] We do not have any books on cassette anymore [LAUGHTER]. Then that little gray slice is overdrive ebooks. That's partially just to show that when people talk about phase transition, like that the ebooks are replacing demand. It's not happening, it's a sliver of usage. It's about on the scale of books on CD. It's funny because when audio books came out, people said all the same things that they said about ebooks. That no one's going to read anymore because now they can just listen. Well, audio books have a particular usage, they've particular audience, they've particular use case and they grew to fill that and then stopped growing. That's really what we're seeing with ebooks. Even if you look at the size of that gray slice in September of each month, even through the pandemic, it was not a significant inflection point and not a big part of our checkouts. But it's there in the mix. You can see this is just the month of September, so we're really doing apples-to-apples. September is not always a hugely busy month for us because people are very busy with other things. But you can see 2019 was considerable increases over 2018. Although in 2018, if I recall correctly, I think we had a building closed during September of 2018, if I remember right. That is partially that may be a little lower than it would normally have been. But then in September 2020 when we were doing vestibule service, you can see lower than 2019, lower than 2018, and then September 2021, a little bit higher than 2020, and September 2022, a little bit lower than 2021. Partially there's a lot of other things to do now that you couldn't do a year ago. But overall, I point this out and then in context of our number of active users growing. It's often for libraries to get really worried about. But to me, we really don't have a lot of control over these numbers. These are mostly about greater societal issues. The weather is a big impact on these things. Really what it's showing is that past three years have been very steady in terms of circulation and then we don't have many concerns about that. A business could get really upset about a 3% decrease. But for us it's just noise in the data really. Just to put that in perspective, that's where we're at at the moment just comparing September checkouts for the past five years. Yes, Molly?
• [00:10:28] MOLLY KLEINMAN: I have a question about the e-book numbers, which is that their cut, you can only check out 10 at a time.
• [00:10:35] ELI NEIBURGER: That's correct.
• [00:10:36] MOLLY KLEINMAN: We don't cut checkouts for physical materials?
• [00:10:39] ELI NEIBURGER: That's correct.
• [00:10:40] MOLLY KLEINMAN: To me the bigger one on 2021 is bigger, especially considering the fact that you can only have a max of 10 at a time and only 15 holds. I'm just curious about like where that--
• [00:10:55] ELI NEIBURGER: It's relatively few patrons run into those limits. I don't know that it's a big impact on the extent of it. I think it's much more just about the number of our patrons that are interested in ebooks at all which many of our most dedicated patrons are also e-book readers. But that's not something that we actually have control over because it's through the consortium and we don't get to set those restrictions.
• [00:11:23] MOLLY KLEINMAN: I guess I was just wondering because there's cuts, if the changes would indicate more users or there's some other thing in that.
• [00:11:31] ELI NEIBURGER: It's a little tricky to get that data out of the platform because it's not our infrastructure. I would guess that we definitely had the most people in 2020 and 2021 trying ebooks. But I think a lot of them could have had a bad experience because you don't really expect to have to wait your turn to use an e-book. When you go, oh, this is great. I don't even have to go to the library. But I have to wait four months for my turn to download the book. Many people don't make it past that interaction. Now this does not include our direct license, ebooks that don't have any limits, because those are really counted as downloads, and even putting all those together, it's not even on the scale of the overdrive ebooks. Did I answer your question?
• [00:12:14] MOLLY KLEINMAN: Yes. Thank you.
• [00:12:16] ELI NEIBURGER: Any other questions about this? Here's a website update. We have all of the reports that the board has ever received are on the agenda, they're with the video. But if you're just trying to look at just those reports, it's not actually very easy to find them. One of the members of the archives team, Karen, pulled together all of the reports that the board has received for the past 10 years. One of the members of the archives team made this webpage, which is really quick and easy way to see all of the reports that the library board has received over the past 10 years. That includes approved budgets, it includes audit reports, includes any other report that was submitted to the board at open session. Labor contracts, the survey reports, the feasibility study, all that stuff. You can see that at /aboutus/reports. It's also on the board page. If you go to about us and you click on library board, you'll see a link to this there. We'll be making some more updates to the ways that the board information is organized. Just to have it a little less duplication and be a little bit better organized. It hasn't had a librarian look at it in a long time. [LAUGHTER] The librarians are on the case and they have ideas. Any questions about that?
• [00:13:32] MOLLY KLEINMAN: That's just great.
