Recently Asked Questions

I work with a number of municipal public libraries - some are village, others are town. Some libraries use their municipality's employee handbooks, payroll, services like snow blowing and building maintenance, and have the municipalities cut the checks.

It would be helpful to have a clear understanding that the libraries are not a department of the municipality and that the board of trustees is in charge of the library, hiring staff, evaluating staff, approving expenses, and have complete control of the budget.

It would also be helpful if there was a sample MOU that spells out the division of responsibilities clearly.

A small, rural public library, we have public restrooms. In pre-pandemic times, our restrooms were not kept locked, and were cleaned once a day by our building's maintenance person.

Both restrooms are ADA-compliant and include a changing table. We have already installed motion sensors on the toilets and sink and replaced the hot air dryer with paper towels. Currently, our building is only open to staff and they wipe down touched surfaces with cleaner after use, and initial that they have done so on a bathroom cleaning log as required by our Safety Plan.

As we edge toward reopening to the public, we have many questions around these restrooms. Should we lock the restrooms and require the public to ask for a key? Should we lock the restrooms to the public entirely? Should we return to our pre-pandemic practice of completely open restrooms cleaned once a day? Should we require non-janitorial staff to clean the restrooms during open hours, and, if yes, how often, and do they require training on the products and methods required to clean a public restroom during a pandemic--and what kind of PPE does that require?

Any guidance on how to handle ostensibly public restrooms in an ostensibly public building is appreciated.

I work at a public library that is gradually reopening to the public. We employ quite a few librarians who trend older and have underlying health conditions. Many of these staff have been working remotely for the past few months, but not necessarily on tasks essential to their positions. As we begin to recall employees to the physical worksite, some are requesting to continue working from home, and/or for indefinite relief from working directly with the public, because of their vulnerability to Covid-19 complications.

While we are working to accommodate our employees, we also realize that working directly with the public is an essential part of being a *public librarian*. So how can we effectively accommodate public librarians who are asking to *not* work with the public?

We have done this during our work-from-home phase, when our Library was required to remain closed. But I don't believe that we can sustain this over the longer term. At some point, we may have to hire people to fill the in-person needs of the Library, and won't have enough "at-home" work for existing staff to do.

Thank you for your guidance.

Public and Association libraries have questions about making policies creating conditions that must be met for library staff to return to work. Can they set policies that exclude vulnerable employees from being able to return to work? Can they set policies requiring non-vulnerable employees to return to work?

[Note; the text of this question was edited to remove the precise dates of scheduled election and notice.]

Executive Order 202.13 states:

"Circulation, filing, and collection of any designating petitions, or independent nominating petitions for any office that would otherwise be circulated or filed pursuant to the Election Law, Education Law or any other consolidated law for any office commencing March 31, 2020 are hereby postponed.

Any school board, library board, or village election scheduled to take place in April or May of 2020 is hereby postponed until at least June 1, 2020, and subject to further directive as to the timing, location or manner of voting for such elections."

My question is: our legal notices had been published indicating an open trustee position and petition deadlines were due March XX (none were filed) and the budget vote is April XX. The question is do we have to do a legal notice that the vote is postponed and do new legal notices once we have a date? At the same time can we reopen the opportunity for people to file a petition to run for the board?