missing title

Thank you.

All right, good morning, everyone.

The March 25th, 2026 meeting of the Select Committee on the Library Levy will come to order.

It's 9.35 a.m.

I'm Maritza Rivera, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Lynn.

Here.

Councilmember Rank.

Present.

Councilmember Saca.

Here.

Councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Foster.

Here.

Councilmember Juarez.

Here.

Councilmember Kettle?

Here.

Vice Chair Hollingsworth?

Chair Rivera?

Present.

Seven councilmembers are present.

Thank you, clerk.

Today we'll be hearing a presentation from the mayor's office in the Seattle Public Library about the mayor's levy proposal.

And we'll also have our central staff here to present a property tax overview and an issue ID on the library proposal.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

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

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

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

All right, given that, we'll have each speaker have two minutes.

Clerk, will you please read the public comment instructions?

All right.

The first speaker is Jennifer Lowe followed by Karen Conover and Lorena Soriano.

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you, Chair Rivera and council members.

My name is Jennifer Lowe.

I live in District 3. I currently serve as board president of the Friends of the Seattle Public Library.

Our vision is vibrant and equitable communities connected through a flourishing library.

For that reason, I'm one of the authors of an op-ed published this morning in the Seattle Times, along with my board president colleagues from the library trustees and the foundation.

We argue that as proposed, the 2026 levy would not provide enough resources to truly achieve the library's mission to be the hub of an equitable and connected city.

To do so, we must invest more in books, programs, and buildings.

For example, because of high demand and high costs for digital books, wait times are now far too long for popular titles.

But to provide enough books to meet Seattle's changing needs, library would need at least $10 million more than the proposed levy provides for collections.

Without this additional funding, SPL won't be able to reduce wait times for e-books or introduce a digital version of the Peek Picks program.

As an avid ebook reader and Peak Picks user myself, I know how much this investment would mean to so many Seattle readers.

Peak Picks is one of the most popular programs at the library.

Ebooks readership has soared since the pandemic.

Imagine how many people would appreciate logging into the Libby app and seeing unlimited copies of the latest books with no waits.

This is the kind of expanded access that the library seeks to provide, and it can only do so with more investment at this critical moment.

Please approve a levy that provides the resources to ensure everyone in our city can read, grow, and belong.

Thank you very much.

Have a nice day.

Thank you.

Karen Conover and Lorena Suriano and Kiana Scott are next.

Welcome.

Good morning, thank you council members.

My name is Karen Conover and I live in District 3. I serve on the board of the Seattle Public Library Foundation and we're delighted to see so much interest in the levy and appreciation for the library here today.

Thank you for your commitment to this public process.

I'd like to talk to you about the value of library collections to our city.

You may know that about a third of all new books at the Seattle Public Library each year are funded by private donations through the foundation.

The library levy provides funding for nearly half.

This means that the great majority of library books in Seattle are not covered by the regular city budget.

and it means that every seven years we have a rare opportunity to significantly boost our collection through the levy.

As an avid reader in a city of avid readers, I believe that this is one of the best investments our city can make.

The library estimates that every dollar put into collections returns more than $16 in value for residents who have access to an incredible selections of books and materials all for free.

If the 2026 levy was approved at $500 million, the average homeowner's property taxes would support the library with about $15 a book, less than the cost or the public value of a single book.

We believe it's critical to take advantage of this opportunity.

Additional support for collections would mean shorter hold times, more digital options, and more access to the incredible value that books provide for all of our lives.

Free access to knowledge is essential to our city, and indeed, even to our democracy.

So let's not miss this chance to provide even more valuable reading experiences for all of our neighbors.

Thank you.

Thank you, Karen.

Lorena Suriano, Kiana Scott, and then Colleen McAleer.

Good morning.

Bye-bye, chlorophyll.

They're dragon dancers.

That's a ginko leaf.

Go, Wilma, go.

which translates to, who run the world?

Girls.

These are some of the phrases that my almost two and a half year old has as part of his vocabulary, thanks to the wonderful librarians at the Seattle Public Library.

Dear council members, my name is Lorena Soriano, and I live in District 8. As someone who is raising a son with no family in town, the library and its resources are not only one of our third spaces, they've become a family member that we visit.

We ride the escalators, we visit all the floors, we take in the different artwork, we say hi to our friends at the Seattle Public Library store, and we say hi to our neighbors.

As weekly visitors of the library, we've learned how the books are organized, thanks to the librarians, and usually a month prior to history months, cultural celebrations, or even seasonal changes, we check out books to better understand them.

This has allowed my highly impressionable son to learn more about the world around him.

We're raising our son to understand, respect, and appreciate different cultures.

We're even learning and speaking English, Francais, Espanol, and ASL as a family.

The library's diverse collections are incredibly important, and besides being a great resource, they've helped me feel like I'm not alone in this multilingual journey.

And this is all because of the different books that the library has to offer.

We actually even check out books in Japanese where one of our neighbors and friends reads to our son.

I'm here to ask you to help the library increase its collection in many formats and many languages.

Please make sure that we keep up with the demand so that young learners like my son can always find something new to discover.

To me, one of the most valuable investments we can make as a city is to continue to grow a deep, diverse, freely accessible book collection for all that you're doing to make sure this levy accomplishes that for the present and future generations.

Thank you.

Next, we have Kiana Scott, Colleen McAleer, and Matt Baum.

Thank you, Chair Rivera and council members.

My name is Kiana Scott, and I'm a proud District 6 resident, although Councilmember Strauss, and I'm a big library super fan.

As a strong library user, a small business owner, and a parent of a toddler, I'm here to encourage you to do whatever you can to improve and expand the library services, programs, and books made available through this library levy.

I use Seattle Public Library in so many different ways.

I check out books for myself, in person and at the Greenwood Public Library, which is my local branch, check out books digitally, check out books for my kids.

We stream movies on Kanopy.

We listen to a lot of audio books on Libby.

Frog and Toad, very, very good.

As a small business owner, I've used meeting spaces for professional meetings.

I took a call in one of your study rooms recently when my internet at home went down.

I wouldn't have been able to do that anywhere other than the public library.

I use the public spaces for civic events that I go to.

We attend a lot of book time story hours at the Seattle Public Library as well.

We attend events for kids, we attend events for adults, and perhaps most importantly to me, I'm a book bingo completist.

It's a highlight of my summer every year.

I see some nods.

This is a chance to expand the programs that serve little ones, but also the author talks, the skills classes I rely on as a new small business owner figuring out what the heck I'm doing, the civic engagement and other programs that we rely on as a community.

It's a chance to improve on the amazing welcoming spaces and libraries across Seattle.

I'm especially excited by the possibility of investing in improving spaces for children and for teens to make sure that we are meeting and exceeding their special needs.

Seattle Public Library adds immense richness to my life, to my family's life, and to the fabric of my community.

Watching my child learn to love books is my dream, and Seattle Public Library is a huge part of that.

What allows that to happen.

Thank you for considering these important additions and improvements to make this levy, our library system, and our city so much stronger.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleen McAleer, Matt Baum, Sorry if I mispronounced that.

Go ahead, Colleen.

Good morning, City Council and Chair Rivera.

I'm Colleen McAleer for Laurehurst Community Club in Northeast Seattle.

We're one of the heavy users up here in Northeast Seattle for both toddlers through seniors.

It's the go-to place, the public library.

Toddlers all around the city have the opportunity for exposure to a variety of books, and the library collection offers diverse adventures for children.

They learn about all kinds of cultures.

Storytime and book groups for all ages are building blocks of the mind, and especially adult education.

And there's nothing better than being buried in a good book.

The hot off the press nonfiction books also keep us up on science, new literature and breakthroughs, and a verification of AI, which will be much needed in the future.

The price tag of the cumulative Seattle levies, though, is another burden.

We don't oppose the way it is right now, but asking for more money is not living within our budget.

There's plenty of money available to reallocate, redesign, and probably redeploy, $419 million.

