JTEL Board of Directors Meeting, Wednesday, July 13, 2011 JTEL Business Office, the Annex, studio #8, 6 pm Agenda: Roll Call Minutes revision from April 11 combined meeting Minutes from the June 12 meeting Notes from July 5 design meeting Reports
Opportunity for Public Comments Old Business
Opportunity for Public Comments New Business
Opportunity for Public Comments Events:
Next meeting: Tuesday, August 9, 2011, 6 pm JTEL Business BOARD MEETING MINUTES Call to order 6:10 Attending: Deirdre Helfferich, Monique Musick, Nancy Burnham, Eric Glos, Melinda Harris, Greta Burkart Guests: Jan Ohmstede, Carey Brink, Hans Mölders Eric: Accept minutes as amended Nancy: second, All approved Will discuss meeting with USKH REPORTS Capital campaign was scheduled to meet at this time—will have to reschedule Construction committee—no special meeting Friends of the JTEL—no Roy Grants and Cooperation
OFFICERS' REPORTS President’s Report It has been an extremely busy month for yours truly. As most of you know, I have decided not to run for re-election to the board, for two reasons: 1) it isn’t healthy for an organization to be so strongly identified with or to rely heavily on the same one or two individuals for such a long time, and being a founder, it has been a good twelve years for me. 2) I want my life and sanity back. I love the library, but it’s taking too much out of me, so I wish to sharply limit and delineate any volunteering I do for it. Over the last two years, I have promised to do several things, so I am endeavoring to finish them up before October so I will be free to work on my parts of the annual report (without going completely bonkers from exhaustion as happened last year). The things I plan to complete before the end of September are: a short, personal vision statement on the library; the design for this year’s Readers on the Run (I will do this by the end of July so there’s plenty of time for marketing the race); an About Ida Lane biography page for the website; finishing up the gazebo trim (with Hans Mölders); a draft privacy policy; and a review and/or edit of the proposed operating budget, business plan, and marketing plan, should they be ready before the annual meeting. I’ve already completed a few of the other things I wanted to get done (see below). I have been doing several ongoing tasks for the library, and will phase most of them out over the next four months. Others will need to pick them up, preferably board members AND additional volunteers. Ended in May:
Ended in June:
Ending July:
Ending August:
Ending September:
Ending October:
Tasks I will continue:
I have begun working on recruiting new board members and volunteers. I’ve contacted Jan Ohmstede, Sue Hills, Bob Grove, and Megan Boldenow as possible board member candidates. I believe it is URGENT that we get our board duties, job descriptions, and code of conduct in place as soon as possible so that candidates have guidelines and understand what is expected of them, and so that the membership knows what its board should be doing and how it should be doing it. It’s a bit difficult to recruit people for something that you don’t have a job description for. Also, I feel that we ought to have general job descriptions/duties for our three regular board seats, possibly on the order of a general recruitment person (board & volunteer), a program person, and an outreach/publicity/member recruitment person. This need not be a bylaws- or membership-driven job description. The board members, however, should not be expected to do as much of the work of the organization as has been the case. We are going to thoroughly burn out our core in short order if we keep this up. Board members should be point people who work with pools of volunteers and chair committees composed of both board members and others, as is the case in our Capital Campaign and Construction committees. I don’t think non-board members should chair our committees. I recommend that we form additional committees and put out calls for volunteers for them: a publicity/outreach/marketing committee; a program committee; an events committee; a board and/or membership development committee; a collections development/curation committee; a grants subcommittee of the Capital Campaign Committee; and maybe a maintenance/operations committee (is anybody maintaining the actual library?). Also, committees should be formed well in advance of our specific fundraisers, and timelines developed for each, as Nancy did for the Lallapalooza. Having specific committees that volunteers can join might help get people involved, since they would have an area of interest on which they could focus, with specific tasks/events to accomplish. These committees could be announced at the Annual Meeting or beforehand. We should have a regular presence at the Ester Community Market to attract local volunteers (at least on Thursdays; there’s a fair amount of local traffic through there). This creates a direct link with the community that keeps the library in the public eye and helps us raise funds and garner members. Developing the Friends of the Ester Library is going to be important. Also, I suggest that we get a non-board member who is skilled in web work to volunteer to transition and maintain the website. (These might all be under the purview of an Outreach Committee.) Project/Work Updates Catalog: Calypso has completed entering their titles (425). JTEL has 1,401 titles catalogued, bringing the combined total to 1,826. To my knowledge, I am still the only one cataloging our books. Endowment: Establishment placed on hold as of June 12 board meeting, pending more reflection by board and review of contract language by treasurer and secretary. I made one more pitch via e-mail to the board for establishment before the annual meeting, offering to make up the difference if necessary between the $2,000 the JTEL would contribute to start the endowment and the $5,000 needed by the end of a year. Grants:
Letters of support:
Meetings attended:
Nonprofit application: The re-amended articles of incorporation were received and filed by the state on May 31, 2011. I called the state, which sent the Certificate of Amendment via e-mail, which was needed for the IRS. Our application had been placed in suspension because we had not sent this yet, but after talking with them, all should be okay now. The new information was faxed on Thursday, June 30, and the IRS should have had it July 1. Partnerships: I am persuing avenues for partnership development in connection with the seed library program proposal; hopefully this will give us an idea of what we might need in general to create formal partnerships with other organizations. I am also drawing on the Neighborhood to Nation conference workshops on partnering and community organizing that I attended in May. Policies & Plans:
Program development:
Publicity statistics: Facebook page has 290 fans Blog has had 3,380 visits as of July 11, no posts since Thorsten Chlupp lecture (May 2); calendar page updated. Unfinished business: Several items have been decided on by the board but have not yet been accomplished. These items have been on various meeting agendas but either the associated tasks were never completed or the item was tabled indefinitely. These should be taken care of, preferably before the new board is elected:
Website:
Vice President’s Report Been busy building- it’s summer Will step down come October, Will remain involved with construction committee Nothing to report- missed USKH meeting Treasurer’s Report $1497 deposited into savings No sales to report
$802.63 expenses
Secretary’s report Will get the requested minutes sent and approved via e-mail Reimbursement funds In theory we could spend all the money we have and get it back the next month. It is possible to get an advance as well- need to look into the process. Trick now is to spend things as possible- to our advantage Received a statement in April from USKH for the same amount as we had paid. We owe them close to $5,000 now. Melinda: Do we want to try the advance process just to see how it works? Taking longer could get really complicated. Need to review contract to see how complicated the process is. Let’s keep it simple when we can Melinda does think it is worth trying, others think easier is better OLD BUSINESS Construction design decision The meeting with USKH included Mike, Monique, Roy, Carey, Jan, Matt, Gary and Thorsten. USKH provided some rough figures to show the difference of basement vs. no basement and potential cost savings and payback (See graph provided by USKH).
These numbers are not fully accurate- guesses by Gary. Based on commercial not residential- we are closer to a residential plan. Thorsten thinks it could be much lower Three sources of cost- design, construction 16-18%, operations usually 84% Basement- Ground too cold- needs to be slab on grade for passive haus Eric- 25-30 years in AK construction. One roof, One foundation- at some point it may as well be a basement, crawl space. Basement slab is thermal mass, Concrete walls are thermal mass, Main floor is thermal mass, That is a lot of additional mass. Passive haus might work well on a house- but we are not a house. Remodeling costs a lot. Recommends full basement and aspire to future passive haus. Basically same amount of money Carey- how come they estimate the cost to nearly halve by removing the basement? Constructions cost keep expanding by meeting standards. Buying space is not cheap and we don’t have much room to expand on grade Melinda- we are trying to avoid sprinkler systems with our occupancy and square footage, how does storage affect this? Whatever we do we don’t want to exceed that boundary. Additions in the future could mean H2O system Monique-Discussed external storage on site rather than basement storage. Greatly in favor of smaller cheaper building, 100% behind passive haus. Want to bring in Thorsten as a consultant Eric- suggest aspiring to passive haus Greta: The cost we need to worry about is how to maintain the building. How to pay the bills. It is difficult to get money to build but even more difficult to get the money to operate. The efficiency of the two designs- with basement 35% efficient, Without basement- 85% efficient. Passive haus is required in public buildings in Frankfurt and other places Read letter from Mike Musick in support of passive haus/Thorsten- attached Hans: If we build passive haus- it will help a lot. The oil savings in the life of the building (150 yrs.) will be huge. If we can build to standard by eliminating the basement. Lots of styrofoam etc to get to R70. In 200 years whoever is around will look at the building as a money maker, not loss. The value will carry Melinda: If we accept this, what are the costs? Solar site study about $300, Computer modeling would cost more Eric:Call the question [group kept discussing despite attempt to call question] Single passive or two story basement? Clarification- Mike and Todd are in favor of single-story Nancy- can we vote on this without knowing what Thorsten will cost? Probably less than $5,000 Melinda will abstain unless there is enough information to vote Deirdre, Monique and Nancy vote in favor of single story passive Greta also feels we can’t vote until we have the cost information Thorsten is the local expert- we could go outside if we want. Our real question is do we want a passive house? Melinda-Familiar