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Good morning, everyone.

The January 14th, 2026 meeting of the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee will come to order.

It's 9.30 a.m.

I'm Maritza Rivera, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council member Foster.

Here.

Council member Lynn.

Here.

Council member Rink.

Present.

Vice Chair Hollingsworth.

Here.

Chair Rivera.

Present.

Five council members are present.

Great, we have a full committee today.

Thank you colleagues for being here this morning.

Good morning to colleagues and those who are watching on the Seattle channel.

Welcome to the first Libraries Education and Neighborhoods Committee Meeting of 2026. I feel so privileged to be leading the LEND Committee for a second term.

Firstly, I want to give a warm welcome to our newest Lenn Committee member, Councilmember Dion Foster.

Welcome.

We're so happy you're here.

And welcome back to Council President and Vice Chair Hollingsworth, my vice chair for this committee, and to Councilmember Lenn and Councilmember Rinke.

We accomplished so much in this committee last term.

We worked with OIRA on how the city was providing services to our immigrant and refugee communities, especially in light of the attacks from the federal government.

We worked with the Department of Neighborhoods ensuring our community outreach efforts were robust across the city and preserving funding for programs like the Neighborhood Matching Fund, which are so meaningful to our residents across all our neighborhoods.

and we also led the very important renewal of the next Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy, or FEP as we like to call it, which passed with an overwhelming support from 80% of voters.

This year we'll be working on a levy renewal for the Seattle Public Libraries.

the implementation and evaluation plan for the FEP levy, and we will be continuing our work with Don and Oira, which is so critical and pertinent as we continue to grapple with the cruel, and I believe to be unconstitutional actions of ICE.

We are all alarmed at what is happening on our streets, across our country, and in our very own city.

I know I will be having conversations with the Mayor's Office and the Attorney General on how we can align on a legal response to these acts, and also with the City Attorney.

In the past, the city attorney and our attorney general have been bold and brave in bringing lawsuits against the cruel actions and what I believe to be, as I said earlier, unconstitutional and illegal actions from the federal government.

And I look forward to continuing to work with them as we move forward in dealing with this situation.

As we know, colleagues, we have no authority over the federal government and we need to look toward the legal system to combat these oversteps and cruelty.

At today's meeting, we have an overview of the Seattle Public Library's programs and operations in preparation for our upcoming library's levy renewal.

Chief Tom Fay will be presenting along with his staff member, Kirsten Nelson.

As you know, Seattle loves its libraries.

Since 1998, colleagues, we have had either a bond measure or a levy to support our libraries.

On a personal note, I have a deep fondness for libraries.

As I've said at this committee in prior meetings, when I was growing up in an unsafe neighborhood in the Bronx in New York City, the library was the only place my mother would let me go.

I was an avid reader and the library was my sanctuary.

I felt safe among the stack of books.

Libraries are places of safety, places of learning, and places to gather for all our communities, from story time for our kiddos to gatherings for our seniors in community.

We are so lucky to have such a strong and thriving library system in Seattle.

I know Seattle has the greatest number of e-books and e-book readers in our city.

I want to thank Chief Fay and his staff and all the librarians who worked so hard to help our residents.

We had a similar overview of the Seattle Public Library Services and programs two years ago at the start of my tenure with this committee, but it seemed appropriate to have another one today as we begin not only the levy renewal process, but especially for our newer committee members who were not here at the time.

So now on to today's agenda.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on the agenda or within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently we have one in-person speaker and zero remote speakers so far.

Thank you.

Given that, the speaker will have two minutes.

Clerk, will you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

We will start with in-person speakers and then remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

The public comment period is now open.

We will begin with the first speaker on the list.

The first in-person speaker is Jennifer Short Takas.

Welcome Jennifer, step up to the podium.

I'm here to speak in regards to the neighborhood portion that is involved here.

My son was attacked in the Capitol Hill of May 11th, 2024 at the light rail system there by Corey Bellette that died.

Video footage clearly shows that there was no sound transit Officers there, supposedly they employ over 500 officers and security.

There was nobody there at the time when my son was being bullied with different homophobic slurs, him and his friend.

And my son, all he did was approach Corey to go ahead and ask him to stop the bullying, where Corey proceeded then to shove my son next to the light rail and then proceeded to try to drag my son onto the light rail tracks, as all the video footage online shows.

Something has got to be done with sound transit.

This should never happen to another family ever again.

It should be mandated that at all times, 24-7, there is an officer on the light rail platforms.

What happened to my son is completely unfair and it is very sad that Cory died as well.

However though, if everybody had been in place doing their jobs, this all could have been avoided.

We need to be better humans and kinder people and do what's right to protect all the neighborhoods and all the community here and all the public transit systems.

I live back east and this has been a nightmare for my family.

My son is away from his two young children under five while we wait for a trial to prove my son's innocent.

and his defense on self-defense.

This has gone on for over 20 months, but yes, I want to bring some awareness to the fact that Sound Transit is not doing their job and they failed everybody that day.

Thank you so much for letting me have a few minutes of your time, but yes.

Thank you so much for being here.

I'm sorry to hear what happened to your son.