The library, without a doubt, though, is the most equitable thing that this city council can pass.

Our public libraries reach constituents with quality books, experiences, resources, and technology.

It serves as a public place to meet, and it's also a safe place for students and children of all ages.

We urge you to pass this levy as is.

Thank you for your work on this.

Thank you, Matt Baum, Prerana, and Grace.

Hi, I'm Matt Baum.

I'm a writer based on Capitol Hill.

My work focuses on pop culture and queer history.

A couple of years ago, I got an idea for a book about the history of queer characters on American sitcoms and how hidden behind their stories is the real life story of the fight for queer equality in the country.

This is a weird idea, but I found a publisher who was willing to take a chance on it if I could get them a draft in five months, which is a crazy tight deadline for a book.

And I was only able to say yes to that because of the Seattle Public Library.

Right in my neighborhood, I had access to books and videos, magazines, old journal articles, a reference desk that could give me one-on-one help.

The library was like my research partner for this book, helped me hit a seemingly impossible deadline.

That book came out a few years ago.

It's called Hi Honey, I'm Homo.

It has been honored with several awards, including by the American Library Association, and the Seattle Public Library invited me to do a talk about it.

It's one of many talks that they do every year with authors, part of a wide range of diverse enriching programs.

So I'm urging you to support a robust library levy.

It's the best kind of investment that the city could ask for.

Every dollar that goes in comes back to us in many, many ways.

For example, I urge my followers online to buy books from local bookstores because I can go and sign them in person.

I have about a half million followers, so hopefully that is helpful.

The levy will enable us to have more inspiring events, more library workers, clean, safe buildings, helping people create new culture that is going to live on and inspire more people.

So this is not just a good idea.

A strong levy is a brilliant investment in our future.

So I thank you for your time and for your support of the library.

Thank you, Matt.

Prerana Shretha and Grace Nordhoff.

I'm sorry if I mispronounced your name.

Thank you, Chair Rivera and council members.

My name is Prerana Shrestha, and I'm a resident of District 7. I'm a second-year PhD student in pathobiology studying tuberculosis immunology at the University of Washington.

I use the Seattle Public Library to find new books every month and also as a space to read and get work done.

I'm also an international student from Nepal, and Nepal is known for a lot of things, but not our library services.

So it still amazes me how accessible so much knowledge here it is in Seattle.

I'm doing my PhD in a very scientific bench lab heavy field, but I've always been drawn to the arts and humanities.

So since I moved to Seattle, the library services have helped me rediscover my love for literature.

As a PhD student, I also spend a lot of time reading really complex papers online and therefore spend a lot of time looking at screens.

So the physical books I get from the library allows me to be present and off of screens and gives me a lot of mental clarity and focus, which helps me in my own research back in the lab.

It's also allowed me to understand what it means to be a scholar and to read more broadly.

Since I was a kid, books have always been a way for me to stay curious about the world, and I'm grateful that the library system here still nourishes that curiosity as an adult, which is especially essential for an immigrant like me, where books provide the space and comfort in the absence of family.

Thank you for opening up this process to learn about and discuss improvements to the library levy.

It's very important to me that our library has the funding it needs to offer knowledge to everyone with no barriers.

I hope you can increase support for more books and materials at the Seattle Public Library and I hope you consider the importance of the welcoming spaces and programs that the library provides to immigrant communities.

Please invest to expand these services.

We are lucky to live in the city with all of its resources including a world-class library system.

I'm eager to see how our library can get even better and make a difference in people's lives with a stronger levy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The last in-person speaker is Grace Nordhoff, and then we'll go to online.

And I do want the record to reflect that Council President Joy Hollingsworth joined us earlier in public comment.

Apologies for not recognizing you earlier, Council President.

Grace, you can start.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Rivera, and hello, council members.

My name is Grace Nordhoff, and I'm a longtime resident of District 4. I'm an emeritus board member and past president of the Seattle Public Library Foundation.

I also serve on the board of the Urban Libraries Council, which is an organization of North America's largest public library systems.

In that role, I have the privilege of traveling to see libraries across US and Canada.

These visits reinforce how fortunate we are to have the Seattle Public Library.

They also demonstrate the exciting innovations that are taking place elsewhere, thanks to the investments those libraries have made.

For example, many urban libraries now feature areas where patrons can access technology like 3D printers, laser cutters, video and audio recording equipment, and more.

And these spaces are especially popular with teenagers.

They often feature equipment for collaborative gaming, study pods, and other incentives for teams to gather, connect, and spend time together and learn.

The levy is the way to provide our library with the level of investment needed to keep innovating and refreshing our spaces here in Seattle.

The renovation of the children's and teen's areas at the Central Library, for example, is a clear need.

With more capital resources in the levy, SPL could imagine those spaces to engage with more young people.

We have amazing libraries in Seattle, but the newest ones are 20 years old, and we are due for innovations and improvements to keep pace with our colleague libraries across the country and in Canada.

This levy is a chance to do that.

Please boost the capital investments to allow SPL to remain a national and international leader.

Thank you.

Thank you, Grace.

We'll now move on to online public comment.

Clerk?

All right, we have two remote speakers.

Our first remote speaker will be Brian Lawrence.

Brian, please press star six when you hear the prompt, you've been unmuted.

Okay, if we're having some technical issues, we'll move on to our next remote speaker, Carrie Lippe.

Carrie, can you press star six when you've heard the prompt, you have been unmuted?

I don't see them on here.

Caller, can you press star, oh, I hear something.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Yes, this is Carrie Lippe.

Perfect.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, council members.

My name is Carrie Lippe, and I live in District 1. For the past three years, I have volunteered with the library's homework help program at the High Point branch.

Homework Help offers free tutoring for K-12 students working on school assignments.

No reservations are needed.

You just show up at the library and trained volunteers can help.

I have absolutely treasured being a volunteer.

I've worked with many of the same families for years now, which means I've gotten to develop relationships with neighbors that I might not otherwise have met.

Programs like Homework Help truly bring people together and encourage connection, learning, and truly so much laughter.

It's such a special program.

It's always one of the highlights of my week.

Homework help is particularly important for immigrant families.

About 80% of participants have parents who speak a language other than English at home.

At High Point, we are fortunate to be able to offer homework help three days a week.

It is usually a packed house.

The program is unfortunately not offered as often at many other branches.

I know that library staff would like to offer programs on more days and at more locations, but they are stretched thin.

Even programs like homework help that use volunteers require a lot of dedicated staff time.

The levy is an important way to expand programs like homework help by investing more in staff resources.

I'm glad to see expanded programming support in the mayor's proposal, and I ask that you all continue to add to that.

As a property owner, I cannot imagine a better use of my tax dollars than providing free programming that supports youth and families and connects neighbors.

Thanks so much for your support and for supporting staff, volunteers, and patrons of our amazing library.

Thank you.

Brian Lawrence, if you're there, press star six, please.

I think we got you.

Thank you, Chair Rivera.

Perfect.

Am I on?

Okay.

Thank you, Chair Rivera and council members.

I'm Brian Lawrence, the CEO of the Seattle Public Library Foundation.

I am a resident of District 1, although today I'm out of state due to the passing of a loved one.

I appreciate the chance to participate remotely.

Thank you to all the advocates and supporters in the room.

Your participation shows how much Seattle cares about our library.

Collectively, we want the 2026 levy to be as strong as possible to ensure a vibrant library.

One critical concern that I want to flag is the levy's support for priority and deferred maintenance.

The proposed levy only includes $10 million in additional resources.

spread out over seven years and 27 locations.

That's less than $5,000 per month per branch for heavily used public infrastructure that is at least 20 years old and in many cases much older.

And this is despite the library identifying at least $75 million more in capital maintenance concerns over the coming decade.

To keep library spaces safe, clean, and welcoming, we must invest more in their upkeep.

And we can't allow these public spaces to deteriorate.

