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Board watches ALA trustee-training videos and considers making president the board spokesperson
Summary
The board viewed two American Library Association 'Short Takes for Trustees' videos on trustee roles and running effective meetings; afterward the director proposed adding a bylaw that designates the board president as the official spokesperson for media inquiries.
Trustees watched two short ALA videos during the meeting addressing trustee responsibilities and meeting management. The first featured Deborah Doyle and Will Shorter discussing fiduciary duty and community partnerships; the second featured Deborah Doyle and Dara Schmidt covering open-meetings law, Robert's Rules and the role of the board president.
After the videos the director raised the idea of including an explicit rule that the board president is the designated spokesperson for media questions and offered to draft language for the bylaws. In the ALA clip, Dara Schmidt explained the chair's role: "The board president is the chair of the meeting oftentimes, and so they're leading the meeting, but they don't have any more authority or weight than any other member sitting on that board." The board agreed to consider codifying spokesperson responsibilities and asked the director to bring a proposed amendment to the bylaws at a future meeting.