Sound Transit is not under the purview of this committee, but we will definitely follow up with my colleague, Councilmember Saka, who oversees transportation, with our colleague, Councilmember Strauss, who actually sits on the board of the Sound Transit Board.

I will say in general, we all and I very much care about public safety in our, not just in my district, but across the city.

And we will follow up, as I said, with our colleagues on this particular note.

and I personally have spoken with Sound Transit about safety at the light rail stations prior and we will continue to do that and I know safety is a big issue for our council member Saka is a big issue and something that he's gonna be following up on and we've actually put money in the budget to support public safety on the light rail and the bus system which is King County Metro but just to say we've done some things and I will follow up with our colleagues.

Yes, I'm so sorry that I spoke, but I'm back east.

It's okay.

And it's an important thing for the council.

And it's okay.

I agree.

And thank you for being here.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Okay.

Chair, that was our last registered speaker.

Okay.

Thank you, clerk.

All right.

There are no additional registered speakers.

The public comment period is now closed.

We'll proceed to our item of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, 2026 Seattle Public Library overview presentation for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

This item has been read into the record.

Chief Faye and Kirsten Nelson, will you please join us at the table?

Chief Faye and Kirsten, state your name for the record and then you can start your presentation.

And I know Chief Faye that you have a board meeting to attend.

So you will be with us as much as you can and then Kirsten will be here and I have no doubt she can answer our questions and then obviously colleagues.

If there are questions that we're not able to answer during committee time, I will make sure to follow up and get you answers after.

All right.

Thank you for being here, Chief Fay.

It's really nice to see you again.

Kirsten, too.

Happy New Year.

Thank you very much.

I'm Tom Fay, Chief Librarian for the Seattle Public Library.

I'm Kirsten Nelson, Government Relations Manager for the Seattle Public Library.

and good morning and thank you for having us here to present about the Seattle Public Library.

Welcome to the new members of the committee.

Pleasure to present the work of the Seattle Public Library.

As we head into the final year of the library's seven year 2019 levy, I do look forward to our continued discussions as Chair Rivera mentioned.

For those who may not have as much experience with Seattle Public Library, we do have our central library in 26 neighborhood locations.

We have a maintenance and operations center that's in Georgetown.

That's where we run all of our vehicles.

We have our facilities and maintenance and shops in that particular facility.

We have 650 wonderful library staff representing 612 FTE.

and then of course we have all of those fleet vehicles that I mentioned and our beloved bookmobiles and mobile service vehicles that are seen out in the community.

Those most certainly extend our outreach in the preschool, senior centers and other community events.

The library is governed by a five member volunteer board of trustees who are responsible for policy and all of the fiduciary elements of the library.

They're appointed by the mayor, to serve five years, and our current members are Yasmin Mehdi, who is president, Dr. Tali Hairston, who is vice president, Carmen Bendixson, Ron Chu, and Faith Pettis, who are board of trustee members.

It's also worth noting that Ron Chu's term expires this year, so we will be back again for a new board member.

And as we look at library usage, these are hot off the press as we start compiling all of our usage from 2025. We operate an active and well-used library system in this city.

We have a city of readers.

Seattle is one of two U.S. cities recognized by UNESCO as a city of literature.

Library circulated when you look at these numbers of 12.7 million.

It's a big number But what that means because we have 24 7 services available We circulate 24 items every minute of every single day So it's a it is a city that truly reads and it reads every moment of the day and We had 2.9 physical and digital items in our collection in 2025. We had 329,000 active patrons in the 12 months.

Those numbers are up from 2024. 6,100 classes and events and activities with over 118,000 in attendance.

Those numbers are also up over 2024. 37,000 questions answered by our information services.

and we had 369,000 public computer sessions in 2025.

Sorry, apologies.

Generally, I would say, colleagues, if you have questions, please raise your hands.

We can do it throughout.

That's going to be all of our reference services that would be online.

So it would be email, our chat services, our phone services, as well as those in-person services.

We're still compiling the in-person reference services as we speak.

That takes a little longer to compile, but this gives you an idea of all those pardon me, those other items such as chat, phone, and email.

Terrific, thank you, and that's a person answering.

I ask because now in the AI world, I just wanted to be clear on what that meant.

Thank you, please continue.

Well, thank you, and it is a great note that when we talk about AI, a lot of that work that we do is people are trying to confirm what they see or hear, especially in the world of misinformation and disinformation that's ongoing.

We'll also address our budget.

Funding comes from a variety of public and private sources.

The city's general fund provides 58% of our funding.

The 2019 library levy accounts for 33%.

And we also receive public funds through our foundation and our other library gift fund.

and you can see that detail broken out here.

There's approximately $605,000 in REIT, real estate excise tax, 853,000 in library generated revenue that comes in from lost item fees, the central garage, print and copy fees, et cetera.

And then of course our wonderful foundation who provides over $5.6 million this year in 2026 They have increased their giving and their award by 8% over 2025. They continue to do great things in service of libraries in this community, and without them we could not have the success that we do.

So with this, the 2026 library budget across all funding sources, including the private gifts and grant support, is $113.5 million.

