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All right.

Good afternoon, everyone.

The February 19th, 2026 special meeting of the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee will come to order.

It's 2.02 PM.

I'm Maritza Rivera, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council member Lynn.

Here.

Vice chair Howlingsworth.

Here.

Chair Rivera.

Present.

Three council members are present.

Thank you, clerk.

Please note for the record that council member Rink is excused as is council member Foster until she can join us later in the meeting.

Let me note here that there have been a couple of late breaking corrections to the presentation materials.

So we have provided newly printed materials for you at your desks, colleagues, and also at the table for anyone of the public who would like to get an updated one and of course the one that is online will be updated as well if it hasn't already done, hasn't been done.

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 particular committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently we have two in-person speakers and zero remote speakers signed up.

Thank you.

Given that each speaker will have two minutes as per our council rules.

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 first 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 our list.

The first in-person speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

Hello.

Yeah, my name Alex Zimmerman and I want to speak about school and library because it's a fundamental point of education.

This cannot be separate.

So situation what is we have right now because I go to school meeting for last 10 years many times and what is I have?

Three times, three year trespass I have from Bellevue and from Seattle.

Situation right now in school, absolutely idiotic, and I explained to you where is a problem.

Board of director, you know what this mean, and I speak many times why I have so many trespasses, make a rules what is look like a concentration camp.

Children from six to 12 cannot understand this.

And I told you, how you can do this?

You bring children to concentration camps like a Nazi pig, you know what it means?

So they're quiet, they're scared right now.

When they're scared from 6 to 12, they will be scared for the rest of their life.

This is absolutely principle, what we have right now.

but you don't do nothing for stopping them.

School don't have enough money, everybody knows it.

Library don't have enough money.

I look statistic right now, from 2000 to 2006, for seven year, 30% and I speak right now with people, you know what it means.

So this 30% approximate increase in salary.

So all money that you have for library or for school, you know what it means, go to salary.

They don't go to children.

You need stop on this.

I live this for 40 years.

So two generations, what is right now, children, what you make in Seattle is a pure zombie.

They idiot.

It's these people who, right now, from 18 to 50, you know what it means?

It's a situation unique.

You make Seattle a pure degenerative idiot.

Viva Trump!

Viva new American Revolution!

Stand up!

Slav and happy cow!

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Alex.

Our next speaker is Brian Lawrence.

Good afternoon, Council Members for the Record.

My name is Brian Lawrence.

I'm the CEO of the Seattle Public Library Foundation.

We are the nonprofit partner of the library working to secure private dollars and advocate for public support of our library.

This past month, we hosted a Love Letters to the Library campaign and we've collected thousands of messages across the city for people who want to demonstrate their love of the library.

In fact, more than 90 retail and community locations have hosted these boxes and the messages have been pouring in.

These letters reinforce what we already know, which is that Seattle loves its libraries.

Our neighbors understand how lucky we are to have a first-class library system and we see that every day and it's high usage in the amazing and innovative programs that they offer and the public spaces that they find safe and secure.

But I'm worried that Seattle's position as a leader among libraries is in jeopardy.

We have seen budget cuts over the years, and we have seen general fund offloading.

Unfortunately, we see this in the other parts of the country as well, where libraries are being deprioritized.

and at times when there is a literacy crisis in America and we see a high usage in our libraries, I hope these messages resonate with you when we share them with you as well as our library staff to show how important our libraries are.

and when you hear about the current impact of the levy from our library colleagues today and you work with the mayor on the upcoming levy renewal package, we ask that you take this love for the library that we see into consideration and make the institution a priority.

Please treat it with the the same love and affection that our neighbors have.

And I think this year presents an opportunity for each of you to leave your mark on the Seattle's library for the next seven years.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brian.

Chair, that was our last registered speaker.

All right.

There are no additional registered speakers.

The public comment period is now closed.

We'll proceed to our item of business.

Clerk, will you please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, Seattle Public Library 2019 Library Background and Overview for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Colleagues, today we have four presenters, including Chief Librarian Tom Fay, Kirsten Nelson, Rick Sheridan, and Rob Gannon.

They've joined us at the table.

Colleagues, before we get to their presentation, I'd like to say some words about the library levy and the presentation that we're about to hear.

First, let me say welcome to a special meeting of the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee.

We were originally scheduled to meet Wednesday, February 11th at 930 at our regularly scheduled committee, but we rescheduled the meeting to today because of the Seahawks parade.

We are so proud of our Seattle Seahawks.

What a great season they had.

It was such an amazing parade if you had the opportunity to see it or be in it.

And we look forward to next year.

So go Seahawks.

Today though, in anticipation of the Seattle Public Library levy renewal, we're gonna be hearing from our great library staff.

We will be looking at what the 2019 levy has funded in detail.

A note that this overview will be broken into two presentations, the first of which we'll have today and the next week we'll have the second half of the presentation.

And the reason we're doing it this way is because you all know colleagues in true Rivera due diligence fashion, I wanna make sure that we are talking about all of the aspects of the library with as much detail as possible.

As I've said many times before, and it is true, Seattle Public Libraries are beloved.

There are 27 library branches in Seattle, and they're a part of the social fabric of our neighborhoods.

As far back as 2012 and more recently in 2018, and I'm sure even before 2012, but we have survey results from 2012 and 2018, residents have said in surveys that they see their libraries as essential third places, a critical education resource and that they are worth the investment.

Most notably, patrons have continued to tell us that library hours are paramount to them.

The number one investment highlighted from constituents across the city are open hours.

Not only do they care deeply about open hours, they also care about access to collections in the format that they want, both physical and digital.

and ensuring libraries have updated technology with computer and internet access.

SPS is currently finalizing the 2025 survey report, which we look forward to seeing as we consider the 2026 levy investments.

Today's presentation and next week's presentation are an opportunity for Seattle Public Libraries to show how they're responding to the priorities of the 2019 levy investments.

It's a chance to publicly show their work, as I like to say, to the taxpayers who so generously supported the libraries through a property tax increase.

The six areas of investment that were included in the 2019 library are, Excuse me, the 2019 Library Levy are hours and access, books and materials, technology and online services, building maintenance, helping children, and administration and central costs.

That means taxpayers voted to have us prioritize these six areas, which is what you'll be hearing about today and next week.

Colleagues, I don't, and public, members of the public and those who may be watching on the Seattle channel, as many of you know, I don't take it lightly when we're asking residents to tax themselves.

That is why it is critical that we show them how their dollars are working and helping our communities across Seattle.

and to that end, I wanna briefly tell you about something I just learned today.

This evening, I'm attending a resident meeting at the Mercy Housing, Affordable Housing Complex in Magnuson Park.

I noticed on the agenda for today's meeting that SPL would be present.

I asked about that and was told that a librarian from the Northeast Branch comes to every monthly meeting, resident meeting, to tell folks about programs at the library and to bring books.

That level of engagement and consistency and care is really amazing.

And I wanted to call that out.

And I know that the Seattle Public Library is doing similar engagement across all the neighborhoods across the city.

They engage with residents in the communities near the branches so that those branches are able to administer programs that neighbors care about.

I know this because since I arrived on the City Council, I've asked Seattle Public Libraries how they serve patrons across the city.

This is critically important to me that SPL is working with community to ensure that they're getting their needs met by our libraries.

And I know that our library staff is doing that under the leadership of Chief Fay.

Many of you know as a kid living in a low-income neighborhood in the inner city in the Bronx, New York, the library was a safe place in my unsafe neighborhood.

That was the only place that my mother would let me go on my own.

I felt safe among the stacks of books and that sparked a lifelong love of reading.

Libraries are so important to the kids in our communities and to our seniors and every age in between.

Now let's move on to today's agenda and learn more about SPL's levy funded services and programs in the 2019 levy.

And then for the record, I also want to welcome Councilmember Rob Saka.

who I know is not on this committee, but I know he cares and I invited all my colleagues if they were able to attend.

Many of them have other committee meetings, external committee meetings and other engagements, but I wanted to make sure that they were included so they too can hear this information that you're gonna present today.

So thank you, Councilmember Saka for being here and for your engagement.

Chief Fay, if you'd like to state your name and have your team state their names for the record and we can get started.

And then colleagues, this is a fairly robust slide deck.

I wanna thank the libraries for doing that work to give all the information.

And if you have questions, please raise your hand as we go along so we're not waiting until the end of the whole slide deck to make sure we get your questions answered.

Thank you.

Alright, thank you, Chair Rivera.

I'm Tom Fay.

I'm the Chief Librarian for the Seattle Public Library and I'll have my colleagues introduce themselves.

I'm Kirsten Nelson and I do the Government Relations for the Seattle Public Library.

Good afternoon, members of the committee.

My name is Rob Gannon.

I am the Director of Administrative Services for the Library.

Afternoon, Councilmembers.

I'm Rick Sheridan.

I'm the Director of Institutional and Strategic Advancement.

All right, well thank you for having us in today and I want to thank my team for getting all of this together as well as Chair Rivera's team in her office as well as herself going through these slides and this information over the last week, week and a half.

It takes a lot of time.

Appreciate the diligence and effort everyone has put forward.

Today we will provide an overview of the levy in three of the categories that Chair Rivera mentioned.

And just as a reminder, the 2019 levy was $219.1 million at that time.

Today we'll be going through the collections and building maintenance and the technology and online services components.

and next week we'll be bringing back hours and access, helping children with literacy and early learning and levy administration and central costs.

