AADL Board of Trustees Meeting - October 16th, 2017

Mon, 10/16/2017 - 6:32pm

When: October 16, 2017 at Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

Watch the October 2017 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.

17-151 I. CALL TO ORDER
17-152 II. ATTENDANCE
17-153 III. APPROVAL OF AGENDA (Item of action)
17-154 IV. CONSENT AGENDA (Item of action)
CA-1 Approval of Minutes of September 18, 2017
CA-2 Approval of September 2017 Disbursements
17-155 V. CITIZENS’ COMMENTS
17-156 VI. FINANCIAL REPORTS - Bill Cooper, Finance Manager
17-157 VII. COMMITTEE REPORTS
17-158 A. BUDGET & FINANCE COMMITTEE
17-159 B. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
17-160 VIII. DIRECTOR’S REPORT - Josie B. Parker, Director
17-161 IX. OLD BUSINESS
16-154 A. AADL STRATEGIC PLAN GOAL 4.4: IDENTIFY OPPORTUNITIES TO INCREASE CROSS-CHANNEL INTERACTION-UPDATE - Eli Neiburger, Deputy Director
17-162 X. NEW BUSINESS
17-163 A. PROPOSED REVISED 7.4 INVESTMENT POLICY– GENERAL OPERATING FUND & PROPOSED REVISED 7.5 INVESTMENT POLICY–STRATEGIC FUND EQUITY - Cathy Savoie & Chris Prisby, Bank of Ann Arbor (Item of discussion)
17-164 B. PROPOSED 3.1P CIRCULATION FINES POLICY REVISION - Eli Neiburger, Deputy Director (Item of discussion)
17-165 C. AADL STRATEGIC PLAN GOAL 3.3: 2016 EPIC-MRA SURVEY PRESENTATION - John Cavanagh, EPIC-MRA
17-166 D. AADL STRATEGIC PLAN GOAL 3.3: DOWNTOWN LIBRARY BUILDING PRESENTATION - O’Neal Construction, Inc.
17-167 E. RESOLUTION RECOGNIZING OCTOBER 15-21, 2017 AS NATIONAL FRIENDS OF LIBRARIES WEEK - (Item of action)
17-168 F. RESOLUTION OF THANKS TO IRA LAX UPON HIS RETIREMENT - (Item of action)
17-169 XI. CITIZENS’ COMMENTS
17-170 XII. ADJOURNMENT

Transcript

[00:00:00.91] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: OK. Welcome everyone. Can you all hear me OK? Great. I'm supposed to call this meeting to order. Karen, do you have attendance? All right, is there a motion to approve the agenda?
[00:00:19.00] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: I'll move.
[00:00:20.24] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Second.

[00:00:21.17] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: All those in favor? Anyone opposed? How about the consent agenda?
[00:00:32.28] JIM LEIJA: Motion to approve.
[00:00:34.84] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Second.
[00:00:36.32] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: : OK, great. All those in favor? Opposed? OK. Karen, I believe we do have some citizen comments.

[00:00:46.56] KAREN WILSON: We have two right at the moment. The first one is Matt Finch.
[00:00:50.92] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: : OK.
[00:00:56.80] MATTHEW FINCH: Thank you. My name is Matthew Finch. I'm from [INAUDIBLE]. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the [? ?] [? ?] and pay my respects to Elvis past, present, and future. That's just something we do before public comment in Australia, where I've come here from. I have been the guest around all the district libraries, working on behalf of the University of Southern Queensland.
[00:01:17.25] Ann Arbor District Library is internationally recognized as being a ridiculously awesome public library.
[00:01:22.65] [LAUGHTER]
[00:01:23.35] MATTHEW FINCH: I hope everyone in this room already knows that fact. For me, as someone in Australia who was invited to work with your staff for a week, it was spectacular to come and see something that you've read about things online, you've seen it through a screen on a laptop. To come and be able to see how people actually work together to be involved in the running of the public library for a week, and see that it lives up to the hype in every regard. It was an incredibly heartening experience for me.
[00:01:46.96] During that time I've been here, it's been my privilege to work with the various teams on exploring even more creative, and playful, and open ended ways for the community to explore knowledge and culture on their own terms. To move from a sense of programming ever being instructional, and making it more like the idea that the library is a magic space where you explore the things that you want to explore, understand things you want to understand, and create new and amazing stories and ideas. It goes right back to the original idea of the library being, you took the book you wanted to, you read it the way you wanted to. We're not teachers, we're not preachers, we're your space of imagination and learning, and connection.
[00:02:24.64] This was only possible to open these new avenues of play, because the caliber of the staff and quality of the service is so incredibly high. I could list names. And not even just expected ones, within programming or the leadership team. People like Darla in the archives, [INAUDIBLE] in the security team. Everyone stood out for me. And as I said, not just the people who care for collections and community activities, but also the facilities and the security team, who are incredibly competent, warm, and welcoming in every regard.
[00:02:51.61] The finance team, who both participated in some of the wildest and most playful activities, and who followed up with me. Asking questions about historical memory and archives, and grieving like they had a super passionate connection to the business and mission of this organization.
[00:03:08.54] Finally, I wanted to point out-- you already know this, but you have an incredible leadership team. The two things that make this clear, is that Eli's deputy director was responsible for inviting me here. Eli has an international profile as a speaker who travels the world, and we all recognize his name and his contribution. Sometimes, especially when guys do this, it's a bit like a walking commercial for themselves. Like that dude is awesome. Oh, he happens to work at this institution. Eli always makes it clear-- he's part of a broader team, and a community of incredible individuals, and you never think of his singular accomplishments without also being aware that he's part of an amazing institution.
[00:03:45.04] And also, having never met Josie, but knowing her only by reputation, I saw her guide the conversation around active shooter training on Monday at the staff development day. It's an incredibly difficult, especially for children's librarians. You have to think about their responsibilities in such an issue. And it was done with such compassion. Such a sense of authority, but also such a recognition of the realities of the situations we find ourselves in.
[00:04:08.65] That as knowledge institutions, we may face the most drastic circumstances. And these things are not just about kind, beautiful words, but also about the most serious notion of community needs. I'm sure you'll hear more about the work we did together this week. But essentially, your staff are amazing, they're ready to soar to even new heights, and I was so privileged to be even a small part of that process.
[00:04:30.47] So, thank you to the leadership team. Every single person I've worked with today, I commend them all to you wholeheartedly. Thanks for your time.
[00:04:38.32] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: : Thank you.
[00:04:40.59] [APPLAUSE]
[00:04:42.87] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: : We're very grateful that you've come to speak to us this after the point in which we're recording this.
[00:04:47.14] [LAUGHTER]
[00:04:48.96] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: : Because there's a lot of gems I think that we can harvest from that. Thank you so much.
[00:04:55.12] [INAUDIBLE]
[00:05:07.70] SPEAKER: Hi, my name is [INAUDIBLE]. I'm currently a senior at the U of M. I'm studying public policy, and I'm here as an intern for CivCity. If you don't know CivCity, it's a local nonpartisan, nonprofit started by Mary Morgan. She couldn't be here today, but she is the executive director and founder. It focuses on increasing awareness of how local government works, and getting residents engaged in civic life, using Ann Arbor as kind of a starting point.
[00:05:38.07] So, through CivCity, I have a big project that I'm working on. It's a research paper, looking at the level of diversity in local government and local elected officials. So, I wanted to come to tell you all that I will be sending you a survey. You, as well as members of the Ann Arbor city council, the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners, and the Ann Arbor Board of Education.
[00:06:03.03] This survey will be asking for your age range, your socioeconomic status, gender, race and your education status. And it will also ask you how you feel about the diversity, or lack of diversity in each identity within your specific board. If you are uncomfortable filling out the survey online, I'm hoping to get 100%, I can meet with you in person or we can talk about over the phone.
[00:06:29.88] The end product will be a written report, hopefully by the end of December of this year. It'll comparing both local levels and national levels of diversity in elected bodies. What I, as well as Mary hope, is that this report is going to encourage public discussion of the importance of diversity in representative government, and more awareness of the current state of diversity, or lack of diversity, in Ann Arbor government. Thank you.
[00:07:01.02] LINH SONG: Thank you.
[00:07:03.30] [APPLAUSE]
[00:07:05.23] [INAUDIBLE]
[00:07:10.04] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: We might have some ideas of other boards for you talk to you too.
[00:07:13.64] JOSIE PARKER: Are you talking to the WCC board?
[00:07:16.75] SPEAKER: Like county commissioners?
[00:07:17.62] JOSIE PARKER: No, the community college is also an elected board in the county.
[00:07:22.50] SPEAKER: What we were planning on doing, is focusing on Ann Arbor. Also the Washtenaw County board. We might be looking at Ypsi too.
[00:07:31.21] JOSIE PARKER: OK.
[00:07:33.25] SPEAKER: We didn't want it to be too far.
[00:07:35.10] JOSIE PARKER: OK.
[00:07:37.02] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Great. OK, that's it for now?
[00:07:40.23] KAREN WILSON: Yes.

[00:07:41.91] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Well, if something peaks your interest during the meeting, you know you can speak at the end as well. OK. So now we move on to financial reports. Bill Cooper?
[00:07:54.45] BILL COOPER: Good evening. You have my report in front of you. I'm just going to highlight a % of topics there. For the fund balance-- or for the tax receipts, we have collected 89.5% of our projected receipts as of September 30th. That's $13,965,793 out of the $15,598,058 that we expect to collect by the end of the year.
[00:08:26.70] And also, we are currently under budget year to date, of $627,244. Are there any questions?
[00:08:41.36] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: Sounds like we have money to spend?
[00:08:44.44] BILL COOPER: As of right now, just because our revenues are higher than our expenditures now, but as the tax collections slow down, the expenses will catch up.
[00:08:55.74] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: No parties coming?
[00:08:58.00] BILL COOPER: No.
[00:09:00.42] VICTORIA GREEN: Do you expect us to continue to have a positive balance at the end of the fiscal year?
[00:09:06.27] BILL COOPER: I would hope we still have a positive balance.
[00:09:09.93] VICTORIA GREEN: You sound a little unsure about--
[00:09:11.74] BILL COOPER: I don't-- I don't want to-- We're not going to be negative that's for sure. But I am hoping that we're not going to be as high as we were last year. We should be closer to spending all of our budget at the--
[00:09:24.09] VICTORIA GREEN: OK. Thank Thank you.
[00:09:28.52] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Anyone else? Thank you very much.
[00:09:31.95] BILL COOPER: Thank you.

[00:09:35.73] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: OK, now we move on to the budget and finance committee.
[00:09:40.04] JIM LEIJA: The budget and finance committee met to review the library's investments, that are held by Bank of Ann Arbor. One of the banks that hold investments for the library. We uncovered, during the course of this meeting, that our investment policy, the organizational policy for the Ann Arbor District Library, is quite conservative.
[00:10:06.93] And, in fact, with some of our current investments, we are actually violating our own policy. Although we are in full legal compliance with our investments. And, so what we're going to do later tonight, is we're going to talk with Cathy Savoie from Bank of Ann Arbor about how we might align our policy with our current investments, and/or keep the same policy and change our investments.
[00:10:37.55] This is a little bit of a confusing issue, so our policy as an organization, is much more conservative than what the law allows for, in terms of how our investments are made. And we have a recommendation for the board, in terms of moving ahead. And as we drill down on it, essentially the current policy only allows us to have investments that last over the course of a year. I believe we have investments with Bank of Ann Arbor right now that are five year investments.
[00:11:10.66] JOSIE PARKER: They've been pulling them back.
[00:11:11.91] JIM LEIJA: But they've been pulling it back, yes. We're going to bring this into a discussion later as new business, and potentially propose a policy change. And Cathy can get into the finer points.
[00:11:23.57] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: So you say our policy now says we only invest a year at the time?
[00:11:27.53] JIM LEIJA: That's right. Yeah, and as we discuss this-- Josie you can help out too. Going back and looking at the history of the policy, we think that that particular policy was last edited in the late 90s.
[00:11:40.06] JOSIE PARKER: It was edited in 1998. And it's a reflection of that time, and the fact that we had the financial scandal. So, the policy is very conservative, consequently. Because it was about a period of recovery.
[00:11:54.74] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: Because we've certainly been investigating the policy and revising policy.
[00:11:59.06] JOSIE PARKER: But that one-- Because the way these funds were invested were not a violation of any laws, it was not something that triggered a question or a legal review. It's just a practice, the library's own practice. So, we are going to try to make this work better for the library.
[00:12:20.96] JIM LEIJA: This is one of those instances where the bandwidth of what we can do legally, is wider than--
[00:12:26.42] JOSIE PARKER: What we've been doing.
[00:12:27.08] JIM LEIJA: What we've been doing. And that's really a question for the board, just decide what level of risk that we want to take on at this time, in terms of our investments. Which, overall, are not risky. At all.
[00:12:42.17] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: We have no risk.
[00:12:44.19] JIM LEIJA: The law provides for that. I think that's all.