It's important to note that the library continues to seek outside grants.

We look at all kinds of national philanthropic grants, local and regional grants, and when appropriate, federal grants as well.

We are very successful and that is often in partnership with our foundation as we seek those grants and have those grants be funneled through our foundation.

This one actually details a little bit of how the dollars are spent in the organization.

Majority of spending is going to be personnel, materials, and buildings.

Personnel accounts for three quarters of all spending.

By nature, we are people-centered and people-powered, people serving people.

The collection accounts for 10% of the spending, facilities maintenance accounts for the rest, and some of the other costs noted here include city central cost, direct programming expenses, software, and licensing.

Chief, can you please, the other, what falls under, there's 8% where it says other, would you mind just, it's not very much, but.

Yeah, the other is going to be things like central costs, city central costs, so that every city department pays a portion of HR, IT, a number of other services that we pay for.

So that's a significant portion of that 8%.

And then there's other costs that might be related to some of our programming classes, services that we offer that come out of that, and software and licensing that is specialty software and licensing for libraries.

Thank you, Chief.

Absolutely.

All right, I'd like to walk through some of our core services.

As mentioned before, we have 2. million physical and digital items.

These include books, e-books, e-audiobooks, DVDs, Wi-Fi hotspots, streaming music, movies, TV shows, research databases, and newspaper access.

We also provide access to free passes for museums and cultural institutions in the area, and we even offer free access to Washington State's Discovery Pass.

Library staff are experts in information reference and referrals.

They can help you find a book that meets your interests or find the answer to your question.

As I said, this is very important in this day of misinformation, disinformation, a lot of great AI deep fakes.

Our folks are there to answer your questions.

And as mentioned before, we do this in person, online, over the phone, a number of formats.

We are in many ways the city's largest referral service for a variety of functions in the city.

So that's an important piece to note.

And as we look at additional library services, we provide thousands of free classes and activities each year.

In 2025, over 6,000 classes, events and activities, as mentioned, 118,000 in attendance.

These, most importantly, support all ages, all backgrounds and a variety of interests.

We also provide a number of programs in other languages.

At the library you can find citizenship classes, English conversation circles, children's story times, tutoring support, digital literacy classes, enrichment classes such as gardening, writing, and much, much more.

The Seattle Room provides in-person access to treasured local history items.

Our digital collection makes Seattle history easier to access for student researchers, historians, and others.

I'm always proud to note that Almost everything in our collection is available for people to ask to see.

Even those things that are in our special collections, we can bring those out and people can actually see those documents that may be hundreds of years old and really connect with history.

In 2024 alone, we acquired over 1,000 new items for our special collections.

One of the most important ones in the last few years is the collection of local historian Paul Dorpat, who donated his entire collection to the Seattle Public Library.

I can assure you that was a lot.

He was a very wrote a lot about the history of Seattle over his time, 300 boxes worth of material, and we are still working through that as we speak.

Moving to a few other services, we have our Library Equal Access Program, often referred to as LEAP.

This provides services to patrons with disabilities and supports access to programs and services.

This team also works to offer accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The LEAP Lab, located at Central Library, provides access to assistive technology and dedicated staff to support our LEAP patrons.

Devices include screen readers, magnifiers, refreshable braille displays, adjustable desks, and much more.

And when we talk about technology, the library offers access to several technologies including public computers, laptops, internet Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi hotspots that support borrowers as well as community partner sites, tent cities, and other encampments.

We have printing, scanning, faxing, pickup lockers for 24-7 hold access, self-checkout stations, and all of this really helps us to close the digital divide.

We stay relevant to workers, job seekers, small business entrepreneurs, researchers, students, and anyone else who finds themselves in need of digital access.

Our IT team also oversees the infrastructure, hardware, software assistance, and cybersecurity needs that support all of these technologies.

The library online, we also have quite a few digital assets.

This digital library is available 24-7 at spl.org.

Last year we launched a mobile app available on Android and Apple.

In 2025 we saw 5.5 million visits to our site.

Visitors use our online research databases, news access through sites like New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, of course, Seattle Times, and many others.

They use our calendar of our events to learn about our programs and author events, and of course, have access to our digital archives and many more online databases and research tools.

In our public spaces, we provide access to free and low-cost spaces in many of our locations across the city, private study rooms, which offer a quiet place to study or work, meeting rooms at many of our locations, which are free and available to all.

They're great for non-profits, school groups, small businesses, and even personal use.

Event Rental Space is available at the Central Library.

And at the Central Library, we have our very favored music practice rooms.

If you're ever at the Central Library and on level eight, you'll hear music playing often as people practice with their instruments.

I will say most is good.

Most are good attempts, if nothing else.

And so people are learning and practicing, enjoying it.

of the space.

We also have an art gallery space on that floor and we usually have exhibits running through there.

As we have an opportunity to renovate spaces like we did with Green Lake last year and University this year, we look at ways to expand public space.

We can't necessarily always expand the footprint of the building, but how can we be creative in the space that we have and get back more public space?

