Happy New Year to you all! I hope we all have a much better 2022. We are hanging in there at PMPL, and every week we get a little busier than the week before. When the Covid restrictions started after we came back to service in June 2020 (!), we had to take our existing staff situation and make it work. We already were down 2 full time staff and at least 2 part time staff, but we took the remaining staff and stretched their full time work hours all across the week to try and get as many public service hours as possible without going into an unsustainable over-time situation. The schedule got pretty wacky and we tried to keep things up for the public. But the situation has got a little out of hand because we are busier as patrons keep coming back, so we need to make sure we have a concentration of staff - at least 4 all the time - to give the patrons the service they require. So, we are going back to a flip-flop schedule similar to what we did in 2017 through closure in March 2020. We have a matching 4.5 hour Wednesday and Saturday so it's much eaiser to schedule staff. We are not going to be open in the mornings on Wednesday until we get more staff. We do regret this. But we're going to add an additional 30 minutes to Saturday and also make sure we have enough staff at the end of the day to serve patrons who are rushing in late to pick up their books and printing. We will be closed for those two morning hours on Wednesday until we can get some more staff, hopefully this spring as our annual funding starts to come in. We really appreciate everyone's cooperation as we manage our way to a new normal!
