AGENDA #4k
MEMORANDUM
TO: Mayor and Town Council
FROM: W. Calvin Horton, Town Manager
SUBJECT: Budget Amendment for Library to Reflect Orange County Appropriation
DATE: November 26, 2001
The attached budget ordinance would amend the current library operating budget to include an additional $7,262 to purchase book stops for shelving. The increase would be funded from additional library support from Orange County for fiscal year 2001-2002.
Book stops are metal strips which are affixed to the back of individual book shelves. Book stops were included in the original shelving installation in 1994, but only in the children’s area. Costs associated with this purchase and installation are not included in the library’s current budget.
Book stops prevent materials from dropping between shelves placed back-to-back. They also eliminate the opportunity for injuries, especially to infants and small children, by preventing shelved materials from pushing other materials being pushed off the shelf from the opposite side of a double-sided shelf.
Safety: Over the past year, safety reviews of the facility have generated requests for installation of book stops on Reference, folio (i.e. big books), adult fiction and non-fiction shelves. These requests were based on incidents when hardcover books fell as a result of a staff member or patron shoving a book into place and displacing a book on the opposite shelf. No one has been injured to date.
In consideration of this safety issue, the library planning consultant also included a recommendation of a 2001-02 installation of book stops in her Five Year Services Plan.
Cost: Based on a bid from shelving manufacturer Marcos King, we estimate that it will cost $7,550 to install support braces on the remaining library shelves.
The Orange County Board of Commissioners approved a $7,262 increase in library support in Chapel Hill for 2001-2002, from $242,071 to $249,333. We believe that this increased support will be on going. This additional revenue was not anticipated in the library budget approved by the Council earlier in June. Past increases in Orange County library support have been used to purchase collection materials and Internet equipment for patron use.
We recommend using the additional Orange County revenue ($7,262) in this fiscal year to install book stops to the remaining shelves in the library. The additional $288 would be paid from the existing library budget.
At its November 19 meeting, the Library Board unanimously recommended that the additional library support from Orange County be used to purchase and install support braces this year.
That the Town Council adopt the attached budget ordinance allocating $7,262 in additional Orange County library support to purchase and install support braces.
AN ORDINANCE TO AMEND “THE ORDINANCE CONCERNING APPROPRIATIONS AND THE RAISING OF REVENUE FOR THE FISCAL YEAR BEGINNING JULY 1, 2001” (2001-11-26/O-3)
BE IT ORDAINED by the Council of the Town of Chapel Hill that the Budget Ordinance entitled “An Ordinance Concerning Appropriations and the Raising of Revenue for the Fiscal Year Beginning July 1, 2001” as duly adopted on June 25, 2001, be and the same is hereby amended as follows:
ARTICLE I
Current Revised
APPROPRIATIONS Budget Increase Decrease Budget
GENERAL FUND
Library 1,895,639 7,262 1,902,901
Current Revised
REVENUES Budget Increase Decrease Budget
GENERAL FUND
Grants 658,817 7,262 666,079
This the 26th day of November, 2001.