I'm proud to say that in my time here, we have done that in every remodel or renovation of a building, is being able to claw back more public space and to be creative in its use.

and both of these locations, Green Lake last year and university coming up this year will have new study rooms at both locations which at Green Lake have been greatly appreciated.

And now for one of our, what I call my small and mighty, but ever-present mobile services team and outreach and engagement.

Our mobile services unit helps expand our services out into even more of the community than our branches.

They serve over 100 stops each month, including 29 preschools, 70 adult facilities, and two tiny house villages as well.

This group also attends many community events where they provide access to books and encourage library card sign-ups.

One of the things I think has been the library's strong suit is community listening.

We do this work continuously to try to meet the needs and interests of our community.

We know that our communities change, demographics change, needs change, ages of folks change, which means their needs are going to change as well.

Many of our staff meet directly with community partners to understand the needs of the people that they serve.

In 2025, we conducted extensive community engagement to guide our program of service.

This was in the, pardon me.

Pardon me.

We actually had service design session, focus groups, and also conducted a statistically significant survey, which was mailed to 15,000 randomly selected residents.

We had a response rate goal of 5%, but achieved 7%, so over 1,000 residents throughout the city participated.

The community listening guided our 10-year strategic plan and our new community use agreement.

It is also going to be guiding our levy planning, which you'll hear more about later in the year.

I'm really looking forward to sharing our findings with you as we move through those levy discussions.

And thank you, Kirsten.

It's always in these sessions when you decide that you need to have a problem with your throat.

So opportunities.

This final slide really outlines a few of the major projects in front of us in 2026 and beyond.

We will continue to implement our strategic plan, which again is from 2024 through 2034, with a focus on community belonging, and organizational resiliency.

We make great progress in our efforts in 2025, and you can see those on our website at www.spl.org slash strategic plan.

Just one of those accomplishments was the introduction of a new Office of Inclusion and Belonging.

We've onboarded a new director for that office who is working now to set the vision of this work.

His focus will be ensuring that we are thoughtful and thorough in our approach to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

With our strategic plan, we have also increased language access for non-English speakers, translated and in-language materials such as library card applications, program flyers, transaction, emails, and much more.

We've established a new story squad pilot with Seattle Public Schools.

to introduce classroom sets at Title I schools for grades two through four.

We've hired key positions to increase safety and security both in person and online.

We have achieved LEED Gold certification with our Green Lake Branch renovation and seismic retrofit.

And we are of course, as mentioned, conducting similar work at the university branch, which will conclude later this year.

We've conducted a competitive bidding process for a new integrated library system or the ILS as we call it in the trade.

That will be starting implementation and be implemented later this fall.

This system is the backbone system of our operations that's responsible for account and collection management among many other things.

Some seen and some unseen but this is the system that allows you to see and have access to all those books and materials.

This is a huge body of work for a library system that has not done this in about 26 years.

Having come from other places, we have done them more frequently than that, so it'll be a big lift for the library this year.

I do encourage you all to check out our website to learn about our activities last year, as well as what we have planned for this year.

Some of those items planned for this year include a new library levy renewal proposal, which you'll hear more about in upcoming months.

the implementation of our ILS as mentioned, a thorough security audit and expansion of our cybersecurity program, and something I've been really looking for, a refreshed summer programming effort.

And that will be for all ages, not just children, but everyone.

And there are many more things as well as we continue to do the work in preparation for the levy, but to continue doing the work that we have outlined in our strategic plan.

And with that, I'm happy to take any questions you may have.

Thank you, Chief Fay, and thank you for that excellent introduction to our libraries here in the city.

Again, I just want to thank you and your team, all the librarians at all the branches within all our neighborhoods and all our districts across the city.

They do such a great job interfacing with population all our populations that utilize the library very importantly our seniors because we know that they utilize the libraries as a community gathering space our kids who show up for tutoring and to use digital services the computers etc and of course our little little kids who show up for story time and also you know very much appreciate the meeting spaces that you provide, many of the branches as you said have those and those are really important to community.

Different community groups meet there and this is important to provide spaces where community members can have their meetings regardless of which groups they are but they're very well utilized and we super appreciate the ability to have those spaces for our residents across the city.

So thank you.

Thank you for all that you do.

And thank you to all your librarians.

Again, remind me how many librarians across the system?

So we have 650 library staff.

Of that, probably close to about 110 to 115 are librarians by degree.

And so we have, in our library system, we have, IT, HR, you know, we have so many other functions within it, truck drivers, all those folks that are getting those books around the system, and then of course all of our branch staff and library staff at the Central Library that you see in person.

But there's a lot behind the scenes to move those millions of books around the city every single day.

So I call everyone a librarian, but all 650 of the staff are equally important, so I want to thank all 650 of your staff members.

Thank you.

And all the folks that even drive the bookmobile, which is a really important asset in our city.

Anyway, Councilmember Foster, I see you have your hand up.

You're recognized.

Thank you so much, Director.

I've got to lean into this.

Thank you so much, Director.

I appreciate you coming to brief us and taking the time to talk about libraries.

They're definitely one of my favorite parts of the city as third places and living rooms and places for families.

