- order of Monroe County Public Library Board of Trustees meeting for July 16th 2025. I'd like to welcome our new member Jennifer. If we could go around and introduce ourselves and if you'd like to share something you're reading you may. Jennifer would you start? Just tell us your name and if you want to share the book you're reading. Sure. Hi I'm Jennifer Whitley and I actually just
- finished a book. I just finished Malinche by Lara Esquivel. She's one of my favorite authors. So happy to be here. Whitney Eads. And right now I'm reading Squire. So it's a graphic novel. And I teach out of middle school here in town. So this is what I am reading over the summer. And then I'll have a group of students at the beginning of the school year so we can get together and talk about it.
- I'm Kathy Loser, and I just picked up the graphic novel, Spent. Jamie Burkhart, I just finished The Librarian of Auschwitz, and I hope to move on to One of Us is Lying. I'm Greg Carson. I'm reading lectures by John Cage, and we are playing Cyberpunk 2077 on the PS5 because it's finally available on the PlayStation Network. I'm Amy O'Shaughnessy, and I'm reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.
- Chris Hall and I finished the west with the giraffes and I am into the great circle now. Nancy Van Allen and on my way home I should be finishing the audio book Rebecca the very exciting ending I hope so we'll see. Thanks for sharing everyone. We're going to move on to the approval of the consent agenda which includes the minutes from June 18th.
- Minutes from June 26th special board meeting, the monthly financial report, monthly bills for payment, personnel report, and the board meeting calendar. Can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda? Second. Any questions or comments before we vote? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any nays? Ayes have it. And we'll move on to the director's monthly report with Greer.
- Okay, I will start by once again emphasizing how strong our overall collection numbers are this year. June is the height of summer reading, so we expect to see an increase in checkouts. Physical collection use typically goes up during this time, and this year is no exception.
- And while digital collection use dipped slightly from May to June, total digital collection use from June 2025 is significantly higher than it was for June 2024. The big story for MCPL collection use is the growing popularity of our digital collections over the past 18 months.
- You can see steady year over year increases in digital use going back to 2022 with a significant jump beginning last June and July, all of which to say our collection development work, our readers advisory and patron reference work, our collection shelving and maintenance work, and of course our marketing and communications work about our collections is all meeting our community's needs and continuing to grow and evolve in very positive ways. So we're very excited to keep seeing this trend.
- There are a few notes in the director's report on some recent role-playing game work that's being done in teen services.
- As a library, we have a strong background in hosting RPGs of various types for patrons. In recent years, our teen services teams have not only hosted these games, but have also facilitated the conception, creation, and execution of original patron RPGs. To see some outstanding examples of these, I recommend watching the CATS recording of last year's annual Friends of the Library meeting, which featured three teen patrons presenting on their own role-playing game creations.
- Our Ellisville branch hosted a plant extravaganza on June 28th, planting green peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers in our Ellisville garden. There was also a rock painting program, which yielded some colorful additions to our garden, and a plant swap program, including on-the-spot plant identification and care information. We had close to 100 patrons attend these combined programs.
- And one note, we did have a reporting error on last month's door count, which is usually the first data point you see in the director's report. So that's been omitted this month. What we'll do is add the June door count numbers to the August director's report alongside the July, just so we can keep that reporting consistent. But that's why that's not in there this time around. So happy to answer any questions about the director's report.
- I'm just curious about the Southwest Branch Living Plant. Do they take a plant home? I'm not sure. Josh, do you know details on that one? Living Plant Library. Living Plant Library. I can share as a patron and mother. My daughter, over the summer, picked up two plants and was super excited. So they did. They had like little cuts. Yeah.
- Yeah. Yeah. Becky Kraft, the adult services librarian, has spearheaded that. It is kind of an experiment. Seed Library has been very successful for quite a while. They did that plant swap you mentioned at Ellertsville. There were quite a bit of leftovers that Stacey Terhune, the adult librarian at Ellertsville, brought over and added to that. We don't have to return them, right? No. I'd hate to fight somebody off on that one. Yeah. No, no, it's a keeper.
- And she went, she bought her own pot. She like decorated her pot at home and yeah, she was very excited about it. So thank you. Any other questions or comments before we move on? Congratulations. It's great to see circulation numbers up and yeah, all the ways the library is responding to the needs of the community. It's great. It's very exciting. I think our benchmark has always been, you know, basically March 2020.
- And you can see that drop off in physical collections and it's been a steady return to those numbers, not quite to the same physical use numbers, but that digital collection use just really took off. And we've cultivated that by increasing access, allowing more downloads per week or month in the case of Hoopla, but to see it continue to grow and really spike like it has over the last 18 months has been great.
- This is maybe a question for another part of the meeting, but I have seen some other libraries in Indiana talk about the upcoming budget reductions needing to lead to them reducing the number of checkouts and access that patrons have to digital collections. I think it was in Indiana, but maybe it could have been elsewhere. Is that something that MCPL is anticipating needing to do with?
- constructing budgets in the future? We are not at the moment. We can't really say what's going to happen after the next three years because we don't have projected numbers. But at present, we're expecting to maintain our collection budget, or at least the percentage of the operating budget spent on collections, which is a heavy investment in digital collections and access.