[00:12:49.56] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Any questions? Great. I think that we move on now to the executive committee. So we have been meeting about twice a month. Linh and I met with Josie about two weeks ago, and then the three of us [INAUDIBLE] this evening. But, just essentially two points of business to share with you. One is related to what we will hear later tonight from EPIC-MRA.
[00:13:19.31] So, tonight we're going to be looking back. But, what we talked about in our executive committee meeting was looking forward. So we need to both think about what feedback have we received before, as we talk about what questions do we want to ask about now. So the executive committee will next be talking about developing the questions that they will ask next year. So that's something that we've been kind of getting ready for, but I know that we talked again tonight.
[00:13:49.19] We want the executive committee to be as much about efficiency, and more about transparency. We want to make sure that we're always bringing everything back to the full board, and that we're not advancing too much business in that small group. Because we moved to this committee as a whole, to kind of get away from just doing things in tiny committees. Jim was kind of reflecting on this tonight.
[00:14:12.92] So, we'll be developing a starting point with the questions, and then we'll bring them back to the board before they all go out. So I want to make sure that-- we got the sense that we were not going to advance very quickly with our goals if we tried to do everything all together. But we want to make sure that we do do as much together as we possibly can.
[00:14:31.44] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: Will there be any communication in smaller groups between board meetings? Or will it just be an executive committee meeting, and then informing--
[00:14:43.33] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: The board? At the moment there is that structure, plus the finance committee. And those are the only formal, in between these meetings, communications. Go ahead.
[00:14:52.83] JIM LEIJA: I'm sorry Jamie. I also, again, just to kind of clarify, I think that we did this last time, as Josie reminded me, , we had two sessions in the communications committee to get the work done. And what we're proposing is, a starting session with the executive committee and a second working session with the board. Not a session simply to inform and rubber stamp, but to actually complete the work as a group. As opposed to the work already being done.
[00:15:25.30] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: Which is what the concept was all along.
[00:15:27.35] JIM LEIJA: Exactly. That's right.
[00:15:29.07] VICTORIA GREEN: And I'm fine with that, the only thing I'd ask is, it'd be great to see the draft in advance.
[00:15:33.48] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Great.
[00:15:33.81] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: That's true.
[00:15:34.81] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: We can absolutely make sure that happens.
[00:15:36.34] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Some of us think slower than others.
[00:15:39.69] JIM LEIJA: Absolutely.
[00:15:40.35] COLLEEN SHERMAN: I think we had 150 pages to review to get ready for today's meeting. So I don't worry about the library giving me plenty of advanced material. Also, we did have a conversation at the last meeting, where we started to talk about and think about this. And it seems like it's been long coming. This is my first time involved in this process, but we've been talking about it for a while. It seems like it should be, and we know how we want to focus, then like you've noted, to forward thinking.
[00:16:07.69] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Great. The other piece is just on the director's evaluation process. As you know, we've been working with Sarah Whinston on this process. We met with her tonight to receive the benchmarking, sort of, results. By benchmarking, I mean that she talked with people at other libraries around the country, to learn about how they do this process.
[00:16:34.00] And probably the biggest takeaway that I share with Josie, is that, surprise, surprise, there's no magic way to evaluate a director. No one had--
[00:16:44.93] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: So what we've been getting.
[00:16:48.18] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: But I do think that they learned a lot from those conversations, and they said that they were very pleased to have always been-- Josie was able to give them introductions to the people they talked to each of the locations, and each of them was like, oh anything for Josie. So I think the conversations went really well, and they learned a lot. And they've also learned a lot from us. They've talked to a number of us, and they've talked a lot with Josie. So I think we're in a good place.
[00:17:16.20] They've given us the feedback. They're going to give it to Josie later this week. Then they're going to start, kind of wrapping up, and giving us what we need to run a director's evaluation every year without having to think about it so much in the process details. Any questions about that? Great, so that's what I have to share for that committee. Let's move on.

[00:17:43.79] Director's report.
[00:17:45.59] JOSIE PARKER: There are slides. So, the first item in the director's report was about the suspension of MeLCat. So, because you know this occurred on October 2nd, we had put out the information about it a month prior. Today is an irony. Today was the first day I've had two people ask me what happened to MeLCat. So since it's suspended, as people began to need it, or think about it, they'll find it's not there. And they weren't necessarily aware. So we're giving an explanation. What's interesting for you to be aware, is we're telling people we still have, what we call traditional ILL.
[00:18:22.61] The volume has increased from five to seven requests a day, to around 30. Requests a day. So people are using ILL in place of MeLCat. It's a slower process, but it's an effective one. This is not a burden. 30 a day is not a burden, because the MeLCat work, the incoming that was already out on request, that's slowing down. So the people who do this work all work in that same area. So the feedback to us, is this is totally doable. So we're still good about that.
[00:18:55.77] We hope that we'll resume in 2018. That's about how well our migration goes. And also, it's on the other side, on the side of the MCLS, working with us to bring it back up on their side of things. They're very on top of it, it just is one of those things.
[00:19:13.88] You just saw Dr. Matt Finch. Heard him talk about being here, and what a pleasure it was. What a great compliment to all of you staff, and the community. Nicely done. That's how he is, obviously. And he did that all week long, everywhere. He was our guest, and he spoke at our staff day. He led our staff day. A lot of the work we did on staff day on our development day. He's made a presentation here for arts nonprofits that was public. We had a number of people from the community, from the nonprofit art community, who came here to hear him speak.
[00:19:46.70] He also did an academic presentation at Shapiro, which was open to all the people who worked in all the libraries on campus. And so that was also done. Then he went with us to University of Michigan School of Information, where we were recruiting grad students to work here, in our public library associate program. He went with us to help us do that. So, we had our secret weapon as it was, and I think it was effective. We'll find out how effective.
[00:20:16.17] Then he did an open presentation for library staff all around our community. Outside of the Ann Arbor District Library. We opened it up to all our libraries in any nearby county, anyone who wanted to come. So A few did. Perhaps the word will get out about Matt now, and when he comes back in the winter-- which he's talking about coming back, maybe we'll get some more people to come to the library for a library staff day. So we're very happy.
[00:20:44.38] Our October 15th Wondrous/Strange event, which was the culmination of his week, yesterday, brought about 250 people to the downtown library. And there's a film, which I think we're going to show as a result of that day. It's very short.
[00:20:58.85] MATT FINCH: Wondrous/Strange is an opportunity for the Ann Arbor community to step inside the world of stories. It uses time travel to explore the past, present, and future of this very city. People can use art or science craft and creativity to express themselves and tell us about where they think the world is going, things they think have happened in the past, urban myths, strange encounters with monsters and ghosts, anything unusual or uncanny.
[00:21:23.84] You can not only learn about it, but actually be part of that storytelling experience. We've got people telling the future of Ann Arbor, going as far ahead as 5,000 years in the future. I've seen a world where groundhogs rule the earth. I've seen a world where humanity has outlawed clothing except for hats.
[00:21:39.77] Young and old have written us postcards from the future, telling us where they think things might be going. But you can also build a castle in the sky, look at historic news story, or just build a robot to send on a play based adventure. Whatever you want to do, you come here, and you steer what the story goes.
[00:22:00.29] JOSIE PARKER: So I encourage you, if you didn't enter the downtown library through the front doors, to go upstairs to the lobby and look up. And you'll see that castle, it's hanging from the ceiling out there. A few pieces have dropped off, and they've been moved away. But for the most part, it's holding together.
[00:22:19.89] And I also find that these things are so interesting to me. Where else do you see eight 19-year-olds amalgamating an anomaly, then at an AADL program? And that was one of the titles of one of those tables. So there was a bunch of little boys standing around that table, amalgamating an anomaly. So that's what we do, that's part of what we do.
[00:22:44.87] We will bring you up to date-- we brought you up to date at the last board meeting on the web site. And where we are right now, everything is still going along as planned for migration and launch in January. That's all still ongoing. We did bring the new staff interface to the website for people to look at on staff days, and spend a lot of time with it. And we'll ask people to be beaded up over a process of time.
[00:23:15.26] And we'll even do a beta, where some of the members of the public who we know use our catalog a lot, we will ask them to go in and use this new catalog a lot. And see what the bugs are, and where the glitches are before we launch. So we have all that in hand. We had a record attendance at the staff day. The library is closed one day a year for us, a staff in-service day all the years I've worked here, before I was library director. This was a record attendance of 135 folks. We had many people who work for us, we call casually-- the world calls part time, ask to be able to be at staff day. So we had to figure this out, because their pay is time paid. But we need them to cover a lot of desks for us throughout the rest of the week. So we had to make sure we can make that happen.
[00:24:12.35] But we try not to turn anyone down. Consequently, we had the biggest staff day we've had in all my time here. It was really, really great. And we did. Matt talked about it, so I'll mention it, Detective Spickard, from the Ann Arbor Police Department, came to the library, I'm trying to think, was it 2013? It was the same year as the Newtown active shooting. He came to us that year and did active shooter training for us, and then we followed it with a situation where we had this building-- we were closed. And the staff could move all around in this building and find out where the dead ends are. Because there are some, and we don't want anyone to go into one if they're trying to get themselves or someone out. And so we did that.
[00:25:04.58] Detective Spickard came back. It's been a number of years. We had actually had him scheduled to come before the library shooting in New Mexico, and certainly before the shooting in Las Vegas. It made this conversation a week ago more poignant and certainly more difficult, but it's something we needed to do. And so we did it. And we appreciated him and his sensitivity to us. He answered the hard questions, and he did it very, very well.
[00:25:38.93] And then Matt Finch. So between the two, we had a very packed day. And we had the kind of day that lets you think about the tough stuff, but then allows you the freedom to relax and think about the fun stuff. And it be OK. And so that's the sort of day we had. I know from the feedback that it was appreciated on all fronts. So the people who were in charge of that, we have a staff day committee, and they did a fabulous job. So we're very, very happy about that.
[00:26:12.30] We are asked-- feels like all the time, by courses, whether they're graduate or undergraduate courses at the various universities around us, to be allowed to have project work done here. And so, we heard today about someone who's an intern, is going to be doing a survey, which is one kind.
[00:26:35.54] Two that we're actively involved in right now, the UMSI Contextual Inquiry Consulting Class is studying the Contact Us database that we have had for over a decade. How we collected that, how we've responded, what's in it. How can you mine that information and see the issues and the comments and the resolutions over a decade of time? And then how to do that better. How, for that to not be the time taker that it is, but still be responsive the way it is. So they're working on that.
[00:27:12.16] Then Apex Consulting. U of M Ross School of Business has undergrad consulting clubs and graduate consulting clubs, is what they're called. And they named themselves, they organized themselves. This particular group is interested in looking at our request fulfillment data. So we have years of this. How long do things stay on the whole shelf? How many items are not picked up? What is the time frame of those items that are picked up? What's the request on an item? That sort of number thing. It's to help us better understand how we need to collect, and also, what does the whole shelf-- what does it represent to people, and how can we provide that in a better way?
[00:28:00.99] For instance, one thing we do know, and we're doing it, when we launched the new web site and migrate over, we're going to have a seven day hold. Rather than six day. Because we know people come to the library on the same day of the week habitually. That means that for many of them, they missed their hold. Because it's the seventh day of whatever that period is. So they end up coming twice, or they miss their hold. So we're going to try to work on that. So that's what that's about. And we'll have a report from them at the end of this semester. So we're working with them.
[00:28:40.62] And then, strategic plan goal 3.3. Will Gordon, the CEO of O'Neal Construction is here this evening to talk to you about the progress that they are making at this point in time doing the assessment on the downtown building. It is not a completed project. We do not have figures, numbers, dollar numbers. But we do have some notion of what our options might be, and what's involved in getting to a number for those options. So Will's here he'll follow a little bit later.
[00:29:11.19] Also, John Cavanaugh is here from EPIC-MRA, at our invitation, to talk to us about the 2016 EPIC-MAR survey and the context of how it's developed, and how to develop the same type of survey going forward. So that's something that he'll be discussing.
[00:29:30.03] And then, this is the summary of public and staff comments about the Star Wars Fest. And they're hard-- I'm not trying to read it, because it's sideways, and it's a little print. But, just to give you an idea of what gets talked about. There's the Star Wars Fest, Wondrous/Strange, which is what occurred this past Sunday. Pulp's birthday, it seems odd that we have Pulp's birthday, Happy birthday Pulp, but we do. And Then, this is a time traveling robot's-- this is putting together, I think-- that this is the castle that's upstairs, right? That's hanging up on the ceiling. I though I recognized the paper.
[00:30:11.74] And then, here is a photograph of what this room looked like when the staff were having to put out all of the t-shirts in sizes and colors, in order to fulfill the orders of people who participated in the summer game and got their t-shirt. So that's how many, and that's how much goes into that right here in this room.
[00:30:36.22] This is someone on staff who has decided to be someone else for a moment. And this is Westgate. This is about the art that's there, and there are three-- those of you who haven't been out there, there are three giant pieces by Ben--
[00:30:56.48] JIM LEIJA: It's his comment.
[00:30:57.92] JOSIE PARKER: Oh, it's his comment.
[00:31:01.07] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Oh, Ben Cowan?
[00:31:02.46] JOSIE PARKER: Oh yes, yes. So that's right. Ben Cowan. I'm sorry, I can see it now. He grew up on the west side, and Westgate was his branch. And so, when he came back to town and saw what was happening, he had these in his parents' basement. He now lives in New York. And he came and he talked to me. He actually knows my daughter in law. And so he said, Mrs. Parker, if I give them to you, would you put them in that library? And I said, sure. Because they fit, they just do it. So we're very happy to have them there.
[00:31:35.25] Wampa toss. At the Star Wars Fest. And then, this one, the A2 STEAM second graders came here on a field trip, and this is Nicole doing story time in the story room upstairs. And this is--C they came here, and they had a very good time. Wonderful time. So much fun, that the kindergarten teacher, whose class I read in every Tuesday at STEAM, has asked if the whole kindergarten from STEAM can come to the downtown library. And we are working-- we're working out that right now, how that can happen.
[00:32:15.21] This is another STEAM fun thing. Bill Van Loo is a teacher at STEAM. He brought, they brought, eight people here as a staff in service, to one of our public letterpress programs. From STEAM. And the sign he made is follow him on Twitter. He did that with letterpress, and that's hanging in the door of his classroom out at Northside at STEAM.
[00:32:46.31] Somebody who's talking about, they borrowed a mobile Cintiq from us. And their current library-- doesn't say where that is, has a free herb garden. And Life Hacker is an online blog, and they just did a piece on unusual things at libraries, and featured AADL. So, I wanted you know about that.
[00:33:11.39] We've upgraded our spinning wheel from Ashford Joy-- to Ashford Joy for Kiwi 2. So this person is very happy about that, and even though I don't have a clue what that means, I'm glad she's happy about that.
[00:33:27.71] This is something Rich Retyi, who is our new manager of communications marketing, and he's right back here with Eli. Rich is right there. Has worked started working, jumped right in and this is just one example. He has us verified on Facebook, which is a process. He spent the last two weeks doing it, and we appreciate that piece of what he's done, in addition to a number of others in the last couple of weeks. So thanks Rich.
[00:33:58.16] That's my director's report, if there are any other questions.
[00:34:03.34] LINH SONG: I have a question, Josie.
[00:34:04.80] JOSIE PARKER: OK.
[00:34:05.45] LINH SONG: So, online in some forums, there's a kerfuffle over computers being in the children's section at the Westgate branch, and I was wondering if you could speak to the need for computers, or the rationale behind having computers in children sections across the district?
[00:34:22.64] JOSIE PARKER: We have-- these are concerns that have arisen since Westgate opened. The computers at Westgate are iPads. And the computers in the other locations in the system are not. They will be, I will say it out loud right now. They will be. But we started with that at Westgate.
[00:34:42.77] IPads are, for the most part, for the young child, are more familiar. They already know about a finger on screen. They don't really know about a mouse at all. So it makes sense that they're attracted to it in a way they might not be to a screen that, if you press a button nothing happens. But you have to do it with a mouse. So, the I-pads make them attractive. They also give us more flexibility in terms of what's provided on that. So that creates interest in those machines.
[00:35:21.88] The location of them is in the middle of the space, which is true of every other place in our system except downtown, the computers are on one end of the room. In Traverwood, they're in front of the picture books, but kind of off to the end. But that's about building size, building design. That's not about us deciding that we're going to put computers in the most prominent, most interesting space in the library.
[00:35:49.70] At Westgate, it's actually interesting why they're there. They're there next to a big steel girder. And that's where the power and all the technology could come down from the ceiling logically. Otherwise, you would have to bust up all the concrete to run it. So we put it there, because that's where you could put the rolling table to plug it in. And that's why they're there.
[00:36:16.79] The controversy around this, is the parents who are finding their children-- when they go there, their children want to look at the computers more than the parent wants them to look at the computers. Their suggested solution is that we move them out. That's the dilemma. And for us, it's one where we must consider all our patrons, and all children who come to the public library. Not every child has access to a computer other than at the public library. So it's incredibly important that computing is available in public areas for children in public libraries. For them to do well in school, for them to be able to compete, they need to know how to use computing. So we provide that form of literacy, in much the same way we provide literacy with the print book.
[00:37:15.93] We respect parents concerns about how space is designed for safety, for comfort, and for reasonable use, but to determine that we don't have something as ubiquitous in our world as computing, is not something that we're able to offer up. Does that answer that issue?
[00:37:40.69] LINH SONG: Yes, thank you.
[00:37:41.41] JOSIE PARKER: OK. OK. Enough?
[00:37:44.59] LINH SONG: Thank you.
[00:37:46.13] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Any questions?
[00:37:46.93] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: Is there still a thought among some educators of young people, that it's better for them to not have computers until a certain age?
[00:37:58.54] JOSIE PARKER: I understand that, and what I've said to parents who've read that, and whose families choose to operate that way, is that when you come to the public library, you tell your children no. And they do other things at the public library. There's so much else to do, that this one thing is not the only thing to do. And these are littles. So, they're throwing themselves down and having a hissy fit. And so this is--
[00:38:29.32] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: There's also the possibility that the child looked at an open window and wants to change the snow outside to sun.
[00:38:36.41] JOSIE PARKER: I hear you Jan.
[00:38:37.76] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: No, I'm not saying, I just know I hear this among educators.
[00:38:40.53] JOSIE PARKER: Yes, and it's true. I mean, there are pediatricians who are concerned about brain development and eye, brain and motor skills.
[00:38:52.75] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: Motor skills especially.
[00:38:54.31] JOSIE PARKER: Yes, and I know that. But it's still something-- the library can't decide that for an individual parent. Parents do, and people do. There are parents who do not allow their children access to library computers, and so they don't. We don't decide for them, and we don't make them do that. The same way we can't help the parent who needs to say no, and who's having trouble doing that.
[00:39:23.13] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Anything further?
[00:39:24.55] LINH SONG: That's great, thank you.