And this time I'll turn it over to Rob for some of the basic budget info.

Thank you, Tom.

Again, good afternoon, members of the committee.

So to begin our presentation, we will start with a sort of general overview of the library's budget.

The slide in front of you is a chart that depicts the council approved budget for the library in 2026. As you can see, the majority of our funding is provided by the city's general fund, about 58%, and the levy contributes one third, 33% in the current budget year.

A small portion of our budget comes from other sources, including the city generated real estate excise tax, funds from the generous support of the Seattle Public Library Foundation, and then also library gift funds.

You'll note a very small stripe in that bar chart to the right.

We generate a very small amount of revenue at the library, and this comes largely from parking at our central library, printing across our branches, and then a small amount from the recovery of lost items, fees when we recover lost items.

The bulk of our budget goes to operations.

So you see in the upper left-hand corner about 102.5 million of our budget is dedicated to operations.

This is providing staff for open hours, acquiring books and materials, and maintaining our buildings.

Those are the core elements of a library's budget and Seattle Public Library is no exception.

The library has also a capital component to its budget.

As you'll see here in the current year, we have about 2.6 million dedicated to our capital program.

These are for major projects, maintenance and equipment acquisitions.

So as we then dive deeper into the history of our budget and the role that the levy plays, we've presented here an overview of the last six years of actual expenditure and then the 2026 bar represents the budgeted amount for the current year.

And what you see here is a breakdown of the library's budget by funding source.

As you can see, over these years, the library has experienced some growth in each of the major fund types.

There's a general trend for growth with minor fluctuations in each year, so there's not a consistent or straightforward pattern to the library's budget growth, but you can see how it breaks down by category there.

The portion of the foundation funding has grown over the period, as has the general fund amount, but there's notable growth in the size of the levy portion.

Much of this growth is built into the levy as a funding device to account for inflation and the anticipated increased costs over that period.

But some of this levy funding growth is also attributed to shifts from the general fund onto the levy.

Rob, can I ask a question about that?

So when you say a shift from general into the levy, what does that mean?

Into things that the levy funds and we're transferring over general fund to make up the difference or can you talk a little bit about that?

I can and I'll invite my colleagues also to help answer that question.

Um, council member, it is the inverse of what you described.

It is things that had been historically or over this period funded by the general fund and due to pressures on that resource at the city level, the library has been asked to move expenditure onto the levy.

and that has happened over the course of a number of years.

All of those transfers are accounted for in the annual budget process that goes through the mayor's office and then ultimately finds its way to council for approval.

Thank you, Rob.

And also, I mean, but we have more levy money to work with because I assume that there's an increase in levy money.

So is that because every year, I mean, it's assessed yearly, no?

The levy, how it's collected.

And so I assume we have more levy money over the course of the levy than originally anticipated.

So I'll answer the question as I interpret it, and then please follow up.

The levy does anticipate that there will be year over year increases to the amount of revenue collected through that instrument.

as it relates to expenditure and specifically to the general fund transfer, when items come off of the general fund and are moved on to the levy, that usually means we have to look at ways to extend the existing levy resources.

It is not that there is an incremental increase in the levy that accounts for that general fund offset.

So we make prioritization choices from the levy and say we will not be able to do this to the same degree or to the extent where this project will need to be deferred in order to absorb that transfer from the general fund onto the levy.

Okay, great.

Thank you, Rob.

But the levy itself has stayed what we anticipated it would be.

It hasn't decreased.

We didn't see a decrease since 2019. Correct.

That's correct.

Over the anticipated 219 million.

So that's good news because this happened over COVID.

Correct.

So, okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It is a finite resource in that sense.

Yes.

In that sense.

But it didn't decrease, which can happen if for some reason the property values tanked and, you know, we didn't have that happen through COVID.

So, okay, thank you.

Thank you, Rob.

Go ahead, sorry.

Thanks for answering questions.

Thank you for the question.

So our next slide here is meant to show the same series of years, again, the levy period from 2020 to 2025, but this expresses the relative amounts that each of the fund categories provides.

So Council Member Rivera, or Chair Rivera, you'll see that over the period of this levy, The percentage of the general fund has somewhat gradually decreased over the period while the amount borne by the levy has increased.

The Seattle Public Library Foundation's portion has remained relatively constant over that same period.

Even though there's an increase in the absolute value of the amount, the relative value has stayed fairly consistent.

Chief Fade, does that mean you would have used levy money in other ways?

I mean, we have the money that hasn't decreased, so it's a matter of prioritization.

But I think what the graph is showing is that the library budget has increased every year since 2020, all of those levy years.

So in that sense, while there might have been maybe fund swaps between the general fund and the levy, that it has increased over time.

Correct.

And when we have those swaps into the levy, it does mean that something isn't going to be done that may have been planned in the levy.

A good example of that is this year that we're in, we needed to make sure that we made the budget reductions that we needed to.

We needed to take $5 million from the levy that had been dedicated for a project, the Columbia unreinforced masonry project, and we are going to have to defer that one.

And that was a decision we made to make sure that we could maintain the hours of operation and not have to have a reduction in staffing or hours.

Thank you, Chief Faye.

So as the chair referred to in her opening comments, the levy is broken into categories.

These categories have remained consistent over both the 2012 levy and the 2019 levy, which helps for readability or legibility and understanding how the library is using its resources.

What this chart depicts is how each of the categories from administration and central costs all the way to hours and access account for the ways in which the library is spending those levy dollars.

Tom made mention in his introduction that we were describing each of these categories in details over the course of the presentation.

This slide is meant only to provide the broad context.

As you can see, administration and central costs in yellow and helping children in light blue make up a very small portion of the levy Hours and Access, which we'll be talking about next week, makes up the largest portion of the levy.

So we'll be discussing the three categories in our presentation today, building maintenance, which you see represented in the dark blue, technology in the green, and then the orange section shows the levy sources dedicated to books and materials.

And so we will start our detailed presentation there, and I will turn it back to Tom, unless there are any questions.

Thank you, Rob.

All right, thank you.

So the first category is collections and I want to give a little bit of an understanding of collections because in library land we sometimes use that term interchangeably to discuss collections.

So in the broadest sense, if we think about it at the 30,000 foot view, the Seattle Public Library has a collection that is the nearly three million items that we hold either electronically or physically.

We then have things that we refer to that are specific types of collections, a children's collection.

That again can be at the entire system level, that could be at a branch level.

And then we have special and unique collections that are going to be a little more granular.

They may be something like the collection at the Douglas Truth Library, the African American collection.

It might be something at the special collection that's around maps or other ephemera.

So just to give a grounding when we talk about collections, we use those words interchangeably.

But in this case, we're primarily talking about books and materials.

So this slide is breaking down what the collections include.

We have physical and digital books.

history items, historic photos, maps, postcards, all types of other ephemera, the unique collections I mentioned, Douglas Truth, the LGBTQ plus collection at Capitol Hill, aviation and zine collections at Central, and several others.

We still of course have DVDs and CDs, they're still popular, even though they're harder to find these days, for sure.

and we also have physical and digital magazines and newspapers.

We have free access to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal.

And of course we have those who love movies and music, we have streaming versions of that through our Hoopla and Canopy platforms.

Chief, do we have, I noticed Seattle Times was absent from this list.

Do you, is that?

We do have the Seattle Times as well, yes.

We actually have.

I wanted to make sure people knew they could access the Seattle Times.

And we do have access to it all the way back in history as we do the Post-Intelligencer.

We have that entire collection digitally as well.

So folks can definitely find the history of Seattle through our newspapers.

And on your unique collections, this was really great to see.

Are these located at different branches or how does it work?

It does.

It generally is something that grows out of a need in a particular community.

A good example is the LGBTQ plus collection in Capitol Hill, a traditional community for the LGBTQ folks.

And then of course, some of these special collections like the aviation and zine collections, some of those again end up being almost like special collections, so they have to take additional handling.

to make sure that they're cared for.

And many of those end up being what we consider a reference collection, meaning you can't check that material out.

The Douglas Truth collection, however, you can check out, which is great.

That's a very strong collection, one of the largest collections on the West Coast.

Wonderful.

And if a community has a particular interest in seeing a unique...

because not every community is represented here, would they work with your folks to identify it and then you all look into creating a unique collection, for instance?

Absolutely.

Sometimes it's opportunistic in that we...

We actually have someone who wants to donate a collection.

That can happen when we talk about special collections.

Sometimes what happens is as requests come in for material and we see those requests more and more in certain locations, it really helps us, our people selecting books, to know that, okay, we need to start getting more of this material.

A good example of that is material in other languages.

that's one of the ways we find it.

The system does something called floating, which means that if you check out a book at Beacon and return it at Beacon, but maybe that book was delivered from the central library, that book's gonna stay at Beacon.

and what happens is that over time people start noticing that, wow, there's a lot more of this material here.

Maybe we should be buying more or moving more of the collections.

So we do that every day looking at those collections.

And you also don't have to be at that location to get access to those books.

You can be at Broadview and access books from the African-American collection that's housed at Douglas Truth.

Thank you, Kirsten.

And what I'm hearing you, Chief, say is it does help, though, if a book is consistently at one branch, it helps you identify there's that interest for that subject at that branch.

And that, yes, and that is the beauty of floating collections.

