Wide Awake Club Library Board
February 9, 2021
Members present: Rod Bennett, Judy Robertson, Shawn Hotchkiss, Rebecca Rowley, Pat Ricketts, Karen Williams, Brad Wilber
Others present: Roxanne Baker, Marriah Propert
Judy moved to accept the January minutes; Pat seconded. Motion carried.
Karen moved to accept the financial documents. Judy seconded. Motion carried.
We still have grant funding from the Tri-County Arts Council that must be used by June. Since it is problematic to encourage gatherings, we are strongly considering returning the money, although we are going to defer the decision a little longer. One idea for using the money productively is to commission a local artisan to expand our outdoor seating or to contribute a mosaic or a piece of statuary.
Our Verizon Wi-Fi hotspots are prepaid for the whole year, and so far Roxanne has been impressed by their customer service. As long as the first “wave” of hotspots works well, we will be getting additional ones with our Libraries Transforming Communities money.
Our Pilcrow grant books also included 20 extra STEM-themed kids’ books from a Colorado donor.
Data from our 2020 annual report shows that our circulation stats are only down 29%, comparable with the circ stats in the old building. It’s stunning evidence of community support, given how much we were closed in 2020.
Kurtis Perry will continue his work on setting up the conferencing equipment bought with LTC funds.
Rebecca plans to meet with our rural community development specialist before the next meeting.
Roxanne is putting available funds toward a new staff chair for the circulation desk and toward an additional book truck.
We discussed lingering questions about the STLS sick leave policy. Unused sick leave should carry over, but the library does not owe an employee money if she leaves her position with sick leave accrued, and the board can limit the amount carried over from year to year. Our payroll company can track sick time for us, no matter whether we front-load hours or use the accrual method. Marriah recommends that for the remainder of this year we front-load 5-19 hours of sick time and accrue as we go, so as not to short-change anyone as we base figures on 2020 hours of service/programming. For 2021 we could transition to a purer accrual method.
Respectfully submitted,
Brad Wilber