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okay let's get started good afternoon everyone um welcome to the rails round uh rails online roundtable trustee update 2021 my name is dan bostrom i'm the rails member engagement manager um we are excited about this event it's kind of a unique event for us uh we don't often hold uh events specifically for trustees um but uh we are gonna start doing it a little bit more often and i'll talk about that in a moment um before we do i just want to talk a little bit uh about our agenda whoops going the wrong way uh so here's our agenda for today i'm going to do some reminders and talk about the recording and then i'll do rails resources for trustees just a kind of reminder for all you out there then we're going to do our two presentations we have alex todd from the prospect heights public library district as well as joe philopek from the aurora public library district we'll do q a for them and then i'll do a conclusion and wrap up again i'm gonna fly through this so uh so just hold on tight uh our format today uh only the presenters have microphone uh and video rights so uh the the three of us will you'll be able to see us and hear us um everybody else uh please participate in the chat if you have comments uh you know but you can put it there choose the all attendees and panelists uh option so that everybody sees it if you don't only the panel see it uh and if you have questions we're asking you to use that q a box um and that is located on your toolbar that will just help us organize everything uh when we get to the q a section um again uh we'll try to get to as many of those questions as possible um you know i don't think we're gonna get to all of them we did get some pre uh some pre-submitted questions thank you so much for those um that put them into uh that that survey that we sent out um you can upvote questions so if you have the same question somebody else you can actually upload it and uh and kind of bump it to the top of the list um and then we'll make a list of all the unanswered questions and try to figure out how to address them in future events um again this is going to be recorded uh you will all receive an email with a link to the video that a video will be available in 24 to 48 hours on our youtube page and you don't need to log in to access it one thing i want to mention for trustees is l2 library learning this is our website uh any any public library trustee from from rails or actually from our siblings system illinois heartland can have access to uh to l2 and this is kind of the key to accessing other resources on the rails website um so i do want to mention this you have to be affiliated with your public library so that means you'll have to request an affiliation that will be approved by your public library director this is a i really encourage you to do this this is a great way to get connected to us um and to find out more about we have to offer it which i'm going to mention in a second rails e news this is our email newsletter that comes out uh once a week around six thousand people subs subscribe to this so um it's chock full of resources that you can use as a trustee uh links to continue education grants all type of events uh and we also have outside events like the illinois library association events um and other things in there so please do check that out okay so i mentioned the other things that you can access from the rails website we have a trustee training page that if you have lt if you have an l2 login account you can use this uh a couple things we have on there trustee academy is a series of online courses that trustees can take that short takes for trustees videos are produced by the united for libraries which is a division of the american library association some great topics on there including things like succession planning board meetings strategic planning um those those are really wonderful they're short they're easy to watch um and just kind of remind her about that we also have some archive webinars that we've done in the past uh you know we hire our own presenters uh we've got a lot on there so do check that out and then i'll mention future networking trustees in a second here um okay so we did send out a survey before this event to uh and about 30 of you responded i appreciate that uh one of the questions was what would you like to see from us in the future in regards to trustee networking and the three big answers that we saw were board self-evaluation director evaluation and strategic planning uh and you were able to choose multiple options so it seems like a lot of people wanted that type of thing so i do want to mention that you know if you're looking for that in the meantime uh those short takes for trustees which i just mentioned available from the rails website there are there are there are videos on each of those topics so if you want to preview those topics check them out um and then uh you know hopefully in the future we will have events that are a little bit more interactive than this um so again i'm going to mention this uh we're planning out some more events we're hoping to do it as a meeting so you can actually talk to each other we can do breakouts um this event is not going to be like that but in the future if you want to if you want to help me plan if you want to help you like a discussion leader i would really appreciate it i put my contact information in there um get in touch with me i would love to hear from uh from you wherever you are okay i'm done talking thankfully and i'm going to turn it over to alex todd uh alex is the executive director at the prospect heights public library district and he's going to talk more specifically about budgeting for boards and budgeting best practices during the pandemic so alex i'm going to stop sharing and you are welcome to share your screen okay hello everybody i'm gonna be sharing my screen here in three or four clicks there we go okay as dan said my name is alex todd i'm the director of the prospect heights public library district and i'm going to talk to you about budgeting in the time of covet i've been told it's the feel-good hit of the new decade 89 on rotten tomatoes so uh thumbs up like subscribe hit that reminder bell if you please so your libraries are more important than ever that's a complete sentence in and of itself i put in during cobit i could have just as easily put in during a great recession or during post-9 11 or during a hurricane or tornado or forest fire or civil undressed because patrons look to their library to help sustain their lives during times of crisis because we're there we're reliable and dependable and we're available for them and we're providing the services to the best that we can under the circumstances that we're facing we also don't judge we bring people in uh you know people bring us their resume we'll look it over we help them uh apply for jobs online for the first time