I appreciated your comments about some of the infrastructure improvements that have already taken place that you've been working long and hard on, Green Lake, University Branch.

I also know there's a lot of needs across our system to make sure that we're taking care of the buildings themselves so that we can provide this incredible service.

I think I've seen in some of your planning and annual reports a little bit about seismic upgrades for the Columbia Branch Library, and I know there may be other libraries that have timely infrastructure needs.

I wonder if you can preview or just speak to that a little bit for us.

Sure.

Yes, there are.

With that many locations, you can imagine that's a significant resource need every single year.

One of the things when I became chief librarian, well, five years ago now, focus, we didn't have a really great understanding of what our capital needs were going to be when you look at, I'm used to looking at a 20 to 30 year cycle so that we can plan accordingly.

And as you can imagine with a variety of budget reductions and considerations over the years, there's been challenges and there's been deferrals of that capital maintenance, much of that major maintenance that's needed to occur.

So we've really put a focus on that in the last five years of understanding what that 20- and 30-year window looks like.

You'll definitely see and hear more of that likely as we present the 2026 library levy proposal.

As we look at projects that we are working on, we have been very fortunate probably before this current administration at the federal level to receive a lot of federal grants that have helped us move some of our projects in the arena of cooling.

So we will have several air conditioning projects that will be going on this year.

That will be an upgrade to both the electrical, so moving from fossil fuel to electrical, in those branches as well as being able to actually have air conditioning.

Our goal is to have air conditioning in all of our buildings within the next couple of years, probably two to three years depending on construction cycles, just to be able to deal with the summers here that have continued to increase in heat.

We also constantly have various large-scale maintenance operations going on in buildings.

That could be everything from the central library.

It might be something like an air conditioning unit.

that's gone out or it could be some other major effort.

We also have a lot of sustainability issues, meaning we are gonna go out and change old lighting systems to LED.

All of those have costs, but we generally work with our partners in the city to find funding for some of those efforts as well if we have not received those grant funding funds.

But there is a large need.

I try not to scare everybody with what that need is because when you hear it, remember these are over 20 and 30 year cycles.

but we also have to start and we have to be consistent.

And I think that's, as we look at aging infrastructure, it's the staying consistent which is really, really important.

Thank you, Chief Faye.

Council Member, well, Council President Hollingsworth and Vice Chair Hollingsworth.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Chair Rivera.

I just had a quick question, but first, Chief Fay, I wanted to thank you for being so kind to my mother when we celebrated the 50-year anniversary for the Douglas Truth Library.

That was phenomenal, that event, and the people, a ton of folks came out, and the Garfield Jazz Quartet was amazing.

They played so well, and it was just really great to see the collection of books.

And I will tell you, when I go to different cities, the first thing I like to do is go to their library, and I guarantee you all the libraries smell the same.

So you just wanted to...

Every single one throughout the country.

But one of the things, and you touched on it just a little bit, but I wanted to, if you just gave us a little bit more detail or just high level about how you all are shifting with the times in terms of there's a lot of digital stuff.

I would love to see people that go to the library, but can you just talk a little bit about how you all are shifting with when things are becoming digital, people finding that love and passion for the library and what you all are doing to keep that engagement amongst neighborhoods?

Sure, I think as we shift things digitally, it's being able to provide access a little more holistically.

And sometimes that may mean that, yes, somebody needs that public computer to be able to see a movie.

So that's why we've extended timelines on public computers, for example.

One of the things we heard from folks is, well, I want to watch something.

My only availability is to do it here.

And so when our timeline was an hour or 90 minutes, people were, well, I didn't get to see the end of it, right?

So, I mean, even simple things like that, things that you don't think about, our staff are looking at how can we make sure that it's really providing the fuller access, not just a thing.

What does it mean to actually consume that thing.

Looking at how we can actually provide new formats for young children where you have read-alongs where it is actually reading as the child can either point a finger or it'll read an entire story to them so that they're also learning.

We know that it's great when parents can do that and it's the most important first teacher a child can have as a parent who will read.

And in cases where maybe a parent has five minutes or ten minutes to do that, can they also put them with this book that will allow them to do that multiple times during the day themselves?

So really looking at technology and how it also supports those basic literacy functions are really, really critical.

And then having those formats again, when you think about audio books.

For a lot of years, people would say, well, that's not reading.

Yes, it is.

It's a different way of reading.

It actually engages the brain differently than you sitting down and just reading.

It brings in so many other senses to it.

And it's an important part.

I enjoy all forms of it.

I enjoy audio, I enjoy eBooks.

I still have the print book that I lug around with me.

But for some, it's the only way that they engage in reading.

My daughter, reluctant reader.

She now, as a 24-year-old adult, that is how she consumes reading.

So it's a really important part that we stay moving with the technologies, but looking at it holistically, not just as a thing, but how can we also help people access that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Rink?

Thank you, Chair Rivera, and thank you, Chief Librarian Faye and Kirsten for being here in committee this morning and just sharing with us the incredible work that's being done by our library system.

And during your presentation, I was actually reflecting on all of the different library branches I've been able to visit this past year from Broadview, Wedgwood, Douglas Truth, Ballard, Capitol Hill, Central, Green Lake, and every interaction I've had at our SPL branch locations.

with staff in particular has been not only just so welcoming but helpful.