[00:39:25.67] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Thank you. OK. Congratulations on quite a month. My goodness. OK, so let's see. We move on no to, I believe Eli is going to come talk to us. The agenda item is Identify opportunities to increase cross-channel interaction update.
[00:39:46.08] ELI NEIBURGER: In other words, an update on email marketing. So, what we're going to talk about today is the email newsletter, This Week! at AADL. We started this on August 7th. Since that, we've sent 425,000 e-mails across 10 issues, so about 42,000 e-mails per issue. Out of that, 129,000 e-mails were opened 30%. Which is a very good open rate, we're delighted by that. And we netted about 13,000 clicks across all 425,000 of those. So about 3.2% of all of the e-mails had a click in them somewhere, averaging it out across all of them.
[00:40:21.59] We currently have 42,997 subscribers to the email list. Each week, about 0.3 to 0.6% unsubscribe. I'll show you a chart of that in a minute. Which we're very pleased by. That's going very well. The way that you get on this list, is that any new users created on AADL.org, are now automatically added to the list. For while we weren't doing that so we could see how fast people were unsubscribing, but now every week we automatically add the new users to the list.
[00:40:47.85] So, what people are clicking on currently. Events and blog posts are the most clicks, with 8,581 clicks. New and popular items, we alternate each week between highlighting new items and highlighting popular items, so that's about 3,400 clicks. And then other things, including the summer game, contact us, and social links, about 1,700 clicks on those as well.
[00:41:09.32] Here are our top 10 items that were clicked the most. Surprising nobody who works in libraries, the solar eclipse viewing party was number one at 441 clicks. Closely, that was about as many phone calls as we got that morning as well. The summer game shop came in second with 259 clicks. Then Wondrous/Strange was very well, sort of teased, and a lot of people wanted to know more about that. The MeLCat announcement did 221 clicks.
[00:41:32.45] Then going on down through a number of different events, French Macarons got 200 clicks, as well as Keegan's Quick breads event Keegen Rodgers does from the co-op. Very popular presenter. And then, our two most clicked items were the Big Sick, which is Kumail Nanjiani's movie that was just released on DVD. That's there, as well as the Circle, which is the thing with Tom Hanks and Emma Stone, about Facebook- like evil sort of thing. For some reason a lot of people wanted to click on that.
[00:41:58.68] So this is just a chart showing the number of subscriptions over time. We did truncate the all important x-axis, so please notice it starts at 40,000. OK. I'm sorry, the y-axis, truncated the y-axis. So, we didn't add anybody until the October 9th one, so we can see what the fall off looked like. And basically, as you can see, about 100 to 200 people were unsubscribing each week. But then between the first week when we started adding people on, and the following week, it's almost flat.
[00:42:26.84] Between new users coming in, and people unsubscribing from it. So, after just two weeks it's about very steady 43,000 users.
[00:42:35.02] VICTORIA GREEN: Can I ask a question, Eli? Did you also take off people who you were getting bounce notices for?
[00:42:40.01] ELI NEIBURGER: We get very few bounces, because we've kind of pre-filtered for that. That's not subtracted from this. There's not a lot of bounces as far as it goes.
[00:42:46.82] VICTORIA GREEN: And I know it's difficult to say how many active cardholder's we have, but what's--
[00:42:51.02] ELI NEIBURGER: Actually it's easy to say how many active cardholders. We have about 60,000 people who transacted business in the past year. So you got onto this list by having created an account on AADL-- having logged into your account on AADL.org more recently than January of 2016, and not having unsubscribed from any of our other email newsletters. So if you unsubscribe from the annual report, or if you unsubscribe from something else, we didn't put you on this list. But new users are automatically added to this list.
[00:43:20.21] VICTORIA GREEN: So 2/3 of our users are receiving this?
[00:43:22.37] ELI NEIBURGER: Yes. OK? Now the other thing is there is a lot of household accounts. So it's hard to say for sure how many individuals are represented by that. OK. Any questions about this?
[00:43:33.95] All right, so our next step is A/B testing. We're going to start testing which parts of it are getting more clicks, we have some infrastructure that will let us do that. And we'll be doing a design update on the format of that. That's something Rich and his team are working on. And then we'll have a new method of approaching click tracking to get a little bit better data about how things are coming in to the website as far as that goes. And thanks to Rich for helping pull together this data for today's report. Any questions?
[00:43:57.63] VICTORIA GREEN: Do we know how much effort it takes to do this?
[00:44:00.69] ELI NEIBURGER: I was doing it up until this past week. It was-- I mean, it would take between the graphic designer, my time, and the developers time, about three hours to put it together. It wasn't taking a lot of time, because we had some infrastructure in place. So it'd take the web developer an hour, designer an hour, and then about an hour in copy-editing. Any other questions?
[00:44:22.11] JIM LEIJA: When you start doing A/B testing, are you going into the kind where it's in real time, or--
[00:44:27.30] ELI NEIBURGER: It's not going to change in real time so that we can see, but it will be for the same email, we'll be testing two different versions of it. We'll be able to see the clicks for each version.
[00:44:35.86] JIM LEIJA: I see.
[00:44:36.36] ELI NEIBURGER: Which one they say. But it won't re-actively adjust the way that mail chip does. It's mostly to inform the designer update. Any other questions?
[00:44:45.90] LINH SONG: Do you think this helps alleviate phone calls, or the number of phone calls made to the library?
[00:44:51.39] ELI NEIBURGER: Anecdotally, not remotely.
[00:44:52.99] [LAUGHTER]
[00:44:54.93] JIM LEIJA: Yeah, I wouldn't expect it to.
[00:44:56.22] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Hey, I like that content. I wouldn't have know about the Macaron workshop otherwise. And I always want to go to everything, and I can't. But just knowing what's going on is always really interesting.
[00:45:06.78] ELI NEIBURGER: We have seen, and of course it's hard to attribute actions, but some events that have not been big in the past that have been highlighted in the newsletter have been big. College night, particularly, has been a bit of a snoozer past couple of years, and we had 150 people this year. And it was highlighted, it was the first one in the events for that week. Any other questions? All right. Thank you very much.
[00:45:30.27] Oh, one more thing. I forgot about this. So, another part of cross-channel stuff is increasing voice and text integration. So we currently have an SMS custom short code. So a five digit code. It's for 4AADL, or 42235. That has been used very well during the summer. The catch is, 42235 always works on any device. 4AADL is not well-supported on Android, because it doesn't like combinations of letters and numbers. And it depends on what version of Android, and all that sort of stuff. 4AADL works fine on iPhone.
[00:46:04.98] However, that short code cost $16,000 a year. So it's a major expense that we did a lot for promotion, but now we're seeing that it's-- now that we have these users in place, we're going to transition with a new web site. Because there's a new feature from our SMS provider, that they can redirect texts to your voice number. So you can have the one phone number. So if they dial a voice call 327-4200 it goes into the Voice System. But if they text 327-4200, It's redirected to our texting infrastructure.
[00:46:33.87] So that will decrease the cost for this from $16,000 a year just for the code, to zero just for the code. We'll still pay the per text costs, which are a very small percentage of the portion. But 2AADL has kind of lived its life. Short codes are hardly a thing anymore. And now we can text everybody who uses 4AADL, and say, January 2nd, 4AADL AADL is changing to this number. So add it into your contacts, because now you can call us or text us. Any questions about that?
[00:46:59.31] COLLEEN SHERMAN: That's awesome.
[00:47:00.81] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: That number that it's changing to again is what?
[00:47:04.05] ELI NEIBURGER: Our regular number 327-4200.
[00:47:06.39] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: OK.
[00:47:08.41] ELI NEIBURGER: And then, the other things that will be coming with the new website, we'll have a new opportunity to promote things. In the alerts and reminders and the notices, we'll have some new infrastructure to put one message at the bottom of all of those. We use that very lightly now, but with a lot of new notices coming out of the web site, there'll be a lot of opportunity to highlight stuff at the bottom, or at the top, some boiler plate that goes into a lot of different things. And also, then we'll be able to know what they're interested in, and distribute that accordingly. I think that's it. Any other questions? Thank you very much.
[00:47:40.30] LINH SONG: Thank you.