• [00:13:33] DHARMA AKMON: That's awesome
• [00:13:35] ELI NEIBURGER: Just a quick plaza update. We're in the process of talking with Scio Township's building department. We don't have a timeline yet, but one of the pieces of feedback we received is that based on the square footage. They were thinking that the space would need more parking. We're looking not to add any new pavement to the space and they don't want that either. This right here shows just a re-striping plan that gets us a lot closer. We paint addressing the number of spots there are. But you can see, let's see is my cursor up there on the screen. These six spots would be a new little place there if we decide that those are necessary. That's an easy place for us to add a very small amount of a non-permeable surface if needed. But we're in the process of having those discussions. We don't really have an update at this point. Once we have a building permit, we'll have a much better idea of how that all process is going to go and Len got a number of bids to award tonight. I think five. Is that right? Five tonight?
• [00:14:35] LEN LEMORIE: Yeah.
• [00:14:35] ELI NEIBURGER: This is a report from our event that we had last Friday. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, please.
• [00:14:40] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: I have a question about that. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:14:40] ELI NEIBURGER: Yes.
• [00:14:41] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: It makes me think a little bit about Pittsfield and how when Pittsfield have events, all of a sudden it was like, oh, where are all those people going to go? Because it's on a busy road. Is Scio township okay with people parking on Parkland.
• [00:14:56] ELI NEIBURGER: We haven't talked about that specifically our plan for the few events that we would have. It's maybe two or three, is we're going to make good friends well, the neighbors because almost all of our events will be on the weekends and there's nothing going on in the weekends. Particularly with the U of M our urgent care facility that isn't currently open on the weekends. We're going to see if we can get direct permission from the neighbors to use their parking lots so that nobody has to park on the street. Our goal is for nobody to be calling the township to complain, about the parking [LAUGHTER] when we have an event.
• [00:15:26] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: I'm thinking about that.
• [00:15:28] ELI NEIBURGER: Yeah, it's definitely something that's on our radar and we'll be in discussion with our neighbors to make sure everybody is comfortable with the uses that'll be happening on the weekends. Did that answer your question Jamie. Thank you very much. Sorry I missed that. On Friday night, we had Congressman Jamie Raskin here in the building in conversation with our own, Debbie Dingell. Debbie did mention that she has since moved to Ann Arbor, which she had lived in Dearborn for many years and now she lives here in Ann Arbor. I took that opportunity to present her with a library card. [LAUGHTER] Got that setup. She is now a card-carrying member of the Ann Arbor District Library. This was a terrific event, very excellent presentation in discussion from Congressman Raskin. He gave a lot of updates, they had a big Newsweek. There was a lot to talk about, but he also talked about some of the personal things that are in his book. One thing that he said that I heard multiple people in the room repeating was that when everything looks hopeless, you are the hope. [LAUGHTER] I think a lot of us in the room were struck by that. It was very well attended, about 130 people, including number watching online. That is something that you can watch on YouTube anytime that you'd like. That is on our YouTube page. Of course, because it's on YouTube, there will be YouTube comments from people. We are having a pretty light touch on that as we normally do. But we will delete comments that are directly misinformation, disinformation, or personal attacks. That's how we're handling that. So you can watch all that if you'd like to see it. Coming up in November, is we will be observing Native American Heritage Month featuring quotes, poetry, staff recommendations, and videos on Native American local history and art. We're also featuring the exhibit. No, not even for a picture which is materials from the Richard Pohrt junior collection of Native American photography. It was at the Clements Library. That will be on display here at the library from November 2nd to January 1st. We'll have a related online discussion with the exhibit curators on November 12th at 1:00 P.M. That's coming up in November. Also upcoming events, October 30th will be our Halloween costume contest. That's also during the time of the downtown trick or treating treat Parade, which will be on the 30th. Then on Halloween itself, we'll have our two showings of the preschool puppet show at 10:30 and 11:30 on Halloween. My costume has arrived and I am [LAUGHTER] so excited to wear it. I've wanted it for a long time, and so it will be making its debut this weekend. Then on November 6th, in partnership with the Jewish Community Center's book festival we'll have two authors, one live and one on Zoom. The author of Shoham's Bangle and Tia Fortuna's New Home. Shoham's Bangle is about a young girl who was leaving Iran and there was a bracelet hidden in a pastry so that she would be able to take it with her when she moved to Israel and then Tia Fortuna's New Home is actually about Cuban Jews. There's some really interesting parts in both those stories and both the authors will be with us on November 6th. I will be MCing that event after I told him about my sock puppet, had a prior engagement. [LAUGHTER] Because that's who they wanted first was my sock puppet to host the event. I said, I'm sorry, you'll have to settle for me. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:18:48] MOLLY KLEINMAN: Didn't we have an event with the author of the Tia Fortuna. I feel like maybe I'm wrong.
• [00:18:55] ELI NEIBURGER: We've definitely had something with her before. I think it may have been several years ago.
