We’ve received 95% of tax receipts through January.
There are currently five items over budget for the year. All of them, except for Legal are expected to come back into line by year’s end.
During the month of January there was nothing out of the ordinary.
06-135 VII. DIRECTOR’S REPORT
In addition to her written report, Director Parker also reported the following:
Director Parker passed around a newsletter from the Urban Libraries Council that included a photograph of Vice President Murphy as part of a group of elected officials during their most recent conference held in Chicago.
We received a letter of thanks along with a framed certificate from the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair for the use of Conference Room A along with the assistance with extensive technology set-up for the judging of entries for this coming year’s art fair. IAS Manager Eli Neiburger was recognized as leading this effort.
06-136 VIII. COMMITTEE REPORTS
A. PERSONNEL
Meeting postponed.
06-137 IX. OLD BUSINESS
04-207 A. UPDATE ON PITTSFIELD BRANCH
Associate Director Nieman reported the following:
Opening day is scheduled for March 20, 2006.
06-125 B. UPDATE ON NORTHEAST BRANCH
Director Parker introduced Larry Hill from O’Neal Construction who was in the audience.
Director Parker reported that site plans had been submitted to the City on the 13th of February. The site plans submitted includes the documentation presented at the Board meeting. Also the information went to the drain commission on the same day in terms of how we will deal with storm water run-off. We are fortunate that First Martin
Corporation had a storm water retention pond built that would handle the storm water for the development. It is big enough to take our project, but it won’t be big enough to take another project. We are going forward with the site planning with the understanding that in the future we may have to help with some improvements on that pond.
Director Parker reviewed the site plan boards provided by Van Tine|Guthrie. She emphasized that the elevation will not be as it is shown, but is expected to change some. Conceptually, it will remain the same.
We are currently $70,000 under budget and we have contingencies for construction of 3.1% and the design contingency is around 12%.
Director Parker noted that the time it would take to harvest, mill, and kiln dry the ash trees onsite in order to incorporate them into the building is longer than we anticipated. On the other side of that, most of the trees that are coming out of this property are ash and the City considers those dead trees. This also means that even though it is a wooded site, it is not considered bona fide woodland.
The City is expected to have comments back to us by the end of the week; we then have a couple of weeks to respond to their comments and at that point it then goes to the planning commission. We’ve scheduled public comment sessions for the time period between submittal and when the planning commission will review the site plans.
Information has been made available to the public by means of the website, information boards in the Northeast branch windows, and flyers that are being passed out as well as mailed to the surrounding neighborhoods.
06-138 X. NEW BUSINESS
06-139 A. VOTE FOR EXECUTIVE SESSION AT THE NEXT REGULAR SCHEDULED BOARD MEETING FOR DIRECTOR’S EVALUATION, OPINION OF COUNSEL AND PENDING LITIGATION
Secretary Cahill, supported by Trustee Head, moved to approve the vote for executive session at the next regularly scheduled board meeting for Director’s evaluation, opinion of counsel and pending litigation.