In my early days, that was not an option in library systems, but today that really helps us better serve the community because it's actually moving to where people need the material.

Thank you, Chief.

All right, in this next slide, we have some of the highlights of the collection.

We are in the top 10 of e-circulation in the world.

That's really thanks to our passionate and voracious readers here in Seattle.

But it also shows the shift of patrons towards e-materials versus physical materials.

And that really, that big shift happened during the pandemic.

As you might imagine we weren't open and so the digital collection really was the only way to have access for several months.

During the time of this levy we have grown our collection from 2.4 to 2.9 million.

We have 2 million physical items and about a million digital in our collection.

We also have Excuse me, we also, I'm sorry, I just noted this here today on my own.

We also move a lot of these books through the system.

And really these checkouts are occurring all throughout the day.

We run 24 seven, you can get an ebook any time of the day.

You can go to one of our pickup lockers and pick up your holds outside the library branch.

And so as you look at the big numbers that we have, we did about almost 13 million circulated items last year.

that equates to 24 books per minute being checked out every single day, every single hour here in the city.

Oh, sorry, yes.

On the eBooks, first of all, I just really wanna note, in the later slide, you're gonna say you all are 10th in the world

We are 10th in the world.

Not nationally, 10th in the world for eBooks.

That's really worth mentioning.

That is amazing.

And later when we get to that slide, we'll talk about, I know there's some challenges on the eBooks, but we'll talk about those later.

I do have a question about the, what are the goals for the eBooks?

I mean, is there a goal that was articulated and that's how you, So, I mean, I know there's demand leads a lot.

Is there more you can tell us about that?

Demand is a big piece, is most certainly, thank you for the question.

The demand is a big piece of a, but really what libraries are looking at is how can we, how can we have the best fulfillment of what that patron wants or needs.

That's why we do spend a lot of effort also letting patrons know that a physical book may be available.

We'll talk about it here in a little bit around peak picks.

That's another way for patrons to get that physical item that they walk in and they see it on the shelf and they just go.

So we do a lot around trying to meet the fulfillment needs of patrons because when you get online and you find that, you know, well that, I'm number 1400 for this book.

that's not really going to be satisfying.

So what we try to do is make sure that we look at our ratios of holds to actual items and then we can buy more to address that fulfillment need.

So that's really where the goal comes in and then a lot of it is again as I said the demand because of the shift and we do expect that to continue to grow as people become more and more familiar with the platforms and just feel more comfortable using e-materials.

Thank you, Chief.

So it's not static.

It moves according to what the demand is.

I do want to state for the record Council Member Foster has joined us.

Welcome Council Member Foster.

All right, thank you.

And yes, talking more about this particular slide, again, we've also increased our language access.

We've purchased more and more world language materials.

We provide Spanish language collections at all locations now.

We've added Ukrainian collections, as well, that's books for children, teens and adults.

Those are at Central, but circulate system-wide.

We've added Portuguese this last year, again, all ages, and that is also at Central and circulate system-wide.

This particular language, Portuguese, was noted last year in some of our communities as Seattle has seen more immigrants and refugees from Angola.

We've added bilingual Dari and Dari to English and Pashto to English board books for kids.

Those are available at Central and Beacon Hill and of course you can request them anywhere.

And we've increased our translation and transcreation of communication materials such as library card applications, welcome emails and other transactional emails and even on our mobile app so people have a better access to our system but all of the materials that we might have in the languages that they prefer.

We've also increased our access to local history.

We continue to acquire new materials, including the vast Paul Dorpat collection, which Paul Dorpat wrote Seattle now and then, and others where we now have 33,000 digital items that we have digitized over the years and very proud of the collection that we have.

All right, this next slide is a look at the amount of levy funding that is spent on collections.

So you can see that books and materials is in the blue and gives you a sense of the percentage as well as the dollar amount that is spent on collections.

Moving to the next slide.

This is a look at overall collection spending by funding source.

And I want to point out here specifically that this is inclusive of the books and materials, the acquisition and processing costs and fees, material distribution costs, which also include the labor to do all of those functions.

So this is not just books and materials.

This is all of the things that makes it possible to get a book in person's hand all the way to the delivery to a branch.

Thank you, Chief.

It's a good reminder that all of this takes staff time from our trustee, great staff at the libraries.

It does indeed, and as I point out, for those books to end up in your library within a day or two, we have folks processing at the big machine in Georgetown, quite a few hours a day, but then our drivers are out at three in the morning, starting the rounds of delivery.

So we have someone in the library working almost 24 hours, somewhere in the city.

This next slide gives you the numbers behind that previous chart, lays out the spending in the general fund, library levy, and from private funds.

Moving to this next slide.

This one is a look at spending by funding source for only the books and the materials.

So this gives you an idea of what that cost is for all of that material I mentioned earlier.

There's no labor involved, no labor costs in these numbers.

And the levy now provides 55% of our spending on books and materials and that's an important piece to note.

And here you can see the private funds as well have increased over time as there's obviously been more reliance on other sources other than the general fund.

Moving to the next slide.

This is giving you a sense of the physical versus digital spending on materials.

You can see how physical material where we sit with that and how much everything is now moved to the digital side of the equation.

Most certainly has been very steady over the period of the levy.

Moving to the next.

Here you can see physical material and digital material and the amount spent from the general fund versus the levy.

And this also gives you a sense of the number of items purchased from those funds year over year.

Thank you, Chief.

And I think what's notable here that you and I have talked about, I know, is that you're able to add less titles to the digital, but they cost more.

So if you look at the items purchased for physical and digital, you see the difference and it's just that cost involved because of the licensing fees.

And I know we'll talk more about that later.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Chief.

and I do want to point out since our foundation colleagues were here today as well, they support the library in a very big way around collections.

They are supporting, this year alone, 15,000 for the African American collection, 65,000 for biography and literary classics, 6,000 for genealogy, 200,000 for children's materials, and 835,000 for general collection support.

So big thanks to our colleagues and all of our generous donors for their work on our behalf.

Thank you chief and I shout out to Brian Lawrence who gave public comment earlier and he and I met the president of the foundation and they do support a lot in the space and Brian shared some really great books and tools for kids, books that talk to you as a way to really help kids with reading and so I know the foundation is an invaluable partner.

Yes, if you actually run into Brian without some of those books in his hand, those talking books, it's a rarity.

He has actually gotten a lot of donors because of that.

It is a great format for kids.

All right, next we'll look at the impact of the collection and we'll look at the physical collection by location.

So as you look at these next slides, they are going to give you a general sense of the collection growth and or decrease across the city around each of the locations.

We've broken this down into three areas.

This is mid city and downtown.

You can see the branches located on the map to the right.

And this is for the period between 2020 and 2025. these don't generally change dramatically year over year where you can see sometimes decreases you might ask well why is that it could be a number of factors many times it's a small location and so to make it multi-purpose and to have availability of another table or something like that sometimes we reduce collections we look at what collections are most relevant relevant or important for that particular location and we try to size it specifically for that and again knowing that anyone can request either in person or online material to land at a branch we don't always need to absolutely fill it from floor to ceiling as as maybe we did in the old days the transportation system and getting the material moved around makes it pretty quick

Thank you, Chief.

That's important.

You can be at one branch and request a book that's at a different branch and you get it to the people there.

Absolutely.

All right.

We'll move on to the next area of the city.

So you can kind of see the collection sizes here.

This is North Seattle.

and I'll note that the university in Green Lake, some of these numbers are a little skewed because of closures for the seismic retrofits that we have completed at Green Lake and are undertaking at university.

So just something to note.

And then we'll move to South Seattle and you can see the numbers here.

And then we'll move on to physical circulation by location.

I think this is an important one for folks to see.

This again is mid-city and downtown.

This shows the circulation growth over the period and life of the levee thus far.

As you can see, we're doing well in circulation increases.

It will move over to North Seattle.

You will once again see the increases everywhere.

The noted exception again is going to be University, which is closed and under construction.

And then South Seattle, you can see considerable increases here as well over the levy period.

And now one of, I know a few people's favorite that people talk about all the time is Peak Picks.

And what Peak Picks is, is a collection of new and popular books with no holds or waits.

And so it's gonna be a physical book.

And the whole idea is that you are just overjoyed that when you walk in that book you were on hold for or really wanting to get that newest title is right there and you're able to grab it check it out and start reading very popular for sure something that we get asked about all the time and it has at any given time you're going to have 60 to 60 60 to 65 titles that are in that Peak Pix collection, that changes every month.

Something is going out, meaning it's no longer in Peak Pix and something new is coming in.

So you should always be finding something new almost every time you come into a physical location.

And all the locations have peak picks.

They do, they do.

Some have a little bit more space and may have a few more than others, and we do that, again, sized by the population served.

These are most certainly some of the most circulated books.

As you can imagine, they're the most popular titles.

In 2025, these materials circulated over 147,000 times, so very, very popular.

All right, this next slide, digital materials.

I highlighted everything here on the right.

We have many times folks are thinking just about the e-books and the e-audiobooks.

And most certainly, if you're a fan of some of our streaming products, music, TV, movies, we have all of those available as well.

Digital magazines.

digital comics, one of my favorites.

When I actually have time just to maybe enjoy a comic, it's a fun one to use as well.

Moving on to this next slide here, we have our digital materials.

This is size and use of eBooks and the audio.

Just looking at these, you can see our collection has grown by 135,000 items since 2020 and digital checkouts have grown by over 2.1 million, which is a 50% increase over the life of the levy.