• [00:19:02] ELI NEIBURGER: And then on November 22nd will be the nerd night season finale with Annie Rauwerda of depths of Wikipedia. Some of you may have seen her interviewing Randall Munroe a couple of weeks ago on campus. She's terrific, and that will be a really great season finale that is actually going to happen here at the downtown library because it's gotten a little too cold to meet out back at York. That will be happening there, and then nerd night will be on a little break for the winter, and then we will resume in the spring. Here's some new ADL releases. We have a new podcast just in time for Halloween, and all new podcasts were AADL staffers, Christopher Becker, Matt Gauntlett, Allison Jones, and Amanda Schott. Talk about horror movies that they've watched. Each episode is a new horror film, and the host discuss at length. We have a four episode first season where they cover the Fog, Alien, the Bad Seed, and a Tale of Two Sisters, and that is available wherever you get your podcasts, and this podcast which just released like two weeks ago, has already garnered some fan art. [LAUGHTER] I'm not sure exactly what from the alien episode this is in reference to, but they were very inspired, and they decide to send us this fan art, some alien animal crossing mixed up. [LAUGHTER] Our archives update. We've just completed a project to digitize the Ann Arbor City directories going all the way back to 1868. Directories are more than just early phone books. They have information on people's careers, marital status, employers, even whether or not they own their homes. These 100 directories cover Ann Arbor, and many early volumes cover other Washtenaw County communities as well. It's no better place to start researching genealogy and local history, and you can find that out at adl.org/directories. This is especially interesting if you have an older home to see who lived in your home previously, provided you know how to navigate all the street name and changes, in the street number changes. Because I found out when I started looking at my house that are addressed used to be a completely different house on a different part of town. There's a great article that I think Grace Shackman had written about the history of street name changes. If you get into researching that, of course, you can always email or archives team, and they will be happy to help you out with that, but this is a great collection we've been looking to digitized for a long time, and now it's all available at adl.org/directories. We have content launch coming up on Sunday, November sixth. This is the next phase of our partnership with the African-American Cultural Historical Museum of Washtenaw County. This is our Phase 9 of the Living Oral History Project, featuring George Goodman, Leah and Mike Base, Bill Henderson, and Jennifer Herschal Brown and Patricia Manley. Those are our subjects, and we will be debuting that on Zoom November 6 at 3:00 PM. Here's a great one. AADL in the community, our second grade visits are back. Finally, it's been something that we've not done in-person since the pandemic. This is when we invite ethically every second grader in the community to come to the library, get a library card and get all signed up. Those have been super great fun. Those have just started again, and here's a photo shared of one of our second graders in the community shared by proud parent Betsy Saltzman. They're very excited to be getting their new library card. Here's our staff spotlight for the month. This is Allison Jones. She's a library technician and a storyteller. We frequently hear her praise for her from people who have been watching her story times, particularly online during the pandemic. We heard from several people who continued watching Allison story times after they moved away to other communities. That's always a great sign of a strong connection with the audience. What do you wish people you work with knew about you? She says, I grew up with AADL, attending preschool story times, Laura Pershin Raynor having fun at events, and playing the summer game, and now I'm delighted to take part in it as an employee. Also one of the hosts of what scares us podcast. Here's a mention of the month. This is a project we've been really excited about. I'm just going to read this here. This is from Aya, which is a Inkalypse on Instagram. Test print from this set of Arabic type that I've been sorting for the past two ish months. Specifically here looking at particular letter connections, and how they function in movable type. This rare set of Arabic type is on loan from Jody Harnish, and the secret lab at AADL gram. I've been helping sort and count the type to determine the font scheme as part of a larger project, and for me, and ongoing inquiry into the place of Arabic and movable type. We're particularly interested when we can get non-English, non-Roman typefaces into the secret lab. It really opens up the inclusion of the facility to other spaces, and it's something that is increasingly rare, and hard-to-find and also something that we need a lot of external expertise for. That's certainly something that's happening with this, and we've got a couple of other languages that we're working on as well. Any questions about that?
• [00:23:38] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: It's cool.
• [00:23:39] ELI NEIBURGER: Here's our compliment of the month. After reading about the shelf service thing in the AADL newsletter, I gave it a try and have to say how delighted I was with my first order. I asked for books about home cooking around the world, and received an overflowing bag full of some great stuff. My hats off to whoever down there did this selecting for me, and to the AADL for offering this service. I've been recommending it to all my friends and neighbors. We have a fun tweak for shelf service coming in coming months. I think we'll be talking about that perhaps at the next meeting. [LAUGHTER] Here's a complaint of the month. It is very unfortunate that my son will not be able to get this lantern. He was very excited all summer gaining the points required to make the purchase. I delayed returning to my job in another state as long as possible in the hopes that this late order would arrive. He loves lights and lanterns and is still dealing with the woes of the dark nights, but alas I will just purchase him a night light and return to my job on Friday. This patron did receive their lantern. We had a supply chain issue with the lantern and some of them were broken and she missed the email saying that it was ready for pickup so she did have it by the end of the week, but just to illustrate how intensely some of our summer game players feel about their prizes, and we are very happy to report that a surprise shipment of pandas has arrived. [LAUGHTER] We have the shipping information that is supposed to arrive will see if they are intercepted in transit, [LAUGHTER] but we are expecting some pandas to arrive next week. We should be able to finally fill the remaining summer game orders next week, and be done with that for this year. That is my report for this month. Any other questions?