[00:47:40.72] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Thanks Eli. OK, so now we move on to the bank of Ann Arbor proposed investment policy. This is what Jim was foregrounding a moment ago.
[00:47:52.19] JOSIE PARKER: So Cathy Savoie is here from the bank of Ann Arbor. If you don't mind. I'm sorry Jamie.
[00:47:56.75] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: No, thank you.
[00:47:59.26] JOSIE PARKER: And we've, sort of given your introduction, and what you're here for. So, I think if you just give us the background information. Appreciate it.
[00:48:09.52] CATHY SAVOIE: So the policy, as you said, you know only buy bonds up to one year in maturity. And you can buy-- the state law specifies the type of things you can buy like CDs, US treasury notes, bonds issued by municipalities. But they don't specify the maturity. So generally, the longer the bond, the higher the interest rate that you can earn. And one thing you can do, is you can still limit the maturity if you want to. If you think you're going to need the money, you could say three years, you can say five years, you can say 10 years, or you don't have to limit it at all. You can just make sure that the bank is informed anytime you need some money, so that we know we can plan for it and provide that liquidity.
[00:49:02.56] Internally, we have our own investment policy, where we won't buy bonds longer than a 10 year maturity unless our trust committee approves it, which in my nine years at the bank, we've never done that. So you don't have to specify. If you choose to just work with us, and give us parameters on liquidity needs.
[00:49:25.45] JOSIE PARKER: I'll give you an example of a time when the bank-- when I let the bank know that we needed to have some liquidity. It was when the library purchased this building. Final purchase for this building from Ann Arbor public schools. Because we needed a certain amount of money. And so I called and let the bank know that we were potentially going to do this, and hope to be able to finalize it and by when, so that they could make those decisions. So that would happen. All right.
[00:49:58.92] CATHY SAVOIE: So interest rates are very low right now. But they are increasing. So, if you bought a one year bond right now, you'd earn 1.3%. If you bought a 10 year bond-- these are just US treasury notes, you would earn 2.3%. So you can earn a little bit more.
[00:50:17.46] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: A very little bit more.
[00:50:21.61] CATHY SAVOIE: Do you need me to cover anything else?
[00:50:24.18] JAMIE VANDE BROEK: Questions?
[00:50:25.40] VICTORIA GREEN: Cathy, can we talk through a couple scenarios that I think I understand. So if we were to remove a restriction on one year maturity rates, we get either just direct you as Josie has done in the past, to say we need this much money by this date, and put no restrictions in our policy. And just talk about it with you. The other thing we could do would be, put a restriction, and we could say five years. Elected to four year terms, we could decide that that was all we were comfortable with. And if we unexpectedly-- if we had our money invested in five year bonds, but we unexpectedly realized in two years we're going to need some money for something, you could still sell those bonds. Which might mean we would lose money, and might mean we would not lose money, based on what the bond market was doing, correct?
[00:51:10.37] CATHY SAVOIE: Correct.
[00:51:11.20] And we usually ladder them out. By a ladder, just means you buy one year, two year, three year, four year. So you have something maturing every year. So even if we say the maximum maturity is 10 years, we're not going to go buy all 10 year bonds.
[00:51:25.63] VICTORIA GREEN: All right.
[00:51:28.41] JOSIE PARKER: And I will just add to this for your information. We also have investments with Old National. When I talk to them about this very same thing, 50% of what they have invested for us is out 10 years. Or about 10 years. So, not all of it, but half of it. So it's something that-- and it's laddered as well, on the same type of thing. And they're coming to talk to the finance committee next week. So, we're working to get everybody the policy.
[00:52:03.48] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: Are we equally invested in both banks?
[00:52:05.73] JOSIE PARKER: No. No. You have more money in the bank of Ann Arbor.
[00:52:09.22] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: As it should be.
[00:52:09.76] JOSIE PARKER: The library has more money in the Bank of Ann Arbor than we have in Old National. But the board has always considered it prudent to have money in more than a bank, one bank. So it does. You will be presented with a policy change to vote on at the next board meeting. So, just as-- we're considering it, so you're understanding what your options are. You may not specify any term at all, because most of the law does that for you. Or the bank does that for you. Or you can cap it. So we're just asking that it be more flexible and generous than it is at one year.
[00:52:52.99] JAMIE VANDE BROEK: Thank you very much for your time.
[00:52:55.08] CATHY SAVOIE: You're welcome. Thank you for inviting me.
[00:52:57.58] JIM LEIJA: Thanks Cathy.
[00:52:59.56] JOSIE PARKER: I think we see Eli again.
[00:53:02.31] JIM LEIJA: I'm sorry, before we move on. So Josie, just in terms of the process, are you-- You're having the policy language reviewed?
[00:53:13.34] JOSIE PARKER: I am. I'm having the policy language reviewed by our attorneys also, so that whatever we bring for you to approve, I know that the applicable state, the public acts, are accounted for properly. And they're called out in the language, so that there's no confusion about what public acts the library's complying with. I think, from what I understand, we're fine the way it is now. But, whenever we're changing a policy that's founded in public acts, I make sure that we're good. That's being done.
[00:53:50.51] JIM LEIJA: And I don't think the committee has a recommendation. So it's a matter of--
[00:53:56.86] COLLEEN SHERMAN: discussed it loosely, in very general terms.
[00:54:00.60] JIM LEIJA: That's right.
[00:54:01.13] COLLEEN SHERMAN: But then we processed it out of-- Let's make sure that we get recommendations from attorneys to make sure. I think we had talked about five years.
[00:54:11.04] VICTORIA GREEN: I mean, I think the thing that was clear from the committee is the we were all comfortable with changing it. No one wanted to say, let's stick with the policy of one year. That was the part we all agreed on. But I don't think we have a consensus in any way about, should we just allow it to be a matter of practice rather than policy, or five years, or 10 years. So, we'll have to talk about that more.
[00:54:30.98] But this also could be a chance for other people to weigh in if you're thinking. If you have strong feelings about it.
[00:54:37.47] JAMIE VANDE BROEK: It does seem like if we already have some 10 year investments, bank carefully. And like you said, we could sell them if we needed to. So there would always be action in front of any four year term person. I don't see why we wouldn't-- I don't see why we would go with five.
[00:55:01.30] JIM LEIJA: Great. Well, we can all vote on it next month.
[00:55:04.53] [LAUGHTER]
[00:55:05.14] LINH SONG: Let's look at the language.
[00:55:06.52] JAMIE VANDE BROEK: Sounds good.