ever we help them identify where they can go for social services that they never in their wildest dreams ever imagined that they need to access but we're also fun nobody's traveling these days but people know that libraries have video games and board games and jigsaw puzzles and books and magazines and movies and tv series that they can stream and book clubs that are online now and story times that are online now and stuff for their kids as well and all of that helps make being at home for 10 months with your family a little bit more bearable we're also keeping our staff on our payrolls we're letting them work from home and we're not furloughing them or laying them off or otherwise putting them in a situation where they have to join a social safety net that is already stressed to the maximum because they are working from home and being productive and keeping them on our payroll means that when we do reopen fully they're able to come back to work for us right away we don't have to hire anybody fresh new and train them from the start by paying them we allow them to maybe stay in their homes and they're paying using their paychecks to buy groceries in our communities in school supplies and take out chinese and all of that helps those businesses survive covet as well but this is not the year to give back uh my library looked at whether or not we should abate our levy in may um we in in october we looked at whether or not we should have uh lower our levy or whatnot and we realized that we really couldn't either way um every library needs to levy for the full amount that they're authorized every year uh it's particularly those that are in tax cap or petal counties or under petal because if you accept less you never get that money back you can't ask for more next year because you ask for less this year but if you accept less that means you're authorizing fewer library services when at a time when library services are more in demand and more critical to your community than ever you're deferring necessary maintenance and that never gets cheaper if you don't fix that leak in your roof now you're going to have to fix it eventually it's going to cost more you're going to have lower staff morale people love working in libraries and they're work willing to work at libraries for less money than they might be able to get elsewhere but if you don't reward them with even cola increases every year eventually they're going to get to a point where they have to find a job that they like less but pays more because that allows them to stay in their homes or just to maintain their their their current uh level of living and all of that leads to just disgruntled patrons but more important not more importantly but just as importantly uh lower and flat levees aren't really practical they don't have the intended impact that you would hope that they would have because if you look past the low lower levee last november it's not going to show up on tax bills until next fall and that's because spring receipts are based upon the previous year's extension so the bills are about to go out in march okay are based on 2020's extension that was established last may and that was based on the levy that was passed in november of 2019. i have a hour-long program on all of that that i give to my board every year to help them fall asleep but it that's the way that it works is as convoluted as it sounds so uh it's just not it's it's not going to show up until well past uh the action is taken so like i said we looked at this for my library and we were going to do something significant we'd like hey let's abate our levy by 10 or lower our levy for in november by 10 and as a ballpark that was about 50 reduction for the average household in my district and the people that i talked to like well my tax bill's like 12 000 i don't know if that's the average but that's the several people that i talked to that was the ballpark that they were in and like 50 is not going to matter i'm not even going to notice that if and if i do it's a rounding error 11 950 or 12 000 um and i'm not going to remember that this was a thing the next time the tax bills come out so unless the school districts or the other folks who are much larger proportions of our property tax bills um you know libraries taking the hit does us more harm that it does good to our community so if you want to have a lasting impact on your community that helps them in the pocketbook and is measurable eliminate late fines because that will help the people who need it most that will help the single parent with two kids who can't afford to pay the fifteen dollars to get to clear their uh library fines to be able to come back into the library so the parent can find a better job using the computers and the kids can come go to the school instead of hanging out on the corner um and be more productive so how we've changed has how we spent has changed this year obviously but it's also changed in a way that we can it's kind of familiar because i kind of planned my budget this year like i would if i was doing a major capital project like a new roof for rebuilding a parking lot or hvac system or something like that because you're having uh you're having um costs that you don't recognize on your budget and i was like oh where is that oh that's because of the project your staff are adjusting how they work they're working from home or they're working in a different area in the building because their work spaces are under construction or maybe they have to walk further because there's no parking lot they're wearing hard hats or face masks or hearing protection or they're using zoom um to communicate and do all that they're adapting the services that they do you know if your parking lots under construction you can't have story time at the library so maybe you're coordinating with the park district to have to have space or maybe you're having your book club in the park or things like that whatever you're doing though your patrons are going to be on board because they they they'll tell you that you should fix that wheat that leak in your roof 15 years ago now you have to i'm glad you're finally you're finally taking care of it or i'm glad you're fixing those potholes because uh they came back uh you know every six months there was that pothole was back and i you know i know i lost a tire two years ago from hitting them so they're on board uh they love the flexibility that your folks are exhibiting by making their services available and they will endorse that because they love their library you do need to check on how your expenses have gone up and down over the last year you know for example you're buying fewer physical items most likely books and magazines and newspapers um you're probably paying less for programming because you're not bringing in you know the puppeteer or the or the traveling zoo or whatnot um maybe you're paying a little bit less for regular library