• [00:25:11] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Those pandas man.
• [00:25:12] ELI NEIBURGER: Yeah, can't keep them in stock.
• [00:25:14] MOLLY KLEINMAN: We got our second panda so our household is happy again. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:25:19] ELI NEIBURGER: Excellent.
• [00:25:22] DHARMA AKMON: Thank you so much. Moving on to new business, which looks to be a whole lot of construction. [LAUGHTER] Do want to come over, and talk about these as a group first?
• [00:25:31] LEN LEMORIE: Are we going to.
• [00:25:33] DHARMA AKMON: What do you think Eli?
• [00:25:35] ELI NEIBURGER: Why don't we give them one at a time?
• [00:25:37] DHARMA AKMON: One at a time. The first is about approving a construction bid for electrical work at Parkland Plaza.
• [00:25:47] LEN LEMORIE: We had three responses for the electrical work. All good companies we worked with two of them, our recommendation is to go with Duggan Electric, which was a little bit on the category.
• [00:26:04] DHARMA AKMON: Sorry, lots of flipping here.
• [00:26:07] ELI NEIBURGER: The three bids are on page 22, 23, and 24, and the resolution is on page 25.
• [00:26:14] DHARMA AKMON: Perhaps I'll go ahead, and read the resolution, and have someone moving then we can discuss. All right, here we go. Resolution approving construction, bid for electrical work at Parkland Plaza. The board resolves to one, authorize O'Neill construction to award electrical work to an Arbor District Library and amount of-.
• [00:26:36] ELI NEIBURGER: Our recommendation is for Duggan.
• [00:26:39] DHARMA AKMON: Sorry.
• [00:26:40] ELI NEIBURGER: To award to Duggan electrical in the amount of $305,170. That's the library's recommendation.
• [00:26:52] DHARMA AKMON: That the expenditure be authorized from the capital fund. Three, that all resolutions, and parts of resolutions that conflict with the provisions of this resolution or rescinded. Can I get a motion on this resolution?
• [00:27:05] KERENE MOORE: Discussion.
• [00:27:06] DHARMA AKMON: I thought we move, and then move [OVERLAPPING] [LAUGHTER].
• [00:27:09] MOLLY KLEINMAN: So moved
• [00:27:09] KERENE MOORE: Second.
• [00:27:12] DHARMA AKMON: All right. Excellent. Discussion.
• [00:27:16] KERENE MOORE: Why do we recommend, was it Duggan?
• [00:27:18] LEN LEMORIE: Duggan. There's a correction. I have 30690. [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:27:23] ELI NEIBURGER: I'm sorry. I looked at the wrong place. It is 30690.
• [00:27:26] LEN LEMORIE: Okay.
• [00:27:27] ELI NEIBURGER: 30690. I looked at the item total is what on the day we should be looking at. Thank you.
• [00:27:35] LEN LEMORIE: Duggan's worked with us quite a bit. They actually did the work in this room and with the video wall. One of our local contractors, if we'd call, they'll do low voltage for us. They're out really quick, so it's been a long relationship. We actually, I think we made that connection through one different O'Neal project. They've done quite a bit for us, and I like them a lot because they are so responsive. We call about something. They'll do a small job for us, and then some of these bigger build-out as well.
• [00:28:09] ELI NEIBURGER: You can also see these three bids are very close. This is not a place where there's a lot of variation.
• [00:28:19] SCOTT TRUDEAU: Can you just tell me what the EMR rate means that's not something I'm familiar with at the very bottom of the bed, each bid as a score. I just don't know what that means.
• [00:28:30] LEN LEMORIE: I'm not sure.
• [00:28:32] SCOTT TRUDEAU: Okay.
• [00:28:35] LEN LEMORIE: That must be an internal O'Neal thing.
• [00:28:37] SCOTT TRUDEAU: Got you.
• [00:28:38] LEN LEMORIE: I will get an answer before the next board meeting.
• [00:28:39] ELI NEIBURGER: Experience modifier rate, so it's basically a way that that O'Neal puts a score on their experience with.
• [00:28:50] SCOTT TRUDEAU: Got you, so they may want to award a slightly higher bid if they've had a good track record versus a bad track record or something like that. Got you. Yeah that's my only question.
• [00:29:03] DHARMA AKMON: Any other questions? Discussion?