- We will probably continue the modest shift from funding physical to more digital as we move forward, but not necessarily in response to any budgetary constraints. That's part of our long-term strategy. Things can change. If there's another budget hit to public libraries like we're going to start to see next year, we may have to go back to the collection budget and reassess, but right now we're not planning to have to change access at all. Yeah, good question.
- right into our next discussion. Yes, indeed. Okay, so under old business, we're continuing the discussion of the impact of SB1 on MCPL's budget and the strategy that we've adopted for absorbing that impact. I'll do sort of a quick refresher. In January, we first heard about
- what SB1 was about and how it may have an impact on revenue, particularly by way of property taxes and local income taxes. But we didn't know how severe it would be. By late March, early April, we understood what the final bill was going to look like and that that impact was going to be $358,000 less in property tax revenue
- for 2026, and then it gets incrementally larger over the following two years by about 20,000 or so each successive year. And so we know what that reduction in growth is going to be. The question has always been, how are we going to absorb it? Our initial conversations were to look at every option, which includes overall compensation, wage rates and structure, benefits for staff,
- whether or not closing one of our branches including the downtown library for a full day would help absorb these costs, the collection budget itself, and variations on those things and some smaller ticket items. But our guiding principle has been whatever strategy we adopt, we want to minimize the impact on the public first and foremost, and we want to minimize the impact on staff however we can.
- What we realized in looking at our turnover rates and our employment rates in general is that
- we could reduce total number of staff on payroll by the equivalent of five full-time employees over a two-year period without doing anything like layoffs because our attrition rate was such that we could rely comfortably on losing people voluntarily over a 24-month period and absorbing that reduction. And so that's what we've committed to doing.
- The trick is, of course, how do you do that? You can't predict when people are going to go and whether or not you're going to make that goal. But that is the strategy that we have adopted. So we shared last month that we're already starting that process. We're going to provide you all, and of course staff, an official update on how much progress we've made probably in August, possibly September.
- A component or sort of a paired piece to that reduction is the proposal to go ahead and close this library, the downtown library, at 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday rather than 9 p.m., which is what we've had for a long time.
- And the reason that's an important part of this is if we're going to reduce by five full-time employees or the equivalent of full-time employees over two years, we're going to have a reduction in staff providing services both at the desk and out in the community and so on. And so reducing hours at the downtown library allows us to shift people's schedules and have fewer people on the desk where needed.
- There's also data that we've looked at and we included it in the packet in June and again this month that shows that the actual door count at the downtown library after 7 p.m., the computer use, the room reservation, and the program attendance, which are all the really big pieces we look at in terms of engaging with the library on site, are pretty minimal. And it's been that way for a while. So the timing of this we think is appropriate.
- And the only caveat that we've kind of reiterated is that we never really want to reduce hours. That's not a positive thing. But if we're looking to make this transition to five fewer FTEs and we look at the data suggesting when and how people are using the library, closing at 7 p.m. at the downtown library Monday through Thursday, not only makes sense, but it would allow us to align our operating hours across all three locations consistently every day of the week.
- because the branches are closing at 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday as well. And then Friday, Saturday, Sunday hours are already consistent. So that's a benefit for patrons because it's just easier to remember.
- So that is the proposal that we want to continue to discuss. We had a brief conversation about it at the June meeting. I know a lot of people weren't able to attend. Jennifer, you weren't with us yet at the time. So we can kind of go through all those points again. The information is out there as far as that meeting is concerned. We have also given our programming librarians kind of the green light to share with some of their regular attendees, hey, we're thinking of doing this. What do you think? What would be the impact?
- To date, we don't really have any public feedback on this. So our ears are open. We look at patron comments every single day. But we don't have anything yet that says, wait, you're totally forgetting some aspect of library operations post 7 o'clock Monday through Thursday. We'd like to continue that discussion tonight and hold off on making a decision about that until the August 20th board meeting. And that would also include deciding when
- we would want to make those hours changes, either November 1st or December 1st or January 1st. And there are pros and cons to all of those things. So before we open it back up, I was going to ask Josh Wolf to come to the podium and talk a little bit about some of the data that's in the packet specific to program attendance, room reservation, computer use, and so on. Thank you. I think if you look on either page 85 or 86,
- The pagination is always a little off, but I think it's 85 is where it begins. To Grier's point, it starts out with some door count data, average daily visits. If you look for the day, for instance, in 2025 so far, this goes back to pre-pandemic numbers, which is interesting, too, because you can kind of see sort of the curve of that.
- and the build back up of visits to the library. But if you look at 2025 average for the day, you've got around 1100, 1200 average visitors per day, Monday through Thursday. And then if you just slice out seven to nine average, it drops well below the proportion of those of our open hours, 117, between 117 and 142. So it's not nobody.
- But it is quite a reduction. Below that, you see PC usage. These are sessions that people log into our public computers per day average in 2024 and 2020. Yes, please. Yes. No, that's a great question. No, it's just downtown and it's just the whole day and then those hours downtown, right? Yeah.
- We actually had to work through that. And I think somebody might have run the report that way mistakenly the first time. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah. Per day average for PC usage, 2024 to 95 sessions a day, 270 a day average in 2025. And then it's just a couple dozen between seven and nine.