cleaning you don't need to shampoo your carpet twice a year like you do normally or do your window cleaning those are savings but those monies are being spent more on increased uh audio books or streaming services maybe you're um you're you're paying for a zoom account now um you're doing maybe specialized uh cleaning of your covet specific cleaning you're spraying your building uh with things like that so that's more you're buying more ppe uh than you normally do so those are the things that we kind of offset each other we found that it's not quite a wash but it's very even where we are spending more we found that we are spending almost as much less in other areas now if you're a municipal or city library you definitely need to check in with city hall call of a city manager or the mayor or the financial director whomever controls your city municipalities budget process and just ask hey are you changing anything this year because of cobit in your process maybe they're starting their process a month earlier so the board so the city council can have more time to look things over or maybe they want additional information or different types of information uh from the people who are um that they're getting that information from and if that's the case the sooner you know about it the better because the sooner then you can start your process to give them what they need so your priorities for budgeting in order of importance your top priority when budgeting needs to be your staff your when you talk to people in your community they don't talk about oh i loved the furniture in the library or i love the the shelving or the light fixtures that you have no they're going to talk to you about how they appreciate talking to jeremy at the circulation desk for a couple of minutes while they're checking out um you know to talk about the latest season of billions or you know some city gossip or what have you they love they'll tell you about how miss carol's uh story time is a family fixture and how they bring all three of their kids over the past 12 years they've been bringing their three kids to her story times and they just absolutely love her or how sam's book club gives them uh just a needed evening out of the house every month and how much they love it and i bet dollars to donuts you guys more often than not when you're asked to highlight what's best about your library you know it's it's the staff myst our staff is fantastic and these are all the things that they do so they need to be your priority in your budget as well because if you don't have happy staff everything else kind of starts to deteriorate um if if jeremy needs to hasn't gotten to raise in five years he's likely going to need to find a job that pays more to help support his family right and if that happens it's hard to replace jeremy or ms carroll or sam because people are just going to the turnover at the library is just going to increase and you're they're you're not going to have those beloved people those institutions anymore and that's really going to help degrade your image over time you're not going to be the vibrant welcoming community center that people love to go to it's going to be more transactional it's going to be more gray people are gonna come in do their thing and then leave but you know no one gets rich working in libraries nobody expects to get rich working in libraries but no one gets poorer either will accept get getting poorer either so you need to budget annual cola increases for your staff at an absolute minimum and that's just to keep their head above water at their current living standard if you're able to incorporate a one two three percent merit pool along with cola your staff's gonna run through walls for you because they know that resources are tight they live in your community too or a similar community and they know the tax dollars are tight and by giving them that respect of a cola an american increase you're showing that you're you value their work and you know that that's the most important thing for the library and you respect them and again they will run through walls for you if you do that and that will help dramatically uh you know if you do do a a construction project you know them running through walls does a great job during the demo phase you also need to continue um funding for continuing education for your staff we're not paying for mileage right now nobody's traveling to meetings or conferences we're not paying for flights or hotel rooms at ila or ala or pla or whatnot but you still need to pay for memberships in those organizations including along with uh rotary and lions and kawanis and whatnot you need to encourage your library director and have your library director encourage their staff to join library committees and organizations and even better be leaders volunteer to be the president or the chair of those committees because they're going to come back with so many great ideas from those groups that will benefit your library to a degree that you can't even calculate it's amazing how motivated they are when they go to these meetings and come back with these ideas and they implement them you also need to provide tools for your staff to for ongoing training in-house you're paying for folks to work at home they need to be able to to work from home a lynda.com subscription will help miss carol learn how to make her use her story time a youtube channel okay or do it on facebook um people who are working from home can use lynda.com or other resources to improve their excel skills which again helps the library in the long run so those are the things that that's critical for staffing safety is another critical concern for for budgeting it's constant but it's always a moving target we're talking about kobit right now two years ago though we were talking about active shooter drills right there is a section in my emergency manual about what to do if someone phones in a bomb threat and i remember sometime in the 80s or 90s when bomb threats were the the big concern that people had but the key to safety is to always review what you've done and to make sure that people know that that review is is taking place so we all did a lot of work um in march april may june when we didn't have as much information as we have now and it's you need to take a step back and review those steps that were temporary it's like oh we'll just have these rope lines up for 30 days and that'll keep people in line for six feet apart so if you have rope lengths are those rope lines still helpful um if so great but if not what's a longer term or what's a better solution or do you even need those anymore and you need to let staff and the public know that these discussions are taking place because that's what they expect you to do and uh it comforts them to know that everyone's looking out for their safety services are the next critical uh part of our budget obviously and this is a thing that has changed