• [00:29:07] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: You can see that the EMR rate is highest or the one that you picked so that's helpful.
• [00:29:18] DHARMA AKMON: Okay.
• [00:29:19] DHARMA AKMON: Oh, go ahead.
• [00:29:21] KERENE MOORE: Oh, no. I was just going to move to amend for the 306,090 dollars.
• [00:29:29] DHARMA AKMON: Can I get a second?
• [00:29:30] MOLLY KLEINMAN: Seconded.
• [00:29:31] DHARMA AKMON: Excellent. Any discussion on the amendment. This is a roll-call vote. Everyone in favor of this resolution say yes. That passes.
• [00:29:46] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Do we need to do the amendment and then the resolution?
• [00:29:49] DHARMA AKMON: Oh, shoot.
• [00:29:54] ELI NEIBURGER: [INAUDIBLE].
• [00:29:56] DHARMA AKMON: Can I get a motion to move on the amended resolution?
• [00:30:00] KERENE MOORE: So moved.
• [00:30:03] MOLLY KLEINMAN: Seconded.
• [00:30:06] DHARMA AKMON: Great. Now, we will vote the amended resolution. All in favor say yes.
• [00:30:12] BOARD MEMBERS: Yes.
• [00:30:13] DHARMA AKMON: Excellent. That passes. Moving on to resolution approving construction bid for HVAC installation at Parkland plaza, page 26 through 28.
• [00:30:28] ELI NEIBURGER: Then why don't you tell us first what your recommended vendor and amount is.
• [00:30:34] LEN LEMORIE: The recommendation on this one is Robertson Morrison, 986,700. This one we only had the two responses and I can go a little deeper in that.
• [00:30:49] DHARMA AKMON: You're saying the one on page 27 is the one that you're recommending?
• [00:30:54] ELI NEIBURGER: Yes. It's either the subcontract total down at the bottom of 98067.
• [00:31:00] DHARMA AKMON: Got it.
• [00:31:03] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: It is really interesting now knowing about that, what that means on these because significant difference in these.
• [00:31:13] DHARMA AKMON: Hold on a second. How about I go ahead and read this resolution. Resolution approving construction bid for HVAC installation at Parkway Plaza. The board resolves to authorize O'Neal construction to award HVAC installation to Robertson Morrison in the amount of 986,700 dollars. Two that the expenditure be authorized from the capital fund. Three, that all resolutions and parts of resolutions that conflict with the provisions of this resolution are rescinded. Can I get a motion on that?
• [00:31:53] KERENE MOORE: So moved.
• [00:31:55] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Seconded.
• [00:31:56] DHARMA AKMON: Jamie seconded discussion.
• [00:31:58] ELI NEIBURGER: I'd like to mention that this one came in above what the project budget was expecting. As we see how things go across the rest of the project, this might cause a expansion of the construction budget overall on the order of one to 200,000 dollars. Am I about right there?
• [00:32:15] LEN LEMORIE: Yes. When I totaled everything up, even probably with what we would recommend, we would be around $225,000 over budget. But we do have the contingency of, I think it's $150,000. [NOISE] It's $165,000. If everything stays on track, it will be around 100,000 over the original bid. This one was really tough because of the work. This is the only one we asked for, basically their cover letter and like jobs, someone that has actually done ground source geothermal. [NOISE] I think that's what changed the rating so much on this one because John Darr had to partner with rigging companies, whereas Robertson Morrison actually has everything in house. I think they do have to subcontract the drilling, but everything else they had in-house and I think that changed the score quite a bit. It's a unique project, we tried to solicit other bidders to get to was not what we wanted, but that's where we ended up. But yeah, it's definitely about 200,000 over the original proposed construction budget where we started this project last spring.
• [00:33:42] ELI NEIBURGER: For HVAC.
• [00:33:43] LEN LEMORIE: For HVAC. Yes.
• [00:33:44] ELI NEIBURGER: Part of that was over the cause is not the sole reason, but through the engineering process, we wound up needing a piece of equipment that was not on the radar at the beginning of that. It's basically with our goal to not require natural gas backup heat for the new office space. We required a new piece of equipment which is similar to an energy wheel, to be able to reclaim some of the heat from inside the building. Because we really don't want, we didn't want to add any supplemental gas-powered heat to the office space. It's going to be well insulated. Geothermal is pretty good for that thing. But in really cold months you have to have a plan. We needed a new piece of equipment that was a scope expansion and also we`ll require some space in the warehouse that we hadn't previously been aware of. I wouldn't say a surprise, but something that was an expansion of the scope of the project as we were in the engineering phase.
• [00:34:39] MOLLY KLEINMAN: Is it fair to say that this is unusual in a lot of ways? We're doing something to achieve a level of sustainability that just isn't widely adopted yet, and that's probably part of that.
