December 7, 2006

Special Board Meeting of the Rapid City Public Library Trustees

Present: Jim Olson, Sandra McNeely, Eric Abrahamson, Monte Loos, Greta Chapman, City Attorney Jason Green.

Absent: Ron Kroeger, Maria McCarthy-Anderson

M. Loos called the special board meeting to order. S. McNeely moved to go into Executive Session for the purpose of discussion regarding the County Library Service contract. J. Olson seconded the motion. Motion carried.

E. Abrahamson moved to come out of executive session. J. Olson seconded the motion. Motion carried.

J. Olson moved to approve the Pennington County Library Services Contract as proposed. S. McNeely seconded the motion. Discussion: E. Abrahamson stated his vote will be no and requested remarks be recorded for the minutes. He stated negotiations have been ongoing for the last year and the fundamental issue is that of shared costs that are based on the costs paid by Rapid City residents. Cost scenarios were provided to the County Commissioners that included per library card, the population served or operational costs. The contract proposed does not reflect any of these scenarios and no accountant would arrive at the proposed contract as a means of providing the services. The analogy of the current contract is the County wants to borrow a truck and drive it across the county and states they don’t like the cost of the gas so they aren’t going to pay for a percentage of the gas. The County currently and in the proposal does not pay for a percentage of the fixed costs or a fair share of the operating costs. Rapid City residents are subsidizing the cost of library services for Pennington County residents. The County residents voted for library services and they need to solve this problem with the County Elected Officials to come up with a way to provide those services and not for Rapid City residents to solve the problem. J. Olson stated he appreciated E. Abrahamson’s comments and understanding of all the issues. J. Olson is willing to in effect extend the current arrangement as an attempt to try and work out the issues with the changes that will be happening with County Officials. E. Abrahamson responded he is also willing to work in the next year to buy time to come up with a reasonable and fair share agreement. S. McNeely stated she agreed the current proposal is not an allocation of costs at an equal level. She also agreed by voting in favor of the proposed contract there would be an agreement to move forward by immediately working upon scenarios. M. Loos stated there will be new Commissioners sworn in at the first of the year and the Trustees would hope to begin working upon a solution at that time so as to not end up next year determining an outcome only weeks before the contract period ended. S. McNeely stated for the sake of the county residents and the library employees whose jobs are on the line due to the contract, starting at the first of the year is best.

A ballot vote was taken for the motion. Roll call of the ballots: S. McNeely – yes, J. Olson – yes, E. Abrahamson – no, M. Loos – yes. The contract was approved as proposed with 3 yes and 1 no vote.