As an independent reviewer for a library grant program in California, I have seen walls covered in mold, falling ceiling tiles, things that have broken off the wall, and disgusting carpets.

And that's what happens when core public infrastructure is neglected.

And that cannot, in my mind, be Seattle's library.

The amazing programs and experiences in our buildings are only possible if people feel safe and comfortable.

And as you know well from roads and bridges, projects don't get cheaper when they are delayed or in crisis.

The time to invest is right now with the levy in front of you.

Our foundation is committed to helping you to growing our fundraising to support our library.

And I ask that the city make a similar commitment to maintain and improve its core public spaces that are part of its charter.

Thank you so much for your hard work.

Thank you, Brian.

Chair, is that?

Chair, that was our last speaker.

All right, thank you.

There are no additional registered speakers.

The public comment period is now closed, so we'll proceed to our items of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, council bill 121181, an ordinance related to regular property taxes, providing for the submission to the qualified electors of the city at an election to be held on August 4th, 2026, of a proposition authorizing the city to levy regular property taxes for up to seven years in excess of the limitations on levies in chapter 8455 RCW.

for the purpose of sustaining investments in library operating hours, collections, technology, programming, and maintenance, while expanding access to opportunity through library materials, technology, and undertaking a seismic retrofit of one library facility, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

For briefing and discussion.

Thank you, clerk.

Colleagues and members of the public who are here in person or watching on the Seattle channel, thank you for being here today.

I appreciate your time and your attention to this really important levy proposal.

As a public commenter said earlier, and you stole part of my line, we're a city of avid, and I will include curious readers who rely on our Seattle Public Libraries for information and engagement.

This $410 million levy renewal proposal by Mayor Wilson reaffirms the Seattle Public Library's reputation as a world-class library system.

For years, taxpayers have generously shown their support for the library by taxing themselves through levies.

They want to maintain open hours, the vast collection of books and e-books, programs and events, access to technology and the internet, and the clean and welcoming branches and spaces at the library.

As part of this levy renewal process, I worked with you colleagues and the mayor's office to ensure that not only existing services but also additional services would be included, which you will hear about in the executive's presentation today.

I want to thank Mayor Wilson, Deputy Mayor Surratt, cbo director ali panucci for their partnership and also chief librarian tom faye and his team who are here today and the library board our live our love for the libraries that's the easy part Deciding the amount of the levy, that's hard.

Why?

Because we want to give so much.

And the reality is that I, and as many of you have said from this day as colleagues, Seattle has a real affordability problem.

We've become one of the most expensive cities in the country.

Therefore, colleagues, I do not take it lightly when we go to voters and ask them to increase their property taxes again.

We're also facing a very real levy lid capacity problem.

We will hear from council's central staff on this point and about how Seattle property taxes are calculated, what the city's levy capacity is, and what impact both this levy and other existing levies have on the city's taxpayer.

tax payers.

All of this said, I believe that this levy proposal is one that we can all be proud of, with an eye toward accountability, as you saw from the Seattle Public Library's presentations that I requested through committee, mindful of our library's patrons' needs and of taxpayer and levy capacity ability.

I look forward to hearing about today's proposal, especially a continuation of the library hours that patrons want most of all, in addition to expansion of the ebooks that patrons rely on.

But let's hear directly from the mayor's team on the proposal.

I look forward to placing this levy on the ballot so that our taxpayers have the opportunity to make their decision.

I'd like to invite Deputy Mayor Surratt, Chief Librarian Tom Fay, and Rob Gannon from Seattle Public Library to join us at the table.

While they're coming up to the table, colleagues, I do want to take a minute to acknowledge the op-ed penned by the Seattle Libraries Foundation that was in the paper this morning.

We're all aligned in our love for the libraries.

The mayor, this council, the patrons, and the folks that showed up today to give public comment, and I thank you for that.

Libraries enjoy strong support in this city and for very good reason.

I would expect the foundation to advocate for additional funding I'm therefore not surprised by their op-ed.

That is their job.

Our job is to balance all the needs across the city, strongly supporting libraries, which this proposal does, while managing for the city's looming fiscal crisis.

I respect the foundation's strong advocacy.

I also do not want it unsaid that the mayor, with the council's input, delivered a package that we can all stand behind.

When we work together, the city has better outcomes.

That is what we have done in this instance, and colleagues, what we will continue to do as this process moves forward.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Surratt, Chief Librarian Fay, for coming up to the table with your staff.

Please state your names for the record, and then you can begin your presentation.

We look forward to seeing you.

Good morning, Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt.

Tom Fay, Chief Librarian.

Good morning, I'm Rob Gannon.

I'm the Director of Administrative Services for the library.

All right, thank you all for having us here today.

We will give you a presentation that will show Mayor Wilson's vision, talk about the proposal development process, and then the 2026 library levy proposal.

And at this point, I'd like to hand this over to Deputy Mayor Surratt to talk about the mayor's vision.

Great.

Thank you, Tom.

And good morning, council members.

It's an honor and pleasure to be here.

Thank you for your time.

Before I go over the high level of the mayor's vision for this levy and then head over to Tom and Rob and team, Listening to the public comments, always inspiring.

Frankly, for me, being here at City Hall, a bit of a bubble, it's always great to hear from folks in communities on how issues touch them, what true public services and assets like the libraries mean to folks.

So if you spare a moment, I think about my daughter.

I have one daughter.

For those of you who know me really well, she is everything to me.

And she's a first year at UW.

And I think about how she grew up with libraries in her community.

For a time, we lived off of Rainier in Southeast.

The Columbia City branch was where she started to explore.

Then we moved to West Seattle and the West Seattle branch is where she really, really got to fully appreciate all the wonderful things that the library system could have.

I think about her time at UW, and she fell in love with Susilo Library.

And so, she has touched so many different aspects of exploration and learning and curiosity through our libraries.

And all of you, all of us have been touched by libraries in our time.

And to go back in the way back machine a little bit further, I'm of the generation, I'm a latchkey kid.

And the library was daycare in so many ways.

And we didn't have a phone.

We couldn't explore.

So we had our books.

And that's where we explored.

That's where my friends and I explored.

And so the library, sometimes we think as an afterthought because they're there.

They're present all the time.

but when you really, really sit with it, you start reflecting on how much it's impacted and shaped all of our lives.

So anyway, so thank you for allowing me to kind of go back into that personal note, because as we start talking about numbers and priorities and whatnot, let's not lose all of that.

So back to my presentation.

I'm here, too, excited to talk about the mayor's Library of Liberty proposal.

It is a $410 million proposal that invests in books for all ages, in a city of readers, and a city of literature.

It invests in public spaces that are free and open to all, a true democratic space where everyone belongs.

We invest in access to free early learning and literacy programs for Seattle's children and their families and caregivers.

We're providing access to free and enriching author events, community workshops, and more that contribute to lifelong learning, entertainment, and joy.

We're providing access to free and empowering classes and resources that help Seattle residents achieve their education and life goals, such as homework help, technology classes, citizenship and English learning classes, tax help, resume workshops, small business legal consultants, and so much more.

Just again, the way back machine on the resume workshop.

When I first moved to Seattle in 1998, I didn't have a computer.

I went to the library to punch out my first little resume to get my first little job here in Seattle.

And so again, those are the resources that we're providing through our infrastructure that we have here.

As we consider this proposal, it is important to note that our community members see the library as a critical and worthy investment.

You heard from folks here who are testifying, but when you really scale out and try to get a sense of where the electorate is and where Seattleites are, you see that 96% of over a thousand surveyed participants said the library is a critical educational resource for our community.

And 97% of the library say the library is worth the money that we invest in it.

Seattle readers know firsthand the value of library collections, how much money they save for the books that they purchase each year.

According to the American Library Association's Library Value Calculator, SPS collection has a $16 return for every dollar spent.

and the library provides value to our small business opportunities as well.

The Urban Libraries Council estimates that SPL's resources such as market research materials and free meeting room access provide small businesses a value of nearly $8.4 million in 2025. The mayor recognized that affordability is the top of mind for Seattle residents right now.