[00:55:08.36] So we see Eli again, I believe, to talk about a different financial aspect. Fines.
[00:55:15.44] ELI NEIBURGER: So, with the new website coming as we talked about with a few of our previous presentations, there is an opportunity to make some changes to the policy, to reflect some of the things that are happening with the way the collection is being used.
[00:55:28.19] So currently, we have two levels of overdue charges. One, is that video and tools are a dollar per day, with a maximum of $10. And the other is everything else is $0.25 a day, with a maximum of $10. Now, there's a line in the policy that says the maximum fine for anything is the value of the item. Which makes a lot of sense. And currently, when you hit $10 of fine balance, the count balance, your access to your library account is cut off. You can not renew items, you can't check out anything else. You can place holds, but they can't be filled.
[00:56:04.05] And again, the policy, currently says that at $40 of balance, the account is referred to our collection agency. Now, it's important to understand that the collection agency does not have the ability to impact somebody"s credit. This is a collection agency, which is an external organization that sends a letter, that helps get the stuff back. That's the goal, is getting the stuff back.
[00:56:28.03] However, this is a library service organization that does this service for many different libraries. They are not able to make any credit reports. So that's a good thing, because there is not a circumstance by which a debt to AADL can impact someone's credit.
[00:56:45.34] So that said, some of the challenges that we have with this current set up that we might consider, is that the account cut off is too low. At $10, if you check out 10 DVDs, and they're all one day overdue, you're locked out. And because we have no limits on our checkouts, it's very easy for that to happen. Especially for 10 kids DVDs. If you're going on a car trip, you're one day out, you can't renew anything because your account has been locked out. So it's easy to get caught in a catch-22.
[00:57:16.16] The other thing is that there's confusion about the reporting threshold. The $10 cut off versus the $40 credit referral. It is a weird situation, it's difficult to describe, and it causes a lot of confusion for patrons. Another thing is that the $1 fine for DVDs is from an era when DVDs were valuable. DVDs are now very, very ubiquitous, and very inexpensive. Most of the things in the collection we paid $15 or $20 for them. Of course the multi-volume sets more, but a lot of the feature films were very inexpensive. And we're treating them as if they are rare and precious. So that's another challenge.
[00:57:53.08] Then with the tools collection, the tools fine of $1 per day is not very effective in getting the thing back. Especially with a $10 limit, because once you hit 10 days overdue, there is zero incentive to bring it back to the library until the bill arrives 45 days later. And then you fall out of your chair realizing that you checked out a $1,200 synthesizer from the library and now it's been charged to you.
[00:58:14.92] So, the one other thing that we're considering is, with the tools collection, we have constant demand for reserving an item for a particular date. And as I've said, we had no idea when we launched the tools collection, what a role it would play in people's weddings. But we have constant requests for the big outdoor toys for outdoor weddings. Usually it dries up in September. This year it has not dried up in September. So we are having a lot of demand for specific dates. We've been trying to accommodate them as best we can, but the system doesn't support it. There's not really a mechanism for it.
[00:58:49.40] So those are some of the things that we might want to address going forward. And what we'll do, is we'll discuss this a little bit here tonight for about 10 minutes. Then we'll bring a policy proposal for next month's meeting for you to consider and edit and such. So we'll have the discussion here.
[00:59:04.45] There's a few more things to consider as part of the revising this policy document. We currently have that, if you own a business, or the director of a nonprofit in the district, that you can get a card for the business at no charge. And it says in the policy that W2 employees of an organization that has an office in the district can get cards as well. Now, the procedure has been that the organization, the owner of the business, or the director of the organization, has to sign for that. Has to sign for the card. That as you can imagine is a little tricky to do. And the reality is, we send the bills to the person who signed up for the card anyway. So it's something to consider, as we're making these revisions, is do you want to change that and allow people who work within the district to apply directly for a library card? It would certainly result in many more library cards.
[00:59:57.88] Recently, we had an issue with the University of Michigan, where for years we had provided cards to department members when the department head would sign for them. Well someone in the finance department asked the finance department head if they could do this. And he said, are you crazy? And we basically had a communication with Josie that said, U of M department heads are not empowered to do this for their members. So we recently had to stop offering library cards to people who do not live in the district, but work for the university. So, that's something that a policy change could address. Any questions about that? OK.
[01:00:33.39] VICTORIA GREEN: So Eli, we're talking about the kind of cards, the w-2 to employees of local businesses? .
[01:00:39.90] ELI NEIBURGER: Yes.
[01:00:40.50] VICTORIA GREEN: They're not getting the out of district cards. They're getting cards for free.
[01:00:44.58] ELI NEIBURGER: They're getting cards for free. Because if the owner or director of the organization is willing to sign for them currently.
[01:00:51.34] VICTORIA GREEN: OK.
[01:00:53.98] ELI NEIBURGER: The idea is that that person is on the hook for their--
[01:00:57.89] VICTORIA GREEN: Right.
[01:00:58.26] ELI NEIBURGER: But logistically, that's not really an easy thing to enforce. Because that's not who's actually got their name on the card and the contact information.
[01:01:08.71] JOSIE PARKER: So what we're suggesting, is that if a business is in our community, they're paying taxes.
[01:01:12.96] JIM LEIJA: Theoretically.
[01:01:14.97] COLLEEN SHERMAN: U of M pay taxes?
[01:01:16.50] JIM LEIJA: Except U of M.
[01:01:18.64] JOSIE PARKER: I said business. At least I know what they are and what they aren't, technically. And that's the question. Because we wouldn't want to exclude U of M. Of And so that's the question. You'd have a lot more people using, you would have a lot of cards. It could impact, it could change your nonresident fee card sign up as well, so.
[01:01:46.72] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: How much do we get for nonresident fees sign ups?
[01:01:49.87] ELI NEIBURGER: The fee is $150, and it is payable quarterly $37.50.
[01:01:53.63] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: But how much of our revenue?
[01:01:55.16] ELI NEIBURGER: It's very few. I mean typically, we had, if I remember correctly, between 300 and 400 cards per year. So it's not a very large number of people.
[01:02:03.71] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: But we give cards to out of town people, or out of district people, who teach in the public schools?
[01:02:09.58] ELI NEIBURGER: Correct.
[01:02:10.99] JOSIE PARKER: All schools in our district. Not only public schools. Anyone.
[01:02:15.06] ELI NEIBURGER: That is also fairly rare.
[01:02:17.41] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Students in schools.
[01:02:19.69] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: Anyone who has an address within the district.
[01:02:22.80] JOSIE PARKER: On all students, even if they don't. If they're still in our district, they are eligible for a card.
[01:02:28.84] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: Yes.
[01:02:30.38] JAMIE VANDE BROEK: It's a tough one. I think it will be enormously popular, but I wonder if people would feel it was unfair, who pay taxes, if university people were able to get cards without--
[01:02:44.23] ELI NEIBURGER: They were for years. Until we had this communication.
[01:02:50.09] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: How will we announce this if we do it?
[01:02:52.60] ELI NEIBURGER: Well it'll just be part of what we talk about when people come up to the desk. Because most people assume that they can get a card. The notion that you have to live in the district is a fairly uncommon one for people approaching the desk. Many people are not aware, because for libraries that aren't district libraries, they generally don't have those restrictions. And issue a card to anyone.
[01:03:11.68] JOSIE PARKER: A public library's a public library.
[01:03:14.98] COLLEEN SHERMAN: that common, Eli? I mean, can I show up in Boston and get a library card there?
[01:03:19.87] ELI NEIBURGER: Generally, yes. For public libraries that are city or county funded. It's fairly rare for them to do it that way, it's more the property tax funded directly libraries that make that distinction.
[01:03:30.25] COLLEEN SHERMAN: there are two things we're talking about, two ideas. We have now probably six minutes talk about. The latter idea-- I'm interested to know what you think, and you think, about this? My instinct is just let everyone get a library card. Right? Does anyone have an, oh no, we can't let everyone get a library card. Does anyone have that gut reaction? So the downsides to saying yes, being more inclusive. Are there downsides?
[01:04:03.19] VICTORIA GREEN: Our audience would grow and our dollars wouldn't.
[01:04:06.43] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Yeah. But it's a public service. It's not a business. But yes, that's an obvious hard to hear truth. Demand and service provision without income.
[01:04:18.31] LINH SONG: Would it require additional staff for us to think about?
[01:04:21.61] ELI NEIBURGER: No, I don't think so. I mean, it would be a wild success if this netted like 2000 additional library cards. You know, that would be really-- But that's a small percentage increase of the user base. And it's hard to anticipate how intensely they would or wouldn't use it. There's all kinds of actions that can result in similar changes.
[01:04:40.74] VICTORIA GREEN: Of course we provide plenty of services which you don't have to have a library card for.
[01:04:45.76] JOSIE PARKER: Everything except loaning, or borrowing.
[01:04:48.76] VICTORIA GREEN: And MeLCat of course. I mean, we all get materials from libraries that aren't our home library. So in that sense.
[01:04:56.26] JOSIE PARKER: But we're paying for that service. The library pays a fee to be involved in that.
[01:04:59.82] VICTORIA GREEN: Do we have pay more if we have more cards?
[01:05:02.13] ELI NEIBURGER: No.
[01:05:03.27] JOSIE PARKER: No.
[01:05:03.73] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: How much do the cards cost?
[01:05:05.57] [LAUGHTER]
[01:05:06.85] ELI NEIBURGER: The cards themselves?
[01:05:08.35] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: I'm kidding.
[01:05:11.98] ELI NEIBURGER: One other thing to consider this, is there are two other places in the policy. One in specific relation to claims returned. It says in the policy that we can not accept a claims return. Meaning when someone says, no I returned that, take it off my account. It says in the policy we cannot accept that after someone has been billed for the item.
[01:05:34.04] JAMIE VANDE BROEK: That's totally happened.
[01:05:35.00] JOSIE PARKER: We do it all the time.
[01:05:38.17] ELI NEIBURGER: And then there's one about, that if you refund an item, then you only get your refund minus the maximum fine. We're not doing that one either. So there's a couple of things here that are more restrictive than actual practice. And it's one of those moments where you consider, is this procedure, or is this policy? It's something that you decide to set that language in a different place.
[01:05:56.78] COLLEEN SHERMAN: would, and rightly so, like our procedures and our policies to line up.
[01:06:02.65] ELI NEIBURGER: Well, we'd like the policy to leave operational things to procedure. To set the values in the policy, and not worry about the customer service judgments, especially. Because there's a lot of legitimate reasons why someone might not have known that their item was really billed until it was billed.
[01:06:22.83] VICTORIA GREEN: Is any of this a substantial financial impact? I mean, this is all just--
[01:06:27.10] ELI NEIBURGER: Not in terms of the claims returned, and in terms of the refunded bill. Of course a fine change can have an impact. The challenge is, it's hard to anticipate that, because it's hard to know what behavioral impact it will have. Also, we have a lot of data about fines paid. We don't have a lot of data about fines outstanding.
[01:06:45.52] JAMIE VANDE BROEK: I think Jim had a question.
[01:06:48.11] JIM LEIJA: If you were to ask us for a policy change, I think we actually have to look at the real impact. So I would just-- because if we also decided to make a change towards people who work in the district, particularly the university, we want to figure out how to communicate about that. I don't actually know how I would come down on this issue right now, to be perfectly honest. I need to see some of the information in front of me in a concrete way.
[01:07:22.30] COLLEEN SHERMAN: The library cards, not the fines?
[01:07:24.01] JIM LEIJA: The library cards.
[01:07:25.70] JOSIE PARKER: Yeah. We knew you would, and this was just the beginning.
[01:07:29.54] ELI NEIBURGER: This is too enable us to develop that material.
[01:07:31.97] JIM LEIJA: Because I'm also just thinking about what it means to go to a community and potentially ask for a bond in the near future, and be giving library cards to people who work at the University that do not participate in the tax structure of the city. Which is always an issue. And because you're theorizing that we would see a significant increase in that kind of a library card. So I just want to be very prudently considering that.
[01:08:07.11] ELI NEIBURGER: I think the university is a little bit of a red herring because we've been doing it for so long. It's actually more the people who would never have asked their boss or owner of the business to sign for their card who could now get one without having to ask.
[01:08:17.40] JIM LEIJA: There is really no way to know of course.
[01:08:18.90] ELI NEIBURGER: Right.
[01:08:20.58] JIM LEIJA: But I would also-- again I want to have my cake and eat it too. So if we're going to move in that direction, I want to be able to understand how we can communicate about that as an asset to the community and to our organization. And I just think as far as fines go, I actually sort of wonder about the radical position of just no fine structure.
[01:08:45.87] JOSIE PARKER: We knew someone would bring that in.
[01:08:47.45] JIM LEIJA: Yeah, and you knew it would be me probably.
[01:08:51.55] JOSIE PARKER: It's a good question.
[01:08:53.77] JIM LEIJA: Yeah.
[01:08:54.08] JOSIE PARKER: There are libraries doing it. They have different funding structure. You're talking about quarter million or more dollars out of your budget if you do that.
[01:09:04.15] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: Is that how much we would be losing?
[01:09:06.95] JOSIE PARKER: That's not lost items. Those are overdue fines. Understand we waive a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in fines as well. We're very generous about that. Fines are used effectively to get material back. That's what they do. And I would argue against eliminating fines for that very reason. That's what you have to get material back.
[01:09:31.80] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: We had such an efficient way of letting people know.
[01:09:34.73] JOSIE PARKER: And we're very good about that up front, ahead of time knowledge. We'll do better with that even with the new site, where people can manipulate their account and their hold list so they don't have things out. So I would argue against eliminating fines.
[01:09:47.46] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: I agree.
[01:09:48.26] JIM LEIJA: Is there a is there a leadership position to take here though that will allow us to say, design a kind of algorithm, that deals with demand in the system? So for example, if I have an item that nobody wants. Like I'm reading Virginia Woolf, Orlando in my bookshelf, and I haven't had a chance to read it yet. And I've had it for like you a year and a half, and nobody has asked for it.
[01:10:13.79] ELI NEIBURGER: It's technically challenging in some ways. I think the harder thing is how to communicate that so people know what their expectations are. You have an issue now with people wanting to know whether or not their item is renewable. It can take a guess at whether or not it's renewable based on the initial circumstances, but it's hard to say that definitively. I will say, I have not seen a library that has gone fine free that also offers unlimited renewals.
[01:10:36.24] JAMIE VANDE BROEK: Right. Yeah.
[01:10:36.94] JOSIE PARKER: Yeah.
[01:10:37.76] JAMIE VANDE BROEK: I think some people think of their fines, like me, as donations to the library.
[01:10:43.49] JOSIE PARKER: Yes.
[01:10:44.57] JAMIE VANDE BROEK: I think I like the position of being flexible, so that the staff have the ability to look at someone and see this person is not in a position to pay this fine. And they might walk away and not come back from the library. Versus someone like me, who is just irresponsible. But also things like--
[01:11:01.74] JIM LEIJA: That's the president of the library board. Confessing to this online. Streaming live.
[01:11:08.75] LINH SONG: I also have a DVD of Bill Nye the Science Guy for over a year, and I tried to pay it back. They said, oh no, you can keep it. So I'm very excited about the DVD policy.
[01:11:22.32] JIM LEIJA: I am too.
[01:11:23.40] COLLEEN SHERMAN: to second the DVD policy. It's onerous, and I think we can all echo that. So in terms of your process for creating new policy and coming back to us with recommendations, do you need anything from the board in terms of being collaborative on the development piece? What's the process?
[01:11:41.12] ELI NEIBURGER: I think that this conversation has given us what we need to bring a proposal next time that can then be. We'll put more time on the agenda, it can be hashed out. And if we're not able to approve in November, it can be approved in December for a January 2nd effective date.
[01:11:56.15] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Knowing what is coming at us. OK. Great, so we can have a follow up conversation next month if we need to, but we'll also know it's coming at us before the meeting, in terms of your recommendations. We can do a little background reading. OK. That's great.
[01:12:09.60] JIM LEIJA: We appreciate the long lead on this.
[01:12:11.70] Thank you sir.
[01:12:12.74] ELI NEIBURGER: Thank you very much.
[01:12:13.64] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: Thank you.