probably the most since march it's been a bunch of services that we just can't provide anymore uh because of social distancing but there's other services that we've transitioned we either do them on a smaller scale or maybe we move them online there's new services that we have uh initiated curbside pickup a lot of libraries did not do curbside pickup until now and now most everybody is so this is a really great opportunity for folks to take a step back and go what are we doing differently now in terms of service and administratively are you doing any different administrative steps that might that might benefit the library if you carry them over when we get back to a post pandemic environment and again curbside pickup is a great example of that many libraries haven't weren't doing that before this but after the pandemic i mean i could see a parent with two kids in the back who just wants to pick up their dvd hold um you know pull up call they run it out a minute and a half and they're done as opposed to finding parking unshackling the kids from their car seats wrangling them in getting the dvd explaining why the kids they can't go play in the trains in the youth department call them out kicking and screaming one kid runs away because one kid always runs away you wrangle that kid back up call them back out to the car they're still bawling their eyes out blocking them back into their car seat curbside pickup is a really good service for parents regardless of the environment key thing you need to keep in mind though is 20 20 is not going to be normal we're going to approach normal we're starting that with the vaccines and all that but don't rely on full capacity events this year if it happens that's that's great and it's easy to ramp up things but uh i really don't think that that's going to happen we're going to have these limitations like social distancing and masks for a period of time and even before even after those things become a requirement they're going to persist on an individual basis where people are still going to be kind of gun shy going to crowded places for quite some time if not forever this might be an event that influences people for the rest of their lives and so they're a little bit skittish so we have to be prepared for that and plan accordingly so that is my time before i turn it over to joe i want to thank everybody and i'd also like to put in a quick plug here that uh in addition to being a director of the prospect heights library i am also the president of dieters and todd library consulting with my partner jim dyers we have over 20 years of director experience and we specialize in doing executive searches for library boards as they look for their next director and we also do consulting on various other topics my expertise is budgets and levying and we're happy to work with boards and their directors to review their financial process and set up processes in place to help them establish savings for capital projects because again that leaky roof has to be fixed and you have to pay for it somehow and also to provide good projections financial projections so you can kind of get a sense of where the library is going to be financially 5 10 15 years down the road um if you're interested in any of that please feel free to reach out to me at alex at dinerstodd.com and with that i will turn it over to joe thank you thank you so much alex i really appreciate that uh so our next presenter as alex mentioned uh is uh joe philpeck and you may be familiar uh with his name he's the rails director of consulting and continuing education he's also a trustee at the aurora public library district so uh joe uh joe's gonna talk to us here about onboarding for trustees and uh if you're not already doing onboarding for trustees uh he's gonna mention why it is essential so joe take it away thank you so much dan it's great to be with you all give me one moment here while i get things set up dan that look okay looks great joe perfect okay well thank you again it's great to be with all of you um as damn mentioned i'm director of ce and consulting so usually i'm the one that's just introducing speakers and then turning it over to them but now the tables are turned and i'm going to be talking to you all today about this topic of um employee onboarding um as dan mentioned i'm trustee in aurora public library district now about six months ago the word district would not have been in my title aurora as some of you may know converted to a district library this summer what that means in terms of the board is that all of a sudden all of our board positions are now elected positions and so onboarding is very much on our minds as we look at a scenario where our entire board could actually consist of all new board members now it's looking like a few of us are going to remain but nonetheless we are looking at several new board members and in fact just just a couple days ago talking to our director about the onboarding process so while half the battle is just finding those people to run for the board and of course recruitment success and planning could be a whole uh webinar topic the other per part that really deserves our attention and consideration is looking at our onboarding process for new for new trustees now hopefully the the reasons why um are fairly obvious but i think that they are worth uh re-examining uh the reasons hopefully that employers consider employee onboarding to be important i i think is is the same reasons really we should consider trustee onboarding import to be important um we want to set up these individuals to be successful in their position we want them to understand the organization that they're joining because they're the ones going to be out advocating and talking to members of our community about the library um we want them to understand their role and perhaps what the role is not and i might underline that one that is that is very crucial especially in the beginning to help trustees understand their role we want them to understand what is expected of them just as we would with any kind of staff member we want them to feel supported and understand that there are places and people that they can go to with with questions and when they have concerns and of course we want them to have that uh positive first impression and as they say you just get that one chance to chance to make that first impression and having a really good onboarding process is i think an opportunity to do that for your board members um i will say sort of anecdotally that in my position at rails and my colleagues at rails with some regular regularity we will hear from libraries um who are having challenges on their board there might be board members who are overstepping micromanaging maybe they're violating open meetings act um and while there are many reasons for this perhaps and and certainly each board member bears some responsibility in that i think we always need to step back