And so I wanted to take that moment to publicly commend again the staff at SPL for just the posture that they bring to the work and really making sure our libraries are authentically welcoming.

So wanted to recognize that.

and just to dive into the presentation briefly.

On slide seven, you mentioned on social service referrals.

I wanted to ask if you could expand a little bit more on that and the kind of referrals that you're making, but particularly your interactions SPL is considering or in conversation with some of our city resources like the care team, Health 99, or community safety officers.

Yes, we are always in communications with all of those.

It's critical that we stay in alignment with city services.

We do not do this work outside of the libraries.

We see this as really serving our patrons who we know are going to be in many times every day throughout the course of the week and people who transition through our spaces that may be transiting the city.

in any number of ways.

And really that's what this group focuses on.

It's not saying let's go out and do XYZ farther out in the community, out in a park space.

That's not what these folks do.

And it's really making sure that our patrons are successful using the library and the services.

We want to make sure people are successful being in the library.

And that's really where Our social service referrals can help people in a number of spaces.

It could be drug addiction, mental health needs, housing needs.

and any other number of needs that are out there from a social service perspective.

Our librarians already and have historically done that work as well, but by having this additional resource with this expertise, it makes sure that we stay in alignment with the city.

Because you can be the best librarian, but unless you're in touch with folks who do this work, critical work every single day, is pretty hard to know all the nuance that goes on in social services.

So that's really where our focus is in that.

Again, as I said with my mobile services team, small and mighty, this is even a smaller and mighty group that does all this important work, really works with our librarians, trains our staff, works with our security officers so that they have a better understanding that some things are not a security issue, some of them are a basic human need issue.

And how do we evaluate that differently?

In the heat of the moment, to make sure that everybody's successful and that we have a good, safe and welcoming space for everyone who comes in.

Thank you for that.

And just to expand on that briefly, hearing that this is a small yet mighty team, understanding that that mightiness can only take you so far sometimes before you gotta ask for additional help.

Is there anything you can speak to right now about our current capabilities and what kind of expanded support you may need?

Yeah, I think right now where we stand, most of our support can be at the Central Library.

For those who have toured some of the other libraries, you know that we have some other needs in other parts of the city as well.

And it would be good to be able to expand that into a couple of those spaces so that again, we can more directly help people be successful in the space, get them more referrals out to the city resources and to Make sure staff are getting the assistance they need as well This group really allows our library staff who are providing library services what you consider your core services to stay focused on that Which is what I want is we are here for libraries So again, it's not you know this massive expansive group that we need But we just need them to stay focused so that our larger body of work can still be accomplished

Certainly, thank you for that.

And I'll just state again, my goal for this year is to go to every single one of our library branches and colleagues would be great if we could do some field trips maybe sometime.

Thank you, Chair Rivera.

Thank you.

I will say that is hard and if you do that, you will have probably beaten me this year.

Thank you, Council Member Rink, and thank you, Chief Fay.

And for folks that may be watching, I think it's important to underscore that we are not expecting our library staff, whether they be librarians or our other staff that we just talked about, to be social service providers.

This is, we're seeing folks entering the library who have needs, needs that the library's not meant to to accommodate and so making sure that we have our staff at the library that they are well informed to be able to provide referrals including reaching out to some of our other services like the care team who can then come into the library and help a resident who might be in need at the library.

So we're not trying to create a team of We're not trying to expect from our library staff that they're going to become social workers.

That's not what this is and that would not be appropriate.

It's really so that they are informed on who to contact if there is a need, if a resident has a need in one of the libraries so that to your point, Chief Faye, your team can focus on the services that the libraries do provide.

and so that's what we're talking about here and that is important because to your point we're seeing more folks entering the library who might have needs and we wanna make sure we're connecting those folks to services that they need and that's the point of that.

So I wanted to make sure that for the viewing public we're level setting the expectation on what we're talking about here and also for the library staff.

I think it's important to note that it's, you know, we are, and it doesn't matter if you're in this city or any city in this country, we are the last free space for people to simply be.

So when people say, well, you know, why are people, because it's free and you can be there.

And most people are just sitting there trying to read, consume, watch a movie, all the things that anyone else wants to do.

And I think that's the important part and why we feel it's an important part in our support of the city that we can send those referrals to the right people so that hopefully people are getting the help they need.

Thank you.

And important to underscore that if someone is sitting there quietly and having a moment, that's okay too.

That's not what we're talking about is folks who might be experiencing some crisis that we want to make sure we're connecting folks.

So we're not turning anyone away from the library.

They can be there.

Of course, it is their library too.

If someone is experiencing a crisis, then that becomes we need to be able to refer them somewhere.

and that's what we're talking about.

Thank you for nodding in the audience.

You look like an avid library user.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lin.

Thank you all for being here and for sharing.

I think in many ways our libraries, our library staff are truly unsung heroes.

of the city and I think the services, the spaces you provide are needed more now than ever to provide these free public spaces for people to go to, to build community, to access reliable information in this period of disinformation.