• [00:34:52] LEN LEMORIE: No, I wouldn't say that. I think a lot of times when, you and I have talked about this, every time I've been involved with a project like this, we either didn't have the land for the wells or we didn't have the funding because it is in some cases double. But we looked at it, I think traditional h of x around 40, 45 dollars a square foot. I think this claim minute 65 dollars. It's not a lot more. I don't think it's, this isn't new technology. It's just you run into things that you won't have the space for the wells or you have to put a parking lot overall. Then honestly people see the cost, so it's just not every company does it. It's hard to get experience trades that actually do this work and do it well, because we don't want someone doing it for the first time.
• [00:35:41] ELI NEIBURGER: Particularly O'Neal did not want to have two separate subs drilling the wells and installing the HVAC because then when something doesn't work, they can blame each other. We want it to be in a position where, if they didn't have well drilling in house to well drilling was the HVAC sub. That was part of why we only got two bids because it's relatively uncommon for firms like this to have a well drilling in-house. They either needed to partner with someone else or that limited that.
• [00:36:13] LEN LEMORIE: We could have added two categories we could have at HVAC, the well-drained and then the excavation, we probably would've had more responses, but it would have still been we might have had two responses for the well drilling, and six for mechanical, but like I mentioned, we really want this under one roof and then be responsible for everything because I'm sure there'll be maintenance calls down the road.
• [00:36:38] DHARMA AKMON: I have a question about just given the large electrical demand by a system like this, what happens if the grid is out, we lose power?
• [00:36:49] LEN LEMORIE: Well, it's all electric heat pumps, basic. The heat won't be circulating. You would lose heat. Well, we would in any other buildings as well because even this building, there's a boiler but it's still forced air.
• [00:37:02] DHARMA AKMON: But that's the generator backup or?
• [00:37:04] LEN LEMORIE: Not in this building. At the branches we do, the branches are full. Full emergency backup.
• [00:37:11] ELI NEIBURGER: That's a project to come later. After this is if we, we talked about the possibility of a large solar array out there, especially if we can get someone else to pay for it. The possibility of some energy storage out there to put us in a better position for that to be a little more grid independent. Now, the amount of power required to do geothermal is much lower than a compressor driven cooling or something like that. But at the same time it is a grid dependent system.
• [00:37:40] LEN LEMORIE: This would be a good place to look at solar array battery backups, things that we didn't do what the branches, some type of harnessing the power and then using it for off-grid times than we would have it for spur outages or even that in a small generator that's much smaller than what we used at the branches because the demand so low. That would be a project down the road. This is still within the conversation we had earlier where with the utility savings, it's still around our 10 or 12 year payback. We went with traditional HVAC. The simple payback is still pretty low with this, even though it's a big number, this is the biggest part of the job for sure.
• [00:38:19] ELI NEIBURGER: I do want to mention that there is still natural gas heat for the existing part of the building, the existing office space, and the, a backup heat for the warehouse that is existing. We did not replace that in this scope of the project. It's something that can be done later.
• [00:38:39] SCOTT TRUDEAU: We're spending more now because the because the operating expense of running this geothermal system will be so much lower, which is why we see the short-term payback. It's a big upfront capital expense, which is why a lot of people don't do it because they don't want to. Because you can amortize those payments out with a less efficient system, but this gets us there sooner and because it's so much less energy-intensive will be. [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:39:04] LEN LEMORIE: We have started conversations about solar because the building is perfect for it. To look at can we partner, can there be some type of grant or something with DTE or we can get a break on it? This would be the perfect building with the low-energy demand from the ground source, geothermal. It wouldn't be a big system. Whereas he tried that we couldn't do it at the branches this place. We're actually designing it where we could use solar and battery, but which we couldn't do when we asked for the generator project.
• [00:39:40] ONNA SOLOMON: Is there space for more solar than we would need?
• [00:39:46] LEN LEMORIE: Possibly. I think that's where [OVERLAPPING].
• [00:39:48] ELI NEIBURGER: Particularly if you do both sides of the roof. It's a large roof. There's a lot of potential and it's situated exactly the right direction. There's a lot of solar resource there for us to explore later.
• [00:40:01] MOLLY KLEINMAN: There are times like the SCU people, the sustainable energy utility conversations around.
• [00:40:10] LEN LEMORIE: Absolutely. To the south of us, there's a huge green space that's not used. If this can't be used as part of this ground source geothermal, that could be another place for more solar. It's facing the right direction. There's a ton of potential there that could be the next project out there for sure.
• [00:40:31] ELI NEIBURGER: Our dream is ultimately to be able to power the delivery route with solar. But that requires not just solar array, but also storage because the truck is out on the road during a time when the sun is shining. But there's a lot of different ways to approach that.