and and it's useful to ask the question of whether uh the board the trustee was ever given the understanding of what their word their role should be from the outset and perhaps what not should be because as we know in the absence of information people are just going to draw from previous experience to lead them to action and that action may not be in line with what is appropriate or expected for a board member so i think it's really critical that we think about this as new new board members are brought in so these next couple slides um i borrowed or perhaps stole without any uh regard or shame from my wonderful colleagues kate hall and kathy parker who authored the book some of you may know the public library director's toolkit hi kate you're probably out there as part of onboarding i think it's it's a good idea first of all to put some resources in people's hands whether that is a physical binder or something you put together digitally or maybe it's a combination of the two um remember that at the time that a new board member is presented with whatever information you're giving them they're going to have very little context to make sense of all the things that libraries do and all this information so it'll be helpful to have something that they can access actually not just then but over time for reference or for clarification so i put i put a number of examples of what some documents are that you could include in some kind of onboarding binder um i don't think a lot of these need much explanation obviously that kind of core library information mission statement organizational chart etc do they have contact information for the other board members for the director if there's someone that works in an administrative capacity at the library that they need to reach about scheduling things whatever do they have the information that they need for that uh the sort of relevant calendars which is you know beyond just board meetings which is obviously a good thing for them to know it's you know is there an annual event held every year at the library that trustees should be aware of then there's kind of like the budget uh information in that calendar and what might be relevant to share in terms of dates and time frames the next three or four on here in terms of previous board minutes uh financial information direct reports this is to kind of acclimate them to what they're going to be seeing uh in those monthly board packets so that it doesn't just come all to them in a surprise and not being familiar with sort of what is being presented then of course things like bylaws relevant library policies uh your strategic plan and any information about maybe the consortium you belong to library system like rails or heartland uh and state information um illinois state library and those other organizations like ila that support libraries i imagine that some of you may do this kind of binder and and give your new trustees uh this sort of information as part of the onboarding process if there are some other things that you like to give them i invite you to use the chat to um to share that with the group but i think this is just kind of a good starting place now while it's great to get a binder together and give people something to hold on to it's also maybe not a good idea to just give them this information and wish them good luck and godspeed and see you at the first board meeting um again they they maybe don't have that context so i think that doing an orientation session uh is really ideal um a chance over the course of you know maybe a couple hours that they you can sit down with new and perhaps existing board members to have an orientation where maybe you're covering the content of the materials that you've shared with them but then an opportunity to go over some other things and here again i think that while in practice the library director and staff are going to have a big role in any kind of onboarding or an orientation process because they have that information it'd be great if if your board members particularly the board president i think could be involved in some level with orientation and if anything if nothing else it also can be served as a good reminder for board members even long time board members to go over these things with new board members um great opportunity obviously to do a library tour during maybe right before right after an orientation obviously as a board member over the course of their term they're going to be voting on things and taking action that relates to the facility that's one of the most important things that we have and understanding the layout of the library and everything that it contains i think is really important um how the library fits into the illinois library landscape again your library may belong to consortia understanding how ila and the systems and the illinois state library and the grants that they offer things like the per capita grant how the library fits into all that because over the course of time they're going to hear you hear the director other board members talk about these organizations and and helping them understand where their library fits in obviously open meetings act freedom of information act i mean there's several laws that are important for trustees to understand but these are of course two really important ones and maybe open meetings act the one that's most important for them to understand and while they're going to go through that wonderful training on the attorney general's website and while there's obviously good information there it can be hard again as a library board member to kind of figure out what does that mean for me and my role as a board and specifically to a library so having some conversation during orientation about the considerations especially now with this pandemic and how things are a bit different given our ability uh to do things virtually i think is a super important thing to discuss and make sure that your new board members understand and then as we as i outlined during the construction of any kind of binder going really maybe reviewing the most relevant policies as a board member to understand um it's a great opportunity to have somebody talk about how the library is funded what is that budget cycle look like um and any kind of and and even just walking through the financials that they might see in their board packet each month giving them kind of a framework to help them understand when they're approving those expenditures each month what does that actually mean and what are those documents how is it being laid out for them i mentioned technology communication some boards might give their board members ipads or some device for their board packets do those board members even know how to use them are they getting email addresses do they know how to access them sometimes there can be a little bit of a divide in terms of technology competencies and so forth and we just want to make sure