[01:12:15.93] JAMIE VANDE BROEK: OK. Wow, we're going to take you all right to the end here. OK, so now we move on to EPIC-MRA. You've been all very patient, especially those of you waiting to speak. Thank you.
[01:12:28.55] JOSIE PARKER: And I just introduced John Cavanaugh to those of you who have not met him before, from EPIC-MRA. And thank you John very much, for your time.
[01:12:40.39] JOHN CAVANAUGH: My pleasure. The director asked if I wouldn't do a reprise, at least a shorter one, of the 2016 presentation. Together with some comparative things that I added at the end, we are going to be conducting a survey on behalf of the district's library in early next year. And I hope to be working with you beginning, fairly soon, on crafting some questions. Much of that will be driven by architect's reports and so forth. But nevertheless, we can start to plan things out. So we can hit the ground running in 2018.
[01:13:34.82] We have conducted surveys on behalf of the library since 2012. And 2014, 2016. We will look forward to the 2018 survey as well. The last two most recent ones have focused primarily on customer satisfaction, and trying to fair it out. To give some guidance to the board and to the staff as to areas to work and concentrate on, what people might have problems with, what can we do better, what are we doing well, et cetera.
[01:14:15.14] This 2016 survey was designed to track some changes from prior interviews, and it used a live operator telephone methodology. We contacted 500 residents of the Ann Arbor school district, which is the jurisdiction of the district. And incorporated in this survey, 30% cell phone contact. We conducted that in the mid to late February.
[01:14:48.66] The overall margin of error for that, if you want your eyes to glaze over with statistical numbing statistics, is 4.4%. I stuck in the subset margins of error, because in our analysis, we will go through a fairly comprehensive demographic report. The questionnaire itself contains a battery of demographic questions, against which you can then see, all right are people in Pittsfield thinking differently than the rest. And so those subset margins of error are-- obviously I didn't get 500 interviews from Pittsfield. Doesn't make up the whole district. Same with any other demographic; gender, income education level, et cetera.
[01:15:40.33] The major findings, we have included this since 2012. We always ask, In return for what you get in local services, are you taxes too high, too low or are they about right?
[01:15:54.08] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Library taxes or taxes?
[01:15:55.61] JOHN CAVANAUGH: The initial question was local taxes. Local services. And when asked which local service provided the greatest value for them, only public education beat you, as providing the greatest value.
[01:16:14.69] There was an increase from the 2014 measurement in the number of respondents who were able to identify how you are funded. There was concern that there was a lack of understanding of that, and some effort was made, as I understand it, in newsletters. And that showed up in the survey. Not only in this, but in other questions.
[01:16:38.83] That final bullet point is to your question. Was that library taxes? And I have a graphic that does a better job of explaining that for you. You have a fairly high percentage of residents who say they have visited a facility in the past year. We just came out of Romeo District Library in northern McComb County, and that was in the high 50s. As opposed to the 84% you have here.
[01:17:09.51] Being a university town, that has something to do with it. Nevertheless, it's a fairly high percentage. And they do so with a great deal of frequency. At least a few times a month. And a quarter of those said they visited in the past year every day or more than once a week. This facility remains the most visited, however, there is a fairly decent distribution across your several facilities within the district. More or less correlating with population concentrations, which only serves to make sense.
[01:17:47.50] Notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of people believe that the internet has not made libraries obsolete. Among those who do not visit, I have the internet at home, I read everything online, no need, no desire. Which in my opinion, are related answers. Or I don't have the time. Well if you thought you had to go to the library, you'd make the time, obviously.
[01:18:14.62] And it's among this subset that we will often give the demographic breakdown a little extra scrutiny. How do you receive information about the library? What's the best way to communicate with these people who are not regular visitors? And that partakes of a great deal of a report on a customer satisfaction survey of this type. They find it is easy to get what they're after, and most of them do it online for a later pick up.
[01:18:51.30] Thank you.
[01:18:53.49] There was some concern, or at least not a concern, a question-- do people feel comfortable asking staff for assistance? 88% said it was very likely that they would ask if they couldn't find it on their own.
[01:19:05.97] JOSIE PARKER: They must be female.
[01:19:08.28] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Possibly. And there was also a notion that, all right, can we encourage greater attendance or encourage non visitors to come? And Not really. By amending the physical spaces. For instance, adding a cafe was not a particularly hot item.
[01:19:36.49] JOSIE PARKER: It will be interesting to see what the answer to that is next time.
[01:19:39.81] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Indeed.
[01:19:40.62] [GROUP CHATTER]
[01:19:46.47] JOHN CAVANAUGH: So, getting back to those bullet points in graphic form. It's a distribution of the facilities that are visited. The yellow bars are again, the 16% who say they have not visited in the past year. And in graphic form, visitation. It's a high percentage of people who do it at least monthly. Your visitors or regular patrons.
[01:20:18.39] Perceptional local tax burden. This is an interesting one. There was a time when a total answer of-- the question asked, in return for what you received in local services, government services, do you think your taxes are too high, too low, or about right? If the respondent says too high, we follow up, would that be much, or just somewhat? The dual- colored bar on the far left gives you the total percentage. Too high at 26%. 8% of whom said very much too high.
[01:20:56.31] In 2014 however, that total was 29%. Nearly half of it was much too high. In 2012, that total percentage was 33% too high. 16% again, nearly half of it, being the more intense much too high. There's no coincidence that we're coming off the recession of 2008, and in just the tail end of it in 2012. And people are finally getting back on their feet a little bit in 2014.
[01:21:27.46] We see this in school district surveys all across the state. This is a common question, and it gives a little bit of an atmospheric read of what's the sensitivity to a request for more tax revenue. There was a time, pre-recession era, when 26% would have been a little iffy. Since the recession, 26% is good, that is on the lower end of what you might expect as a reasonable amount. You get into the mid to high 30s, you've a pretty tough row to hoe. If you're asking for a tax increase.
[01:22:09.16] In contrast, what's your perception of the library tax burden in particular? A negligible 11%, and more to the point, too low. I'm getting more from them than I'm paying for is the response there. You'll usually end up in school districts and in other taxing jurisdictions, somewhere around 2%, 3%, or 4% at best. It is somewhat remarkable that 12% realize that they are getting a lot for their money.
[01:22:46.45] But again, as it was in the earlier slide, on overall local tax burden. That total tax burden was considered too high in 2014. And it went down considerably in 2016. So your comparison versus overall, you are in good shape in terms of that atmospheric. People don't believe they're being gouged. So that's one to look at.
[01:23:19.16] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Yes it's about time, and about income, and recession. But the Westgate impact on that number, perception of too low, it will be interesting to see what that changes.
[01:23:35.68] JOHN CAVANAUGH: This is the question concerning ease of finding what you are after. No one said it was very difficult. The vast majority were either a one or two on a one to five scale. This is the method by which they obtain their desired items.
[01:24:02.81] And would these influence you very much, somewhat, only a little, or not at all, if the district at the meeting rooms? Play spaces etc. and that's in a rank order of total influence to visit more often. We put together a battery of, what was, four or five different programs and services. Did you know about it first, and among those who knew about, it did you use it? And if you used it, were you satisfied with it? And that's the rank ordering of awareness of the things we tested.
[01:24:55.09] Among those who are aware, that's the rank ordering of use. So, interestingly, not a lot of people were aware of Pulp.org. That But of those who were aware, they had the highest use level. And there's your comparison of awareness to use. As you can, see only the art and science equipment sorry was the one where we use was less than awareness, among those who were aware. I know about it, I just don't use it.
[01:25:39.40] Quite satisfied with, again, a scale of one to five. I mislabeled that, sorry. That's not a zero, it's going to be one to five. Where one is not satisfied at all, and five is very satisfied.
[01:26:00.52] Overall, judging the qualities and services of the Ann Arbor District Library, would you give that a positive rating of excellent or pretty good, or a negative rating of just fair or poor?
[01:26:15.19] VICTORIA GREEN: The green is pretty good or fair? And the yellow was excellent or poor?
[01:26:19.38] JOHN CAVANAUGH: There are gradations of positive and negative. For the positive, the gradations are excellent and pretty good. So, on the far left bar, you have a total of 94% giving you a positive rating. 59% of is excellent.
[01:26:35.68] JOSIE PARKER: We just have no poors.
[01:26:38.05] JOHN CAVANAUGH: 2% said negative. Nobody said poor. It was a more tepid negative response. In 2012, by contrast, you had an 82% rating.
[01:26:54.76] JOSIE PARKER: It's pretty good, we were pretty happy about it.
[01:26:59.35] JOHN CAVANAUGH: And that's the comparison of your satisfaction ratings between 2016 and 2012. I picked 2012, because that survey asked about, if the Ann Arbor District Library were to put a proposal on an upcoming ballot, and then went on to describe briefly what it might be, would you vote yes or no? And I'll get to those slides in a minute.
[01:27:26.07] But again, I get back to that sensitivity to taxes and the differential between 2012, 2014, and 2016. And how that had gone down, that my taxes are too high response, over the years. And that has been our experience in school districts, and transportation districts, any of the taxing jurisdictions we've done surveys for throughout the state. It is a common theme over time.
[01:28:01.71] And that's why I put the top issue history of one of the other atmospherics we will ask at the outset, is I'm going to read a list of issues for you. Could you tell me which one stands out for you as the most important? 2012 are the red bars. You can see library quality, expectedly doesn't show up very high.
[01:28:26.14] However, the economy and jobs in 2012, and if you recall in 2014, all the publicity and all the news was about the sad state of our roads and bridges. And there it shows up as 35%. Again, local taxes. These things don't measure much, but the economy and jobs dropped to 16% from 29% in 2012, as a top issue of concern in a prompted list.
[01:29:07.08] There you have a seven point drop in total. More importantly, the intensity of it, about local tax burden. We didn't happen to ask a library- specific tax question in 2012, so I don't have one to compare for you. And as I mentioned we, after going through some of the atmospheric questions, asked, would you vote yes or no on a $65 million bond issue for improvements?
[01:29:39.21] That means the board would ask for 0.69 mills for the owner of a $200,000 home with $100,000 taxable value. That translates into $69 annually as an increased tax. Knowing this, would you vote yes or no? If the person responds immediately either yes or no, than they are in the solid category. A solid yes at 45%. A solid no of 33%.
[01:30:13.16] If they say they're undecided, our interviewer is instructed to press a little bit, and say, well if the election were held today, would you lean yes, or would you lean no? Leaners-- particularly yes leaners, are notoriously unreliable yes voters. So the rule of thumb, typically in ballot questions, is you like to have 60%. That's only half the equation, you'd like to be over a majority in the solid column too.
[01:30:47.15] So among those people who said no to that question, we followed up with, well if the library presented a scaled back version asking for 0.51 mills, translating into $51 annually on a home for the taxable value of $100,000, would you vote yes or no? You moved up a little bit. Still not above a majority solid yes. That's what reducing the millage rate produced. A three point total, but only two point in solid. You're still not over a 50% majority solid yes.
[01:31:32.20] Well, among the no voters and the .51, well, how about a further scaled back? To 0.25, costing $25 a year. Would you vote yes or no? Only then, you get a fair majority of 51% solid yes.
[01:31:50.46] I take you back to the atmospherics. My local taxes are too high at 33%. My biggest concern is the economy and jobs. The roll out request, even at 0.25 mills, got this sort of response. That's it.
[01:32:10.99] JOSIE PARKER: We know what happened.
[01:32:15.11] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: That's a lot to think about and to digest. It's really helpful to hear it that way, rather than just reading the PFs I think.
[01:32:22.70] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Well, I left my crystal ball in Lansing. I don't know what 2018 is going to bring. I do know that there will be an open seat for governor. Plenty of open seats in the state Senate and state house, thanks to term limits. There will be very active campaigns. And who knows what's going to happen on the national level.
[01:32:51.11] We do what we can measuring the atmospherics, as far as sensitivity to local taxes. Sensitivity and an assessment of worth of the Ann Arbor District Library for tax dollars spent. But many other items influence things. The best we can do to provide for you, is to try to zero in on how do we get the solid yes. Everything else is out of my control. And yours. For that matter. As far as how the campaigns shape up.
[01:33:28.50] What I do know, is that typically, in even year November general elections, and even more so in presidential year November general elections, ballot questions tend to have a better go at it. They're much higher turnout elections. The anti forces are deluded. That isn't a universal truth, but it is a general rule of thumb. Unfortunately. The downside of those. Is that you get swallowed up in the massive amounts of campaign advertising for higher visibility races.
[01:34:13.82] So what that argues for, is a very robust analysis in demographics. Who are persuadable? Who moves from undecided to Yes? Or who moves from no to undecided? What messages incorporated into that survey moved them? Who are they? How old are they? Are they mostly men, or are they mostly women? What's their education level?
[01:34:44.41] So you have a notion of how to construct your messages of wide variety of items that can be picked apart and looked at to be of assistance and that. Typically in a school district survey where they are asking for a bond, we will lay out the components. This $65 million will pay for the following: new heating and air conditioning unit at the cost of $10 million, all the elementary schools will get new windows and doors. You lay out the components and see which ones are-- no matter how you're voting on the overall issue, do you support or oppose that particular element? It gives you an idea of what does and doesn't ring bells out there.
[01:35:32.71] We can also line up proponents of this, and line up by four or five advocacy arguments, irrespective of whether you voted yes or no. Is that a very or somewhat convincing argument, or not a convincing argument at all? And then line up the opponents arguments with the same question. You can then pin point components of your plan that may or may not have public reception. And arguments both for and against, that may or may not resonate with whom.
[01:36:09.35] Cross tabulate that against the demographic battery, and it gives a yes committee the guidance it needs in formulating a message, and to whom to send it.
[01:36:22.43] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Have we taken some of the survey results and compared them to how voters voted on the bond according to geographic by townships or by--
[01:36:32.23] JOSIE PARKER: You have that. You can look at that from the voter demographic. But the library, we did not do that after it failed. You can. We did know-- actually we did look. I'm going look at Eli. We actually did know where it failed. Wholesale failed. So we have that information. We could tell. We did it at a surface level, we didn't go down into it, in terms of male/ female voters or anything like that. We did. We looked at in terms of wards. Yes, yes we did.
[01:37:12.05] The other thing we knew at the time that was interesting, is that 10,000 people who voted, did not vote on the issue of the library bond at all. So not any vote at all. Maybe it was a turn over the ballot, because it was a whole lot. But it wasn't the only thing on the back. And so we had 10,000 people who didn't vote on it.
[01:37:35.39] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: That's interesting.
[01:37:36.20] JOSIE PARKER: And so that was interesting. So we did know that.
[01:37:42.86] JAN BARNEY NEWMAN: Were the wards in town pretty much equal? Do you remember?
[01:37:50.14] JOSIE PARKER: I don't remember. Honestly don't remember.
[01:37:55.24] JOHN CAVANAUGH: It's been a while. So we should actually look at the data.
[01:37:56.50] JOSIE PARKER: Yeah, I don't want to guess. I don't want to guess at that. No, but that's interesting. Because I would guess that the closer in would be more positive. It was more of a socioeconomic strata than it was a distance stratification. Yeah.
[01:38:13.87] JOHN CAVANAUGH: And if they stayed on the ballot.
[01:38:16.23] JOSIE PARKER: That's right.
[01:38:17.41] JOHN CAVANAUGH: The drop off is another concern you have with even your November elections. There was a lot of stuff on the ballot.
[01:38:26.38] JOSIE PARKER: That's right.
[01:38:28.36] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Yeah, we all had to run for office. I don't think we ever figured out how many people didn't vote for library board, but I'm sure there were lots of people.
[01:38:35.29] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Yeah, we certainly could. You could easily look at those numbers. Yeah.
[01:38:39.03] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Yeah.
[01:38:40.14] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Yeah, total voter turnout versus total vote for library board.
[01:38:44.02] JOSIE PARKER: It's a little harder because of the pick three kind of thing. You don't know. If one person voted for one, or it actually-- you can't figure it out. But you could come up with some numbers.
[01:38:57.85] COLLEEN SHERMAN: That was very helpful. I started to read through this data, and having the comparative between 2012 and 2016 helped give a really nice snapshot. I learned a lot. Thank you.
[01:39:09.61] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Good. Yeah, reading that report can be drier than a biscuit sometimes.
[01:39:14.07] COLLEEN SHERMAN: It's pretty interesting if you like data points.
[01:39:18.22] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Thank you all.
[01:39:18.86] JOSIE PARKER: Thank you very much for [INAUDIBLE].
[01:39:22.88] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: OK, home stretch, everyone.
[01:39:25.11] COLLEEN SHERMAN: 3.3.
[01:39:26.07] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Yeah.
[01:39:26.70] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Our favorite.