- Interesting to note about the PC usage summary, those are not necessarily discrete patrons. Many of our patrons come here, they stay, they log in, they get off, they get back on. We have people who spend a lot of time here in the library. So that's probably more sessions than it is actual people in both cases. And then you go to the program data. We've got 2024.
- You've got a full number of programs offered, and then the number of programs after seven. So for adult services, it was 450 programs, 33 after seven, and then 207 over that period of a little over half a year. But the programs actually averaged about eight participants a program, so not huge. The numbers get inflated a little bit because a few of them have larger
- Like they'll do a big after hours program or a dance or something and you'll get a lot of people, which we plan to continue doing a couple times a year. After hours programs are very special and important, particularly for teen audiences and children's do it as well.
- And I think adult may do that some. So if you look through that 2024 and 2025, our average numbers are from the high single digits to the very low double digits as far as attendance goes. And then, and I know this is a lot, so bear with me. Reservable spaces, if you go to meeting rooms,
- Seven to nine reservations percentages, average percentages in 2024. It goes sort of between from 6% to the low teens. There's one spike I think in July is like 19. Reservations of the meeting rooms in 2025, it's sort of the same. Eight to 14% is seven to nine.
- Study rooms even lower from seven to nine, mostly in the single digits, and the lowest being level up. I should make a distinction here, too. It was a whole other set of charts. Those numbers, those seven to nine numbers go up a little bit if you count meeting room and study room reservations that begin before seven and go to like 715 or 730 or something like that. Those numbers are going to be a little higher.
- that's something to take note of. And so those are kind of the numbers we looked at. The other question I think we went over about this before I turn it over to you guys is if we are not, we're not cutting, if people who are currently scheduled till 9 p.m., we're not cutting their hours off or paying them less or shortening their
- how are we, what benefit are we getting from this and how will this benefit us with a five FTE reduction? And the answer to that is how we schedule, we schedule a day shift currently from like 8.30 to five and then an evening shift from 12.30 to nine. So our optimal staffing hours are from 12.30 to five and that's when we do a lot of our big programs or big project work or collaborative work or anything like that.
- But whenever there's a shortage, whether we have an illness or somebody's on vacation, we basically have a half day to cover on both ends of that, of open hours, of desk time that we have to cover, nine to one or five to nine. So by reducing this, you really only have two hours of that overlap on either side. You can staff more thinly. You can cover gaps that emerge much more easily. People can stay and flex their hours, because it's only two.
- And we have a lot of experience with how that works because that's how the branches are and have been for some time. So we're hoping to leverage that through this closure. And finally, the other thing Greer said about having consistency across branches is certainly something we've discussed for a long time. It's very difficult for our patrons to remember the differing hours that go on. I keep saying, this is the last thing I'm gonna say.
- Bookmobile outreach services are not part of this proposed change. Those services are so heavily weighted to the evening that they would, we would really be impacting a ton of their patrons. So we've already discussed that. They weren't part of the formulas that we worked with. That's the same offsite programs that we do outside of the building that are outside of those hours will not be affected, whether it's school visits, open house nights, all those sort of things that we do with IU or the books on tap. So that won't be impacted either.
- or cats. Thank you. Thank you. Can I just make sure and restate a part of what you just said to make sure I understand it? Sure, sure. So the staff numbers will be the same unless people move on or whatever. But the ones who are on staff, they won't have their hours cut. It's just there will be more of a longer overlap time.
- getting your work done at your desk or different tasks you would have done anyway without dealing with patrons or helping patrons, that's not, that's how that's happening then is you're getting your work done anyway, it's just patrons will be in the building a couple fewer hours. Well, they won't be staying on staff or at work until nine. That's a great question. Let me see if I can make that a little clearer. Like there'll be like five people in this area working
- an extra couple of hours as opposed to there used to be less of an overlap time. Is that making sense? There used to be three, but now the five who work there who would have only overlapped a couple of hours, maybe they're going to overlap four hours now. Am I visualizing that right? They'll still overlap for the four hours in the middle, but when the early shift leaves,
- and there's a smaller shift here for the evening and we have fewer people to cover that smaller shift, they can kind of hold the fort down for only two hours. So if I am in a situation, we've actually been having conversations about this even for before this time, if we have two staff members and they're covering two different service points,
- or one covering two different service points and they have to rove, it's easier, they don't have to do it for a whole day. Or if you have to call somebody in, you don't have to put them on the clock for a whole half day. They could do two hours and then maybe they could just scrape those two hours off later in the week. So the overlap time between the two shifts is still the same, but the time before and after that overlap is shorter.
- because it's only two hours instead of four. So yeah, that's a great question and a great distinction. Is there a certain time that the second shift starts typically so they won't be coming in earlier? No, they'll be working 11 to 7 instead of 12, 30 to 9. So actually, the overlap time does get longer, doesn't it?
- That's what you were saying. Or I didn't know if you were going to be creative. And well, I didn't hear what you said for sure about if you're here two hours. There is. And that's definitely like a side benefit. There will be more overlap time in that part. But the bigger benefit, too, is just for the things that we can't change. We have to staff our desks. So those times when we have fewer people there, yeah. OK. Yeah. Sounds manageable. Yeah.