that trustees understand what they need to know to access what they have to access and to get at the communications that they need to get to and of course a great opportunity to talk about what direct what the expectations are as a board member um and this is i think a great place for perhaps a board president to go through these things things like attending all the regular and special meetings of the board to participate in discussions to read the agenda and materials in advance the standby decisions of the board board members have power through their vote and understanding once a vote's been taken to be supportive of the library and their actions um and of course to know live the library and its missions its goals and objectives its services and programs all of these things in terms of expectations as board members can be a great opportunity during an orientation session um this chart can be found in a lot of different places one of them being like the illinois uh trustee manual and this is actually just kind of a snapshot of it but when i said previously one of the most important things we need to do um for new board members is to help them understand what their role is i think that a big part of that is understanding the difference between what the board does and what the director does um so this chart which um again you can find a lot of different places and in fact the actual chart has a third column for friends groups it's just basically looking at these areas of responsibility such as policy planning fiscal advocacy and sort of outlining what the responsibility of the director is and what the responsibility of the board is and i know as you read that it isn't always often as a sort of clear-cut and there are definitely areas where there might be overlap and every library perhaps approaches some of these things just a little bit differently but end of the day there is a very clear distinction of what a library director should do and be responsible for and what a board should do and be responsible for so having that conversation again from the very beginning for an ongoing for someone coming into the board that maybe just doesn't understand what those distinctions should be is really really important i think that this chart is a good place to to sort of start with that framework and understanding for new board members um just a couple last sort of slides i want to share with you before we before i turn it back to dan and and we open it up to your questions a few other things i think i would consider when looking at an onboarding is talking to your trustees talking to new new board members and understand that we may have very little or no information about them as on incoming board members so a conversation that includes why did they run for the board why um what what hopes do they have for the library and for their own service on the board what do they hope to achieve what skills do they bring that may be of value to the board or even relationships within the community they may possess the most important thing for any new board member anybody you want in the board is obviously that they're invested that the library is important to them and they want to do what's best but they also bring skills that can be really helpful for the library or again relationships and so from the outside it's good to understand what those are uh onboarding is a process not an event now i describe the orientation obviously that would be an event but here again remember that just like when you start a new job it's very overwhelming we throw a lot at our new board members through any orientation or onboarding process and they're not going to have the context and while you might ask if they have any questions about what you shared regarding the budget in that moment they might not have any but three months they might have a lot of questions so the idea of maybe looking at onboarding as a process over six months or even a year and revisiting um certain things over time might be an even more effective strategy because remember unless it's a appointment trustees are going to be serving likely for four years six years they might have multiple terms so there's no need to sort of rush through this process and i think really looking at it as a cycle over time might be a really good strategy for that i've heard libraries say that they use a sort of mentoring process or a mechanism by which they pair new board members with existing board members um so that they have somebody they know they can reach out to with questions or just a chat about a concern that they have obviously if it's just a kind of one-on-one situation we don't have to worry about any kind of open meetings act considerations there so i think that can be a good um approach as well and again just i i think it's great to have both staff and board members be involved with any kind of onboarding process i think that's meaningful uh for honestly for both the staff and those new board members and i think it's helpful for the existing board members and i think it's something that is generally something they enjoy and and appreciate being involved with and then finally i'll just i'll just wrap up by saying and dan mentioned some of these resources at the outset but uh if you haven't explored the illinois state library on their trustees and public library administrators page of their website you can find resources like this illinois public library trustee manual like the trustee fact files and even though some of these documents might be a little outdated in terms of when they're published all the core information is generally the same i also would encourage you to look at the illinois library association as a big resource for us in terms of advocacy the library trustee forum is a forum within ila that supports trustees does a lot of continuing education um and dan mentioned united for libraries before so um i think with that i know we want to wrap up to give some time to questions so dan thank you all for your attention hopefully and i'll turn it back to you dan thanks so much joe and uh and just a reminder to folks i'm gonna put the slide back up but uh if you have a question for joe or for alex um you can put it in that q a uh section in your toolbar um we're going to try to take them as much as we can we did have some ones that we wanted to get to right away uh because uh these are the ones that were submitted through the survey early so thank you for doing that if you were able to do so um joe the first one is for you and it said how did how do i how do we diversify our board through recruitment yeah thank you dan and thanks for that question um you know of course libraries are very much in turn in terms of staffing and libraries this is the same question that libraries are asking generally um in terms of diversification of their staff and and for boards no doubt this is a challenge uh many libraries i'm sure some of those on