Sage Council Meeting
Meeting Summary for Sage User Council
January 20, 2026
Recording Link: https://vimeo.com/1156610339
Attendees: Beth Longwell (Sage), Dea Nowell (UCSLD, Chair), Jon Georg (Sage), Perry Stokes (Baker), Rachael Fox (Hood River), Susan Lewis (CGCC), Carrie Bushman (Cook Memorial), Kristin Williams (BMCC), Mark Rose (Hermiston), Amy Bendtsen (Arlington)
Request for agenda items:
Dea added the bylaws under old business since they need to be discussed as a part of the representative distribution in addition to the survey regarding member satisfaction over apportionment.
Quorum
There was a discussion about whether a quorum was 5 or 6 council members. There are currently 9 filled seats out of 10. Consensus was that 5 would suffice for quorum, as it did not appear to be explicitly stated in the bylaws.
Minutes – Verification that July and September’s minutes had been approved over email. The minutes for November were ready for approval and sent out last week. Perry moved to have the minutes accepted and Carrie seconded it.
Committee Reports
The Cataloging Workgroup met on December 2nd. That meeting was focused on cataloging reports. It went well and there is a recording of it on the web site.
Beth is working on getting the circulation workgroup meeting again. The next meeting will most likely be next month.
Systems Update
Automatic Renewals
Dea asked if the automatic renewal issue had been resolved. Beth explained that Equinox had fixed the issue. It was related to a cronjob issue on one of the servers. The fix also fixed the issue with Jon having to manually run the print notices every day.
MessageBee
Equinox is continuing to make progress with getting MessageBee configured. They had to configure a key to allow data to transfer to Unique [the company that runs MessageBee]. Beth is hopeful that we’ll be able to launch MessageBee soon.
Anubis
We had delayed installation of Anubis to see if the Evergreen patch that Equinox installed was going to be adequate to handle AI traffic or not. The patch helped to significantly slow AI traffics impact on the servers, but overall traffic is slowly increasing, and we’ve had several instances of instability over the last couple weeks where Jon had to restart services. Beth is going to have Equinox install Anubis.
Browser Issues
Jon briefly mentioned how the process to restart services had changed, and that it has caused there to be less browser issues for patrons and staff. Carrie asked for clarification about that process, if it was something handled on the servers or by staff. Jon clarified that it is in regard to the process with how services are restarted on the application servers. He also mentioned that he’d updated the browser reset instructions on the staff portion of the web site, and that he’s willing to assist staff with any browser issues they’re still experiencing.
Budget Committee
The budget committee met Friday for an impromptu meeting. The committee is comprised of Perry Stokes, Beth Longwell, Dea Nowell, Carrie Bushman, and Heather Estrada.
Perry presented a draft overview of the proposed budget. He started the presentation with a narrative document showing the key trends. That included an estimated three percent cost of living increase- the estimate was missing two months of data due to the government shutdown. This will allow there to be authorization to go up to that three percent rate if that continues to be the rate when the budget is adopted.
We’re continuing to keep certain benefits included, like healthcare, so that they’re budgeted in, in case either Beth or Jon needs to be replaced. Those rates are based off of a two year cycle. Healthcare costs appear to be showing an increase of seven percent for insurance rates.
The rest of the budget is pretty much the same as last year as this is a maintenance budget not an expansion one.
We’re also in phase 3 of the roll-out of the reformed fee schedule. Trying to get some of the school libraries up to the same per capita rate as the academic libraries isn’t feasible, so instead we’ll be matching them to some of the other public libraries. The take away is that the budget is consistent with our historical practice, and should keep us stable and sustainable.
For anyone who hasn’t seen the budget before, the information on the left is historical. The darker purple column is the approved budget. Next to that is the actual expenses, and the lighter purple column is the supplemental budget, which will be approved later to adjust the lines that were either over or under budget.
There is a larger reserve than originally projected by about $10,000. Beth, Christine and Jon’s position have a three percent cost of living adjustment added to them. The health insurance estimate for Beth’s position ended up being overestimated so that number has been decreased.
The technology lines need to be updated, as they are partially broken out into separate line items. Beth will work with Christine to get that cleaned up. Technology costs are higher than the prior year because it did not include things like MessageBee and Streamline. They also include services such as the EOU lease for hosting the servers, Evergreen support vendor costs, ContentCafe subscription for record images [replaced by LibraryOne], updates to the SageApp, and the GoDaddy web hosting fee which should go away once MessageBee is working.
The Courier costs were under the projected budget amount, so that number has been dropped by $5,000 for the proposed budget.
The capital outlay will remain set to $15,000 and the operating contingency budget will stay set to $30,000. [It was noted one would be increased by $3,000 but I’m not sure which.]
Collected dues will be slightly lower than the $314k we want to collect, but since health insurance costs for Beth won’t be spent, adding that amount back into the pool of resources gets us to within $5,000 of the expected amount so reserves should be fine.
Adjustments and refinements are still pending.
Fee Schedule
Sage Reformed Member Fee Schedule (see Phase 3/4)
The right side of the worksheet shows the phased years. We started 2024-2025 as phase one, current year is phase two, and next year will be phase 3 of the 4 [or 5 if needed] year roll-out of the new fee schedule.
In order to get everyone to the $1 per capita rate, which seems to be the fairest method for charging members, there will be some members who have a reduction in rates and some members who will see an increase in rates.
Review of representative apportionment among classifications
The results of the member survey were fairly consistent with most members being happy with how apportionment is currently handled. There was a suggestion that we add council alternates so that we can more easily establish quorum. We will look into that.
The council still needs to look at how to handle circulating schools and resource sharing/special library institutions. Kolle had previously confirmed how difficult it is for resource sharing/special library institutions to participate on the council due to limited hours and staff availability. Circulating schools appear to be in the same position.
Bylaws
Since it looks like adjustments need to be made to the bylaws to accommodate the above changes regarding representative apportionment, those changes need to be ready for presentation at the March meeting so they can be voted on in the May membership meeting.
Dea asked for volunteers to assist with the bylaw special committee. Dea, Beth, Jon and Kristin all volunteered to assist. The committee is open to non-council members so any other interested parties should contact Dea directly.
The next council meeting is March 17th, so the bylaw committee has a tight window to get this completed, however there shouldn’t be a lot of revisions that need to take place.
Items to stay on the agenda
Review of representative apportionment among classifications needs to remain on the agenda since the process is still ongoing and will likely get folded into the bylaws discussion.
Making the Courier self-sustaining will be tabled and kept on the agenda. Wendy Cornelisen had posted some additional information regarding IMLS funding for next year.
Server replacement is being postponed until next meeting again. Beth will be reaching out to Equinox to get their recommendation for server capacity. Jon mentioned that hopefully prices will start to drop by the time we need to order new hardware, as RAM prices have gone up substantially due to AI growth.
The strategic planning process hasn’t been completed for several years, so we will want to go through that process. The consensus was that this will likely need to be pursued in the next fiscal year, as Mark pointed out that we can work with the State Library but we’ll need to check with Darci to see if Sage qualifies for any assistance with getting that accomplished. It needs pushed out because there are a lot of prerequisites that need to be handled first, and we already have a lot on our collective plates.
Dea said that she was willing to entertain a motion to adjourn. Perry motioned to adjourn the meeting, and Kristen seconded it.
Meeting adjourned at 10:59 am Pacific Time.
Next Meeting will be March 17th