LIBRARY BOARD MEETING ON INTER-LOCAL AGREEMENT AMENDMENTS
Blanding Library / Virtual: meet.google.com/gxi-xxkp-toa
October 06, 2022 at 5:30 PM
MINUTES
CALL TO ORDER and ROLL CALL (5:33pm)
Present: Ramona Chamberlain (Chair), Carolyn Dailey, Marjorie Haun-Storland, Zak Podmore, Tim Schulte, (Board Members); Nicole Perkins (Library Director), Mikaela Ramsay (Assistant Director), and Mack McDonald (County Representative).
Joining Late: Lucille Cody and Genevieve Ford (Board Members)
Ramona Chamberlain asked Carolyn Dailey to take minutes since Genevieve Ford was absent at the start of the meeting.
PUBLIC COMMENT - Mikaela Ramsey reported an incident of a negative comment of which she had emailed the details about to all Board members. The incident concerned a religious book left by a patron in the free bench that someone else objected to. Carolyn Dailey commented that she thought the incident reflected on the person making the comment and not on the library and others generally agreed.
BUSINESS/ACTION - San Juan County Library, Presented by Nicole Perkins, County Library Director
- This special meeting was held to discuss and approve or disapprove amended agreements between Grand County and San Juan County Libraries.
Three possible Inter-Local Agreement Amendments were included in the agenda packet and discussed:
- Original Agreement - $6,000 for 3 year agreement passed by the SJ County Library Board at the last meeting asking for names and address of 84532 Spanish Valley patrons
- Proposed Grand County Amendments - $6,000 for 3 years removing the names and address request.
- Proposed San Juan County Amendments - $6,000 for 1 year asking again for names and addresses.
- The Grand County Library Amendment removes providing names and addresses of those being served in the Spanish Valley area with an area code of 84532 due to privacy concerns. It was determined by Nicole Perkins in consultation with the County Attorney and confirmed by Mack McDonald that it is against Utah Code Title 63G-2 302 Private Records for libraries to give ANYONE the names and addresses of their patrons. Zak Podmore suggested that census block breakdowns could be used to provide sufficient information for location of patrons.
- Ramona Chamberlain asked if library usage data was available for the Spanish Valley patrons. Nicole Perkins said that Carrie Valdes, Director of the Grand County Library had provided the following information. Carolyn Dailey added that she had met with Carrie Valdes who said that a special patron code was assigned to Spanish Valley residents by looking up their address on a county plat when a patron card was issued so that they now were able to track data.
- There are 348 individual library cards that have been used at least once in the past three years. This represents 217 households in SJ County. Grand County only purges their system every 3 years to eliminate patrons that have not used their cards during that time.
- Regarding circulation, the totals for San Juan County residents' Grand County Public Library (GCPL) checkouts since Jan 1, 2019 to the present (September 30, 2022) were as follow: Total issues overall = 6648; Total renewals overall = 4691; and Total combined circulation overall = 11,339. Circulation is defined as any physical item that a patron takes home from the library. It does not include usage of computer time or other services such as toddler time. That is a total of 33 months of data collected which shows an average of almost 1 checkout per individual per month or 1.58+ checkouts per household per month and approximately 4176 checkouts on average per year.
- Mikaela Ramsey presented a chart she compiled on the Population to Patron Card Ratio that showed Blanding had 53%, Monticello had 56% whereas the data provided by Grand County Library showed Spanish Valley had 71% of the population being library patrons. She was unsure why there was this difference, but stated the difference may be due to rural versus city populations.
- Mack McDonald expressed that census information does not match zip codes and he felt that if they are not charging per head, that it doesn't really matter if it is over inflated since they are only charging $6,000.
- Carolyn Dailey explained that the $6,000 per year cost was determined in 2011 and based on the $60 non-resident library card cost multiplied by 100 households in Spanish Valley. This $6,000 had been reused in succeeding agreements. The new data shows that now there are 217 households. If the cost was recalculated based on current data it would be $12,000 to serve Spanish Valley residents. She felt it was best to keep the agreement at 5 years to lock it in at $6,000 since it is unpredictable how favorable future Grand County Commissions might be. Mack McDonald agreed.
- Nicole Perkins explained that she was seeking a 1 year agreement to collect as much data as they could and because she was unsure that funds would be available in the future. She reported that at the beginning of the year the Clerk's office had given her the figure of $435,000 in tax revenue for the 2023 budget and that 2 days ago they gave her the figure of $415,557 - nearly $20,000 less. She was unsure how she was going to reduce the budget since it already was at a bare minimum. She did not want to commit to Grand County for more that one year because funds would be needed in the future for other expenses such as parking lot improvement.
- The La Sal Library branch was discussed as a possible alternative for serving Spanish Valley residents. Nicole Perkins said it cost about $9-10,000/ year to run it. Carolyn Dailey said that Moab residents don't ever go to La Sal, whereas La Sal residents regularly come to Moab. Marjorie Haun-Storland said that a segment of the population in La Sal doesn't have cars and that it serves a wide area to the Colorado border.
- Genevieve Ford said she was favoring either a 1 year contract with Grand County or cancelling it altogether. Tim Schulte said he felt the same way.
Notice of Special Accommodations (ADA)
In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, individuals needing special accommodations (including auxiliary communicative aids and services) during this meeting should notify Pat Smith at 435-587-2281.