the call like you are just struggling to find a living breathing person to serve on your board that are willing to volunteer so the idea of then also kind of adding another layer and to recruit a diverse i know is is is is um is a challenge i guess i would say a few things um a board definitely should aim to have a board that is representative of the community that it serves in terms of demographics so forth i think the most critical step is intentionality um if we're simply saying i hope we can get more diverse candidates and if we do then we're going to really prioritize and try to make that happen i don't think that's enough i think that there has to be a conversation that the board has the full board discussing about what we mean when we say we want to diversify our board because that that might mean a lot of different things to your board members it might mean race it might mean age it might mean just that we don't have seven board members who are all on the west side of town i mean there's so many things um obviously if your municipal library versus district library there's a bit of a of a difference in that in a municipal setting that's also a conversation you need to to have with your mayor and and the people that are being appointed to your board and making sure that they understand that that is a desire of the board but i think it just in terms of strategy when we talk about recruitment i would say that um there's a need to just broaden your networks that you use for recruitment and so if you're looking for better representation with respect to age or ethnicity or any of those other components you need to find where those people in your district or city live in where they operate in where is their that space and the network they belong to and look there to recruit and then that old axiom of what's in it for me so when you're doing that recruitment it isn't simply hey can you be part of this board it's also helping them understand why that should be something that they want to do and then i would just i would say i guess in my final thought is is just the idea that if if you're bored if you feel like you don't have a diverse board um just as important as who that board is is what that board is doing and the action that they are taking and so the board should be looking at how they can incorporate edi into the work that they do into strategic planning into policies and collection development into their partnerships and it's a kind of a laundry a long game approach of creating a more equitable and inclusive library for your community and over time if you build a library that's inclusive and equitable you will have an effect on your users and then hopefully finding more people that are willing to be part of your board so um last thing i'll say is that rails and ila are really interested in the stock of the topic of edi for both of us really a kind of priority area and we're hoping that we can find ways to support you with this this kind of uh work yeah thank you joe and and uh alex i got a question for you but before i do that i uh just want to address a question that was in uh the q a this is a question i think we can maybe crowdsource uh as attendees um it says can you offer bobby can you offer a link to the trustee roll page if you all uh out there uh directors trustees if you have a a document that you can point to publicly um uh about the the the role that trustees play at your library and you want to put a link into the chat that would be a huge help to us i know some of you have already started doing that thank you so much for doing that um this is a place to share uh libraries are great at sharing so um okay alex i have a question for you this was uh some pre-submitted um it's a long one so bear with me uh what is an acceptable level of reserve carryover from one year to the next i fear we are carrying over too much each year one option is to transfer more to our special reserve fund but i'd like to advocate for just decreasing our levy uh and then the parentheses is we are village home rule library and not subject to tax caps although we try to to here adhere to petal as much as possible okay thanks um first if i could touch on uh diversity of the boards just real quick because this was something that one of my trustees brought back from ila trustee day several years ago that diversity has a lot of different definitions if you're a library district and you're serving more than one town you want to try and have representation from the different municipalities that you serve you can have diversity in income level of your trustees and if you try and have someone who uh maybe is a single mom um struggling to get by they're gonna have a different perspective for your board than a retiree might um and although they're going to be difficult to have but there's a wide range of diversity that we can bring into it that makes it a little bit more difficult if you want to try and match all of that there's more things that you have to have but it also i think gives us a little bit more uh it calms us down a little bit like we might not be having uh you know a traditional viewpoint of uh diversity in terms of ethnicity or or gender or age or all that but if we're meeting some other criteria like joe said that really best suits our community then we're doing that um for the reserves uh so on the top end the general consensus is the maximum you can have legally in your operating account or any of your accounts other than your special reserve fund is about two times your operating expenses and there's a something called the miller formula that helps calculate that the courts have never said two times is what it is courts never say what it is they just take the question that they are addressing and say yes or no and so court cases have said 2.8 2.5 are too high 1.8 1.7 are okay so again the acceptable wisdom is if you keep it at 1.994 or 2 percent you're going to be okay as far as people um appealing their taxes and saying you have too much money on hand on the other end how much is too little or what is the recommended any amount is obviously desirable i would recommend um about 18 18 months six six months worth i would say at a minimum because uh we get our money twice a year in the fall and in the spring with the tax disbursements and you want to have enough money to cover that gap in case something weird happens with the disbursements uh it's been a while this predates my time as a director but cook county used to be notorious of for not dispersing the their taxes um in the fall that we now get in august and september until october or november um you know so you need to have money in the bank to cover those um if you can have up to if you can have a year's worth of operating expenses i think that is is good because it just gives it makes you feel good to have it and not have to worry about it um but it is worthwhile to establish what your goal is as a board