[01:39:27.34] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Yeah, we move on to 3.3. Yeah. So we're going to move on now to a report from O'Neal Construction.
[01:39:35.88] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Thank you.
[01:39:36.82] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Thank you very much.
[01:39:39.84] JOSIE PARKER: So Will Gordon, CEO, of O'Neal. Thank you very much, Will, for being here this evening. And I purposed it a little earlier that we're not talking dollar amounts tonight. You're just bringing everybody up to speed on where we are.
[01:39:50.85] WILL GORDON: I don't have any slides.
[01:39:51.94] JOSIE PARKER: OK, that's fine. That's fine.
[01:39:53.44] WILL GORDON: No, we don't have a lot of information yet. We are continuing to work with Len, the Director of Facilities, to go through this existing building and figure out how all of your parts and pieces are working. We've spent a lot of time. So what we're doing is developing four different scenarios, four different cost estimates for you to review.
[01:40:16.81] Number one is the existing building. We'll go through it with a fine tooth comb. We're looking at all your mechanical, electrical, plumbing systems, your building envelope. You have some masonry problems that have to be taken care of. And then the typical things, like when you're going to have to replace the roof and the flashings that go with it. So we're spending a lot of time on that. We'll put together the 20 year capital expenditures plan for this building, basically, to repair, replace, and maintain what you have.
[01:40:54.64] And then scenario two would be to take this existing building and renovate it from top to bottom, without any major structural changes. So I'm not sure it will meet all of the needs that you have for programming. But it would be a renovated building, the building that you have now, the existing building, new, on the interior.
[01:41:19.09] LIBRARY ANNOUNCER: Your attention, please.
[01:41:20.40] JOSIE PARKER: Sorry.
[01:41:20.61] LIBRARY ANNOUNCER: The library will close in 15 minutes. The internet stations will automatically shut off at 8:55 PM. Please make any final copies at this time and take all materials to be checked out to a self-check station, or to the Circulation Desk by 8:55 PM. Thank you.
[01:41:37.84] WILL GORDON: OK, I'll hurry up.
[01:41:38.77] JOSIE PARKER: We will not be locked in.
[01:41:40.39] WILL GORDON: OK. So scenario three would be the demolition of this building, taking it all the way down, and building a brand new library on this piece of property. And then the fourth, which-- the two most difficult things for us to put numbers together on are scenario one, which is taking this existing space, and trying to keep everything running, and showing you how to pay for that over 20 years. That's tough, but we're working on it.
[01:42:14.34] The second most difficult is scenario four, where we're trying to decide what part of these structures that you have now would you save, and how do you make it work with a new addition that may surround it, go next to it, on top of it, or there's several different options with the addition.
[01:42:40.31] So those are the four things we're working on. We are planning on wrapping up our numbers the end of this month. So we'd like to get something to the group before the next meeting, so you have something to look at. And then I'll be back with slides at the next meeting. All right?
[01:43:01.59] JOSIE PARKER: Thank you.
[01:43:02.59] WILL GORDON: Any questions?
[01:43:03.44] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Questions?
[01:43:04.45] COLLEEN SHERMAN: I have a question. So in terms of the scope that you've been given with replacing the building-- when you have a replacement building-- same square footage? Different square footage? Different configuration?
[01:43:18.81] WILL GORDON: I believe it will be slightly more square footage. But the nice part about what we're going to do is we're going to give you square foot numbers. We have historical data. We have current data. We're We just received estimates for another library that was out on the streets, what we call out on the streets, out for bid, here recently. So we have that data. And if we started with 150,000 square feet, we can massage that and make it smaller or larger from there.
[01:43:52.06] JOSIE PARKER: So I think what you're saying, too, is you're kind of coming up with a number that you can give us an estimate on, but a number that would fit on our existing lot. So you're not going to give us a million square foot library that wouldn't fit on our lot.
[01:44:01.97] WILL GORDON: Correct. Correct.
[01:44:04.51] COLLEEN SHERMAN: And would you prioritize the work, too, in terms of if the roof was to go first in the next 20 years, or I'm thinking, maybe, the septic tanks.
[01:44:13.11] WILL GORDON: Yeah, it's part of that, kind of, capital expenditures we are planning to show you. Hey, we think the first thing should be the boiler. And then in 2020, you ought to hit the roof. We're going to lay it out like that for you.
[01:44:29.61] COLLEEN SHERMAN: I'm especially keen on the septic tanks. That's my favorite.
[01:44:35.56] WILL GORDON: Yeah, you have a sewage ejection system here that needs some attention.
[01:44:41.26] JOSIE PARKER: But is some of that the city's responsibility?
[01:44:44.48] WILL GORDON: The city's responsibility?
[01:44:45.39] JOSIE PARKER: Is it all the library's responsibility, or is there is a situation, underneath where we are built, that is also a problem?
[01:44:53.93] WILL GORDON: I think-- and we're not done looking into this-- but I think that the biggest problem are the ejector pumps, and then your lead out to the city main. I think the city main is fine. So yeah, I believe it's the library's responsibility.
[01:45:09.66] COLLEEN SHERMAN: But the most recent sewage problem we had was related to the city's infrastructure, not our own, right?
[01:45:14.49] JOSIE PARKER: No, what happened was there was work going on right out on the street by contractors for the city. They hit the pipe that runs from us to them.
[01:45:28.74] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Our feeder pipe.
[01:45:29.55] JOSIE PARKER: Our pipe. Our pipe was clean. Anything just shattered it.
[01:45:37.32] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Right.
[01:45:37.53] JOSIE PARKER: So it's our pipe.
[01:45:38.98] COLLEEN SHERMAN: So if it had been newer infrastructure, it might still have been hit, but it wouldn't have been broken.
[01:45:42.96] JOSIE PARKER: Likely not.
[01:45:44.22] COLLEEN SHERMAN: All right. OK.
[01:45:45.81] JOSIE PARKER: And it would have been bigger, and a whole lot of other things. But yes, it's our pipe that was broken by the city.
[01:45:53.98] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Correct. And they fixed it. OK. But there are newer technologies around this, around septic tanks. I think our clay plates are how old?
[01:46:04.49] JOSIE PARKER: Yes, they're old. And I won't make you answer that. The other thing to understand is the way our sewage leaves this building is also part of the problem, about how it goes out into the street. And that we have places that create difficulty when you have a blockage, to make that work. So it backs up. And that's why the backups are in these bathrooms upstairs, in the front, because they go straight out.
[01:46:36.32] All the other restrooms in the building go down into the basement septic pumps. This bathroom does not. Am I right? I'm right. So there is a curve. It's a curve. It's not a T. There's a curve. And that is where large items that are placed in toilets, that shouldn't be in toilets, can get hung up in that space. And if you had multiple large items that shouldn't be put in the toilet, and then over time, you have a backup. That's backups due to a design problem.
[01:47:09.74] COLLEEN SHERMAN: And increased usage makes that worse.
[01:47:11.59] JOSIE PARKER: Right. And the other part of this is these are bathrooms that were put in these buildings in 1958, 1977, and then not many more in 1990. And we have over a half a million visits a year in this building. That's a tremendous amount of visitation in a space with so few toilets.
[01:47:34.02] COLLEEN SHERMAN: So I think you're probably gathering is it's safe to assume that we have relatively low tolerance for risk in the sewage department.
[01:47:40.75] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Yes. Everything all comes down to bathrooms. Everyone knows that.
[01:47:44.73] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Is this the fourth meeting in a row that we've talked about sewage?
[01:47:48.44] COLLEEN SHERMAN: I think Lynn brought it up--
[01:47:50.20] JOHN CAVANAUGH: I think she did. I think she's playing to her audience.
[01:47:52.44] COLLEEN SHERMAN: --to make sure that we hit it out of the park on [INAUDIBLE].
[01:47:55.70] JOSIE PARKER: We went on a tour.
[01:47:57.26] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Yes. We took a selfie with the sewage pump.
[01:48:01.06] COLLEEN SHERMAN: After it was cleaned and cleared.
[01:48:03.30] WILL GORDON: OK.
[01:48:04.14] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Although I am very interested to see-- actually, I was wondering if we-- I know we have monitors on these things. It might be interesting if we could actually get a live feed, video feed.
[01:48:14.70] JOSIE PARKER: You mean, sort of like people watching baby birds get born in a nest, we're going to watch the sewage pump?
[01:48:20.36] COLLEEN SHERMAN: To get the total experience.
[01:48:23.36] JOSIE PARKER: The pump came on while they were standing there, and I was so hoping it worked. I wanted to make sure this thing worked. We're standing in that space.
[01:48:32.76] COLLEEN SHERMAN: So we're very excited. Thank you. Yes.
[01:48:35.00] JOHN CAVANAUGH: I have two questions, not related to sewage. In option four, when you're considering an addition, is that sort of an overlap with the option of renovation? Does that presume only an addition, or does it presume both an addition and a renovation?
[01:48:59.14] WILL GORDON: No. Renovation of the existing-- what's left of the existing--
[01:49:03.24] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Plus a wrap around structure, or something.
[01:49:05.45] WILL GORDON: Exactly.
[01:49:06.44] JOHN CAVANAUGH: And then when you are making the determination of demolition and new building, and you're speccing that out-- did we, Josie, make a recommendation of space, or are you just making a presumption based on what we have now?
[01:49:25.88] WILL GORDON: We're going to make a presumption based on what we think would be the right piece of structure to add to.
[01:49:31.03] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Got it.
[01:49:31.38] WILL GORDON: Now, these are just numbers. We're not designing anything. And like I said earlier, you can apply that number. If we take the renovation number, and you decide you want 85,000 square feet left in place and renovated, we'll just apply that number to that $85,000. Make sense?
[01:49:50.09] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Right.
[01:49:50.82] COLLEEN SHERMAN: So I just have one comment about the numbers. I think, in town, people get a little bit-- well, a lot of folks, rightfully, get worried about large numbers associated with public works. And then, for some of us, we have a little bit more contact, so we know, say, a local high school, the roof was, I think, $5 million in renovations, just to repair the roof. So we present the numbers. Is there any way that you can give us contacts? You were saying that you're aware of another library that's in a similar situation. Can you give us comparative numbers?
[01:50:24.54] WILL GORDON: I can tell you that a similar library, locally here, has just come in at about $300 per square foot. That's brand new, out of the ground, with demolition of the existing.
[01:50:43.82] COLLEEN SHERMAN: OK.
[01:50:44.52] JOSIE PARKER: And, I'm sorry, what's the square footage of this library today?
[01:50:46.92] COLLEEN SHERMAN: 110,000 square feet.
[01:50:50.14] WILL GORDON: Big number. Any other questions?
[01:50:55.57] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: I'm sure we'll have lots of questions for you next time.
[01:50:57.89] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Yes.
[01:50:58.42] WILL GORDON: I'm sure you will.
[01:51:01.03] JOSIE PARKER: Thank you, Will.
[01:51:01.73] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Thank you.
[01:51:02.07] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Thank you. Oh, my gosh, we're almost going to do it! We might even beat the next five minute warning. OK. So we have a resolution recognizing October 15 to 21. Would someone like to read it?
[01:51:15.63] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Sure.
[01:51:16.52] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: It is on page 30, 31.
[01:51:18.46] LIBRARY ANNOUNCER: Your attention, please. The library will close in five minutes. If you have materials to check out, please go to a self-check station, or to the Circulation Desk now. Thank you.
[01:51:30.01] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Jamie, you want me to read all the whereases? Oh, my goodness. Let's see where we are here.
[01:51:41.04] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: It's fine. What do We think ? Yeah, go for it.

