HomeMy WebLinkAbout052401PORT TOWNSEND LIBRARY BOARD MEETING
Port Townsend Library
May 24, 2001
Present: President Bill Maxwell, Sarah Muirhead, Kate Schumann, Larry Thomas, Eileen Price
Staff. Linnea Patrick (Director), Carol Costello (minutes)
Guests: Julia Owens
President Bill Maxwell called the meeting to order at 9 AM. The minutes from March, April 26, and May
3`d were approved as read.
Communications: Bill received a letter from Aholaah Arzah regarding an idea for a library fundraising
event. The idea will be passed on to the Foundation and Friends.
Sandy Diamond, artist and musician, would like to donate some of her work to the Book Boost. She has
25 copies each of 10 quotes that she has done in calligraphy. The quotes will be sold at the circulation
desk in the library.
No public comment.
Director's report: Linnea asked that the Friends book sale, June 23, be added to the calendar.
Linnea applied for and received a $900 continuing education grant to attend the ALA conference in San
Francisco during June.
Friends: The Friends made over $1000 at their annual Rummage Sale. They have had to reorder book
bags as the bags are selling quite quickly.
Foundation: The Foundation will meet June 13th at the library.
Staff: Carol reported that the circulation staff will move the current hold shelf bookcase to the popular
materials room to increase shelf space for adult fiction. Lynn Ring has purchased and remodeled a
replacement shelf for the books that are being held for patrons.
The children's library staff has hosted several programs from the Pacific Science Center this week for
young children. The children's staff is also working hard preparing the summer reading program.
Carol Cahill has revised the library's website.
Linnea mentioned that the current level of business stretches the staff very thin. In order to correct this
situation she says the minimum needs are about 1000 hours of substitute staff or additional hours for
existing staff. The board would like to have a dollar amount for what it would cost to add the hours for
existing staff.
During January and March there were over 17,000 books checked out each month. This is the first time
this has happened since January 1998.
No committee reports'
Old Business: The board began discussing tax alternatives for future funding as suggested by City
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Manager David Timmons at the special board meeting on May 3.
Linnea is concerned because several patrons have approached her thinking that annexation to the county
library would mean possible closure of the Port Townsend Library. This is not true. There WILL be a
library in Port Townsend. How the library is administered will be the question.
Linnea feels that the most secure source of funding would be annexation, but not enough money could be
collected in library district taxes from city residents to support this library, so some additional
arrangement would have to be made to make this alternative appeal to the county library.
Linnea has contacted the King County Library regarding a document they have compiled for their
branches which explains how many staff are needed to support the amount of people served and the size
of the building. Linnea would like to compare their document with what is currently in place at Port
Townsend Public Library.
The board would like to invite David Timmons back to a meeting as soon as they are prepared with
questions and/or answers. Linnea has made charts for board and staff members to use while identifying
pros and cons, and unanswered questions for each possible funding source as outlined by David.
The question was raised about whether there was enough time between now and the August 30`b deadline
set by Timmons to decide on a long -range funding plan. The board is concerned about what will happen
with the 2002 budget in the meantime.
The board proceeded to. work on the first alternative funding source which would be "doing nothing."
Bill has a copy of the 1987 lid lift levy used for fire equipment.
Book Boost: The board will have a table for Book Boost donations at Safeway on Friday, June I", from
10 AM until 6 PM.
New business: A representative from OCLC will be coming to meet with Port Townsend Library and
Jefferson County Rural Library District staff members on June 7`h. It is hoped that we can jointly
purchase an agreement from OCLC to ease workload and funding for interlibrary loan and cataloging.
There will be a special meeting of the library board on Tuesday, June 5h, 7 PM at the library.
The meeting was adjourned at 11 AM. The next regular meeting will be Thursday June 28''.
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