• [00:40:48] DHARMA AKMON: Anything else? Shall we go ahead and vote? All in favor? Aye.
• [00:40:56] BOARD MEMBERS: Aye.
• [00:40:59] DHARMA AKMON: Does the motion pass or the resolution passes? It's the appropriate thing to say.
• [00:41:03] ELI NEIBURGER: Yes. Resolution passes.
• [00:41:04] DHARMA AKMON: Resolution passes. Excellent. Let's move on to gypsum board. [LAUGHTER] Resolution approving construction bid for gypsum board assemblies at Parkland Plaza 29-32.
• [00:41:19] LEN LEMORIE: Our recommendation is Great Lakes Ceiling and Carpentry for 328,356. That is right.
• [00:41:29] ELI NEIBURGER: That's on Page 30, GLCC.
• [00:41:32] DHARMA AKMON: What are they called again, Great Lakes what?
• [00:41:34] LEN LEMORIE: Lakes Ceiling and Carpentry.
• [00:41:40] DHARMA AKMON: The amount being 328,356?
• [00:41:43] LEN LEMORIE: Correct.I'll go ahead and read this. The board is all sworn to authorize O’Neal construction to award gypsum board assemblies to Great Lakes Ceiling and Cap.
• [00:41:55] LEN LEMORIE: Carpentry.
• [00:41:56] DHARMA AKMON: Carpentry?
• [00:41:57] LEN LEMORIE: .Yes [LAUGHTER]
• [00:41:58] DHARMA AKMON: In the amount of 328,356. Number 2, that the expenditure be authorized from the capital fund. Number 3, that all resolutions and parts of resolutions that conflict with the provisions of this resolution are rescinded. Len, you're going to tell us more about it?
• [00:42:18] LEN LEMORIE: Yes. We had three responses on this one. All very good companies. O'Neal has worked with all of them, highly recommended. We've worked with Great Lakes and Precision quite a few times on different projects. Any one of these vendors would have been someone we'd be comfortable to go with. The low bid on this, which was AACP, they actually didn't include some of the materials and that shows the tabulation form from them. They didn't include the hardy board. Technically that low bid, even though there's the second on the rating. Actually, I think Great Lakes did this room as well. They're out on liberty road so they’re local.
• [00:43:06] DHARMA AKMON: Just for those of us that don't know what this is, what is this actually?
• [00:43:10] LEN LEMORIE: Get your studded walls, your drywall, your finishing for what would have been the office space.
• [00:43:16] DHARMA AKMON: Got you.
• [00:43:17] ELI NEIBURGER: The major piece, as Len mentioned, the hardy board is for the wall between the office space and the warehouse volume. That is like it's not really exterior, but it's exterior grade because it will be on the outside of the vapor barrier and the condition space and such.
• [00:43:34] DHARMA AKMON: Other questions, discussion?
• [00:43:37] FEMALE_1: [INAUDIBLE] make a motion
• [00:43:44] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Yes, I don't think we did it.
• [00:43:46] DHARMA AKMON: Shoot. Can I get a motion on the resolution that I read? Sorry.
• [00:43:50] SCOTT TRUDEAU: So moved.
• [00:43:51] DHARMA AKMON: Second?
• [00:43:52] KERENE MOORE: Second.
• [00:43:53] DHARMA AKMON: All right. Thank you so much. Now we will vote on the resolution. All in favor, aye.
• [00:43:58] BOARD MEMBERS: [OVERLAPPING] Aye.
• [00:44:00] DHARMA AKMON: The resolution passes. Moving on to approving construction bid for painting at Parkland Plaza, pages 33-35. What are you recommending for this one?
• [00:44:16] LEN LEMORIE: We are recommending Tye Painting 42,896.
• [00:44:27] DHARMA AKMON: Let me read this. The board resolves to authorize O'Neal construction to award painting to Tye Painting in the amount of 42,896. But the expenditure be authorized from the capital fund. That all resolutions and parts of resolutions that conflict with the provisions of this resolution are rescinded. Can I get a motion?
• [00:44:47] MOLLY KLEINMAN: So moved.
• [00:44:49] DHARMA AKMON: Second it.
• [00:44:49] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Seconded.
• [00:44:50] DHARMA AKMON: Thank You. Do want to tell us more?
• [00:44:53] LEN LEMORIE: Yeah. Two responses here. Pretty straightforward in it's painting, but Tye Painting is a go-to painter. If we do a large project, they are typically our contractor, whether it's through O'Neal or not. They do a ton of work in our area, I think they're actually paying the big Jiffy edition right now. When I saw what they bid on it, I was happy to also see they were loaded.
• [00:45:23] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Really close too it seems?
• [00:45:24] LEN LEMORIE: Yes.
