Meeting Minutes Still a Top Issue of Discussion for EL Library Trustees

At an 80-minute meeting Wednesday (March 15)  – much shorter than more recent acrimonious gatherings – the East Lansing Public Library Trustees met to discuss ongoing business of the community resource. Much like the last meeting, however, a bulk of discussion was spent reviewing minutes from previous meetings, the process by which they’re edited and whether they are an accurate reflection of discussion.

Early in the Wednesday session, while entertaining a motion to approve the minutes from the March 1 meeting, Trustee Ameenah Asante repeated her concerns from that gathering about the insertion of discussion she said did not take place.

“My concern as we seek to approve these minutes from March 1 are: One, who is in charge of the minutes? Two, who can edit them, if anyone? Three, what board policies does it violate to have edited minutes that are unauthorized? And four, if no policies exist, what policies need to be adopted so we can maintain the integrity of the minutes?” she said. “And with the answers to these questions, I can then join in a vote to approve these minutes.”

Asante then pulled out a thick binder containing what she said was the trustee handbook. She told trustees the guidelines said Shori Teeple, executive assistant to the director, and no one else is in charge of the minutes. Asante asked for a discussion to address her questions.

With a suggestion from President Polly Synk, Trustee Diane Goddeeris made a motion to table approval of the minutes to later in the meeting.

When the topic was revisited, Asante asked ELPL Director Kristin Shelley how meeting minutes are processed after a session.

“Shori takes the minutes, she takes the notes,” she said. “And then she puts them together and she has [Assistant Director] Brice [Bush] and I review them, mostly for grammar, or to make sure we have the right people first and seconded on motions and then I think they go to Polly.”

Synk said she received the minutes three days before the next meeting with the rest of the board. She also said she had spoken with EL City Attorney Anthony Chubb about the possibility of sharing the minutes with the entire board earlier. He advised Synk against it, saying  that becomes an issue of the board wishing to change the document before the next meeting. Chubb told Synk the  appropriate time to make edits is at the meeting..

Asante asked Teeple if she had earlier drafts of minutes and Teeple provided the first draft of the March 1 minutes. Asante and Truste Amy Zaagman, seated next to each other, spent several seconds reviewing the earlier draft against the proposed minutes that were to be voted on.

“So offhand what I do notice,” Asante said, “is that it looks like Shori’s notes are robust and they have lots of detail.” She compared  the notes to a specific section in the final draft of the minutes saying it, “has gone from 15 lines in the original notes to 10.”

Asante said she would be happy to continue studying the minutes and report back at the next meeting, leading Synk and Zaagman to openly consider tabling the approval of the March 1 minutes to the next meeting.

Goddeeris countered that Asante was possibly misunderstanding what meeting minutes were supposed to entail.

“Minutes aren’t necessarily things that portray discussion,” she said, “because if someone writes what their interpretation of what discussion is versus somebody else’s, that’s up to us as trustees. This is really just the facts of what happened at the meeting, which is what the minutes are supposed to capture, the motions and the decisions.”

The trustees again jumped back into a discussion of  the minutes of the January meeting that were the center of heated conflict during the March 1 meeting. The specific issue in those minutes was inclusion of a line stating that library policies were followed leading to the police being called on a Black teen who was mistaken for someone else.

“A line was put into the minutes,” Asante said, “that was not a part of the meeting, and that’s what I’m talking about around the integrity of the minutes. That’s really my sole concern.”

Synk appeared at times uncertain how to proceed, pausing frequently, conceding that the minutes were altered by library administration before being published. At one point, she looked to Shelley, asking, “Is it fair to say that you were not trying to change what happened?”

Before she could verbally respond, Asante asked if Shelley could explain how the statement entered into the minutes.

“I really don’t know,” Shelley said. “I don’t remember where the statement came from. I don’t remember adding the statement. In conversations with Trustee Goddeeris, she believes I actually said that, so that might be where.”

Asante suggested the possibility of using a recording service in the future to document what is said, to which Shelley indicated she could look into the costs of such a thing.

In the end, approval of the March 1 minutes was tabled by the board until the next meeting.

The rest of the meeting moved quickly.

East Lansing couple Karen and Jerry Jennings spoke separately during public comment, both to thank the library trustees and administrators for their service and to offer their help in finding after-school solutions for students needing a place to go.

Eric Burling, the STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) educator, stood with other nonsupervisory workers of the library to offer their support of the subcommittee that is investigating the January incident.

Synk gave an update on that subcommittee, reporting on her research of survey tools to be used to explore what the community – especially youth – wants from the library in terms of services and programming.

Goddeeris’s five-year term expires in June and the board will look at applications submitted to the city to replace her. The board set the cut-off for applications at its next meeting on April 19.

Time prior to the minutes discussion was spent talking about the successful March 11 celebration of the East Lansing Public Library’s 100th anniversary, bringing 1,100 community members to the library, including descendants of the original founders. Stay tuned for an upcoming ELi story about the event, the history of the library and what’s in store for its future.

The trustees are  scheduled to meet next on Wednesday, April 19 at 4:45 p.m. at  the library.

Correction, 9:30 p.m. This article was corrected. It originally said nonsupervisory workers of the library offered their support of the leadership and the subcommittee, but the support stated was for the subcommittee only.