with his presentation and design. She and Greta visited his house, Heard his lecture, Not convinced with the evidence We’ve been wishy-washy all along. We have to have the plan to get the money Eric- I can be swayed (one-story vs. two-story) to get this moving along. Let’s make a decision and run with it Thorsten is not the designer- he is the consultant. He will measure the solar gain, efficiency of the building, and help us determine our thermal storage needs. It is not a “Thorsten-house two”. Not concerned as much about Thorsten’s cost as on getting the project rolling. USKH has been wonderful- dealing with our changes VOTE: Single-story passiv haus- APPROVED BY CONSENSUS Policies bumped to next meeting Computing- covered in Pres report Business plan- in progress Marketing plan- in progress Organization goals and objectives discussed changes ACTION: Monique move to adopt as amended [as presented, with one change: from “on our land in Ester” to “on the library’s land in Ester”] Eric- second, All approve Community survey update 91 online, 39 hard copy. Total 130 surveys Try and do final push- send it out Enter the hard copies into Survey Monkey to get the aggregate results, Keep hard copies and hand compile results. Use the simple form- use the questions that get the best results. Find out what really matters Will provide the aggregate responses- evaluate them, then self-administer a paper copy that really gets to the important things This is one reason why the market has been so successful- one on one speaking NEW BUSINESS RISE Alaska- meeting July 7, Melinda: Met in person with Judy Andrijanoff, Project manager. All her projects are public libraries- entities under city or borough. Made a cold call to Melinda a few months ago. Introduced self as a “project guru” interested in meeting. Said sure- we’re open to talking. Was in town for other meetings- gave us an hour for introduction. Melinda, Deirdre and Greta were there, at least for part, Nancy discussed with them post-meeting Spreadsheet of state library projects by year. All public projects- ie. Cordova, Juneau, Sutton, Kenai (expansion). Amounts requested- averaged to $2 million- from $350K to $4.7M. Qualifying criteria- a little mysterious- possibly “A-list”. Ready to pay and play- public libraries. We are not that Did some name dropping etc. Randomly picked name from board website- called Melinda PM- what role exactly? Offered to get started talking with folks. Need to compose our financial picture, history- how we have managed funds: Committed, expended, secured, pending. Being able to articulate that fiscal picture is going to be vital when talking to “money”. This will be an important part of our grant funding. This is also a key part of our business plan. Need a complete fiscal picture- elevator speech ready! Seemed to be fishing about our ability to be a paying customer. Did not let her do any “speaking for us” without understanding what she was in it for. Unless we hire her we don’t want her doing things. RISE Alaska also is really expensive. Appreciate the reminder that we are not a pubic library. Beyond Books really fits- we are not trying to become a public library. Her time is appreciated- but her services don’t fit Deirdre-One more thing: great libraries are not warehouses for books- they are active community and civic centers- they are a focal center for a community. She had some great information- but is so focused on a library as a public entity that she missed what we really are. It will be important to have a project manager Construction management Are we able to pay for it? It needs to be considered as one of our costs Need experienced contractors. An experienced contractor may be better than a project manager. The RISE Alaska model seems superfluous. Described her statewide funding approach, Works with AKLA. Library construction and expansion program is what she is geared toward- we don’t qualify. She alluded to a relationship with the borough. She also wanted us to ask for more state money. Wells Fargo- funding libraries Important to document need, Document affordability. National standards on # of volumes to population Agreements and cooperation are important. Funding history for the project is really important. Deirdre has made a draft- shared with Monique and Nancy. This meeting was informational and free- nothing else from her ever would be Monique- If we end up building using combinations of local labor and subcontract separate parts of the building then we will really need a educated, experienced project manager. Seed Library Met with Calypso- asked if they would rather do it than the library. They are done by lots of associations- but modeled off the Richmond Library. Calypso concerned about being over-committed if they tried to do it. Would like to partner with us collaboratively- they do some aspects we do others. As far as partnerships they just need a memorandum of agreement. Had some ideas- Vista volunteer
Calypso interested, Could bring new people to them too Board member recruitment Look for contacts- look for skills we need, Make personal invitations Recognition of bequests- ideas?
EVENTS Library Music Festival- August 20th. One good venue- no hall- Eagle good Library lecture: Matt is scheduled for August 17, can we do it Aug 10. Ester History- Nancy will ask Amy about a poster. Confirm with Matt. Deirdre will do news miner. Monique will do Facebook and Blog. Greta will try university contacts Readers on the Run- Sunday October 9. Who will organize- Greta and Trey Eric: motion to adjourn Nancy: second, All approve 8:50 Next meeting: August 9, 2011, 6 pm, JTEL office | ||||
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