- Yeah, we'll see if that's what we decide to, everyone decides to do, but, you know. Thank you. You mentioned the bookmobile, the hours will stay the same. Yes. It shouldn't be affected. I should warn everybody, the bookmobile still does not have air conditioning. Go visit them, give them a high five, and check out your stuff. But it's definitely a more outdoorsy kind of experience. Everyone's coming.
- Is it, oh sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. Well is it a good sign that you haven't heard from the public? Or do you think it's just, it's kind of like we're all busy and people aren't listening. I'm worried that it's more of that. Okay. I had a question about that because when you talked about, you said some of the librarians or people who worked here were just having some conversation. Yeah. So between watching this meeting and that,
- interaction? Is there any other type? Is it on the website? Is there? No. And so this is a great question. It's kind of like saying, should we survey the public? And we decided at the beginning not to do that the way we do, say, our strategic planning. Because in our experience and many of our peers' experience, if you put something out there and say, do you like this, then everyone's going to have a reason to say no.
- And that's fine. We want to hear the reasons for no. But if you give an avalanche of, I don't like that, it's not necessarily going to be from the people who actually use the library after 7 o'clock. It's going to be more of the, I'm concerned that you're reducing hours, period. Or what about this possibility that nobody's done? I'm going to clarify that for Whitney. So I don't know if you caught that earlier when Greer was mentioning the librarians who have been speaking. But they're the people that it would impact that are attending
- during those time, yeah, they are attending those programs. So feedback of those that would be most impacted. And that feedback, we haven't gotten anything on that yet either. You know, to your question, Nancy.
- I'd like to think that people watch our meetings and they read the packets and they hear our discussions and they think, yeah, that makes sense. It's rational. I get it. And we might get a few people say, but I really love coming in after seven. And we would, of course, listen to that. I don't know if that's the case. But we do feel like the best we can do is to have two successive public meetings in a row where we talk about it and not make a decision and then come back in August. It gives people more time.
- from here to August 20th. And if we do start to hear a lot of stuff, we're going to take that into consideration. But as of today, we just haven't. Is there some way maybe to place, starting at 7 o'clock, some kind of notification out there, like when they're checking out their materials or something, so that they are aware and then can share feedback?
- If we decide to do this, that is exactly what we'll do. I'm suggesting maybe even before just to get some feedback from those patrons coming in where they're going, oh no, I can't ever make it here before seven or something like that. So do you mean like maybe at the point of service where you have sort of a face-to-face interaction, you can say, hey, we're thinking of doing this, what do you think? Or just having a piece of paper while they're checking out, just saying, you know, we're thinking of, what are your thoughts? You know, something just to, if you're wanting some feedback, it would maybe only be to those that
- to use the library during that time. Right, not during the day, right. I personally think that's not worth the staff's time to do that. To put that word out there. No, because it's our decision. It is certainly our decision. And, you know, this is the reality of the world today, so I think, I'm not trying to be hard nosed, but I think aligning our library, the downtown library with the branches, to me, that's just valid enough.
- Okay. What I'd like to do is talk with our marketing team from a strategic standpoint and say, because again, like with the survey idea, we feel pretty strongly that putting a survey out about something like this is only going to garner one kind of response. I'd like to get their take on what
- value there would be if we just put that on checkout slips or we had a notice at the desk and let people sort of face to face provide some feedback, see if we would get anything at all. They may agree with you and say, like, you're asking for it if you do that. They're only ever going to say no. But I think there is an understanding that there is a cut. Yeah. Yeah. And there's nothing that we can do about it. Right. And we're trying to make that cut as less painful as possible. And I think the closing of the hours
- to align with the branches is probably the best way and the best approach. It's just my opinion.
- I did want to ask, too, I appreciate you and others sharing a lot of context for librarians weighing in on this and other staff. I did want to share two thoughts that I had leaving last meeting, which were I understand not wanting to have flexible library hours that are difficult for people to remember. But I did think because one of our last meetings was at the Ellisville branch. And leaving, I was like, oh, I'm going to see if I can check something out. I was like, oh, the library's closed, actually. So I fall into that category, too.
- But it did occur to me that it feels really different to close the library at 7 in the summer versus in the winter. And so I don't know if there's precedent. Again, y'all have studied this much more than I have as someone who parachutes into these meetings. But I did think about whether it had been considered or looked at the door entries at the other branches at other times of day. Seasonally, really the two things I was thinking of were
- is there a possibility where this could be potentially a value add for someone who's in Ellitsville or on the Southside Library? Like, what if all the libraries closed at the same time, but they closed at 7.30? Again, probably you've thought about this, and it wouldn't work for shift reasons. But it is a way to provide something additional that's not being provided to the other branches and could still reduce the hours here at the downtown library, if really it is about, like,
- overall shift overlap and not a stringent number of hours. So I did think about that and also whether you had considered having winter hour. I just think about what it feels like to walk outside at 7 p.m. now or even the room reservations have a spike
- during July, or the computer hours are much higher during July here at the downtown library than they are in January. So just two thoughts that, again, trust the library staff to manage those things. But those were two things that I considered leaving the last discussion that I wanted to just address here or bring forward. I have worked at other libraries where they had seasonal hours that changed, yeah.