And this next slide gives you the numbers behind that previous chart.

We've included the digital spending, which has stayed relatively flat and available funding has remained flat as well.

And over time, our purchasing power diminishes for some of those reasons you mentioned that the costs are going up for e-materials, the greater demand on e-materials, meaning we need to just buy more of them.

to meet in that fulfillment component that I mentioned earlier.

so in this we have to make some tough decisions and here in the recent past we've limited the number of digital holds that people can have from 25 to 10. In some cases we've had to extend that ratio I talked about that holds to item ratio because of the costs and it could have been a reduction in budget, it may have been a prioritization of having to do something else to make sure we could maintain hours and so it is a balancing act.

Yeah, and still within all that, I don't want people to lose sight of the fact that we are 10th in the world for eBooks.

So, I mean, that is an important note.

Yes, the demand, there's more demand, and being 10th in the world is a pretty big deal.

So, which just goes to show how popular it is.

Absolutely.

But that we are doing, and you all are doing so much to increase that demand.

if we're 10th in the world, who's number one?

Number one swings back and forth from time to time, but Los Angeles, the city of Los Angeles is number one.

Singapore is number two.

Our colleagues at KCLS, I think we're five this year.

We swing back and forth at different levels as well.

So it does move.

And I think, you know, it's important to note too that during the life of this levy, there has been an increase in population.

And if we just look at even the last decade, we know that the number, the amount of money that we've had for collections has not grown tremendously as this kind of flat line indicated.

And so we know that We do need to increase that over time to make sure that we have enough items and material for people to consume.

The population will likely continue to grow here and it will be important to meet that need going forward.

I do think the whole licensing fee is an issue, but I know you have a slide, another slide after, a couple after this one that we can talk about that too.

Sure, and I'm happy to, as we wrap this up, if there's additional questions on the collection piece, I can most certainly answer ones that haven't been addressed.

Thank you, Chief.

And so our next slide talks about Books Unbanned.

I know many of the council members have seen or heard about that program, but just as a reminder, it's for all teens and young adults in the US ages 13 to 26. We provide access to our entire digital collection.

And this was launched with the Brooklyn Public Library in 2023, now has six libraries across the country also participating.

Seattle was the second one to do this and really this was an effort to combat censorship and book banning.

We know now that there's a lot of interesting things going on around information, lack thereof, misinformation, disinformation and it's really important to make sure people have access to this.

Since we started this we've had 25,000 signups, 730,000 checkouts over this time.

And it's really important to note here that this is completely privately funded by the Seattle Public Library Foundation's generous and passionate donors.

When I'm out with donors, they talk about this program probably more than any.

because of its impact across the country.

And if you've ever had a chance to take a look at our Books Unbanned link on our website, there are so many stories from folks about the importance of having access in some of these states that have just banned material in general.

Thank you Chief and though this is a presentation about the levy and this program is not levy funded, it really goes to show the great partnership with the foundation because this is fully funded by the foundation.

So it wasn't really meant to show something that's levy, but just a great partnership with the foundation that is really meaningful to kids across the country, particularly those in cities where they have banned books, unfortunately.

So it holds great value.

It's a source of pride and it is something that we're so grateful to the foundation for.

Absolutely, thank you for that.

All right, we'll move on to impact on library patrons.

Our patrons provide us feedback every day.

There's a few examples of it here.

And if you look as we go through these presentations today and next week, we'll provide some of those quotes.

But our patrons, you know, really tell us that it improves their children's reading skills, enriches their lives and saves them money.

and I think, I always point this out when we talk about how many items we circulate, that 13 million items we circulated last year, big number.

When you talk about the ROI of that, One of the things we kind of think about or consider in libraries, and this has been kind of a general rule of thumb is that take an average cost of about $20 per book.

You're gonna have things higher, you're gonna have things lower for sure.

But if you look at that 13 million items, that was $256 million in value.

provided back to residents of Seattle and their ability to check out that material freely.

So it gives you a sense of really how we are providing that return on investment.

Moving to some challenges and opportunities, as you know, and I think you were foretelling here, eBooks and eAudiobooks are really of great interest to patrons.

We know we have the funding limitations we've talked about and the rising costs in those subscription models are the things that can really stymie us in providing broader collections over time.

Thank you Chief and colleagues.

This is something Chief Ann and I have talked about the whole time I've been on the Council for the last couple years on this challenge of these licensing fees are so expensive and that is what makes providing the e-book so expensive.

And so Chief, I know that there are some efforts across the country on how to what can be done about the licensing fees because that's not something cities can do unilaterally.

And if you have information I'd love for you to share with colleagues and I would love an update on where are we on trying to get public libraries more access at a lower cost for, you know, given these licensing fees.

Yeah.

Thank you for the question.

And it's interesting.

We've seen several different things across the country.

We've seen states try to address this and that's generally going to run up against all kinds of roadblocks.

We've seen individual libraries or cities try to address this.

I have been working and Kirsten have been working with the statewide library directors to really see if there's something we can do at the legislative level to at least begin understanding how much is being spent on this.

These are all taxpayer dollars.

How much is being spent on this?

So that's one of the efforts we're putting forward this summer to be able to inform the legislature about those costs, the concerns around the costs, and then the long-term concern of not having a perpetual license, meaning that these are subscriptions you know when you go into a library you expect to see a book you want to see that either physically or digitally down the road when now an author isn't hot a subject isn't hot 20 years down the road and a publisher doesn't want to put it out anymore if it was only in the E realm it just doesn't exist and what a loss of all that intellectual thought and it's not even contained in a library.

That's something we want to resolve and we know that will have a cost.

I think what we need to do, and I've been talking to my colleagues across the country, there's now a bigger effort with a lot of the larger systems to see if we can bring, instead of trying to take this from a legislative point of view where we're all at odds, is really bring the publishers to the table, bring the middleman group that probably is making a lot of the profit to the table as well and say, how can we actually work together to solve a couple of problems?

And we don't expect it for free, but maybe there are other options around subscriptions.

Maybe there are different numbers that we can use.

Maybe there's ways for the smaller systems Imagine being a rural library.

We're fortunate being the Seattle Public Library.

Imagine being a rural library with a $5,000 book budget.

That's not gonna go far and it's not gonna buy anything in the e-realm.

So those are the things that we're working on now.

I've been having several conversations with folks across the country in the last month, month and a half.

And so that is where we're trying to put some effort.

And that's not just gonna be those library systems, but really what we what we all belong to in the big urbans called the Urban Library Council that represents 200 of the largest library systems in North America.

And we do believe that that group can really help to bring people to the table to start discussing this because it is a long-term problem for sure.

Thank you for the update, Chief, and I think working with the publishers is something that is really important and also want to acknowledge that, you know, like in the music world, in the book world, authors need to get paid for their books.

And so that is important as well.

And within that, is there a way to work with the publishers for libraries, a specific subset of folks that are buying licenses to have their constituency read these books?

Is there an opportunity to do a carve out for libraries?

And that is really important because the increasing costs Again, we're 10th in the country, I mean, in the world, and that's still, we still have more demand, but we are 10th.

Imagine being not even in the world.

We're playing on the world level, not even playing at the national level, to your point, so.

Absolutely, and we do want authors to be successful and be paid.

But more importantly, we want their works to survive.

And that is something that I do worry about.

Probably in the last five or six years, probably more than I ever thought about or worried about.

That really, truly entire topics, entire authorship could be lost as the E realm takes over more and more of this industry.

With that, I'm sure you're tired of hearing me talk, so the reason I have asked Rob and Rick here today is to have them go through some of these other sections and I'm more than happy to intercede when necessary, but I'll turn it over to Rob for our next portion.

Thank you, Tom.

So members of the committee, I'm going to move us into the next topic, the next levy category, which is building maintenance.

And of course, we all have a broad understanding that libraries are institutions, libraries are the collection of materials that are available, but libraries are also fundamentally about the buildings and the spaces that we create for our patrons and our communities to come and to enjoy, to explore, and to enrich their lives.

In order to do that, we are in a position to maintain all of those facilities, and the levy plays a critical role in helping us do that.

Just as a broad overview, I do want to sort of differentiate between the types of maintenance that we do to keep our buildings safe and ready and accessible to the public.

Maintenance can fall into three or any number of categories, but we generally think of them at the library in these categories.

So first, major maintenance.

These are the significant projects that we take on that alter or upgrade our buildings, either to contemporary standards or to address major issues.

There's also routine and scheduled maintenance.

This is really the everyday work of maintaining our buildings as welcoming environments, as safe environments, as clean environments so that they're suitable for the use of the public.

and then I'm sure everybody is probably well familiar with the notion that repairs fall into the maintenance category and all sorts of things come up on a day-to-day basis.

Sometimes they are emergent issues, sometimes they just require our prompt attention, but this is how we spend the bulk of our maintenance dollars.

There's some examples on that slide and I'm happy to talk about any of them, but it is a broad category of maintenance, a broad definition that we use for maintenance.

I wanted to hit some of the highlights in our maintenance program, looking back retrospective to the period of our levy.

There have been some notable large-scale projects.

Tom has mentioned our unreinforced masonry projects, which we sometimes shorthand as our seismic retrofit projects.

We have completed two of those in the period of the levy.

The Green Lake branch was completed in 2026 and the university branch is well underway and we are confident that it is going to be completed later this year and should be reopened to the public in the fall.