I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit about and you've spoken a little bit about this, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about sort of the evolving role of libraries, either here or nationwide, giving our changing needs some of the crises we've faced.

You're coming out of COVID and you're providing critical services through that.

But as we face, you know, affordability challenges, behavioral health challenges, but this evolving information space, I was just wondering about your vision, other people's visions for the role of libraries, you know, both currently and in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you for the question.

Yes, I think as we have these discussions and I will use the national level with my colleagues when you have the executive directors and chief librarians and from across the country the biggest library systems Really the the focus again is coming back to some of the basics.

So those basics are Around reading and literacy if you look today There are challenges out there.

We read less as individuals at all ages.

This is not just a youth issue, a children's issue by third grade.

This is an issue of everyone reading less.

We need to, again, start doubling down on that, and you'll see and hear more of that as we look at levy proposals around collections.

around creative formats, as I mentioned to President Hollingsworth, because that's what we need.

We need to have the material, the formats, the other resources to really make this available and really encourage people to come out and read.

And to tie that to things that also are what's not often considered, like programming, classes, things that make people curious and want to inquire.

that's what leads to additional reading when you're an adult.

You know, as a child, it's an engagement on programming, right?

Something fun, something exciting, you know, that children are wanting to then have also that tactile experience with a book.

All of those things we need to continue to double down on because the numbers, you know, are distressing when we look at our schools.

We know that reading at third grade level is an issue.

We know reading at fifth grade level is also an issue.

and we also know that if you're not successful by those age groups, it is not a great outlook for not only your academic success but also your work success in society.

So those are all things that, as we talk about it from a national standpoint, that we really need to focus on.

We also need to focus on the disinformation, misinformation, start looking at how we provide digital literacy tools around that and around AI and its responsible use.

How do you prompt AI?

How do you know what data sources that it's calling all of its information from?

Those are things that we also are talking about.

How do we focus?

I was actually with a group a few months ago put on by the Digital Public Library Association and University of Washington and that's exactly what we were talking about.

How can from the academic library side, public library side, how can we start doing that and getting in on the front edge of this making sure that we're providing that kind of instruction and availability of that instruction for the public.

Otherwise folks are just using the tools.

The tools are designed to do a lot of things, but not necessarily always provide you, how are you getting to the answer?

And I think that's where we have to do a lot of work as well.

So those are the big topics that we're talking about.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lynn.

And thank you, Chief Fay for that.

I very much appreciate the back to basics.

There are a lot of arenas at the city where we're focusing on back to basics.

I think a little bit, while well-intentioned we've gone beyond because we've had to, there have been things that have come up that we need to address but then that has taken away from the basics and very much so I'm concerned about reading and math for that matter but we're talking about books today and reading.

Reading in our schools and kids are just missing the mark, they are not achieving those outcomes, and you are correct, that's gonna have lifelong impacts.

And outcomes are really important.

So this back to basics piece and making sure that all individuals are reading more, but I'm focused in on kids because if kids cannot read and they cannot do math, they're not gonna be successful in the workforce.

And that is anywhere between college, traditional college, or trades programs.

You need reading and math for all of that.

And our kids in Seattle Public Schools, many are not achieving that.

And this is a problem across the country, so I don't wanna pick just on Seattle Public Schools.

We're all in this together, so it's less picking on, but these are realities, these are facts.

And so I very much appreciate you talking about Back to Basics.

and having that focus.

And it sounds like from your conversations, it's not just in Seattle, we're seeing this across the board and we got to do better.

We got to do better for our students and we really have to focus on these academic outcomes, which include reading.

Thank you.

Council member Foster, you look like you have another question.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for recognizing me again, chair.

So I was listening to the conversation from council president Hollingsworth and discussion of ebooks, I remember there's something I wanted to touch base on, which is I know that for libraries, the cost of ebooks and ebook licensing has been a challenge given the costs and some of the issues with the providers.

I'm curious if there are any innovations in that space or things that you might want to bring to our attention just because it's such an important segment of the population who's tapping into e-books and my understanding is a rising cost for you and for us.

And so I'd love to hear a little bit more about that and if there's any potential bright spots or areas for exploration so that we can help innovate in that space.

Sure.

I wish I could say there's bright spots for innovation.

It's a challenge because I've been around a long time.

This is my 43rd year in libraries.

So I've been there at the beginning of eBooks.

I was there during the battles around eBooks and fair use.

All of that was settled when it comes to e-books.

E-books were designated as basically software.

They don't fall under the same laws or guise of a book, of a print book.

So those challenges we fought and we all died for it at the time seemingly when we were talking about those prices.

And we really all got on the bad end of each other when we talked about libraries, publishers, and some of the people in the middle.

and I think as we look at the future of this, we have to come back to the table to discuss all of this.

The price is an issue.

It's one of the most expensive things as far as library material that we will buy, e-audiobooks and e-books.

E-books generally are at least two to three times more than you as a consumer would pay for an e-book.

They also have limited use it could be you know that we get 26 Uses of that we might have some other agreement in that subscription And then e-audio can be up to five times more than you pay as as a as a an individual person all of these things are then making it more and more difficult to meet the demands of a growing population.