And we have worked with the library to put forth a proposal that invests in community priorities and community values.

We look forward to working with council through deliberation so that we can put forward a package that Seattle voters can be proud of.

It's been an honor to work with the team from the Seattle libraries.

I can't say more how impressed I am the thoughtfulness and how this package was tailored from capital improvements to thinking about the library that meets our needs and a library that really is projecting out and thinking about the future.

And so I want to commend Tom and the team for doing that.

I'm going to pass it on to Tom to walk us through some more detail.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Sarab.

As the Deputy Mayor eloquently pointed out, that community voice is very important in everything that the library does.

And I want to start out our presentation by sharing the community-focused process that helped inform the proposal.

So the community conversations we actually held for in 2022 to hear directly from patrons what was working for them in the 2019 levy and where they saw areas for improvement.

We also had a levy-funded future of the library study that led to the development of our new 10-year strategic plan, which was informed by dozens of community stakeholder organizations throughout the city.

The strategic plan launched in 2024 and focuses the library on community impact through increased community belonging by emphasizing community literacy, empowerment, and enrichment, and increased organizational resilience through funding, capacity, buildings, technology, and sustainability practices.

In 2025, we employed several engagement strategies, including the survey that DM Sarat cited in an earlier slide.

That went out to over 1,000 randomized Seattle households, as well as having workshops with about 40 community groups that included library partners and meeting room users.

Some of those included Literacy Source, Seattle Housing Authority, the Rainier Beach Action Coalition, Seattle Indian Health Board, West Seattle Book Club, Friends of Little Saigon, and many more.

We also held listening sessions and facilitated discussions with leaders from across the city, including with Seattle Public Schools, the CARE Team, Department of Neighborhoods, Parks, Seattle Center, and the Seattle Chamber of Commerce.

And again, we engaged our patrons conducting passive engagement activities at 14 locations, which provided visitors the opportunity to provide us feedback through open-ended prompts to questions such as, how could the library help build community?

And what surprised you during your library visit today?

Now, as we look at the proposal itself, I want to orientate, orient you, I'm sorry, orient you to how the funding categories are described.

So you will see hours and access, and that includes open hours at 27 libraries.

Early learning support through our Kaleidoc Scope Play and Learn program in seven libraries, and all ages programs at many locations, such as the programs Deputy Mayor Surratt mentioned.

Collections are our physical books and materials, e-books, e-audiobooks, digital streaming services, the Seattle Room special collections, and more.

Our building maintenance, which includes capital improvements, and routine and responsive maintenance.

Technology and online services, which includes public and staff computers, printers, copiers, access to high-speed internet, digital equity initiatives, such as our Wi-Fi hotspots.

And then administration, which includes administration of the levy itself, as well as the central costs associated with the City of Seattle's centralized services.

For the next two slides, I'll hand over the presentation to Rob Gannon, our Director of Administrative Services.

Thank you, Tom, and good morning, members of the committee, council members.

We'll start with just a very high-level overview of what the levy is structured to do and what it will provide funding for the library in the future.

So the chart you see here depicts the breakdown of the 2026 library proposal by the elements that are being sustained and shows also in relative terms what is newly funded with this $410 million investment.

The sustain category, as we'll describe in the presentation that follows, but have also described in prior presentations to this committee, shows what current library operations are and how, by levy category, we are providing critical services with these resources.

Tom just discussed these categories.

We'll be going into additional detail, but sustained can really be thought of as our baseline.

It's broken up into two categories here.

$278 million is the essential operations of the library.

That includes things that were in the prior levy, the 2019 levy, that have been extended into this projected levy period, and also includes an inflationary adjustment.

The second category of sustain accounts for offsets that the levy has absorbed when the general fund could no longer sustain those expenses.

So you see those total there.

And then additionally, we have proposed $70 million in expanded opportunities for the library to grow and enrich its services and to continue to provide relevant and meaningful buildings, books, and overall experiences to library patrons.

This slide depicts the impact to Seattle taxpayers, and I suspect that the presentation by Council Central staff will go into this in much greater detail.

But we wanted to provide an overview of the existing levy, the 2019 levy, which is funded at $219.1 million, and this levy, which presents a figure of $410 million for consideration.

The new levy, if it is replaced, would have a $0.19 per $1,000 of assessed value.

And as others have mentioned, that would equate to about $163 a year for the average taxpayer based on the median assessed value of property in Seattle.

So at this point, I'll hand it back to Tom, and we'll begin an overview of each of the levy categories.

Thank you, Rob.

When we talk about the hours and access, we are talking about, again, providing open hours and access to 27 safe and welcoming public spaces, which often operate as cooling, warming, and clean air centers at various times throughout our year.

We have over 1.8 million physical books and other items.

Of course, our library staff and Often many of you see our friendly information services staff who guide you through your reference questions or our readers' advisory staff who can get that next best read for you.

We also have free public meeting rooms at 22 locations, free private study rooms at 17 locations, and of course, thousands of free programs each year.

And we have free Wi-Fi, computers, device charging, assistive technology, and much more.

The 2026 library levy investment of 218.4 million would continue funding for our current open hours, staffing and delivery of the multilingual Kaleidoscope Play and Learn, which is an early literacy program for children zero to five and their caregivers.

It's held at seven locations, Beacon Hill, Columbia, Delridge, Lake City, Northgate, New Holly, Rainier Beach, and South Park.

These particular programs are available in English, Amharic, Mandarin, Somali, and Spanish.

Social service referrals are also available through our community resource specialist.

One position is levy-funded and youth-focused.

This team provides information on referral services for people in need of support.

It works closely with our partners at Seattle Fire, Care, Human Services Department at the city, and many others.

They also provide training, information, and resources to the rest of the library staff to better support our community members system-wide.

Also, this funding supports security staffing.

It currently funds nine of the library's 24 security personnel.

In terms of new investments in hours and access, the proposal adds $12.6 million for more all-ages programming, including story times and other literacy programs.

classes and workshops to help people achieve life goals, such as resume and job skills, citizenship, and language learning.

Events that bring joy and connection to people's lives, such as author visits, resource fairs, gardening classes, musical performance, and much more.

These are popular offerings, but currently limited in scope and availability.

This investment would allow the library to expand to more locations and more types of programs.

There's additional $7.7 million for increased security and emergency preparedness, including six security officers, and upgrades to our building security systems.

$2.4 million is added to officially establish our Office of Inclusion and Belonging, which works to help the library improve language access, equity training for leadership, policy updates, and equitable decision-making throughout the system.

It's currently staffed with one position using one-time funds.

This would allow the work of this office to continue and grow by one additional position.

In each of our levy categories, we provide this chart, which shows the cost of this work as it was approved in 2019, to your left, bottom left.

and the cost to continue this work as a baseline with general fund offsets and assumed inflation factored into the numbers.

And lastly, the total cost as proposed in this 2026 levy proposal with the new investment reflected.

Our next category is collection of books and materials.

This category includes physical and digital books, e-books and e-audios for all ages, interest and viewpoints, physical and digital history items, photos, maps, postcards, menus, and so much more, and unique collections, LGBTQ+, African American, aviation, zines, and other curated special collections.

DVDs and CDs, physical and digital magazines and newspapers, streaming music, movies, and television.

The 2026 library levy investment of 58.5 million for collections would continue funding for books and materials, and it currently provides about 55% of the library's funding for books and other materials.

The library facilitated 12.8 million checkouts of physical and digital items in 2025. This item is included in this levy to continue fine-free borrowing, and the investment helps offset lost revenue from our days of actually charging daily overdue fines.

This particular program of fine-free has restored access for over 18,000 patrons who had previously been suspended.

It did not impact return rates.

And just because people are often curious, patrons return items on average five days before they are due.

So often we hear the lost book stories or lost late fees, but in reality, most people get their books back on time and then some.

collections.

This also will support collections and shelving staff.

