CLN: No Sunday closures

PINEHURST — It's official: No libraries in the Community Library Network will close Sundays.

"If the CLN board of trustees did in fact have a valid approval vote of closing on Sundays, it is now rescinded," Chair Rachelle Ottosen said Thursday morning in a motion during a regular meeting of the board at the Pinehurst Library.

The motion was unanimously approved by trustees.

Trustees previously considered and voted on closures for the library network's branches that open Sundays — Post Falls and Hayden — to save money. Ottosen initially cited religious reasons for doing so. The board majority — Ottosen and trustees Tim Plass and Tom Hanley — approved the closures at a past meeting after Ottosen made the motion. Budgetary issues no longer support the closures, Ottosen said.

"We made a motion, I think it was actually the motion that was seconded on an amendment to it, then we finished that and before we did the actual motion or voted on it, we tabled it," Plass said. "Looking back at videos, it's a little bit confusing, but all we're doing is just ending it. If there was a motion made and it was tabled, we're ending it, and I totally support that."

Also during the meeting, trustees directed Library Director Alexa Eccles to work with the board's counsel, Colton Boyles of Boyles Law Firm, to file an appeal with the library network's insurer, the Idaho Counties Risk Management Program, known as ICRMP, by Oct. 1.

The board received a letter dated Aug. 18 from ICRMP informing trustees of changes to the network's policy, and gave them until Oct. 1 to appeal the changes.

In the letter obtained by this newspaper via a public records request, ICRMP detailed the following changes to the network's policy:

• Total removal of employment practices liability

• Reduced from $3 million to $500,000: Auto liability; general liability; law enforcement liability; errors and omissions liability; employee benefits liability; and sexual molestation/sexual abuse liability

• Annual aggregate liability indemnification limit for all covered claims reduced from $5 million to $2 million

"The (ICRMP) Board of Trustees' decision to implement these changes is the result of increasing risk exposures," wrote ICRMP Executive Director Timothy L. Osborne.

The Community Library Network board will hold a special meeting at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday to discuss this further.

Insurance policies and quote comparisons will also be discussed at the special meeting as board members weigh options for providers.

"I would suggest that we have minimally one, if not two, other quotes from other insurance companies besides ICRMP because there's no guarantee we're going to work things out with our appeal letter, and even if we do, we may want to look at pricing or what other insurance carriers have to offer," Hanley said.

Redman Insurance was consistently brought up as an option by the board majority, although Eccles said she was told by an agent at the company that it will not be able to provide a full quote by the Oct. 1 deadline. Quotes from Marsh McLennan, formerly PayneWest Insurance, will also be presented.

"It just doesn't make sense to not contact Redman Insurance if they are reportedly, if they're competitive with ICRMP," Ottosen said. "We were being told that other insurance might cost us two or four times what ICRMP costs. It only makes sense that we ought to contact them, so that's at least three."

Trustee Katie Blank said the heavy endorsement for Redman Insurance seemed like a conflict of interest. The Coeur d'Alene agency is owned by Jordan Redman, a Republican legislator serving in the Idaho House of Representatives.

Plass moved to add any additional insurance quotes from Redman and PayneWest to be provided for review at the special meeting. Trustees unanimously voted in favor.

Trustees also voted to approve a draft resolution presented by Hanley for the Community Library Network to disassociate with the American Library Association. The board majority voted in favor while Trustee Katie Blank voted no, citing concerns about censorship, and Trustee Vanessa Robinson abstained because the language was not clear to her. Boyles will review the draft to be brought back to the board at a meeting in the near future.

Info: communitylibrary.net