Minutes for the May 17 Trustees Meeting

The meeting convened at 7 p.m. at the library. Attending were Cindy Binzen, Rachel Kurland, Curt Albee, Carol Wilson, Melissa Strayton (librarian), Diane White (for the Friends) and Marty Frank.

Minutes from the April meeting were accepted.

Librarian’s Report:  Melissa said she has placed or is in the process of placing orders for adult and children’s books that should get spending on target for the year. Some new DVDs are also on the way, although there wasn’t much to choose from.

She has been chipping away at weeding the collection, including the mystery section where some of the older titles of the popular and prolific authors are being removed.The summer reading program is coming together, with the inaugural session being a story walk on June 24 at the pocket park. The second program is scheduled two weeks later and probably will be under the tent set up for the book sale. Melissa has reached out to Brooke Wilkinson to see if she might be interested in giving a performance for one of the programs.

Based on what she learned at a meeting of the LUV cooperative earlier in the day, most libraries are preparing to reopen soon, albeit in different ways. Several have already reopened fully, some are still, like us, just offering curbside service and some are open by appointment. At Melissa’s recommendation, the trustees decided to reopen the library by appointment starting June 2, with masking still required. We will maintain our current modified schedule but make adjustments if demand warrants them. 

Melissa reported that she has secured a grant for the summer reading program. Cindy noted that the readings that normally are hosted by theTownhouse Forum remain suspended and suggested that the library should arrange some author readings. Among the possibilities: Catherine Tudish, Corey Cook and Melanie Finn. 

Treasurer’s Report: Rachel distributed a profit and loss statement before the meeting. It accounts for the fact that a new laptop has been acquired and paid for. Most everything else is in line with our income and expenses from last year. The money that we had invested in a CD has been put in a money market account because it didn’t make sense to lock it up in a new CD when interest rates are so low. The two 990s have been filed and cost us two-thirds of the $700 that H&R charged us for three 990s — our two and one from Barrett Hall.

Friends’ Report: Diane reported that the Friends have decided to hold a book sale on July 3. Although Diane and Denise Cote will be running the sale, Rachel will continue to take care of sorting the books and arranging to dispose of unsold books. There are still a fair number of unsold items from collection of medieval French books that were donated to us. Rachel believes that most of those have ISBN numbers and can be shipped to Better World Books. The boxes of unsold books from the last sale will need to be checked and reboxed to make sure they include nothing that Better World Books prohibits. Diane will put out a call for volunteers to handle that on the same day as our annual library cleaning. 

Later at the meeting, after it was noted that we won’t have the full complement of tents available and there will be a shortened amount of time to organize the sale, the trustees suggested that the Friends feel free to limit the number of boxes they’ll accept as donations and stop collecting them when they feel the numbers might be getting unmanageable.

Other Business: Curt talked with Shawn Harlow about the water intrusion in the basement. Shawn has agreed to work on it, although he’s pretty swamped right now. The finishing touches on the painting project remain to be done. The lawn is being mowed every week.

Cindy has consulted several people about landscaping around the building, and she has received a corresponding number of opinions about what might work best. Someone from EC Brown’s has recommended hydrangeas that should be cut down annually, but advised that we should place drainage stones around the perimeter of the building regardless of what we plant. Brown’s will give us an estimate of what that work would cost. The upstairs cushions have all been redone. Rocky Fuller, our hardworking non-trustee, has completed the first of what he believes will be three phases of slate roof repair and has also put in a new shelf for the audio collection. The personnel committee will meet with Melissa sometime in June.

The next meeting will be June 14 at the library.

Submitted by Marty Frank