It currently provides funding for 10.8 FTE and shelving, acquisitions, processing, and special collections.

For the new investments in collections, The levy is proposing 2.2 million for more physical books to help us continue building a broad and deep collection.

We have about 2 million physical items in our collection, and they were checked out about 5.5 million times in 2025. It also includes a new investment of 2.4 million for more e-books and e-audiobooks.

We have about 1 million digital items, and those items were checked out about 7.2 million times in 2025. Once again, we have this chart which shows the cost of this work as it was approved in 2019 at the bottom left, and the cost to continue this work as a baseline with general fund offsets and assumed inflation.

Lastly, the total cost as proposed in the 2026 levy proposal with the new investment added.

I'll turn this back over to Rob to go over information for our buildings maintenance technology and administration categories.

Thank you, Tom.

The building maintenance category includes three broad categories within it.

We have capital and major maintenance in this category.

We generally include things like renovations, seismic retrofits, significant access improvements, large-scale replacements of core building elements, re-roofing, et cetera.

We also have routine and scheduled maintenance.

This is the everyday work of keeping our library facilities in good working condition, supporting 27 locations and a maintenance and operation center.

This is everything from landscaping, janitorial and custodial, and building system controls.

And then we also have repairs, which include unplanned maintenance, everything from broken doors, graffiti, window replacement, et cetera.

So as we contemplate the future levy, we have proposed $85.9 million to cover all of our maintenance needs.

Again, this would cover our routine and major maintenance, several HVAC replacements, the everyday work of keeping the buildings in top condition.

It also includes facility support to do things like deep cleaning, power washing, window washing, the things that keep our buildings looking inviting to the public.

It also includes things like furniture replacement and pays for capital improvement staffing and overall administration.

Mayor Wilson has proposed additional funding for this category, which includes $10 million for priority and deferred maintenance.

This would be an additional $10 million to what exists in the levy baseline.

This would allow us to continue to look out into the future and address life safety concerns, replacing systems that are out of date, that have reached their end of life, and to do even more improvements to ADA accessibility across the system.

This would also fund one seismic retrofit of the historic Columbia Branch.

This would follow on the footsteps of similar successful work at the Green Lake Branch and the retrofit that is currently underway at the University Branch.

There would also be sustainability improvements made at the Columbia branch, and it would allow us to complete a project that was meant for the 2019 levy, but due to financial circumstances, was deferred as the library took a $5 million cut because of the general fund's challenges.

This would also give us some additional resource, about $5.9 million in increased facility and custodial support.

This is to account for the...

increase draw on our resources to do everyday repairs, to bring in contractors to do things like plumbing and HVAC repairs, maintain elevators and escalators.

Those costs continue to increase and outpace the existing funding.

This chart again follows in the format of the prior.

The 2019 levy had $50.6 million carved out of its $219 million total for building maintenance.

The baseline amount for building maintenance in this proposed levy is $57.1.

And then in those two categories that I mentioned, the seismic retrofit and increased resources for building life safety and deferred and scheduled maintenance, we see the $13 and the $10 million added respectively.

I'll switch over to technology and online services.

As is mentioned in the overview by Tom, this is the basic network and computer infrastructure of the library.

It includes those things that support the library as an entity, but also provide necessary and important public technology, everything from computers, printers, laptops, self-checkout stations, and more.

It creates internet access, the SPL network inside the library, but also the public access and the Wi-Fi hotspots.

It allows us to assure that our digital resources and overall network are secure and can resist the ongoing threat of cyber events.

And it also takes care of necessary infrastructure work to keep our system, our technology systems available for the future.

This levy as proposed would bring $38.2 million of investment for technology and online services.

It seeks to continue to provide funding for the things I just mentioned, public staff computers, which are heavily used, printing and copying services, which never seem to go out of date and are very popular with our patrons, the Wi-Fi hotspots, which are regularly used.

We have more than 900 hotspots in the library collection that are checked out more than They were checked out more than 6,500 times in 2025. And then this also provides some funding for our IT staffing and also our online services staff.

The additional resources proposed would allow us to continue to work to keep pace with the never-ending upgrades and advances that are required in IT infrastructure.

This would help us ensure that we have continued stable and secure library network.

that is also resistant to cybersecurity threats.

It would allow us to increase our management capacity over critical data systems.

It would improve our ability to keep track of mobile devices, which are an ever-growing feature of library services.

And it would also allow us to modernize some end-of-life legacy systems that are approaching failure, almost literally end-of-life.

So as you can see here, the technology and online services component of the existing levy was about 23.7.

The baseline amount for this proposal would be 25.82.

And with expansions in some of those categories, cybersecurity, mobile device management, application support, and capital IT infrastructure, we would grow the technology component to 38.2 million.

And our last category is administration.

This is the smallest of the levy funding categories, totaling only $9 million, but the category does provide, this funding does provide critical levy administration, and it also covers city central costs that have been moved on to the levy.

The levy administration staffing includes two FTEs spread across a number of positions.

This allows us to both do active accountability and reporting on the levy and how it's administrated year over year, but it also provides support for the behind-the-scenes accounting and the financial administration to assure that all those dollars are distributed at the right time and to the right units.

This also, as I mentioned, has the portion of the levee's central costs that are now continuing into the next levee period, and then we are proposing to add two FTE to our human resources staffing over the seven-year period.

That would amount to about $2.3 million.

Again, this is a summary slide in the existing levy proposal, excuse me, in the existing levy.

It is 3.3 out of 219 million.

The baseline amount here is 6.66.

And if approved, we would grow this to just short of $9 million.

Thank you, Rob.

And that leads us to the end of our presentation.

I'm happy to take any questions that you all might have.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Surratt.

You're not alone in your...

Thank you for sharing, you know, not just your daughter's experience, but your own.

And I've said many times up here that in my neighborhood, in my inner-city, low-income neighborhood, very unsafe neighborhood, the only place my mom would let me go to was the library.

and that's what turned me into an avid reader.

So it's important for folks to know that libraries have an important place in all of our hearts, grownups and our children.

And for folks that have grandkids or are lucky enough to have grandkids, I hope I will be lucky enough one day.

I have two daughters.

They are important to everyone.

And so I am not surprised by the outpouring of support for our libraries.

And I am looking forward to placing this on the ballot so that we can continue the great work that the library does.

Because the fact is, if this ballot measure doesn't pass, the library cannot continue to do all its important work.

So thank you for sharing.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for presenting this.

Thank you, Chair Rivera, and thank you to the mayor's office, to the library, to the Library Foundation, friends of the library, all of everyone who came out today to provide comment and voice their support for our libraries.

Your time and work on this is thoroughly appreciated.

And colleagues, I've mentioned it before, but I'll say it again, I am a proud library kid.

My bubi was a librarian.

She was also my caretaker growing up, so some of my earliest memories were scouring the shelves for that next book on ancient Egypt and trying to decipher what the Dewey decimal system really meant.

And I was raised by my grandparents, who worked long hours to provide me with the basics, means we didn't have much more than that.

But having the local library by me opened up my whole world.

And in more practical terms, it was the place where I did my homework every day after school.

So I literally would not be here today if it weren't for my community investing in safe, welcoming third places where helpful and caring adults could unlock the secrets of the world for kids like me.

So we know this, but our libraries are essential for connecting our neighbors, opening up opportunities for working people, folks starting small businesses, and giving the next generation the tools that they need to thrive.

And our work in this committee is more than just coming up with the funds to keep the lights on at our libraries.

It's about ensuring that our resources are invested in ways that pay back in massive dividends in the near term and in the long term across our whole city.

And as we deliberate this levy proposal, I'm thinking about kids like me, who the Seattle Public Library serves today.

The girl who will break my record as the youngest city council member ever elected is probably going to her local library branch after school today.

So it's our part, and we need to do our part to ensure that library branches remain open, safe, fully staffed, and stocked with all the resources she and our community needs to learn, grow, thrive for the years to come.