• [00:45:26] DHARMA AKMON: I'm sorry. What did you say, Jamie?
• [00:45:28] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: They're very close, the two bids.
• [00:45:31] LEN LEMORIE: They did all the branch meeting room projects, this room, the secret lab. Anything bigger than our maintenance department would do Ti Painting typically does for us.
• [00:45:46] DHARMA AKMON: Other questions are?
• [00:45:48] MOLLY KLEINMAN: Just looking around at all the edges [LAUGHTER].
• [00:45:56] DHARMA AKMON: Shall we vote? All in favor of this resolution, vote aye [OVERLAPPING]. Resolution passes. Moving on to E; resolution approving construction bid for fire suppression at Parkland Plaza, Pages 36-37. Looks like we only got one bid.
• [00:46:17] LEN LEMORIE: One response, yes. It's TriStar Fire Protection for 315,000.
• [00:46:24] DHARMA AKMON: I'll read the resolution. The board resolves to authorize a new construction to award fire suppression to sorry, what did you say?
• [00:46:31] LEN LEMORIE: [INAUDIBLE] It’s stated star. Tristar Fire Protection.
• [00:46:35] DHARMA AKMON: Tristar Fire Protection in the amount of $315,000. Two, that the expenditure be authorized from the capital fund. Three, that all resolutions and parts of resolutions that conflict with the provisions of this resolution are rescinded. One.
• [00:46:53] LEN LEMORIE: I wish I had more information and why we only had one response. I believe it's the paper vault, so there's going to be some dry chemical there. The good news is this is the company we met with after we purchased the space and talked about the paper vault, what we would need to do. They've been in conversation with us the whole time. I think that's the biggest part of it. There's some rework of the existing fire suppression of where the office space will be. It runs lengthwise currently, so we'll have to move some of that. But I think the one response was really about our paper vault and the needs there. It's pretty specific.
• [00:47:30] ELI NEIBURGER: It's a specialty product.
• [00:47:31] LEN LEMORIE: It is.
• [00:47:32] ELI NEIBURGER: There will be gas canisters where the fire suppression system for the paper vault is, so that if there's ever a trigger of the fire suppression system inside the paper vault, it's releasing gas in that water.
• [00:47:44] DHARMA AKMON: Can I get a motion on this resolution before we proceed?
• [00:47:48] SCOTT TRUDEAU: So moved.
• [00:47:49] DHARMA AKMON: The second?
• [00:47:50] KERENE MOORE: Second.
• [00:47:51] DHARMA AKMON: Excellent. Now discussion or questions.
• [00:47:57] ONNA SOLOMON: Sounds like they're the one [LAUGHTER].
• [00:48:01] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: That reasoning makes sense that there wouldn't be a ton of people doing that work, but we've got to protect our staff.
• [00:48:08] LEN LEMORIE: It is a unique job in that sense where we had meetings with one archivist in another firm.
• [00:48:15] ELI NEIBURGER: We had two different archivists specialists, who specialize in developing these types of facilities to help us make sure that we were on the right track with the different products and the suppression system that we were specifying and other things like the way that you wrap the space and that you'd want to make sure when you have a gas fire suppression system, that's really important to not have any penetration through the walls that aren't sealed up. Because if it goes off, it needs to be concentrated for it to work. You don't want it to be all flowing out under the wall or things like that. We had our construction manager was in those meetings. We have some really great advice from specialists in the field that helped us specify these unusual specifications for a project.
• [00:49:10] DHARMA AKMON: Shall we vote on the resolution. All in favor.
• [00:49:13] BOARD MEMBERS: Aye [OVERLAPPING].
• [00:49:16] DHARMA AKMON: Resolution passes. I think that does it for your business. Sorry. Thank you so much.
• [00:49:24] ONNA SOLOMON: Thanks for all your work on that.
• [00:49:25] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Thanks, Len. That's quite the series [LAUGHTER]
• [00:49:30] ELI NEIBURGER: But then that's it. I think those were the last five.
• [00:49:34] LEN LEMORIE: What's left is doors, frames and hardware, the glass and glazing, carpet and fluorine, we'll call it elevator wheel lift and then plumbing. That's all that's left.
• [00:49:48] DHARMA AKMON: It's exciting to see it coming through.
• [00:49:49] LEN LEMORIE: They're all just pending scope review, getting that scope. We should have those for the next month really.
• [00:49:55] DHARMA AKMON: Thank you so much.
• [00:49:56] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Thanks.
• [00:49:58] DHARMA AKMON: Do we have any citizens' comments?
• [00:50:03] ELI NEIBURGER: Let me just check the, or never mind.
• [00:50:07] DHARMA AKMON: [OVERLAPPING] We're all set. Then this meeting is adjourned. Thanks for keeping us on track, Karen