Library Board Meeting ~ August 26 2013

Oshkosh Public Library Board of Trustees
Agenda – September 26, 2013
Library Lower Level Meeting Room, 106 Washington Avenue

Call to Order 4:00 p.m.

Public Comment

Consent Agenda (Action item)
(All items listed under the consent agenda will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a request is made prior to the time the Board votes. Items removed from the consent agenda will be considered under New Business)

   1. Minutes of the regular meeting of August 29, 2013
   2. Regular funds vouchers payable totaling $ 328,764.54
   3. Capital improvements funds vouchers payable totaling $ 1,545.00
   4. Special funds vouchers payable totaling $ 3,585.12
   5. Annual Resource Library Agreement between Oshkosh Public Library and Winnefox Library System (Action required) (Exhibit A.)
   6. Annual Contractual Services Agreement between Oshkosh Public Library and Winnefox Library System (Action required) (Exhibit B.)

New Business
   7. Market adjustment – The Director proposes that a one percent market adjustment be applied to the library pay plan, retrospective to the first full pay period of 2013, in order to bring it into line with the City of Oshkosh pay plan for non-represented employees. This would involve increasing the 100% Control Point for each pay grade by one percent and then re-calculating all other points in the pay grade based upon the new control point. The starting wage and current hourly wages for library pages will be increased by one percent, retrospective to the first full pay period of 2013. New labor rates will become active in the first full pay period after board approval. A lump sum payment will be made for unpaid 2013 earnings back to the first full pay period of 2013. Only employees employed by the library on the date of library board approval will be eligible to receive a retrospective payment of salary or wages. I estimate that this adjustment will require an additional expenditure of $25,000 from the library’s carryover funds. (Action required) (Exhibit C. – OPL 2013 pay plan after adjustment)
   8. Table of organization – The Director proposes changing the library table of organization to increase a 0.5 FTE (20 hours per week) Reference Librarian position in the Reference and Adult Services Department to 0.6 FTE (24 hours per week). We recently learned that this change will be necessary to maintain the position’s eligibility for city health insurance coverage. The city has required 1200 hours worked per year minimum for coverage for some time, but library administrators only learned of it recently. (Action required)
   9. LSTA Application – OPL submitted an application for a federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant, in the Digital Creation Technology category, by the September 13, 2013 deadline.  If the project is funded, we must be able to certify that the application has received library board approval. (Action required) (Exhibit D.) 
  10. Finance Committee / Trust Fund Management Advisory Committee – When it revised its by-laws at the July 25, 2013 regular meeting, the library board authorized creation of a standing Finance Committee, with one of its stated roles being service as an Investment Committee for the library’s trust funds.

The library board previously authorized a Trust Fund Management Advisory Committee to provide it with guidance on the organization and investment of it’s the library’s trust fund assets. That latter committee met last on June 13, 2011 (see minutes of that meeting contained in Exhibit E.) That committee consisted of the Library Director, two library trustees (including the President of the board), and two informed community members (the City of Oshkosh Finance Director and the Winnefox Library System’s Assistant Director).

The issue for the library board is whether to disband the Trust Fund Management Advisory Committee and carry on its work with a newly formed Finance Committee. A related issue is whether to evolve the Trust Fund Management Advisory Committee into the Finance Committee by adding one more trustee (since the by-laws require three trustees on this committee) and by working with the city (in the light of a vacancy in the position of Director of Finance) to add representation from its Finance Department. (Action required) (Exhibit E.)

  11. Establish Trust Funds for Library Excellence – When last it met in June, 2011, the Trust Fund Management Advisory Committee agreed upon a recommendation for re-structuring the library trust fund assets into five new funds, collectively named the “Trust Funds for Library Excellence.” Exhibit F. contains a proposed resolution for the board to define and create those new funds, to set in motion the transfer of existing trust and memorial fund assets to the new funds in 2014, and to determine an overall distribution of trust fund assets among them. (Action required) (Exhibit F.)


Information – July 2013 (Action not required)
  12. Revenues
  13. Expenditures
  14. Library highlights
  15. Monthly statistics
  16. Donations
  17. Personnel changes
  18. Children’s summer library program
  19. Younger Americans’ library habits and expectations (summary of findings from Pew Research Center)


Library Director’s Report (Action not required)
  20. 2014 Library budget update
  21. Library building update

Trustee Reports and Comments

Adjournment

Next meeting October 31, 2013, 4:00 p.m.