That's why, again, you heard me say some of those things going back to the collection and beefing that up will be key.

We are looking at different ways that we can start now engaging not only publishers, but what we call the middleman, those platforms like your Libby that you use.

That's OverDrive that provides that product.

But being able to go back to them and say, how can we talk about this holistically, but not just as individuals.

We need to come together, and that's another thing library directors, chief librarians, et cetera, have been talking about.

How do we do this nationally and engage them in truly a dialogue?

Not a pointing fingers, not back in the day when we were all fighting about this, but hey, here are the realities.

I, as someone who has been long in career, what I want to see is not only do we have some fair and competitive pricing, that would be great, but more importantly, and this is something important for all of us when we think about stewardship of tax dollars, right now I own very little in the digital realm.

I subscribe to a lot.

When I subscribe to that, what I would like to see is some kind of license in perpetuity.

At least one.

If I bought 300 licenses, I would like at least one or two licenses so that we can keep it and we have an actual digital library.

That's the kind of thing that I think can actually start resonating with publishers, making it more, you know, reasonable to them as well, but most certainly reasonable to authors.

because at some point you want to make sure your titles, your work are still available even maybe after you pass.

what interest is it in a publisher or middleman down the road 30 years from now for an author who wrote a book that no one remembers but could be really great and life-changing for someone?

That's what libraries are about.

So that's the kind of discussions we need to have, not only as we think about it as a state, but more importantly, I just had this, I was just telling Kirsten on the way here, I had this dialogue with a person who represents about 190 of the largest public libraries in North America.

How do we actually have that discussion together and actually bring that leverage to the table?

So it's a very important discussion and one that is, again, ramping up.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

And Chief Fay, if we purchase a book at the library that has how many uses, do you think?

One book.

Oh, one book?

One book can have a lot of uses when you're talking about a physical book.

I mean, it can be there four years.

What gets a book off the shelf is going to be usually wear and tear.

It's just not holding together.

It doesn't have pages.

That'll get it taken out.

But as long as a book is serviceable, often will stand on a shelf for quite some time.

The other thing we do is we look at what is that importance or relevance of that title or that particular subject.

then it may go into our special collections.

It may go into our African-American collection if it's a specific subject or title or any of our other specialty subject areas.

And yet what I'm hearing you say in the e-book space, you could have a book and we pay to use the digital version, but we might only have 26 uses of it.

Correct, or only have it for two years, yeah.

Yeah, which is really a shame.

So I...

just to underscore the importance.

And in a city that really relies on e-books, and a city as avid readers as we have, notwithstanding the fact that we need even more individuals to read, that's just a national problem.

This is really important.

So thank you, Council Member Foster for raising that.

Council Member Lynn, you're recognized.

Thank you.

One topic that we all are concerned about that came up earlier is protecting our immigrant community from the awful actions of of the federal government.

Just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you see that showing up in our libraries, how we can ensure that our libraries continue to be safe, welcoming spaces, any data privacy issues, how they can be spaces for folks to get accurate information and resources and this is a sensitive topic so if we need to take any of this conversation offline, happy to do that.

But anything you feel comfortable sharing in this space about any resources that we can, any better collaboration or support that we can provide given the critical services that you provide to our community.

We do actually work well with OIRA, Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, with the city and we follow their guidelines on this.

We also, they provide information that we can hand out to patrons.

We work and look at other partners in this arena and also have their information and services and or referral numbers, et cetera, contact information.

So we are able to help there just as if they had called OIRA and often we might put somebody in contact with OIRA for more legal.

We cannot provide, at the library we can't provide legal advice, we can point you to it, which is an important piece around it.

I think, you know, I will say this, obviously it's always tricky to say any of this with enforcement efforts, we are a very public space.

So obviously, as a public space, we all see what can happen in a public space.

That most certainly could happen at a library.

It could happen at a school.

We've seen all these things happening.

I think it's always being prepared, at least from the standpoint of the library system, to make sure that we're in compliance with the law.

and that we are doing all that we can to inform people before they're in the spaces, when they're out in public, when they're at home.

Those are the things that we are good at doing.

But yes, we never know what might enter our doors as we've seen recently.

Thank you, Chief Faye.

Any other questions?

Thank you.

All right, colleagues, any other final questions?

If not, I know I so appreciate Chief Faye.

I know you have a library's board meeting, I believe, and I want to make sure you get to that.

I really appreciate you staying to answer questions.

Colleagues, if you have any other questions, please let me know.

I'll make sure.

that we get answers for you.

Thank you for your thoughtful questions today.

We all care very much about libraries.

You can see that, Chief A. So I look forward to the continued conversation, colleagues.

All right.

Okay, seeing no further questions, this concludes the January 14th, 2026 meeting of the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee.

Our next committee meeting is scheduled for January 28th at 9.30 a.m.

If there's no further business, this meeting will adjourn.

I'm looking around.

I don't see any hands.

Hearing no further business, it's 9.30, excuse me, 9.35 a.m., and this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you, Chief Fay.

Thank you, Kirsten, for being here.