Worksheet of Infographic (Library Beat Update)

Library Budget Infographic (Library Beat Update)

March 19th City Council Work Session Notes

On Thursday, March 19, 2015 the City of Huntington City Council met for work session.  About 31 people were in attendance; this included three Huntington Police Officers and the mayor. A few members not in attendance. The following notes are what we briefly discussed at the meeting:

-Pledge

- Reports and reminders from the mayor:

·      Introduction of Rick Edgar, new manager of Big Sandy:

o   Been on job for week.

o   Plans for big summer events

o   Making connections in tow

o   Multiple ways of recruiting

Concern with new billing system at sanitary board

Problematic with bills: 60 days behind, trying to catch up, loss and lack of communication, no one will have the charge of lateness on the bill, a letter of explanation will be sent out, 12 months to pay, no late fee, no termination, meeting next week to further discuss the matter, should have been handled differently, new billing cycle to catch up, not to worry, talking to everyone that calls in, software issues, were told the current software is what was needed and we had to adapt, not going to happen next time, citizens are the customers, high compliments to the staff for taking care of issues.

#5: Business sidewalks and the removal of snow issues- businesses need to keep them clean and clear for safety reasons.

#6: Amending sections: charter- brings in line with current legislation: Chapter 8 Article 4: 8-24 is now 8-8.

#7: Payment of municipal fees for members of council: have the fees and bills withheld from members of council’s wages until it is caught up

#8: 9-51 ordinance fee-exemption for low income renters, clarifies that landlords of low income renters can claim exemption are taking advantage of this policy, needs to be rectified.

#9: Planning commission and house keeping ordinances/charters to be caught up with current code

#10: March 9 meeting- recommended by state: 3 changes to ordinances:

o   Addition of definitions and terms

o   Clarification on elevations

o   Attributing on preferences

#11: Resolution of City Hall renovations, 100^th anniversary coming up, volunteer work on construction saved money, take up of floorings and removal of glue costs, still have over $55,000 for renovations in foundation funds, agreement with one crew that worked on Visual Arts Center to remove flooring and glue at $21,000, 1985 was last renovation yea on building.

#12: Douglas Center Update: Mr. Runyon, finance director, volunteers as president of Ebenezer Outreach Clinic, 3 clinics in building, dental, medical and pharmacy, multiple tenants, non-profits, Marshall to purchase to operate, to add offices as well, proceeds to pay off loan, adds $130,000 back into the organization’s budget, approved transaction in April, 50 year designation has to remain with the historical integrity of structure of building, debt service of $780,000, responsibility of building fall to Marshall and the state or city, Outreach will continue to pay it’s share of the rent.

#13: General Fund Budget: Saturday a resolution to be made for 2015-2016 to be adjusted to add revenues and expenses for two items: collection of $265,000 extra, $455,00 more for extra paving making budget $1 million, rest of budget proposed stays same. NOTE* Reads different because of state revenue: adopt to meet language of Charleston, special assessments, elections in line wiggle room for more adjustments to budget, 27^th is when it is due.

Dr. Brooks Interview Transcribe (Library Beat Update)

Dr. Monica Garcia-Brooks Interview Transcribe:

“The bad news is that over the last five or six years we’ve had cuts, as I mentioned we have lost about 20 percent of our overall buying power, with combination of cuts and inflation. Because publishers have forced publisher inflation and we don’t get to negotiate with that because they have a monopoly on several of the titles. In fact that one publisher has the most significant lock on all the science, technology, engineering and medical journals in the world. The own something like 20 percent of everything that is published in the world. So if you are an engineer and you like the number one journal in your field because you’re teaching your students and you want them to have access to this information there’s only one publisher that we can get that journal from, and they can decide how much they want to charge us. It’s a little bit frustrating. (The publisher is Elsevier Publishing, a Dutch company.) The good news is that the university has been working on a whole new budget model, and the chief financial officer has been working with information technology to address the inflation issues for the library. So we are very hopeful that the inflation will be addressed for 2016 and beyond and the library will no longer have to make cuts because of journal inflation. We are excited about that.  We are probably over time going to recover what we have lost, but we can’t do it overnight because some of the materials are really expensive. But as new programs are created at the university, now there is the process of where some of the programs write into their budget. So if we start a new program that requires an expensive journal then the deans and chairs and program coordinators who are establishing that program work with us to make sure they get current pricing information, and they know long term what the projected cost will be and they can write it into the program. At the committee meeting we reported that we were working on these things, but we at the time did not have the concrete numbers and figures, so it is kind of a bummer we think. There were two areas in the Health and Sciences Library, which is under the medical school; they had two big packages of journals JAMA and portion of their STEM packages that they were scared that they would not be able to renew, and the next day we got word that they were able to. I would say the library is on an upswing because the new budget process will now address some critical needs; especially inflation and we are now involved in the establishment of programs creation and development. We write that and we base it on all the expenditures from the previous year, and each year the library vendor will help us aggregate all of our subscriptions, in this case its EBSCO, and they will provide a projection of what they think inflation will be for the upcoming year and that’s what we base our projected costs on. For this upcoming year we are projecting a six percent increase in inflation. And we EBSCO gives us a projection, it’s an average, so it’s possible some journals won’t increase at all, others might increase by 12 percent, and there will be some in the middle at around five or six percent. We have to balance all these things in determining the cuts.”