Sage Council Meeting Minutes

March 21, 2023

Attendees:

Perry Stokes (Baker, Vice-chair), Beth Ross (Sage), Marsha Richmond (Lake County), Maggie Pando (The Dalles), Kathy Streed (OTLD), Kathleen Schmidtgall (Weston), Mary Reser (Gilliam County), Jon Georg (Sage), Mark Rose (Hermiston), Delia Fields (Hermiston HS)

Agenda changes – Beth added update on bylaws vote.

Bylaws Vote (Beth) – An online meeting took place regarding the change to the number of council membership seats and attendees voted. Those who were unable to attend the online meeting voted via email. The change was approved.

Approval of January minutes – vote on minutes tabled to next meeting due to lack of quorum.

Committee Reports

           Cataloging Committee – The Cataloging committee met on February 6. An update was given on cataloging training in the Niche Academy. Guidance was given on the audiobooks and videos marc 346 field. Tips were shared on the Marc Editor, including the help and validate buttons.

           Circulation Committee (Kathy) – they are continuing to work on the circulation policy. There is a meeting on the 23rd at 1pm. At the last meeting they talked about a lot of different profiles and privileges associated with those.

           Courier Committee – no meeting. Perry asked about how the new Ontario courier was going. Beth reported that it was going great. The driver has been very consistent.

Budget Review – Perry shared the budget draft. The major cost driver is going to be replacing Beth. Benefits are restored into the budget at employee and spouse level. If the successor does not have a spouse some of that money could be moved to salary as a part of the negotiations. There is an Increase of $10,650 over last year. A 5% increase to the business manager salary and to the contract for Jon has been added. We’ve requested more from LSTA for the upcoming year, totaling around 68,000. A total of $262,300 needs to be raised from membership fees. The last couple years we have been operating on a variable rate, with a base rate and a variable amount based upon an increase or decrease in average population of the last three years. It is also based on your percentage of the total Sage population base. The service populations come from what is reported to state. The budget draft will be finalized and then sent out for an electronic vote.

New member request by Condon School (Mary) – Condon High School used to be in Sage as an ILL partner but would now like to be a circulating school, coming in at the lowest level. New member fees would be charged based on how many new records (non-matching) come in and the resulting authority control cost. A vote on the new membership request should take place electronically.

Potential of Crook County library requesting to join Sage (Perry) – Crook County used to be a part of Sage but joined a system with Deschutes County. Recently there was a proposal by the library to pull out LGBTQ materials from the juvenile area and house them in a separate section and label them as such. The board voted against that in a 4 to 1 decision. The board members are appointed by the county judge/administration which is quite conservative. It is expected that the county will continue to appoint conservatives to the board and that eventually Crook County would have to leave the Deschutes partnership and may want to join Sage. Perry suggested that we review the MOU (IGA) and add a statement that members must abide by best practices of the American Library Association. The MOU needs to be updated anyway. If they did join Sage and had materials segregated it would jeopardize our courier grant through LSTA. We will start to work on a new MOU draft.

Meeting adjourned at 10:35 am Pacific time.