Oct. 25 SA Meeting Minutes

Staff Association Meeting - October 25, 2018

Meeting Date / Time: Thursday, October 25, 2018 – 2-4pm.

Meeting Location: Southern Oaks

Attendees:

Jessica Morris – Chair
Lawana Morgan – Vice Chair
Chad Allen – Southern Oaks Representative
Jamie Kizzar – Villiage Representative
Kevin Colwell – Service Center Representative

Around the system concerns:

Jessica at Downtown reports at her branch they will be tracking mail deliveries to evaluate the process and see if there is a solution for improvement. Come to find out, Villiage is doing it also and we think one more library but we are not for sure. Downtown is also in the process of hiring two part-time Access II positions. And we talked about how the system just had eight new people starting soon.

We had talked about the hiring process and asked why it seems to be taking so long. The Access Services meeting minutes had been posted the next day with Risa stating she has met with HUM with recommendations to help the process go faster. I emailed the committee the quote and to take a look at the minutes to share with their libraries if they haven’t already.

Chad had a couple of questions that were brought to him to ask Staff Association. One was about maternity leave. The question asked about having longer maternity leave and how the process works. I and another rep tried to explain to the best of our abilities the process. Also, we explained that Stephany Dowd and or Denise Courts, are the best at explaining this and mapping out your leave if you have to use FMLA. Also, remember the staff can save up their AVL leave and build it up to 240 hours and 960 hours of Sick leave.

https://my.metrolibrary.info/drupal/policy_procedures/sh/sh-220-employee-leave

Village reports they have been closed lately on and off for water leaking/spilling everywhere. And props go to the maintenance guys for coming in the middle of the night to pack up books and try to fix the water leak. In addition, the beginning of 2019, Villiage will be closed for 2-3 months for renovations.

Agenda Topics: Thoughts about Staff day, Emoji Project, and the Crafty Talent Event

The SA reps spoke about Staff Day briefly and thoughts about the speakers and the little side projects. Everyone said they also filled out the evaluation on the intranet.

The sub-committee, headed by Lawana, spoke about the Emoji grams, we worked with her during the meeting to continue with the planning and organizing the Emoji grams for the holidays for the MLS staff to send to each other. The online order form questions have been sent for processing. We are waiting on a few more other details such as finding the card stock paper, which candy to put on the grams, and a tracking sheet still needs to be done before making the grams available for purchase. I am also following up with Business Office about ordering items.

Another event we are planning and organizing is an after-hours event for the MLS staff. Jessica is heading this event. Staff Association thought since the library system has such diverse and talented employees that SA would like to show support, appreciation, and showcase those talents. Staff Association has had talent shows before and they were a big hit. We wanted to expand more with this event and the talents system-wide because we believe every MLS Staff member is talented in some shape or form.

Jessica has begun filling out the after-hours event request paperwork. If approved, the library we are planning for the event is the Downtown library. We looked and the parking is free on Saturday and the library branch has a big event space with a stage. A tentative date was proposed for January 19th but their research shows there is a parade that day so we moved it to January 26th. In addition, the SA reps briefly talked about doing a skit or something at the event. A small description of the event below:

The Crafty Talent Show event, all talents are welcomed. Especially crafty ones. Just to name a few, if you sew, paint, sculpt, hula-hoop, sing, dance, this event is for you. Staff Association wants to encourage all to come. You can display your work or even set up a table to talk about it and we will have a stage for the performers. We will have food and drinks and prizes for different categories. Keep watch of it for January 26, 2018.