- Curiously, it went in the other direction, but that was... Really? There's less activity in the summer. Yeah, they closed Sundays. A lot of libraries used to close Sundays in the summer. Yeah. And two, I wondered... Because I looked at those and I wondered the statistical significance of it, and I wondered too if that had to do with the additional programming and things that happened with summer reading. Well, and then there was the school activities for the...
- During the school year, I would think that some of those might be the evening hours, too, because of the homework and all that. Even IU students, I don't know. So that's why the possibility of the winter is greater than the summer. Yeah. There are spikes, certainly, around our programming that we do. And in the summer. The closing Sundays in the summer must have made sense in those communities. In ours, it certainly doesn't. It's a weekend destination.
- particularly for families with children, and the free parking makes all the difference. So we expanded our Sunday hours when the meters went in. And I think we also have to reiterate with the public that the 350,000, really, we can manage. We are not in the same situation as Orange County or Sobrano County. So I think we should be very appreciative of what we have. That cut is not as deep.
- as other organizations in smaller communities. Absolutely. And that's one of the lead talking points we had coming out of the final version of SB1 was we were very nervous at the beginning. It was close to a million dollars projected in 2026 that we would be losing. And it's nowhere near that, and we should count ourselves lucky.
- So in other words, we don't feel that the community should feel sorry for the library necessarily. There are plenty of other entities that deserve sympathy in the face of SB1, but not MCPL, however, it is a cut. And in order to absorb it the way we want to, and I will reiterate that, you know, our strategic plan right now has that fifth goal, which we're always driven by service to the public. That's our reason for being, and it's our mission.
- but we take very seriously the fact that staff
- who feel secure and confident in their roles and supported are the ones who make that public service mission work. And so adopting a strategic goal that emphasizes being the best employer we can be is very important to us. And we kept looking at that when having these conversations about how can we absorb this reduction and minimize the impact on staff. And that includes compensation and benefits and everything else. And we realized we can do this by way of attrition and make those reductions
- The public impact is going to be reducing hours downtown by eight per week. Do we think that that's a reasonable reduction, to your point, in the face of basically a new state law that we have no control over? We thought, yeah, that's a reasonable reduction. Because it's not like opening late, where we know people are coming in first thing or anything like that. It's closing when it seems that people aren't really here anyway.
- So I take your points, Kathy, that that might be the hard and fast, hey, we got to do something and this is part of what we're going to do. Because the five FTE reduction isn't going to hit the public directly. That's just fewer staff. It's five spread across the system potentially, so it's not going to be just one area. But the hours change is where the public sees the impact of the bill on the library.
- So these are some interesting ideas. We'd like to talk with our team about some of this, and then we can come back in at the August 20th meeting and say, here's what we've done. This is what our proposal is now. And then we can have a vote at the August 20th meeting about the hours. OK. All good? Sounds good. OK. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Osh. New business. We're going to visit our first draft of the 2026 budget with Gary.
- Let's see if I can wake this machine up.
- Yeah, I went right to sleep.
- There's only two pages that I'm referring to, basically. And they're in your packet. So it looks like it's waking up. A way that if it comes back on. All right. So tonight, we take a more detailed look at the 2026 budget.
- we took a brief look as we went over the impact of Senate Bill 1. Next month at the August 20th board meeting, we'll ask the board to approve the public advertisement of the 2026 budget. Then in September, after taxpayers have had a chance to see the advertised budget totals, there will be a public hearing on the budget at the September 17 meeting
- which will be at the southwest branch. Final step in the process will be to adopt the budget at the October 15 board meeting. So for 2026, well, let me start by saying that I'm referring now to the revenue and expense summary of the budget on page 63. So for 2026,
- And I'm talking about the revenue section of the budget now. The growth quotient will be 4%. The 2025 tax levy revenue was about $7.9 million. The 4% increase based on the growth quotient amounts to about $318,000, which brings the 2026 tax levy up to about $8 million
- $285,000. Then there will be a reduction to next year's revenue from the tax levy because of the SB1 legislation. The tax levy reduction estimate provided by the State Board of Accounts amounts to $358,000. The second biggest source of revenue is from the library's share of local income taxes.
- For 2026, revenue from local income taxes is expected to be about $3.1 million. There's not a lot of change in the other categories of operating fund revenue. Total operating revenue that includes investment income, excise tax revenue, and loss and damage fees is estimated to be about $11.6 million.
- With all the revenue categories combined, the 2026 is estimated, the revenue increase is estimated to be about $110,000. In addition to the operating fund revenue, there will also be property tax revenue flowing into the debt fund to cover the library's debt payments that will be due in 2026.
- The debt fund revenue is estimated to be about $678,000. And now I'm moving down the page to the spending section of the budget. The operating fund spending budget and the debt fund spending budget, the total of the
- spending includes both of these funds. The total 2026 spending limit is the growth quotient, which is 4% for 2026. So the bottom line for the total spending budget for next year is about $13.8 million, which is a 4% increase from the previous year.
- Looking at the operating fund, the major categories are wages and benefits, supplies, other services, and capital spending, which includes spending for fixed assets and book purchases. So about 70% of the spending budget is in the wage and benefit category. For 2026, the wage increase used for calculating the wage budget
- is 2.75 percent or 75 cents an hour, whichever is greater. We'll make a final decision on the 2026 wage increases later this year when we know what's going to happen with health insurance rates. So before moving to the next slide, are there any questions about this report showing next year's revenue and spending budget estimates?