Our unreinforced masonry projects are not simply about those particular projects, structural reinforcement.

We also use this as an opportunity to address other things that are priorities through the library, like making our spaces more accessible, making improvements to restrooms, to elevators, to entrances.

And we also have used this as an opportunity to improve our climate resiliency.

making the buildings themselves more efficient and taking advantage of contemporary technology and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

We also have just a wide variety of conventional projects, including major roof repairs, ranging from straightforward roof replacements at a place like the Greenwood branch, which was completed just recently, but also the Queen Anne branch which has a historic slate tiled roof and required a great deal of effort to make that upgrade.

There are any number of other projects that are going on throughout our system, and we're calling out a number of the highlights here.

We have made several improvements to HVAC systems, heating, ventilation, air conditioning and cooling, improvements at multiple locations, not only introducing more contemporary systems, but also adding cooling systems to places that did not have them previously.

We, as Tom mentioned earlier, moving materials through our system is no small feat.

And part of what this levy did was replace what we refer to as our automated material handling system that had previously been located at our central library.

So we both replaced that system, but also relocated that system into a new building, a new maintenance and operations center.

And the levy not only helped us or not only helped us with that replacement and relocation, but it also provides vital maintenance to that system so that we can maintain it and have it functioning well into the years ahead.

We've made a number of updates and renovations at critical branch locations.

The sole pole at the Douglas Truth branch had a complete renovation.

I mentioned the roof replacements and there are The projects just keep going and going.

More highlights included on this slide.

We made improvements to restroom access, especially during the COVID period at five locations.

We reconfigured some spaces to make them more conducive to reopening libraries.

We've made lighting improvements in garages and on main floors with more sustainable lighting that takes less energy, but also less maintenance.

We have done, when I mentioned everyday maintenance, we have increased the frequency that we do pressure washing at some of our more high-trafficked branches, including Central, the plaza, both on the front of the building on the Fifth Avenue side and the Fourth Avenue side, the plaza at Ballard, much more cleaning at our Capitol Hill and Lake City branches.

If anybody has noticed, our central branch has quite a few windows and we have to make sure that those stay clean.

They're also part of the structural integrity of the building, so it is a maintenance effort as well as just a cleanliness effort.

And then over the period of the levy, thousands of work orders have been completed, everything from, as it says here, graffiti removal to repairing carpeting to replacing furnitures to addressing what sometimes feels like an endless range of plumbing issues and many, many more.

This next slide sort of in a consistent format with other slides throughout this.

Oh, I apologize.

Before we move on, because the rest I know is just the costs involved on the air conditioning at 22. So that means five do not have air conditioning.

Is there a A schedule for the other five?

Is it the hope of with the new levy we would complete the other?

And where are they?

Yes.

So apologies, council member.

I didn't see your hand, but I'm happy to answer the question.

We have four projects that are scheduled for this year.

Okay, great.

and I don't remember the fifth but I can get that information for you but we'll be doing Columbia this year, West Seattle, Fremont and Queen Anne.

So those are projects that should be complete well will be completed during this current levy term.

They're in the process of being permitted and should be fully ready to go.

Great, so by the end of the year we should have 26 of the 27 done.

That's terrific.

Particularly as things are heating up, it's really important for folks to have a place to cool off.

Well, I want to also note again how we leverage all types of funding.

Much of this came from some efforts to get federal funding and state funding.

And as everyone might recall, we also are supposed to be replacing any kind of fossil fuel burning plants that we might have.

So anytime we're going to do something like air conditioning, We have to do the electrification component of a building, which means we take out all those fossil fuels.

So it's not just a simple cost of putting an air conditioning system in, it's all of that other work that goes along with it.

That is so critical.

Thank you, Chief, for highlighting that as well.

Continue here.

This slide is a depiction over the years of the levy period showing how much of the levy funds goes to building maintenance.

So you'll see a notable increase in 23, 24 and 25 and those roughly coincide with our major seismic retrofit projects and that accounts for the bulk of that spending.

We are We would have seen a larger increase also or a larger amount in 2026, but for the deferred project that we referred to earlier, but we do look forward to the next levy period in the hopes that we can complete the seismic retrofit for the Columbia branch.

This last slide, again, in the consistent format with other categories, just shows the balance of general fund and levy fund.

It's important to note here that the general fund does give us a base amount of maintenance, building maintenance, and support of the personnel that do all of that important work.

but it has been relatively flat or has not grown consistent with the demands and the needs of the library system.

So the levy plays an increasingly critical part of funding the way in which we can maintain our buildings, make those important upgrades, and think about making our spaces contemporary to the uses of our community.

This slide simply depicts the dollars that sit behind that chart.

And as we have been showing, the levy provides critical resources that don't just mean budgetary opportunities for the library, they are directly impacting our patrons and our patrons value the things that we're doing to keep our buildings safe and accessible.

People consistently comment about what a place the library is to come, how connected they feel to our communities as a result of the library's presence and a result of the programming.

It also offers a safe place for many of our population throughout the city from young adults and teens to People who are just looking for day-to-day resources to be in a place that is welcoming and safe and supportive Finishing this section on challenges and opportunities, as I've generally alluded, we have many, many challenges or many opportunities across our system to continue building out and maintaining our buildings.

Seven of our buildings are over 100 years old and those require special and oftentimes very expensive maintenance.

Being able to do that work and keep up with all of the other maintenance requirements can be a challenge.

Four branches are still yet to be seismically reinforced, so we have upcoming unreinforced masonry projects that still need to be completed.

I mentioned Columbia as being deferred, so we're trying to prioritize that in the upcoming period, but we know that work needs to be done at West Seattle, Fremont, and Queen Anne.

Those historic buildings built in the Carnegie era of libraries need to have their masonry reinforced so they can stand for the next 100 years.

and we continue to have great opportunity and increasing challenge with vertical conveyances, how we keep our elevators and escalators well maintained and operating So those are the challenges that we face on an everyday basis and we'll continue to look for ways to address it with future funding.

Levy investments do create the opportunity for us to make these important maintenance changes, upgrades and address not only the deferred maintenance but enter into a phase where we're doing planned maintenance so that we can keep our buildings fully up to code and up to the needs of our patrons.

As Tom mentioned earlier, we know that there are other opportunities and so we look to state and federal grants often to leverage the amount or to extend the amount that the levy and the general fund provide and that becomes a critical piece to our ability to do things like make broad improvements to a space, not just a structural upgrade or not just adding heating and cooling upgrades.

And I know in the past, the Carnegie Libraries have received some funding from the feds.

I don't know where we're at with that today, but up to last year, I guess, there has been opportunity that way that I think Chief, we've been able to tap into.

We have fortunately been able over the years to receive some federal earmarks.

We also received some FEMA grants for a number of efforts.

I can happily say that we have received those funds when we've asked for reimbursement.

So we have been fortunate in that regard.

We know it will likely be a little tougher at the federal level over the next two or three years potentially, but we continue to put forward working in collaboration with the Mayor's Office grant requests and or earmark requests to our representatives.

Great.

Thank you.

That's great to hear.

And we do have a current earmark outstanding in FEMA's portion of the Department of Homeland Security budget, which is obviously currently unfunded at the federal level.

So should that go through?

Should they fund FEMA?

We do have an earmark from Representative Adam Smith for the Columbia branch.

Great.

Great to hear.

Thank you for that update.

All right, I'll pass this next section off to my colleague Rick Sheridan.

Madam Chair, Council Members, the last levy category we'll look at today is that of technology and online services.

This category includes many things I'm sure you're familiar with and probably some things that are a little more back of house to systems like the library.

So it includes public and staff technology such as computers, printers, laptops, self-checkout, and catalog stations across our library system.

It provides the internet access, the SPL network, both wired and wireless, and funds our hotspot program.

It supports digital security, both the staffing and the monitoring tools we need to keep our system safe.

And it funds capital IT, such as the major network infrastructure server switches that support our technology use.

Rick, I think Councilmember Foster has a question, probably about the prior slide.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you so much to the library's team, and I apologize for my late arrival.

We had a Board of Health meeting where I am Vice Chair, so appreciate you welcoming me late today.

I did have a question about slide 40. As you know, I really care about our aging infrastructure, and I appreciate the Chief Librarian for our previous conversation about this.

I wonder if you can speak to just, and I'm sure we'll get into this forward facing with the levy, but being able to put some numbers on this, these infrastructure costs that you reference on slide 40 with these challenges and how they might be phased in in the coming years.

Yes, we have looked at that and we have a very large number that we know is facing us as we look at that 20 and 30 year window.

and I remind folks all the time that the central library at the end of this next levy that we are contemplating will be nearly 30 years old.

And so with that, there'll be a lot of need for that infrastructure replacement in many cases or support.

But yes, we do have numbers.

Rob's team has done a great job of determining what that all looks like down to even individual systems like HVAC down to windows and things like that that also are part of the structure.

It is not something you can chew off all at once and it most certainly will not be something we can get done in one levy.

And it may also as we look at some of the opportunities Rob talked about for enhancing spaces, it may require something like a capital bond to move those efforts forward in a way that's going to provide enough funding to do the work.

So we are looking at a lot of different ways that this might come about.

The levy is most certainly one of the tools.

Thank you so much.

And I look forward to hearing more about the numbers that I'm sure your team has put together.