[01:51:43.89] COLLEEN SHERMAN: OK. Whereas, the Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library, established by local citizens in 1953, recognizes the critical importance of the securely established public library, and has provided loyal and consistent support for the development of our highly respected District Library system.
[01:51:59.31] Whereas, the Friends has continuously raised funds and resources for the District Library, thereby providing support for programming, equipment, collections, special educational events and exhibits, and outreach to the community. Whereas, the work of the Friends highlights, on an ongoing basis, the fact that our library is a cornerstone of the community's access to education and enrichment, and aims to encourage everyone, from small children to senior citizens, to engage in the joy of lifelong learning through use of the library's resources.
[01:52:28.55] Whereas, the Friends understand the critical importance of public awareness of the library's needs and resources and endeavors to sustain community support for the District Library and its collections and services. Whereas, the Friends' gift of their time and commitment to the Ann Arbor District Library demonstrates the way that volunteerism leads to positive civic engagement and the betterment of our community.
[01:52:51.56] Now, wherefore, be it resolved that the Ann Arbor District Library Board of Trustees proclaims October 15th through 21st, 2017, as Friends of Libraries week in Ann Arbor, county of Washenaw, Michigan, and urges everyone to join the Friends at the Ann Arbor District Library and thank them for all they do to make our library and community so much better. Resolved further, that all resolutions and parts of resolutions that conflict with the provisions of this resolution are rescinded.
[01:53:18.08] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Thank you so much. Do I have a second?
[01:53:20.09] JOHN CAVANAUGH: I'll second that.
[01:53:21.93] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: I believe there is someone from the Friends here tonight.
[01:53:25.81] JOSIE PARKER: Melanie Baldwin, who's the Book Shop manager, who is here with Faddle the Owl.
[01:53:31.25] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Faddle the Owl.
[01:53:32.43] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Our wonderful mascot. We thank you very much.
[01:53:36.02] COLLEEN SHERMAN: We love you, Faddle.
[01:53:37.57] JOSIE PARKER: Well, we thank you, and Faddle, and all of the members of the Friends, I believe Josie's a member of the Friends.
[01:53:45.31] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Thank you. All in favor?
[01:53:47.37] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Aye.
[01:53:47.76] JOSIE PARKER: Aye.
[01:53:48.15] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Aye.
[01:53:48.94] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Opposed? Great.
[01:53:52.20] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Can I say this is much more poetic than our usual resolutions?
[01:53:55.20] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Yes, it was very nicely done.
[01:53:57.46] JOSIE PARKER: I was at the Friends meeting when our resolution was read from last year. And they really do appreciate it. And this one expresses our appreciation even more.
[01:54:08.21] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Last year's resolution [INAUDIBLE]. And then this one was delivered the exact same way. [INAUDIBLE]
[01:54:14.96] JOSIE PARKER: We'll get it to you the same way. Thank you.
[01:54:18.12] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Thank you.
[01:54:19.44] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: So there's one more resolution to do. You want to do it? Oh, man.
[01:54:24.28] COLLEEN SHERMAN: All right.
[01:54:24.67] JOSIE PARKER: Did you want to do it?
[01:54:25.67] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Yes, but I'll just talk after. Go for it.

[01:54:28.16] COLLEEN SHERMAN: OK. Or you can read it, and I can talk after. I'll read it. The board resolves that it would like to officially thank Ira Lax for his services in employ from March 22, 1999, to October 30, 2017, of the Ann Arbor District Library. That all resolutions and parts of resolutions that conflict with the provisions of this resolution are rescinded.
[01:54:56.71] JOHN CAVANAUGH: I'll be happy to second that.
[01:54:59.23] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: I want to hear why you wanted to read it.
[01:55:00.91] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Because I have known Ira Lax since I met him at Frog Island, when he was hosting a jazz band. That man could do anything. And I have interacted with him when I worked at the Ark. And he represented the library so incredibly well. As
[01:55:17.61] And I saw that on the outside, looking in, just collaborative partner, and so easy to work with, and always moving forward. How do we get kids more involved? How do we-- he's been part of a fantastic team. And he's represented the team really well.
[01:55:36.04] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: I worked with the Ira 10 years ago, when I worked for Terry and Outreach Neighborhood Services. And I think Ira is outreach. All the way down into his soul, he embodies what the library wants to do when they do outreach. Used to do library songsters. So he would get people to sing.
[01:55:54.74] He would take the library on the road, just like different senior organizations. And I think he embodies what we want to be for the community. He's given so much of himself to this organization. So we wish him the best.
[01:56:09.11] COLLEEN SHERMAN: One more thing. He's the only person I know whose name is a sentence.
[01:56:12.09] LIBRARY ANNOUNCER: Your attention, please. The library is now closed.
[01:56:13.28] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Oh, yeah.
[01:56:14.81] JOSIE PARKER: Say it again? Will you say it again?
[01:56:16.27] COLLEEN SHERMAN: He's the only person I know who's name is a sentence. I relax.
[01:56:20.39] JOSIE PARKER: I relax.
[01:56:21.06] COLLEEN SHERMAN: And it's the best sentence.
[01:56:24.70] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: OK, that's a nice way to end this meeting.
[01:56:26.03] JOSIE PARKER: Hey, we totally did it.

[01:56:29.31] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Oh, my gosh! Oh, there might be more citizens coming.
[01:56:33.72] JOSIE PARKER: We need to vote.
[01:56:34.42] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: OK. We're really close. All in favor?
[01:56:37.02] JOHN CAVANAUGH: Aye.
[01:56:37.38] JOSIE PARKER: Aye.
[01:56:37.73] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Aye.
[01:56:38.09] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: OK. Opposed? OK, Karen, do we have some more people signed up?
[01:56:54.83] ROMNEY: I appreciate the time, guys. I know everybody's trying to get out of here. So I'll be brief. My name is Romney. I'm with All Inclusive. We were the previous custodial company. We stopped working a couple of days ago.
[01:57:05.41] But after reviewing the video from the last meeting-- even though I wasn't here, we felt compelled that we wanted to come and talk a little bit, just to clear the air. We felt that we were misrepresented a little bit with what was said that ultimately led to us leaving. But, again, we just wanted to clear the air. So I know I only have a few minutes.
[01:57:22.07] First, I wanted to clear up that I have a co-owner. Andrew Parker, sitting behind me, is actually a co-owner. He is not a supervisor. So every and each time that Andrew did respond, he was, actually, talking for the company.
[01:57:34.96] He can make changes as well. So I'm not sure what was about it that had been perceived that he was a supervisor, rather than an owner. But I know that was one of the big things that ended up leading to us. So that's one thing that I wanted to clear up. Excuse me.
[01:57:49.00] Another thing that they talked about at the meeting that we felt that was wrong, misinformed, was us not attending the board meeting. We had, actually, a meeting prior to the board meeting that Friday, where we discussed what was going on and some of the issues that we had. At that time, it was made pretty clear that the decision was made. So out of respect for the board and the process, we left it alone.
[01:58:13.04] We did reach out to see if there was a different way that we could address. And it was the same thing, was to meet with management. So we, again, decided to just leave it alone, having seen that that's what was going to go. That's the way it was going to be voted. And we chose to just leave it alone. But, again, having seen that we were misrepresented, we felt compelled to talk. So that's the second thing that we wanted to talk about.
[01:58:39.55] There was a comment from the board that spoke about getting what you pay for. And we strongly, strongly disagree with that. Previous vendors have changed the quality of paper towel, toilet paper, midway through the contract, in order to save money, intentionally sabotaging different-- trying to sabotage different vendors with fraudulent paperwork, things like that. Nothing that we have done. So we felt that we represented ourselves, and tried to give the best quality to the library that we could provide.
[01:59:06.22] From day one, we increased the quality of the products, plus the services that the library had. We're actually the only vendor in Ann Arbor that ordered the specific toilet paper and paper towel that we had stocked libraries with. Changed out dispensers immediately from day one of the contract. Again, trying to just further that quality that we could offer to, not only the members of the staff here, but also the community, obviously, of course.
[01:59:36.45] The other thing we wanted to point out, again, back to some of the issues that we have. We had three complaints in about a month and a half span. We addressed them. We actually got rid of the night crew that was at one of the branches. We replaced them, and then we provided additional training. So rather than replacing some of the day staff, we provide additional training.
[01:59:57.01] So we worked with them, aside from Andrew, worked with them side by side, two days in a row, two full days on shift. And then, again, the same thing happened into the following week with the other day crew. So rather than just terminating the daytime worker, we tried to give them more training, instead of just kind of terminating. But we did make the necessary changes with the night crew, terminating them.
[02:00:17.83] So we felt like we did what we were supposed to do. And there wasn't enough time given. There wasn't enough time given to let the changes affect. And then, of course, we chose not to attend the last board meeting, just to respect everybody's decision making. So that's what we felt.
[02:00:37.13] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Thank you for sharing that with us.
[02:00:38.85] ROMNEY: Thank you.
[02:00:39.41] COLLEEN SHERMAN: We appreciate, especially, you're staying all the way to the end of the meeting.
[02:00:42.44] ROMNEY: Of course.
[02:00:43.79] COLLEEN SHERMAN: I think I saw one more comment.
[02:00:45.11] JOSIE PARKER: Yeah. Letaw. Letaw.
[02:00:56.57] JESSICA LETAW: Hi, I'm Jessica Letaw. I run the building matters workshop conversation series through the Ann Arbor District Library. So thank you very much. And, in general, if you ask around, I am the lady who super geeks out about buildings.
[02:01:07.78] I run the Ann Arbor YIMBY-- that's the "Yes In My Backyard" page on Facebook. And so I'd like to ask if it would be appropriate and acceptable for me to share the EPIC-MRA findings. I'm particularly interested in how acceptable people find the tax burden. That is really not the dominant narrative. And I'd love to put data out there-- because I'm also a data nerd-- to be able to start to counter that. So would that be all right?
[02:01:33.11] JOSIE PARKER: Yes, and I think most of the EPIC-MRA findings are already available publicly. But if it's hard for you to access them the way they're are currently available, we'll get it to you.
[02:01:44.93] JESSICA LETAW: OK. Thank you very much.
[02:01:45.86] JOHN CAVANAUGH: These are your resources.
[02:01:47.36] JESSICA LETAW: Very good.
[02:01:47.81] JOHN CAVANAUGH: You paid for them. And you should use them wisely. And we would love for people to know more about the information in this study.
[02:01:54.72] JESSICA LETAW: Very good. So I'll make sure to link it back. This is my first time attending an AADL board meeting. And I have to say, this was really interesting.
[02:02:01.10] JOSIE PARKER: Thanks for coming.
[02:02:01.96] JOHN CAVANAUGH: We're glad you came. Thank you.
[02:02:02.86] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Thanks for coming.
[02:02:03.11] JOSIE PARKER: Please encourage other folks to do that as well.
[02:02:05.71] COLLEEN SHERMAN: Yes. Thank you.

[02:02:07.04] JOSIE PARKER: And to watch online. Great. OK, we might really be done now.
[02:02:11.66] JAMIE VANDER BROEK: Yes? OK. Great. All right. We are adjourned. See you in a month.

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October 16, 2017 at Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

Length: 02:02:15

Copyright: Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)

Rights Held by: Ann Arbor District Library

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AADL Board Meeting