- Gary, just to remind me, is the library currently paying an annual debt levy for the cost of building the new library? Is that already in effect and this is just the annual amount or it begins in 2026? Can you remind me? Yes, it's already in effect. I think the first year that we made bond payments on Southwest was 2022, I believe. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
- Okay. So going down the page below the revenue section. The last report in this binder shows actual operating fund revenue and expense starting in 2021. And it also includes projections for years 2025 to 2027.
- And so let's look at the bottom line, because it shows the actual operating surplus trend for the past years and was expected for the current year and the next two years. So looking back at 2021, the library had an operating surplus.
- of about $1.8 million, which was allocated to the branch project. Then in 2022, the surplus was a little over a million dollars. We allocated $240,000 to the branch project and carried over about $800,000 to the rainy day fund. The 2023 surplus was about $438,000.
- There was an operating surplus of a little over $800,000 in 2024. So for 2025, I'm estimating the operating expense will end up being very close to the operating revenue. For 2025, I'm estimating a surplus of around $200,000. For 2026, the SB1 impact takes effect, and I'm estimating
- that operating expense will come in very close to operating revenue. The report shows an estimated surplus for 2026 of $100,000. For 2027, I'm estimating that operating expense will be slightly more than operating revenue. The projected deficit for 2027
- is about $150,000. So are there any questions at this point on this first draft of the budget? I guess I'll ask. So on 2021, the surplus was so high because we didn't
- we weren't open, am I understanding this correctly? If we had this going back before 2021, so I got here in 2011 and the surpluses slowly increased over those years and so
- And as we looked in those earlier years and saw the surplus each year, we realized that we probably could afford to expand service. And that was the peak in 2021 of where our operating revenue was greater than our expenses. And we knew that after then,
- And after we started making the bond payments and hiring the additional staff, that we wouldn't see years like that. And we don't want to see years like that. We're not a bank. So yes, that was the peak. And now we are. And really, all of this is expected. We really expected that once the branch was done,
- operating revenue and expense would align much closer. Thank you. And then SB1. Yeah, and then SB1. That makes it nice and level. And again, those projections, we don't know that impact yet. Those are just estimates. Estimates, exactly. We don't know if something will happen with local income tax revenue to make it balance out some of that.
- We have to operate on what we know. Any questions about the budget draft before we move on? Okay. Well, we do have an action item. Can I get a motion to hear about the resolution to transfer funds to Lerf? So moved. Second. Gary, you want to tell us more?
- a transfer of $53,750 from our restricted gift fund. So this gift is from a donor who built, basically is paying for the Southwest branch. The Hain Family Amphitheater by the Woods. Yeah, yes.
- And they are making four installments. This is the second installment. And so during the year after we receive these gifts, we are transferring the funds to LERF to basically pay. LERF is the Library Improvement Reserve Fund. And that's where we spent the money in anticipation of being repaid. And so now we're repaying.
- And that's what this transfer is about. And I will start it with you. So, Gary, is this for every time we have to, knowing that we're doing it four times? Pardon? You had shared that this is every, we're doing the payment four times? So do we have to approve this four different times or can we just, this is? Yeah, we do it. Each time there's a transfer.
- we would have to do it. And I guess I started that a little bit prematurely since you haven't voted. That's okay. We're not looking to see what their vote is. Anybody have any other questions or comments before we vote? Okay. All in favor of approving the resolution to transfer the funds to Lerf, say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Okay. Ayes have it.
- And now we have a department update from IT Information Technology, Ned Baugh. Tell us all the great things. Hi. I'm Ned Baugh. I'm the IT department director. This is my annual department update. The IT department is a relatively small department. We're made up of five people, including myself. There's Paula Gray Overtoon, our web administrator, Vanessa Schwegman, our Polaris and phone system administrator,
- Cody Mullis, our network administrator, and Dakota Erickson, our tech support. Together we support library staff and patrons in all things technical and computer related. That includes maintaining the database of our library collection and our patron accounts. That includes our staff computers, phones, the public computers, our internal network, and our Wi-Fi access for both staff and the public.
- I presented to the board in July of 2024. And in that update, I covered the migration of our public website to a new platform. And I talked about the work we'd done to prepare for implementation of Vega, Discover, and CommuniCo. So I'm going to start with an update of those two projects tonight. Going live with Vega. The library's database of our collection is Polaris.
- That's the vendor. It stores our patron data and all the collection data that we store and manage. So that's the books, magazines, movies, games, connections to other databases, et cetera. Patrons access all this information through our website. And Vega Discover is the latest version of the Polaris website, the catalog that patrons access. It's how they search for materials in the catalog, place holds, and see what they have checked out.
- The description of Discover that we get from Polaris says, Vega Discover is a user-friendly discovery platform that enhances the public's experience with our online catalog by rolling all formats into a single display, integrating e-content, utilizing big frame to link data and more. So what does that actually mean? The biggest change when you're searching the catalog now is what are called roll-ups.
