September 2025 Minutes

APLE General Membership Meeting

 September 5, 2025, 6:30 p.m.

       Reynolds Corners | Zoom Link 

Agenda

1. Officer Roll Call

• Teresa Alvarado

• Steve Nichols

• Carlye Seybold

• Sally Sherman-Weckerlin

• Amy Hartman

• David Lutz

• Juliette Hebert

• Morgan Rinckey

• Renee Sarra

Call to order: 6:35pm

2. Officer Reports

   1. Chairs

   2. Treasurer–$187.78

      1. Reimbursements will now go to sansasnider@gmail.com, TAAP secretary ; checks will be mailed to the person's home. 

   3. Trustees/Negotiators–CWA has started their negotiations.

3. Old Business 

   1. Safety

      1. Jeff Sabo’s position has been eliminated and been combined with Ryan Snodgrass’

         1. Now looking for Manager of Environmental, Health, Safety, & Security 

      2. Security company changed from Continental  to Allied

      3. Britney, the number two in charge of security, quit or went back to Continental, guards in limbo, Continental has informed them there are no openings 

      4. More guards are absent this week, at times only one at Main.

      5. Do TPD walk around downtown?

         1. Could they do a walkthrough of Main between the transition of Continental and Allied?

      6. Every time they rotate guards in branches there is an uptick in issues as patrons get used to the new guard. 

      7. Allied is starting Oct. 1 ; Continental was told Sept. 30th is their last day.

      8. Bring any security concerns to Steve and Teresa. 

4. Budget

   1. Reductions announcement & Part-time II offer

      1. APLE officers were not informed ahead of time of any of these announcements. 

      2. APLE Chairs and Emilio talked to our lawyer about violations of the contract.

      3. APLE filed a grievance with HR about negotiating PT II offers without going through APLE and lack of communication with the union. 

      4. APLE did have a grievance meeting with HR.

         1. There was some acknowledgement that there were flaws in the announcement.

         2. HR said they were not the only ones to make the decision to announce it that way.

         3. Members acknowledged it makes it harder to trust them.

         4. We ask that in the future they meet with us first before any announcements like this. 

         5. HR has to go through APLE to work with employees who want to be PTII.

         6. 4 employees expressed interest in this. 

      5. We also asked for a financial meeting with Mike G. for more specific numbers for the budget. 

      6. We still need to cut $2.8 million.

         1. We’ve been given several different numbers over the past few months. 

      7. Who is held accountable for this deficit?

      8. When they say $2.1 million needs to come from staff, does this mean union staff and exempt or just union staff?

      9. Are they changing staff at branches that are not cutting hours? 

      10. The library has not given us concrete numbers yet on any staff reductions. 

      11. ELT did not want to do furloughs as a cost saving measure.  

      12. 63% of the budget is personnel.

      13. Have we gotten an itemized list of reductions?

      14. Are the attendance and IT lines worth it?

      15. 30 year capital bond

          1. This is for brick and mortar. 

          2. Can we go back to the voters to amend the bond?

      16. Jason said we can ask the Foundation for funds, would that be worth it as a short-term fix?

      17. Can it be brought up in negotiations how over the last 10 years that there has been a big increase in exempt staff and we did fine before with a smaller ratio of exempt staff?

      18. HR has to negotiate the process of the layoff process. 

          1. Back in 2009, the union got together to work toward a common goal to make sure no one lost their jobs.

          2. Can we talk to ELT to make them aware of how we did things back in 2009?

   2. Discussion of Article 16 

      1. This covers the layoff process.

      2. There is a lot we don’t know still.

      3. They come up with staff compliment at each branch with hours being cut.

      4. If someone was laid off, they then bump into another position.

      5. HR will give us options for cost saving and we would get together to vote on them.

      6. Furlough means taking unpaid leave. If everyone took one hour a week off, we would save $500,000.

5. Open Floor

   1. APLE members have been having conversations with managers about attitude issues.

   2. If you have a talk with your manager, please tell Teresa and Steve.

6. Adjourn: 8:20 pm