To my mind, our investments must go beyond just maintaining the last levy.

Our population has grown significantly since the last levy, as has demands and the cost on the library's physical spaces and collections.

We're not keeping up with our growth, and we're definitely not keeping up with bookflation.

So, I look forward to working with all of you to identify the smartest investments in SPL's capital projects, collections, and staffing to ensure the maximum benefit to all of our neighborhoods, to get some good jobs in our union workforce to tend to the capital projects ahead of us, and to give our neighbors, the neighbors that we serve, the libraries that they deserve.

Shucks.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for that, and thank you for indulging me on those opening remarks.

I do have a couple of questions for the panel today just to kick us off.

Thank you again for crafting a Levy proposal that maintains current open hours at our branches and really leans into filling those hours to maximum benefit to all of our patrons.

Can you highlight for us some of the proposed investments in programming that are addressing gaps from years past or otherwise expanding opportunities for our patrons?

Sure.

Thank you for the question, Councilmember Rank.

So as we look at our programming, we highlighted several of the types of programs that we have.

And, you know, for many, they think of story times.

That's obviously one that many people have their first memory of.

And that's an area that we would hope to expand again, be able to have more story times, but also look at those programs like Kaleidoscope, Play and Learn, those ones that are really focusing on that early literacy, bringing in families where English isn't the first language, often isn't the language spoken at home, and really trying to bring those families together as well.

That type of programming, as you might imagine, is intensive.

It takes a lot of time.

It takes a lot of work with partners to develop those resources.

to have multilingual programs.

But also as we look at our population, we know our population is also aging as well.

We don't have as many programs as we should for our older adult patrons.

That's an area where we believe we can also do a lot of work.

When we think of some of the partners that we work with in the city, some of the housing for seniors, those are the areas where, again, the programming doesn't always have to just be in the library.

It could be out with our partner groups.

and being able to do that does require that additional resource.

As I often say, we're people serving people, and it's really hard to do the work without the people.

We have a great staff, they are stretched thin, and really, this resource would allow us to do more of that programming.

Another area that is really important that the library focus on is teens.

We don't have enough programming for teens.

And as we look every time in the summer months, we know that there really needs to be that investment in our teens who are looking for those things to do.

And we want it to be those positives, right?

To have that experience that you had that Chair Rivera mentioned as well, that positive experience when you come into the library.

Part of that is through programming.

How do you bring them in There has to be something that piques their curiosity.

Is it going to be that program?

Is it going to be maybe that DIY type of program?

How do I make these things?

Something that actually piques a teen's interest.

So those are the types of program areas that we're looking at investing more in.

Thank you.

Thank you for unpacking that.

And now turning a little bit to collections, Chief Librarian Fay, where is SPL seeing the biggest increases in unmet demand in relation to our collections?

I would say that would be on our e-materials, so e-books, e-audiobooks.

The demand continues to go up.

And as we've said here a few times, I know that Chair Rivera has had us talk about this at a couple sessions.

very expensive on the e-book side.

We are basically subscribing to those.

What happens and has been happening is that we've had to increase wait times because we haven't been able to keep up with both the demand but also the cost of the e-materials.

Our physical materials, though, are also still in demand.

as the population increases, people will say, well, I'll take the book in whatever form I get it, right?

And so they will get that physical book as well.

So for many years, you saw a decline, a steep decline in physical, but that has plateaued because again, the population's increased and people want to have that reading interest met earlier than later.

So the biggest challenge for us in recent years has been keeping up with that demand.

The fulfillment issue is the one that we would want to resolve.

Understood.

Thank you for that.

And lastly, on capital projects, how far are we from ensuring all of our branches are earthquake-ready and can meet the heat and cold extremes from our changing climate?

So from the earthquake side of things, we know that we have multiple projects.

As we discussed here, Columbia is in this package.

The next one, the city a number of years ago did a study on all of its unreinforced masonry buildings.

So we have them in order of priority.

The next one in that order would be West Seattle, which is another Carnegie.

It then would be Queen Anne, a Carnegie.

and then the Fremont Library, which is another Carnegie.

Those are our oldest buildings in the inventory, so to speak.

And again, those projects generally are going to range from 13 million upwards of 17 or 18 million, depending on when they are going to get done.

And as I think was pointed out, the longer we wait on some of those, just the more expensive they become to do.

And in this case, we feel that the investment in these buildings has been worth it.

These buildings have been with the Seattle Public Library for over 100 years.

They're still serviceable.

And then what we want to do is make sure that they're the safest they can be in almost any condition.

When we talk about air conditioning, I'm happy to say that by next year, we should have all of our air conditioning done in all of our buildings.

That's a great thanks to council.

A few years ago, actually approved about $1.2 million to help kick us off in Northeast and the Southwest branch.

and then we were able to secure funding from FEMA to get the rest of the buildings done.

As you know or might know, it's not just putting in air conditioning.

We have to actually go in and rip out all the fossil fuel plants.

which is a great benefit to the environment, but also adds a cost to those projects.

So we will actually have that complete by next year, and it's been something I have worked on since I came into this role, and we'll be happy to say that we will have air conditioning in every building.

That's fantastic to hear, and we'll be excited to celebrate that.

Thank you all for answering my questions.

Thank you, Chair.

Looking forward to this process.

Thank you, Councilmember Rink.

I do want to raise, because you brought up the important point, Chief Fay, about the teen programming, that we also, the library investments are not the only investments we make at the city related to kids and teens, and we have the Families Education Preschool Promise Levy, that we just passed last year, voters approved, and that has funds in it for K-12 investments.

A lot of that is teen-focused in terms of programming.

So I say that to say there are other areas and also parks, I should say, also has teen programming.

It's important for folks to know all the areas in the city, the other sister departments that also fund programming for teens and children because it's something we've really prioritized as a city.

are to take care of our young people.

And I don't want it left unsaid that we're not making some other investments in other areas toward that end as well.

Council Member Kettle, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

First, I wanted to start with a thank you for all the public commenters and especially for your signs.

The curse of writing was beautiful.

Your penmanship was fantastic.

Yes, there it is.

I particularly like the cursive.

They don't teach them anymore.

Like the deputy mayor, I have a daughter, younger, fifth grader, and she has learned some cursive writing, but we need to keep it going.

So I really appreciate the penmanship and the cursive.

I also, and I don't see her anymore, but I really appreciate the point regarding foreign languages.

I think that's so important, and as a first-generation American, I didn't really have that issue since my parents are from England, but in reverse, I do have a love of foreign languages, even if I don't speak them particularly well.

So thank you.

And I really appreciate the deputy mayor's remarks, because I have my counterparts of that.

For those that don't know, I was a stay-at-home dad before I took on this job.

And I was a regular at the Queen Anne Library to the story time and all the different pieces that were with that.

And it was a fantastic experience.

And speaking of deputy mayors, in 2023, I got to know a gentleman named Bill Stafford, who's a former deputy mayor, but also strong with the libraries.

And sitting down with Bill...

Yes, you can do that.

Sitting down with Bill for coffee was like, you know, going to a grad school class.

And it was like a tutorial.

It was almost like I'm in Oxford or something.

and going through the different pieces and understanding what the city charter says in the sense of the five pieces, parks, fire, police, transportation, and the library system.

So it is a charter requirement.

And then he would talk about President Johnson's Great Society and these different pieces and the ebb and flow in terms of investment in a civic space.

It was great to talk to him about that and through that I got to meet different people with the foundation and so forth.

So I just wanted to give a shout out to Mr. Stafford because he has been a treasure for the city, was a treasure to our city and a great person.

multiple mayors and it's fantastic.

I just wanted to note, well first I want to also say thank you to Mayor Wilson and to our chair and to Mr. Fay and the foundation and all the different elements for a very strong package.

I know it takes a lot of work.

I know Chair's been working hard.

I've had meetings with her.