- which basically means when you search for a title, we have it in different formats. Those are all presented together in one record. With our old catalog, if you were searching for a Harry Potter book, and we had the book, and we had the audiobook, and we had the DVD, those would all show up as separate items. And now when we have something that has different formats, they all show up together, so it's easier to see, oh, the book's checked out, but I could get the audiobook instead. So that's a big change for patrons. The other thing is called Bookshelf,
- And if you go to the catalog, there's a drawer that is minimized normally. You open that up, it comes up out of the bottom of the web page. That's where you see your account information. So instead of going to a separate page to see your account information, what you have checked out, that sort of thing, it's always available on the bottom of the page. And that's also where your saved searches and books that you've saved that you want to come back and look at later are saved in collections.
- I'm realizing now I should have made a visual for this to show you, but it's a really nice system. I think patrons are mostly happy with it. It's a lot different than what we used to have, so there was some change to it. But yeah, thanks, Greer. OK, so roll-ups in the bookshelf are both new. And then related to Vega, but not something that patrons would be as aware of, we implemented a new backend system for delivering texts and automated phone messages if patrons have requested that type of notification.
- Our old text messaging system used an outdated system that was no longer universally supported by phone providers. It was an SMS to text system that was gradually being phased out. So with this new system, we should have better compatibility with more phone networks. We should have fewer patrons who are saying they're not getting texts from the library. Vanessa and Paula on our staff both put in a lot of work on making the transition to Vega Discovery a big success.
- When I reported on it last year, we were behind on our launch date because there were so many things that we need to iron out with the vendor. But now it's in place, and we're really pleased with it. And then Communico was one that we had gone live with when I reported last, so I won't go into a lot of detail about the background for that. But basically, our old calendar vendor was a company called Advanced, and they were purchased by Demco.
- And then in August, in 2024, Demco said that they were going to be shutting that service down by August. So we had a hard deadline. We put a team together to look for alternatives. And this team explored various options and decided to go with a solution called Communico. And we went live with that calendar system in April of last year. So after it's been up for a year, I think it's been mostly a positive improvement for the library. I was asking.
- some other staff to give me some feedback on how they thought it went. They're definitely pleased with the look and feel of the public calendar on the website. It's more visually appealing and more professional looking. And it's easier to manipulate for the public. So if we want to make a list of events or we want to make a specific calendar view for patrons, that's easier for staff to do. And staff can more easily set reservation rules, things like requiring meetings to end 15 minutes before the library closes.
- or determining how much setup time in between meetings, for example. That's easier for staff to determine and set up and configure now. And the system, this sounds like a small thing, but the system allows for patrons to cancel their reservations themselves, which saves a lot of staff time and also means that our calendar is more accurate. If somebody's on the day of an event or a meeting looking to see whether it's been canceled or not, the calendar reflects that in real time.
- It's easier for staff to approve patron reservations requests. It's easier for staff to create reports that can be scheduled and run automatically. So it's easier to pull statistical information out of it. So overall, we're really pleased with it. Those are all sort of the front end things that staff and the public interact with. But it also gave staff a better workflow when it comes to creating programs for the public.
- Dana Duffy, our program coordinator, tells me that the programming aspect of it has gone very well. The staff were quick to adopt the new platform and it has made the process of moving a program from a proposal to a public-facing event much smoother. Basically, the workflow in the past
- involved multiple systems, basically. There was one system for developing a program and getting manager approval. And then another, once you had that approval, you'd go about putting it into advanced. It still worked, but it was a multi-step process. And Communico sort of facilitates a more streamlined process so that it's not jumping from one system to the other. It's all built into the same thing.
- Vanessa and Paula and Cody all worked hard to make that transition work and still work to support it. The next thing I was going to cover has to do with Polaris as well. This is our Polaris permissions review, which
- As I say it out loud, I know it sounds kind of wonky, but over the years, various staff have been granted different permissions in our Polaris system depending on their job responsibilities. We have access to do different functions and have access to different information. And in general, we try to limit employee access to what they need to do their job. But procedures change, and people move around from different departments and change roles over time. And over the years, we've ended up with a lot of leftover permissions in our system that may no longer be appropriate.
- In August of 2024, the Polaris Permissions Review Team was established with the goal of ensuring accurate, consistent, and secure Polaris permissions across all library positions relative to individual roles and responsibilities. That's a lot easier for me to read than to say, so thank you for that. But basically, it's just like it sounds.
- The Polaris database lets us decide who has access to certain functions, certain roles, certain reports over time that we make changes to it or we don't update when somebody changes a position, that sort of thing. Vanessa worked with Christine Snead, our ILS coordinator, and a small team of other staff to go through all the permissions staff have and verify that they have the appropriate assignments based on their current position.
- It's the kind of thing that sounds a little esoteric, perhaps, but it was a large task. And at the end of the work, they'd audited every employee's permissions and evaluated how they lined up with their job responsibilities. They worked with managers throughout the library, and they made recommendations to the admin team. And now they're in the process of implementing those. So not something that patrons are ever going to be aware of. It's all internal, but it will definitely clean up the way our staff work with Polaris.
- It's not so much a security thing, because every employee here understands the importance of confidentiality and conserving patron information. But it's just nice to know. I've been here 25 years, and this is the first time we've done something this comprehensive. So it's a good review. It feels good to have it happening right now.