And I know, I'm sure when we see it, there will be, you know, a bit of sticker shock, but it's helpful to have that context.

And I say it really with the spirit of knowing, and I know my colleagues are aware of this as well, that we have levy lifts that we will come up against or levy maxes that we will come up against.

and I think it's important for us to understand the full needs in our system.

And to your point, Chief Librarian, even if we're talking about to the end of the levy that we will need to put forth to voters this year, so that we can do that long-range planning to make sure we're taking care of our really important capital assets.

So I'll follow up with you and your team.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

You're welcome, Council Member Foster.

Thank you.

And I know this is something that Chief Fay has been working on with his team.

It is not something that they have not considered.

And it is something he and I have discussed in the last couple of years and just how to best ensure, because it's a rotational piece.

is as you fix buildings, other buildings are aging and then as you fix those buildings, the ones you fixed prior are aging and it's a cycle.

But it is something that they're looking at and it is something that when they look at the levy implementation with the general fund and the other smaller sources of funding that they make a plan.

It's part of their library plan that the board, they work with the library board on how they're going to do those infrastructure maintenance pieces with the funding we do have.

So we can get more information on how they prioritize that.

because to Chief's point, we're not going to be able to do it in any one levy period.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for the question.

So, Levi highlights for this category of technology and online services include increased access to technology and digital tools, such as providing the public robust access to Wi-Fi, computers, printing, copying and scanning, and much more, all of which is exceptionally important given the growing digital divide that exists within America.

and what we know from our patrons is that for some of them, this, quite frankly, is their only way of accessing the digital world.

So if you have an interest in applying for a job or seeking educational opportunities without the library's access, you're locked out.

And so we recognize the importance of this investment.

Additionally, we also released a new mobile app in 2025. From the app, patrons can browse our catalog, check out physical and digital books, and further explore our SPL resources.

And we've had over 25,000 downloads in the Apple and Android stores to date.

Turning to improved systems, infrastructure, and security, prior to our 2024 ransomware attack, we were already investing in this area.

As you can imagine, the attack accelerated our need to invest more, so we've recently hired a cybersecurity analyst to grow and mature our digital security program.

Additionally, SPL has installed new network switches system-wide to improve the stability and performance of our network, and we did so at a cost of approximately $2 million spread out over several years.

And lastly, we've begun preparing for a new integrated library system set to launch later this year, which I'll discuss more in the next slide.

As the integrated library system, the ILS is a significant levy promise.

In the current levy, we wanted to share more about this project and our progress towards completing it.

It will replace our existing system, known as Horizon, which is no longer supported by our vendor and is at end of life.

This technology is the backbone to our library operations.

It's used for managing patron accounts, our circulation, book holds, lost item fees, and more.

The new system, which will be called Polaris, will stabilize our core infrastructure, make critical library workflows more efficient, and improve the user experience for patrons and staff.

We expect it will decrease hold times, allow for better integration with our new mobile app, and provide more accurate collection information for our staff.

We also think it will enhance our service to patron through better account access and a better checkout experience, an easier payment system for lost item fees, and a more efficient process to discover works that are of interest to the public.

I do want to note that we expect it'll take us three days to bring this system online later this fall, and so we're planning to have a period of time over a long holiday weekend where we bring our systems down and bring this new Polaris ILS system up.

Rick, can you please tell us, so this was a levy promise, why did it take so long?

I think there's a good response, but it does, it made me think, given that it's, this is the last year of the levy, it took this long to get it up and running, it's not up and running yet, so

Yes, we are going to deliver it this year.

So it will be delivered within the levy timeframe.

And for us, I think it was a matter of understanding the needs of the system, understanding what was available in terms of the marketplace, and making sure we were replacing this old Horizon system with something that was worth the investment.

And so we wanted to do our due diligence around that.

And then, of course, it's a matter of sort of balancing a real significant ask of the system and patrons against other needs in terms of technology.

We had a couple of interrupters in this, which obviously was COVID, which made it nearly impossible to do any of that type of work.

The ransomware attack also set this back about six months because all IT capacity was taken in resolving the ransomware attack at that time and then as Rick mentioned, you know, this is a very large-scale project.

This is actually I spent 15 years of my career in libraries and IT.

This is the most significant and most difficult and most public-facing project that we will undertake and so yes it has to be it has to be right and it takes probably the most capacity of any other effort in the library to do this it affects almost every single person working in the library and it most certainly will have an impact on every single patron who uses it

Thank you, Chief.

I suspected there was a good reason, but I want the public to know because I think it's a fair question they may have.

This was a 2019 goal and it's now 2026. It's not quite implemented yet.

It will be later this fall and it bears mentioning that the due diligence piece, Rick, is music to my ears, as you know.

But in all seriousness, it's also quite a challenge to convert systems as we saw with Workday.

So I really appreciate the intentionality of this piece and I look forward to those three days being just three days and keeping fingers crossed and toes crossed.

After the mention of Workday, I hope everyone will knock on wood and I'll throw some salt and everything else.

Exactly.

Thank you.

So turning back to the numbers, here's a look at the levy funded dedicated to technology and online services from 2020 through 2026. And here's the overall funding across all sources for technology and online services.

So the general fund, the levy that obviously layers on top of it, and then private resources, thanks to the Seattle Public Library Foundation.

Here are the numbers behind those financials.

Now we wanted to take a moment and do a deeper dive on some elements of our technology and online services offerings that are available to the public.

And I wanted to start first with the Hotspot program.

And so for those of you that aren't familiar with it, essentially the library lends electronic devices that you can take home, plug into an outlet, and you have access in your apartment or your home to the internet.

And so we have over 11,000, excuse me, 1100 devices in public circulation that are checked out over 7,000 times in 2025, which represents a 38% growth in this program in terms of checkout since 2020. It's the most popular item in our collection.

Currently, there are more than 1,400 holds against the Wi-Fi hotspots that we currently have checked out, which speaks to the need in our community for access to the digital world.

We also have a separate collection of over 300 devices for community partners that we call outreach hotspots.

And this helps extend our reach by virtue of the library system partnering with trusted community organizations who can then connect their clients to the online world via hotspots.

The total Wi-Fi hotspot program costs about $300,000 per year, which includes the cost of the device, device, excuse me, supplies, and then the data expenses as well.

Rick, do you mind, for those of us not as tech savvy, the whole public versus the outreach, how does the, so the outreach I imagine is this next slide that you're going to talk about where we have partners that help us, we share Wi-Fi, with them, hotspots with them.

The public, is that the ones at the library?

And how does someone go about checking that out?

You simply check it out like you would any other item in the library's collection, like a book.

Now, unfortunately, there's a long list in terms of people waiting in line to secure one of those devices because you can use it for up to 21 days.

And so, given the number of devices and the demand, there is a wait list.

However, it is simply as easy as saying to a librarian, I'd like to be placed on the wait list in order to check out a device.

And in the interim, there are computers at the libraries at all the branches that folks can use when they show up, you know, as available while they're there, but they can do that as well.

Correct.

And in fact, we'll get to a couple slides later on in the deck where we'll talk about digital access that's available inside of our library buildings.

Great.

Thank you, Rick.

Certainly.

So in terms of the outreach hotspots, through our Wi-Fi HiSpot program, we partner with over 45 community-based organizations to help address digital access.

Just a few of them are listed on this slide.

We prioritize organizations based on community need, and we look to partner with these organizations to help spread access to the library through books and library card sign-ups.

Some of these devices are installed longer term, and some are merely lent to an organization for a shorter duration period.

And so, just as an example, if you look at, say, tiny house villages, those have been lent to those communities on almost a semi-permanent basis, because we want to ensure that those populations have access to the Internet so they can pursue educational opportunities, employment opportunities.

And so, with that partner, we're looking to a longer-term loan.

Other organizations, like a Summer of Learning partner, we might lend them that device over the summer, so is there hosting events to support learning and literacy for youth?

that they are basically able to use that device to support internet access, whether it be for children or for the parents that accompany them to that program.

So, Chair Rivera, going to your point about computer access inside of our facilities, the next three slides are about the digital access usage that we see inside of our library branches.

So the first slide shows mid-city and downtown.

These show both the desktop devices and the laptops that are available at each of our locations for free, which are, as I mentioned earlier, extremely important to the patrons that rely upon them.

We've seen significant growth across the system when compared to use in 2020. If you turn to the next slide, that is North Seattle.

It shows, obviously, the branches that are located in that region.

I should note that the unities branch is down in terms of usage because of our seismic retrofit project that began in 2025. and then the last slide shows public computer use in South Seattle.

Again, this is all desktop and laptop usage inside of those facilities.

So when it comes to library technology, patrons tell us that we have made it simple for them to use our resources and that the connections we provide make their lives easier.

And so these two patron quotes that are here on the screen really highlight the perspective that we think many library patrons feel about the technology services, programs, and systems that are offered by the library.

We've reached the last slide of this technology and online services section, and here are the challenges and opportunities that SPL sees in this area.

As to challenges, cybersecurity threats remain top of mind and not just because of our 2024 ransom attack.

Since that attack, we've worked hard to improve monitoring detection capabilities because the threat to all online systems for the library is only increasing.

Over the past 12 months, we've remediated or blocked 585 antivirus alerts, the majority of them coming from patron-facing devices.

We've also successfully blocked 718 phishing attempts using email security controls.

So continued investment in this area will only grow in importance for the library system.

