Unofficial Meeting Minutes

A four hour meeting with various custodial, security, and administrative staff for the public library. A conversation that was surprisingly funny. I joked to R. we should disseminate all the jokes and nothing serious to see if the attendees even read the minutes..

Attendees:

P. the head of capital management projects at nyc libraries. Looks and acts like ray romano. Oversees 36 building projects in queens

R. - country boy architect from west texas

Me - slacker architect 1/2 paying attention

B. - DDC bureaucrat

T. - facilities manager for libraries. Oversees maintenance of 63 libraries 

First point of discussion - solar panels

By city ordinance, for any roof greater than 230 sf solar panels must be used. We put them into our roof, and now we were asked how do we use them. Do we attach them to inverters to convert DC power to AC (alternating current) to power the lighting in the building, or do we tie our power system back to the energy supplier, or do we store energy in batteries. Where do we place the batteries and inverters? Inside or outside? If outside does can it be replaced easily? If inside does it need to be in a fire protected room? If so, how big does the room have to be? This item on the agenda led to many questions.

Second item on the agenda - indoor planting. Who takes care of the plants? Do the plants grow in pots so they stay the same size and need less maintenance? How many species do we grow? Do we need biodiversity in our planters should certain species fail? We don’t want too much biodiversity because it’s hard to tailor 1 management plan to numerous species.  It’s a problem to put benches in the planters cause kids will jump on the plants. Do we put railings around the planters? If so the railings can’t have holes more than 1” wide for kids to stick their fingers into. Do we put backs on the seats? Do we put glass guardrails around the plantings? To avoid making a terrarium, The final resolution was to raise the planting beds so kids don’t climb on them.

At this point R. made a dark joke “why don’t we just put electric cattle collars around the kids necks so they get zapped if they go into the planters. We can use our solar panels to supply the electricity.” Everyone laughed. 

Third agenda item was zinc roofing panels. By the ocean, aluminum panels will pit and deteriorate fast. Zinc panels will last 100 years before replacement is necessary. The warrantee for zinc is 50 years. At this point the table got serious. All of us at the table would be outlived by the roofing material on the library. P. said, “this is depressing. I first started thinking about mortality when I had my first kid at 39... I wake up at night thinking about this. It sucks to die” B. said “at least you will have grandchildren to enjoy the roof... when will your oldest son have kids?” P. replied “the way my younger 17 year old son is acting I could have grandkids soon” R. said “I had my kid in my 50s... mortality struck me when my dad died. Back In west texas my mom said to me remember so and so? They have 17 great grand kids. Down south it’s easy to pump out kids”

Fourth item was door hardware. What kind of locks go on each set of doors. It’s a pretty dry conversation. This door gets a lock... this door gets card access... this door has a panic bar for egress... when we got to bathrooms, they wanted a knob that indicated occupied or unoccupied like a plane door. At this point someone quipped “we should have it in 10 languages... how do you say the bathroom is occupied in west texas?” asked R.  R responded in a slow southern drawl “I’m in here” .. then mused they would probably say something more like “I got a gun” then recounted going to a grocery store in west texas where moms hold guns on their belts since it is allowed. Curiously churches tell you to leave guns outside the house of worship. 

Fifth item on the agenda was security. You know the library is in a really bad neighborhood and people will break through glass to get in so we need to have some glass break intrusion monitors in these areas people shoot guns BB guns to crack the windows at this point R interjected “ I remember when I was a comb and we stayed at the top of the road when we shot the BB gun straight up into the air and we will see if we can hit the top of the roof down the street the one time we hit a window and we all got in trouble.”

Final agenda item was interior finishes. somehow We ended up talking about an artist  installation at another city library where there was a ceiling track with motto and provocative words that were motorized and moved around the room saying “what is Art” Custodian said that was a wacky stupid installation. sometimes you think what is that art? then we talked about banksy and exit through the gift shop and I brought up the origin of Banksy and the  Zabar’s  tag and then the art Basel banana that was duct taped to the wall and sold for $120,000 and the two bananas taped to a wall in Williamsburg we passed this weekend that were made as a joke on a subway station wall.