Our conversations tend to be dominated in public safety and some other areas, but I recognize, too, on the Mayor's side, the hard work that goes into this and to ensure that it's not just a one-for-one replacement plus CPI, that we're doing additional investments on top of that, and that is so important.

I know, too, a lot of the focus is on hours, the e-books, although I must have to note that my mom, nearly 84, in my hometown, again, a strong supporter and beneficiary of the library system in my hometown, needs large print books.

So, mom, way back in my hometown, I just wanted to say, hey, I'm remembering your needs, too.

And I think that's something that's very important.

And then, the maintenance piece.

And so, I was gonna have two questions.

One is on the maintenance piece, but my colleagues has pretty much answered that.

The Queen Anne is, like, a perfect example of this.

And so I appreciate the work that's been done, like, on their roof, but also the tuck pointing, the URM piece of this is super important, and I'm glad to hear that that's there.

Obviously, Columbia City's central to this, but, you know, that's important.

And my understanding is that, and I think you asked this question, but I'll ask it again.

you know, the HVAC piece.

So, the bases are covered in that area, because we've gotten inquiries, and this is a, maintenance is, you know, as an old Navy guy, is really important to me.

But in terms of the HVAC piece, you know, Columbia City being one, but the other libraries, We're well covered with this proposal, correct?

As far as HVAC?

HVAC.

HVAC, yes.

We've actually secured the funding for HVAC with other means, but yes.

Okay, the combination.

Correct.

Okay, very good.

And by the way, as somebody who does work public safety, when I meet with...

small businesses all the time.

If they have private security, I say thank you, because it's really important.

As we move from where we were to where we're getting to, when we're making progress on that front, I always say thank you to them.

Also non-profits and some others that do that kind of support.

But I also want to add, and I recognize it's an additional cost it takes away, from other opportunities.

But it's also needed in order to...

It's kind of like maintenance of the buildings.

If there's this combination, it's hard.

But I also want to say thank you for all the work that libraries do as it relates to creating a safe base for our kids and everybody, actually, to be in that library.

because that's so important.

And to be there without distraction is so important for those young kids, whether it's, again, the story time piece.

By the way, I'm having memories right now of being at story time, because I'd go every time.

And there was one, and it was related to, The New Year, Asian New Year.

And it was a book called The Empty Pot.

It's in my mind right now.

There's such great lessons in that book that, you know, for not just kids to learn, but every kid.

So sorry for that aside, but I'm just remembering that story time.

two things.

So my question is, and you kind of hinted at, well, that was one question related to the maintenance, and a lot of it was covered with Councilmember Rink, but you kind of hinted at another one, because you talked about Queen Anne and West Seattle and I think Fremont being Andrew Carnegie libraries, and that highlights incredible effort that Andrew Carnegie did like 100 years ago.

Incredible.

But it also begs the question in terms of is there an Arnold Carnegie out there today?

And separately, what is the work in terms of public-private partnership?

I know this is, you know, the foundation is strong in this, but can you speak to that a little bit in terms of the outreach and that kind of relationship with Lamptey or, you know, across the board?

Yeah, I mean, we're very fortunate to have a great partner like the Friends of the Library and the Seattle Public Library Foundation, who is that...

private partner nonprofit that sees so much of the work that we do in programming.

They fund that.

They seed some of the innovation as well.

They have in back when what they called libraries for all when they remodeled and built several libraries and built the central library, they were instrumental at that time in raising private funds to go along with those capital bonds.

and of course are still a great partner in thinking about how we might do that in the future.

Because as we've pointed out a few times, the capital maintenance needs are gonna be bigger than any levy could do or produce realistically.

You could put a lot in one, but it might be a little too much when we're also looking at the basics of programming, hours, and books.

So we try to balance that out.

But our partner with the foundation has been great because they also work with all of our staff who are working with all these other partners.

So we're able then to leverage different opportunities with other partners throughout the city.

That is one of the strengths of having such a great funding partner like the Seattle Public Library Foundation.

That allows us also to do some of the things we've done with our collections.

We're very fortunate.

They buy almost one in four of the books that people are checking out.

That is significant.

That is a gift that most libraries don't, public libraries don't get, and that shows their commitment to really working in this public-private nature all the time.

Thank you.

And I'll just add, since I mentioned my mother, I'll mention my father.

Just to close, thank you, Chair, is that, you know, he would always ask me as a kid, and after like the thousandth time, he would say, you know, why did I come to America?

And I say, yes, Dad, education, education, education.

And central to that point are libraries.

And so just thank you for your work and obviously the work of everybody here who I'm sure is central to our libraries.

So thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

I want to piggyback on the Carnegie buildings because I know that there's some funding through the federal government and other sources for Carnegie buildings.

Are you working on trying to get at some grants.

I thought you and I talked at some point.

That's why I'm raising it, and it hasn't come up in the context of this conversation.

But it's important because we do have a lot of Carnegie buildings.

They are very old.

They're very expensive to maintain.

And we're not going to be able to do it all, even if we, you know, it would be an endless levy if we were just going to do the capital maintenance.

So can you talk a little bit about that, Chief?

Sure.

Thank you for the question.

And yes, we actually, when I came into this position five years ago now, one of the areas I was looking at was how can we really leverage all types of funding.

So the federal funding, the state funding, none of which we had gotten And again, that's working with our funding partner, the Foundation, to really go after a lot of these other grants.

They help support us in that.

Our staff does a great job writing those as well.

But we've gone after several federal grants.

That's what's allowed us to do the HVAC.

The state grants come from Commerce, and those are directed at older historic buildings.

We've been able to secure about 3.8, almost $4 million from those grants.

Those grants have gone directly into our Carnegie buildings.

Rob right now with his team is writing another one for Columbia.

that will also go into making sure that everything can be done in that branch.

We've also been fortunate.

This is slightly aside, but it comes back to it in a way with Carnegie.

Carnegie, actually, the foundation had not been giving to libraries for quite some time.

It had probably been almost 30 years.

Working with our foundation partners, and Carnegie said, hey, we want to start working with libraries again.

The Seattle Public Library was one of 11 libraries across this country that received a large grant out of 1,400 applicants.

So the need definitely is out there, but again, working with our partner to secure that funding.

And while that wasn't for buildings, it was for programming and English as a second language programming that we do.

It also then highlighted the Carnegie Foundation, the need.

They actually gave $10,000 per Carnegie branch in this country to every single library system in the country.

even if your Carnegie branch isn't here anymore, because the Central Library actually had a Carnegie branch at one time.

Ballard was actually a Carnegie branch at one time.

So we received $80,000 in funding from the Carnegie Foundation for that.

So again, these partnerships, coming back to that, but also leveraging every type of fund.

We leverage our levy dollars to say that we are going to do the Columbia project.

Well, that then gives us the matching funds for federal dollars or for state dollars if required.

Those are all very important pieces, and that's why I look at this as an investment to also leverage, right?

How can we do more with these other dollars that we can also go after?

Terrific.

Thank you so much for sharing that because it's important for everyone to hear We're pulling from all the resources to do this work.

Council Member Foster, you're recognized.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And thank you for this fantastic presentation.

And I will also just take a second to thank our public commenters.

I got goosebumps earlier today listening to folks share those stories.

So thank you for coming down and spending the time to and share what the libraries mean to you.

It really means a lot.

And I'll share briefly my own library experience, because I know we've all been called to do so today.

But I'm a mom of a 13-year-old, which means we're still going to libraries, luckily.

Hopefully, we've got a few more years of that in us.

And we've had the experience of going from having our favorite librarian in Columbia City when we went to story time, and it was a place of not only connection, but as a parent, sanity.

I'm sure that's relatable for a lot of folks when you know that you've got this place to go and see your neighbors every week, to going and picking up our books from the library, to now he goes by himself and he can get them from the book lockers, which we love to have because it gives us access after hours and at times might not otherwise be convenient.

We've had tons of fun going to the downtown library and puppet time, story time, it was a thing for a little while, and going to meetings and public speakers there as well.