Additionally, we all know that the rapid expansion of AI is a challenge for us and for information professionals across the world.

We see that misinformation, disinformation spreads all the more quickly because of AI systems that exist that people are taking advantage of.

Additionally, the ethical use of AI is important to the library, and SPL wants to ensure that our patrons are supported when it comes to these technological advances and the way that AI is maturing in their use of technology.

As for opportunities, the upcoming 2026 levy renewals is an opportunity for us to invest more in helping address some of these challenges.

And we also see the fact that patron uses are changing when it comes to technology.

More and more people are bringing their own devices into the library system, which may afford us an opportunity to change the configuration of devices we offer, the systems that we offer, in a way that might make more sense for evolving patron tastes.

And with that, I'll hand it back to Chief Librarian Faye.

All right, well thank you all for listening and for the great questions today.

As mentioned earlier, we'll be back next week to talk about hours and access, helping children and the administration and central costs.

I do want to note for folks that if you have more interest in the levy, our website has about 25 reports that are both quarterly and annual reports on the levy.

that have a lot of narrative data and also quotes from patrons, et cetera.

So if you would like to see more, there is more there.

In that same area on the website is also our impact reports, which gives a great visual representation of a lot of the work each of the years.

So I invite you to take a look at that if you'd like some additional information.

And with that, I'll conclude.

Thank you, Chief.

And colleagues, as part of the levy, every year there's an annual report that the library's SPL puts together to talk about the levy.

And all of that is contained on Seattle Public Library's website.

So I encourage you to go there to read the reports.

And there's a lot of other information contained.

And as I started intro this presentation, I wanted to make sure that through committee, we had as much information as we could with the time that we have to really show our work to the public on all the levy investments.

As you can hear, this was only half of the full presentation.

there is a lot happening at Seattle Public Libraries, and it is important for the public to hear that because they can see their levy dollars at work.

The levy funds many, many important projects at the library, from library, from maintenance to technology, to book acquisition, to eBooks.

And what we didn't really talk about, which I know we'll talk about the next presentation, but I mentioned it earlier, bears mentioning again, all of this work is done by a team of really amazing library staff staffers, really wanna give your team across all branches a shout out.

lucky enough to be with you at the Broadview branch where the team welcomed me on a Saturday because our libraries are open Saturday and Sunday and the folks there, the library staff are just so welcoming and so helpful and so happy to be there and so cheerful.

It's really to welcome our our kids and our grownups and to help with anything from looking up, looking for a book to helping with, excuse me, using the computers and the technology.

Anyway, so colleagues, are there any, I don't see anyone's hands for questions, but happy to, if anyone has a, Council Member Foster and then Council Member Saka.

Thank you so much, Chair.

I really appreciate the slides that you have.

I think they start on 50 and 51 that show the, just like, I mean, astronomical, I think it's fair to say, growth in the public computer sessions across the library system.

I wonder about how that aligns with your ability to support all the folks who want to access are public computer sessions, if that sort of manifests as backlogs or a need for additional computers and space or any other information that you want us to be taking away from, I mean, you know, 204% growth, 190% growth, et cetera.

Yeah, and I think it's important to note that's across all those platforms.

So one of the things that we do is monitor If there is any kind of backlog, what does that mean?

In some spaces, there is no more room to put another table, right?

But we could maybe provide a laptop and somebody could sit in a chair, a more comfortable chair and do that.

What we see now more shift to is more use of our Wi-Fi.

So more people coming in just wanting really stable and fast internet connection for whatever purpose they might have.

And so we see that shift now more into really the Wi-Fi utilization.

Computer use we feel is very stable, still a demand, still a need, but we are not seeing it where people have long queues.

We're actually able to now provide people more time.

When we started, probably even when this levy started in 2020, there would have been longer times because we were limiting people to an hour or 90 minutes.

Now we can provide more time for people to actually do more things that they need to do.

You can imagine the frustration of just about getting your resume done and say you're done for that really important job.

So we've been able to actually balance a lot with having access to Wi-Fi, laptops, other types of portable devices to allow people to have access.

Thank you so much.

One final quick question.

I know you recently made some changes to allow, I think, some continuity to have all of the branches open.

Is it all the branches are now open seven days a week?

Is that correct?

No, they're not all open seven days a week.

Okay, I remember you just made some recent changes and I'm forgetting the details of them.

It was in the Mid-City East region is where we made some changes to some branches, Douglas Truth and Capitol Hill and Montlake.

Got it.

And on the heels of that, I'm curious how you, how do I want to say this, understand if there's more demand for expanded hours for our library system.

Again, knowing that we can't always meet every demand that there is, but how you understand that, if you could just share that with us, please.

Sure, we do look at that across the board for every location, every community, and what we've really tried to do, because we know that the general fund is often under constraints and we know that the levy is tied integrally with the general fund, so if something happens to the general fund, it impacts the levy.

We're very conscious now of making sure that what package we put together in hours is able to be maintained and that's why when we have these discussions around budget we have to push back many times saying, you know, that particular reduction would have an impact in staffing and the number of hours that we can operate.

And so we're very careful now to say this is a package that we know is maintainable and sustainable.

and we do know when asked, we have shown what it would cost to do some of these things.

It becomes a very high cost to add those additional staff for hours.

And then you have to look at, is there truly that return on investment?

if you have five people in a location, that extra hour or that extra half day, was that worth the cost of however much that staffing was?

So we look at all of those components in there and we know that access is important.

That's why we're looking at other options.

like kiosks, where you could actually just have a kiosk with a partner organization that somebody can go in and get a book, trying to really create different ways of accessing materials than just your traditional library.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

We'll also be covering more of that next week's presentation, too, so you'll get some additional insight.

Yes, hours and access will be in next year's presentation.

But thank you for the important question, Councilmember Foster.

And of course, there's always, with everything that the city does, there's always going to be more demand and need that then we're able to fill.

That's just the nature of the work.

And what I really appreciate about Chief Fay and the team, his entire team at SPL, is that they are very intentional on how they go about having to make that prioritization.

And what I said earlier about by branch and working with communities on what the need at each of those branches are based on every community where a branch is located has different needs.

And SPL has done a really great job of working with the community to be able to meet those needs as best they can.

So I think they've done a really great job.

Yes, we can always do more if we had more funding, but I really don't wanna lose the fact as we're constantly talking about the more that we need, all that we have.

Because I think sometimes you can lose that when you're having the conversation on the more need, is making sure that we acknowledge all that we have and all that SPL has been able to do and the services that are being able to be provided to community.

And again wanna shout out the foundation because there's a lot of programming that the foundation's actually paying for.

because SPL is not able to pay for, and that's important as well.

So they've been great partners on the programming for kids programming and things, seniors programming, things of that nature.

So really wanna shout out SPL for that and really acknowledge that yes, we can always do more, need more, and the levy has really supported a lot.

So thank you.

And council member Saka.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to Chief Librarian Fay and your team here for this very insightful overview.

As someone who does not happen to sit on the council committee that oversees our libraries, I was before this presentation much less familiar from a policy standpoint of all the terrific work you all do.

library card holder, go occasionally with my kids and family, but now I see firsthand all the tremendous work in a PowerPoint deck format that goes into delivering these excellent, excellent mission-critical community services that have a strong tradition in not only our city but this country in terms of providing people with empowerment, empowering people with education, information, and to ideally help change their set of circumstances.

In my own office today and my home office, I have a depiction of the library, which is a Jacob Lawrence painting.

A depiction from Jacob Lawrence, as everyone knows, is a famous Harlem Renaissance-era artist.

And in the library, there's communities piled up, huddled around in a library, huddled around books.

And my interpretation of that is, empowerment, education empowerment, way out, and bringing people together.

So love our libraries, love the opportunity to learn more here today.

And I know we're meeting here in the next week or two, looking forward to that conversation, Chief.

And before I entered politics a few years ago, I was a technology lawyer.

What I, more specifically, product lawyer and more specifically a digital security, cybersecurity lawyer.

And so that's why I was kind of geeking out by some of your presentation portions as well.

But I will share, you know, some of my priorities pertaining to libraries because I just, Having the set of circumstances and things that I've experienced in my life, I never would have thought I would have ever worked at a place like Microsoft or Meta or supported these massive technology companies providing services that everyone uses every day in some shape or form.

And I want more people to have that.

So it should be no surprise that addressing digital equity, so digital equity initiatives, very, very important and bridging the digital divide.

digital divide, digital equity in terms of substantive digital skilling initiatives, getting people more familiar with not just how to use the technology, but how to create, including writing code.

And there's a separate levy that we worked on for that with the FEPP levy that voters generously approved last year.

I think the opportunity that could potentially manifest itself here is Most of us take internet, just basic internet access for granted, even in this city.

And so bridging that digital divide by bringing broadband internet access to people, You know, there's this construct of people going to libraries.

Indeed, I have physical libraries.

Indeed, I have depictions of that, artistic depictions of that.

And I love, we should all celebrate and treasure that.

That will always, I think, be the case for libraries.

But, you know, we also need to meet people where they're at.

And in terms of providing this core essential service, meeting people where they're at, One way to do that is digital hotspots, and there's some information about that.

So looking forward to learning more about potential, more about what the specific need is, what the trends are, and some potential expansion opportunities for that.

Low-cost internet referrals.

As we know, internet access, again, mission critical, we all rely heavily on it.

And not everyone needs, even if infinite resources, free internet.

