The Library Board met 07/19/2022. It was an unexpectedly short meeting. Apparently, due to the members’ schedules, it was difficult for them to get enough members at the meeting for them to have a quorum, and it sounded like some members needed to leave fairly quickly. As a result, they ended up only briefly going over and approving the action items and did not go over any of the information items. So, there was no update on the building project or review of the 2021 key performance indicators.
The reappointments to the board of Rebecca Kellner and Brian Looker were noted. This would be Rebecca’s third term and Brian’s fourth. Also recognized was the appointment to the board of Nan Bunnow who was replacing Greg Hartjes as the AASD representative on the board.
The board briefly reviewed the various action items.
They had bill registers from both May and June because they did not meet in June. One board member commented that he saw the payment for Kanopy (https://www.kanopy.com/en/apl/) on there and mentioned that he really liked that resource which let him stream Criterion movies. Board chairwoman Nancy Scheuerman agreed and encouraged everyone to spread the word about it because it was a really nice resource that a lot of people didn’t know about yet.
Chairperson Scheuerman also commented that she saw there were now some new bill payments related to the temporary library location.
Library Director Colleen Rortvadt mentioned that a lot of the library expenses went through the Facilities Department but some such as signage, the temporary building lease, and utilities came out of the library’s budget. She said they still needed to maintain the utilities at the old library until it was taken over by the construction company. More details about how everything would be structured would come out during the budget adoption process.
Chairperson Scheuerman noted that the June bill register included some payments that hadn’t been done before such as one to Pfefferle for trash removal.
A board member commented that he was excited to see payment for a Young Adult Library Services Association symposium. He assumed they had sent the young adult librarian to that to get some good education on cool programming and stuff to do with the kids.
Director Rortvadt said that “staff development is more important than ever” seemed to be a phrase that people were saying a lot right now, especially as they were looking at how they were going to maximize and entirely new space. Investing in staff was going to be key to make sure they were as prepared as possible when they opened the renovated library’s doors.
The moved on to discussing the new city policy’s they were being asked to approve.
Chairperson Scheuerman commented that it looked like the biggest change to the Code of Conduct policy was regarding city employees bidding on city property.
Director Rortvadt said the old version had reflected the policy of the previous vendor the city had used whereas the new policy was in line with their current vendor.
The Critical Incident Stress Debriefing policy was essentially being deleted and instead replaced with department specific procedures. A board member asked if the city actually needed to have a policy stating that there would be procedures.
A staff member said it depended on the departments. Some departments formalized their procedures and others just had past practices that they followed without being formalized. [At least, that’s what I understood him to be saying. He was not talking into a microphone.]
Director Rortvadt said that departments had such varying types of critical incidents that required debriefing that it was unrealistic for them to have the same policy across all departments. Critical incidents experienced by police were different than what would be experienced by someone in the Parks and Rec Department. Also, some departments, such as the police, already had their own policy that was probably dictated by state statute.
In answer to a question that was asked off microphone, Director Rortvadt said the library did not have a procedure. Their safety manager had a process that he followed, and she thought it might be a good idea to ask him to develop that process into a documented procedure.
A board member thought it was important to have a procedure even if it wasn’t a rigid process.
Finally, they briefly touched on the appointment of board member John Keller as the chair of the Library Board Finance Committee. Greg Hartjes had been serving as the chair of that committee, but since he was no longer serving on the Library Board, they needed a new Finance Committee chair. Although Nan Bunnow was Greg’s replacement, they did not feel it would be fair to make her take over his chairing duties and thought it would be better to have an existing member take on that role.
There were no further questions or discussion about any of the agenda items and the board voted unanimously to approve all of the action items.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=920199&GUID=297A732F-6815-4597-BE06-2170C96833EE
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