- Another thing that this is a little more visible, but it probably isn't something that a lot of patrons would necessarily be aware of unless they were interacting with this specifically. And I'm talking about website accessibility work. Website accessibility is an ongoing process. It's not something you can say you ever really finish. Paula, our web administrator, has done a lot along the lines of making our website more accessible, both in the pages created in-house
- and working with our vendors to ensure their products meet standards as well, like Vega Discovery and like Communico. We've always strived to make the website as accessible to everyone as we can. The Department of Justice recently updated its regulations for Title II of the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act.
- with specific requirements about how to ensure that web content is accessible to people with disabilities. So Paula has been going through those requirements and seeing how we can improve and how we can better meet those requirements. She recently has worked to check every page on the website with accessibility tools to see how and where we can improve accessibility.
- Among other things, she's improved functionality for patrons using screen readers to access the site, as well as making sure that the site still works for patrons with visual disabilities. Something that I'm always surprised by is the things we can do to change color contrast and make menus more clear for folks with disabilities. And it's all stuff that makes it easier for all of us to navigate as well.
- That also includes adding proper alt text for images, updating form labels, and working on the tab structure of a page. For instance, she's added skip to links in the library catalog. You've probably seen these and it may not have occurred to you what the purpose of it is, but if you're using a screen reader on a webpage and it starts out with all the header information and then maybe the navigation is in a sidebar farther down the page,
- If you've got to wait for the screen reader to read everything that's up there and all you really want to do is get to a link farther down, that's inconvenient. Websites often now will have a skip to link at the top. So if you know you just want to get to the navigation, you can skip to it. So she's done things like that to make sure our catalog has that.
- That's the sort of thing that helps with screen readers as well as improving the experience of patrons using the keyboard to navigate the website rather than a mouse. People who tab through websites will notice that as well. So she's also updated links throughout the website and the catalog to be more clearly visible with underlining and higher contrast to make it clear this is a link, this isn't a link, that sort of thing. Part of the recent rules
- involving the ADA also involve requirements for making all published PDFs accessible as well. So she's already converted some of our existing PDFs to HTML for better accessibility. She's also deleted obsolete PDFs in preparation for converting linked PDFs to accessible documents. There were approximately 2,700 PDFs in the main website file directory. And going through those, she was able to bring that down to 1,250.
- And they're still a bit more trimming to do. But that's basically going through. We often have three versions of the same PDF on the website. And so rather than try to remediate all of those and make them accessible, she's sort of pruning them in advance of that. Like I say, that's an ongoing thing. I could probably give you a website accessibility update every time I give an update. It's a big job, and you never really finished with it.
- And then in addition to those larger ongoing projects, I don't feel like I've said very much about the work that Cody and Dakota are doing. It's mostly behind the scenes, but it's definitely a big part. As a department, we're typically responding to between 60 and 80 help desk requests each month. And the bulk of those fall to Cody and Dakota. And these are things that include replacing PCs, fixing printing issues, installing software, troubleshooting public computer issues with patrons, and that sort of thing.
- So that's my update for the past year for the IT department. I'm happy to answer any questions or cover anything that I didn't cover. We hope we don't lose those people as people who are retiring or whatever. Hopefully they will not be. I have questions. I have lots of questions. One being permission review. I know you said that, of course, all staff recognize the sensitive data, et cetera. But I still think that's an excellent practice because you never know
- when someone's account would be compromised in just least restrictive environment. So I thank you for that. I was wondering, is there a review schedule? Have you talked about doing that like annually, or is that part of onboarding, offboarding? That is a great idea. No, we haven't. Like I said, this one was fairly unique. And I guess I should clarify, the Polaris permissions audit that I'm talking about right now are specific to the Polaris
- database. We do similar things with employee accounts. We have a Windows Active Directory that we use for authentication. Polaris works with that. So we do things like we have a process for making sure when somebody leaves the library, their account is expired and becomes inaccessible after we've made sure that they're done with what we need. And same with their email. So we do have processes like that in place for those. For Polaris specifically,
- It was more of something that we had, I guess, overlooked. And so, yeah, I agree the idea of making that a regular review is a good idea. OK. Thanks. The other question I had, well, actually I have two more, is does Polaris also then provide security within that database? I'm assuming patron accounts are part of that, that they monitor and protect? They are part of that. I'll tell you.
- made an effort to retain as little patron information as possible. I think years ago, we even used to store like, we've never had social security numbers, but we used to ask people for their driver's license. We stopped doing that a long time ago. We don't store financial information like any of the credit card information that goes through stays with the credit card terminals. That's never on our network.
- something even like a user ID and password, you know? So I was just wondering what type of securities do we have in place for patrons? Yeah, I'm not sure how to go into that exactly. The database that we get from Polaris requires
- authentication to access that. And then we provide some of that. We make it available to the patrons through the website. So if they've got their library card number and their password, they can get in and see information about their account. Those servers are on our network in a VLAN, a section of the network that is dedicated to servers. So it's not accessible from the public. We've got that behind a firewall. I could go into, I guess, more... But they're local.
- Yes. Yeah. OK. All right. Yeah, it's a mix, though. I probably would be happy to talk with you in more detail when I'm not on camera just because of obvious reasons. Anybody have some questions? OK. Well, thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.
- Anybody have questions or comments before we adjourn? We have public comment. Do we have public? Anyone here have public comment? Okay. Thank you. All right. All in favor of adjourning?