But what about low-cost internet options?

I'll turn that one to a question.

Do we have low cost referral options for people who meet certain thresholds?

What does that currently look like?

And are there any expansion opportunities with that?

We do have that, so we have a number of ways we might provide that through our reference desk when people are asking questions.

We may have a gathering of folks to have community partners in, some of whom may be those low-cost internet providers.

Actually, it was a few months ago we had a group in doing just that, they were at the central library for trying to remember maybe a couple of weeks at different times and they were able to engage people we obviously put it on our website let folks know about it that is a big important piece for us because as indicated with Rick's presentation on hotspots, there's a long line of folks waiting for those devices.

And we know we can't serve that whole need.

I mean, as you know, some of this, there's holes in the city where there's just not access, broadband access.

We also know that it is a cost factor for many people in this city, even as wealthy at times as it seems to be, there's many that don't have it.

So we know that we are filling that that need in some way and we know there's greater need beyond that.

But we do work with several partners.

I mean, that's why it's really important with those outreach hotspots that were mentioned, that we're looking at those partners, we have those prioritized audiences that we know lack those opportunities or that resource and make sure that we're aligning with those partners that are providing those services to patrons.

So yes, there's always a greater need for internet services and to your point on the digital divide and digital equity, that is a great concern of ours.

We do have an entire team that works on that.

You'll hear more about that as we even look at the next levy, but that is a concern with AI.

How do we actually harness that?

How do we teach?

How do we get people to not be afraid of it, but to understand it?

What are those ethical uses?

All of those things a library has a role in.

We have classes, we have opportunities for people that they may not ever get anywhere else.

And that's what we look forward to being able to provide.

Thank you for that.

Also important is to further that priority that I mentioned in terms of addressing the digital equity or addressing the digital divide through digital equity initiatives, digital navigators, helping people to learn and navigate the various devices and internet.

I saw on the list of sort of community groups and providers via Communitaria, which is based in my district in South Park.

And they have folks that help people, especially when we're talking different native tongues.

And so that is a very important set of skills and assistance needed as well and furtherance of that priority.

Just curious, what are some, and I think this is probably a more focused conversation and could follow up offline and have in our other conversation as well, but just high level, what are some of the industry trends that you all are seeing to address the digital divide and build and promote more digital equity initiatives as it relates to libraries?

I think it's many of these things as we're having discussions on it, I see almost a divide in the discussion.

So, so much of the discussion or error is being taken by the AI element.

And then the digital equity element, really the, what you're looking at there is how do you create opportunity?

How do you create access?

AI almost needs to be merged with that, it's just a tool.

And so I was actually attended a national event hosted by the Digital Public Library of America at UW and was one of the panelists there and I said we need to quit thinking of these things as two separate things.

We have to pull this together and understand that is a tool.

We need to be able to provide better access and better opportunity to learning the tool.

But we also need to make sure that in this, we are recognizing again that we need to meet people where they're at, which means that that may not always be at the library.

How are we working with some of those partners already doing that, which is the library has a great strong suit in that.

and then making sure that we have long-term sustainability plans on how we deliver that access and those opportunities.

And I think that's where some of the struggle fits and starts that I have seen in digital equity has really struggled, especially since the pandemic where we had been making strides.

I feel that coming out of all of that, there's been even a greater dependence on technology and we haven't been able to address those needs.

I'm happy to say that now I see even some of our branches able to start offering that help and assistance with devices.

Again, that was something that really got curtailed for a long period of time.

Some of that comes down to staffing.

How much time do you have to provide for that?

But how can we be smarter?

How can we find partners that can come in to help provide that?

And those are some of the efforts we're undertaking as well.

Got it.

Thank you for that.

Talk a little bit about access to, arts and cultural spaces and events.

I think there's a museum pass program and allowing access to places like the Seattle Aquarium and Wing Loop Museum and the Seattle Art Museum.

Can you talk about that program a little bit and also utilization rates and potential expansion opportunities with that?

Well, I have the person who manages that for me right here, so I'll hand that over to Kirsten.

So Museum Pass Program is one of our most utilized passes within the library system.

This past year, we were slightly waylaid, so the numbers for 2025 are a slight skewed.

The provider that we had that actually administers the passes so that people can check them out online and don't have to come into a branch they shut their doors with little notice.

So then we had to get a new provider and get the whole system up and running.

So it got a little bit of a delay.

That said, we had, I think it was 40,000 past checkouts in 2025 across all of our different organizations.

So we currently have our current slate.

We regularly reach out to different cultural institutions, check in, say, hey, would you like to join our program?

The foundation covers the cost for the museum pass program.

And so we pay a portion of a fee, and they allow us to have between two to usually four people enter on each particular pass.

We have some various restrictions around it in order to try and get as much access to the community as possible.

So you get one pass checkout every 30 days, and that's to any of the partner institutions.

If you cancel within that period, then you immediately go back and have the ability to re-reserve.

We do a lot of focus on highlighting this program to communities that might not otherwise think that they would have the ability to engage with these particular cultural institutions.

So there's a lot of in-language focus on making sure that this program is well understood, as well as some of our Title I schools in close connection with those particular communities.

But yes, I'm looking forward to all of them.

We aren't just located specifically within the Seattle Bounds.

We actually have had partners that are down in Pierce County, up in Edmonds.

We currently have the National Railway Museum, which is out in the Snoqualmie and North Bend area.

Super cool.

Thank you for that.

Chief, you mentioned earlier the thorny problem of subscription-only, digital-only access to content.

So as a technology lawyer or as a product lawyer, what does that mean?

My day-to-day, you know, like helping advise from a legal perspective on innovations from ideation till product launch and future iterations and working on that involves intellectual property, that involves, you know, day-to-day navigating the regulatory soup of including consumer protection laws, data privacy, security, all those things.

What we were talking about, that is a, like, I didn't think, I wasn't aware of that problem from that perspective until you mention it, but it makes perfect sense.

What you're ultimately talking about, however, because as a creator of content, you own exclusive copyrights to publish it in any form, in all forms, all media.

And so what you're ultimately talking about is a fundamental change in US copyright law.

If you or anyone locally is able to navigate that and solve that, I like, hat tip to you, kudos, getting Congress to act on that.

I think the more likely path and solution is what you started talking about towards the end in terms of working directly with the authors or platform providers and negotiating, you know, different access models.

But in any event, that's what comes with being a creator.

You own the rights to how it's viewed and seen and shared and monetized.

Okay.

Final question, thank you for entertaining me here, Chair, and I really do love this stuff, so it's really, really- Council members, thank you for being here, and I'll let you have one final question, but I know we have other council members that need to leave, so happy to have you ask if it's a short one.

Absolutely.

Thank you, friend.

library workers and staff are increasingly called upon to navigate and help triage and problem solve any number of issues for which reflect broader societal challenges.

And whether it relates to behavioral health challenges, homelessness, and the like, and most aren't social workers, my understanding, but are increasingly called upon to navigate some of those challenges.

What kind of empowerments and resources does the library make available for staff at these branches and the various locations to address these?

Sure, there's any number of things.

Obviously, it's probably a longer conversation than here, but we look at, to deal with these things, each of these things are, you know, again, different issues that people walk in the door with, and that could be anything from drug addiction, mental health, homelessness, to just general questions, right?

People come in with a lot of different things and they bring everything in with them.

And so we actually spend a lot of time with de-escalation training for staff.

We do have social workers at the Central Library that also work with our staff across the entire system to have them have better tools to work with different populations and different needs and understanding on how to provide the best referrals.

Again, those also deescalate crisis by making sure you have things that people need or are seeking.

We also, even when you look at our security, which supports staff, those same security folks have those same deescalation skills that they bring to the table, which is an important part.

Our goal is to make sure people are successful at the library.

and our team, our library staff believe that as well.

They will go to every effort to make sure people are successful.

They care about people.

I think that's always the thing about people that work in libraries and truly are those public servants.

Being one myself, I always took home when I failed to actually deliver what that person needed, right?

And that's the thing that's always the most difficult at the end of the day.

and then being able to come in the next day and say, okay, this day starts over.

I just had that conversation with a group of library staff maybe about a month ago I said that's how I've had to deal with it all my years is that I know that we actually had more successes than failures and then we have to continue to provide those de-escalation skills.

We have to continue to provide those social workers that are bringing the latest and greatest in information and trends in how to serve these populations.

We need to continue to develop that.

It's an ongoing process and it will be as our populations shift.

Thank you for that.

Finally, I note the maintenance and operations capital improvement portion of the presentation, which is also very, very important, but my office has been working with your office on some installing a security gate at the high point branch.

And my understanding is there's precedent for that.

We've been working for six months, plus eight months, no security gate installed today.

Would love to work with you all offline and make sure we can actually get that security gate installed.

But all this is a huge plug for operations and maintenance.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Sacca.

I also want to say that the CARE team is a partner to Seattle Public Library, so they don't have to take it all on.

We have so many resources across the city and all the sister departments should be working together to ensure that we have more robust points of contact because we are paying for investments in other areas of the city and it all should be complimentary.

So I know you work with the CARE team as well, which is now across the city.

So just by way of saying there are more resources there too that are not just Seattle Public Libraries but that you partner with.

Thank you so much.

All right, this concludes the February 19th special meeting of the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee.

Our next committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, February 25th at 9.30 a.m.

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

Hearing no further business, it's 4.06 and this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.