and to determine um to transfer anything that is not allocated that exceeds that to your special reserve fund um you probably gained from my talk um i will never tell you to lower your levy i i think that it's wrong to do that i think you need to get and even if you're not in a tax cap if you're in a home rule area i think um agreeing to abide by tax caps informally that's a that's a perfectly valid strategy to do but i still think you need to um incorporate what tax cash would have allowed you every year 2.1 percent 2.3 percent this year one point eight percent a couple years ago um because those incremental increases they're acceptable but if you go flat or go negative two years down the road as a home rule you would be able to have a five or six percent increase if you want but that's going to make people go whoa what's the library doing but if you just continually incorporate small incremental increases year over year um that's going to make it better so don't lower your levy if you have money that you're not spending and this year it may be a perfect year for that because you're not spending as much on things so you have money quote unquote left over put it in your special reserve fund because you're going to need a new roof sometime you're going to need a new hvac system you're going to need a new building at some point that's what the special reserve fund is for and the more money you have on hand in savings is uh less money you're going to have to add borrow or ask the people for or things like that awesome thank you thank you alex uh joe have another question for you and this is an evergreen question uh how do we prevent some board members from micromanaging operations okay um i didn't know that happened so i think there are a lot there are several reasons why this happens um obviously some people just have micromanaging sort of as a style or a personal trait and that's just kind of their almost modus operon it's just kind of how they operate um obviously we we know that there may be board members that come in with that have some kind of personal agenda and maybe the micromanaging is sort of directed towards that personal agenda but i think that there's also maybe in most instances where you have a board member or board members that are just really eager to contribute and want to be involved as and and be helpful in as many ways as they can um and this really comes back to what i was saying what i was saying about orientation and and onboarding of helping trustees understand what that role is because as we know directors and their staff are the ones who are responsible for those day-to-day operations of the library now when you say micromanaging that of course can mean a hundred different things um but i think that as we're onboarding our new trustees and talking to them about role it's important they understand that concept of of collective authority which is really um you know for not just library boards but really all boards that no one board member holds any sort of legal authority on their own that the the power they hold is is through their vote and and it is the collective will of the board that action takes place not the will of any single single individual um so here again onboarding understanding roles now i know in practice of course um when you have a board member who's micromanaging and you perhaps suggest that they don't understand their role um i really haven't heard of someone saying oh i didn't understand that was not my role i will stop now and just go to be like i know in practice that really doesn't happen so i would say a few things i would say that um this is where the role of the board president comes in of course unless the board president is the one micromanaging i know that that may be the case sometimes but i think that ultimately it's the board president um and their responsibility as president to have that conversation with the board member who's maybe uh overextending or or overreaching i think there may be an opportunity as well to sort of redirect that energy if you will that if you have a board member that is being super active and really trying to micromanage maybe there is a more sort of appropriate board project a subcommittee something that they can use that energy towards that is in a way that isn't going to at all hinder um you know the library staff or obviously the library board um and and this is also why we continue to offer and encourage trustees to engage in continuing education for boards to have um board retreats to bring in consultants that can work with the board because it's one thing for the director or board president to communicate something to a board member obviously it's appropriate and and necessary but to have somebody kind of from the outside to just sort of re-articulate role i think it'd be a really good idea um and i think someone even put in the chat i was going to say just in terms of making sure you have good sound policies and bylaws that really sort of reinforce again what roles and responsibilities are for trustees of course if anyone has a one or two sentence solution that's perfect and that would immediately fix this issue please put it in the chat yeah thank you joe and i appreciate that and we appreciate all the participation that you all have offered uh in the chat that's been really helpful um and unfortunately that that is going to bring us to the end of our hour i wanted to make sure that we were able to get um everyone in and and i know that you all have questions that uh that we're submitted in and might we might not have gone to i apologize for that uh we knew it was gonna be tight so uh we'll we'll do our best to try to arc of those and address those at a later at a later time at a later event um that would be our priority um i really appreciate everyone for coming i know that there was another event that was going on today in dc or something i i wasn't completely aware of what it was uh but but we thank you so much for for joining us uh it's been a lot of fun uh thank you alex thank you joe for your presentations they've been great um uh i will again we're going to do more of these we're going to try to do more events uh in which we can get you to talk as trustees as uh library staff um a little bit about roles and responsibilities um about some of these topics strategic planning board evaluation things like that to kind of hear what you're doing and share links and we think that this will be a really fun way for you all to uh to grow and learn from each other so um thanks again for the time again this will be recorded uh we will have a recording up by the uh probably by the end of the day today um but but uh but more likely uh tomorrow um and uh and again thank you have a great day enjoy the inauguration uh take care everybody along everyone thank you thank you i forgot to mention my children's artwork is for sale i should have put in a plug for that sooner oh well