So the diversity of what libraries brings to our communities and to our experiences just can't be overstated, and the importance of it for folks who are raising their families in Seattle, I think also cannot be overstated at every stage of life.

And I loved getting to hear the college students talk about accessing our libraries.

And I project that into the future for my child, whatever he chooses to do.

Thank you, because it's incredibly meaningful.

And I want to turn from that to dive into a little bit around capital needs.

So, and I really appreciated the comments that have already come from my colleagues and the discussion around the Carnegie Libraries.

I want to turn to quickly, I know that there's money in this levy that will allow us to do much needed work at the Columbia City branch.

And then there is also, I see, additional dollars for maintenance.

But I specifically, I heard a public commenter earlier talk about the fact that there's, I think he said, sort of $5,000 a month over the lifetime of the levy for maintenance.

So with what's in the levy now, my understanding is you expect to be able to do this one significant maintenance change and then sort of just upkeep.

Is that correct?

Yes, that's basically what it would do.

Rob can also touch a little bit more on some of the details of it.

But yes, it would basically allow us to do the break-fix type of work that often happens, but it would also allow us to touch on some of the deferred maintenance.

As I've presented here before, there's a lot of that when you look at a portfolio of 27 locations.

Buildings ranging from 20 to 120 years old will have a variety of capital needs.

Everything, as Councilmember Kettle talked about the roof at Queen Anne, seems like a simple thing.

It's not that big a building.

It's a million dollars.

It's a landmark building.

The same kind of slate has to go back on it.

The same copper fittings for the drainage system has to be like it was made 100 years ago.

It is part of making sure that we continue to invest in the history of those buildings.

And that just gives you an example.

And everything to, you know, the Central Library now being 22 years old, at the end of this next levy, it'll be nearly 30. We already are at the point of needing to replace elevators and escalators.

Those aren't cheap.

Each elevator is a million plus, just round numbers to consider doing.

And there's four elevators.

There's six stories of escalator that also has to be considered as a replacement.

And then elevators throughout.

the rest of the branches.

We do have elevators in a number of branches.

Those also are aging and are at that point of needing to be replaced.

So those are the types of things that we see, and of course you don't want to be on the end of running into an elevator situation in which you must replace it, because that's not gonna happen tomorrow.

it will take months and months and months to actually bring in a new elevator cab.

So it gives you a sense of the type of things that are out there and the needs that are out there.

And as we've discussed here in some of our presentations over the last month, those needs are great for sure in the capital side.

Thank you for that.

And did you want to pass it to another staff member before I add a follow up?

Did you have some additional detail that you would like on the $10 million in maintenance?

I do.

I mean, I think, so you've certainly started it well.

Maybe I'll put a finer point on it.

I think just four elevators in the downtown library, $1 million each, $4 million.

So that $10 million seems like it can go quickly.

And I suppose what I'll say is one of my concerns is, and I know all of my colleagues care deeply about balancing affordability and the cost of the levy.

But one of my sincere concerns is that through deferring some of these costs, they may just be escalated costs that we have to pay later down the line.

That not only do we have to pay later down the line, but that could also interrupt access for folks.

When you talk about libraries not having potentially working elevators or needing to fix those.

So that's a concern I have.

And I think what I'm coming to understand is that the investment that we have here really just does not cover the sufficient need that there is to make sure our buildings are up kept over the next seven years.

Did you, Rob, could you add a little additional context to the 10 million?

I can add some context, yes.

So first, I'll just say that by way of background, the library has a comprehensive plan that looks out over the future years and does a condition assessment for all of our buildings.

what we have been able to do is look at different scenarios that range in time span and cost to say, if we were to prioritize against a certain set of benchmarks, like critical life safety systems, deferred maintenance, planned maintenance, and if we wed that with a time span and said, what would be our priorities in the next five years or 10 years or 20 years, that's how we did the overall cost assessment.

what this levy proposal will do when you combine the baseline major maintenance, which is about $31 million over the life of the levy, and the $10 million of additional resource.

We have about 40 million over the life of the levy to address just the most critical life safety and deferred maintenance needs over a five-year period.

So roughly our need is about $40 million extended over a five-year period.

If we look out over a 10-year period, we see that figure grow substantially to as much as $160 million over a 10-year period.

So it's a rich and detailed assessment, but right now we're able to get to about a quarter of our need looking out over 10 years, five years will allow us to say just barely on top of our most critical maintenance needs.

Thank you.

And obviously we're not able to anticipate any future needs if something breaks that's unexpected or if there's an extreme that are completely high cost that comes back for something that could sort of shift the ability to deliver on those projects in the next few years.

And if I may, if I can just help me remember, the Columbia branch was in the previous levy and then had to get rolled over, for example.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

That's correct.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

It's really helpful because I think as we're thinking of this levy, we want to make sure that we are setting up our city for success with these investments in these just incredibly important places.

I want to turn from the capital into programming.

We love library programming so much.

and Chief Librarian, I heard you speak about the need for additional programming from teens to seniors and so much more.

I know something that this council invested in previously was the kaleidoscope play and learn programs.

Can you just describe for me, with the levy as is, do you have a planned expansion of that program?

I'm recalling back to when you were here previously and we looked at a map of where that program is reaching folks currently.

I know there was some discussion from council about potentially going a little bit further north.

Yeah, pardon me.

Yes, thank you for the question.

At present, with what we have in the funding, probably not an expansion of it.

It costs about $350,000 per site per year to do that work.

And again, as we try to balance our programming, As I mentioned, in some areas we're very weak in what we are offering.

We probably would not be able to do that as it's laid out right now with the funding that's in there for programming.

We will be still looking to do things around children and literacy, but not necessarily just that program.

Okay, got it, thank you.

Another thing I've come to learn that I'm really excited about, and actually before I say it, I'll appreciate not just your leadership, but the Library Foundation leadership, it's just so clear that you all are always going after every, dollar and every partnership and every opportunity to double the investments that we are making here locally.

So thank you for that.

Something I recently learned about is a partnership, and I believe it's with the foundation and a national funder that has allowed us to expand and our ESL programming in our libraries.

And my understanding is that partnership would run through the end of 2027. Is there funding in the levy as is to continue that after 2027?

Or would that be something that we would lose access to at that point?

There is not, not at the scale of the current grant.

That grant is that Carnegie grant.

It was $450,000 over two years, and it does expire in 2027. It doesn't mean that every program that we have around ESOL would go away.

We have others beyond what they're doing there, but that's our largest package that we've been able to put into play.

Got it.

And my final question.

You were also in front of us a few weeks ago talking about one of the more popular programs at the library.

I think you said it was the thing that has the most holds is the Wi-Fi hotspots.

And I believe I saw this in here as a continued investment.

Is that an expansion of the number of hotspots that are available or is that continued at the level that we have right now?

It would be continuing at the level we are right now.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate all the clarifications.

Thank you for the questions.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

I will say also that we have another presentation coming that will talk a little bit about the fact that the library board are the ones who dictate where funding is placed, and there is ability to shift funding around as needed.

That is also something that happens, which is different from other city departments.

So I think that bears mentioning in this conversation, as well as, Chief, you mentioned that on the capital side, having the money alone, I mean, there are other considerations related to ability to deliver on projects.

So I know that that is something that is also part of the conversation.

So I wanted to highlight Council Member Hollingsworth, I'm gonna go to you.

And then I would like to move on to our next presentation and then we can go to questions again.

So we don't run out of time for our next presentation.

But please go ahead, you're recognized Council President.

Thank you, Chair.

And I will be fast, I will not tell everyone the library story.

I think we've...

You can, you can.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

So one, everybody knows I love the library.

One thing, and I'm so glad Councilmember Foster brought this up because one of my concerns were the maintenance thing.

So you all answered a lot of that because when I was looking at 2019, it was about 20% of the maintenance, or excuse me, 26%.

of the pie, right now it's about 20%.

And when I do an overview of our comprehensive plan, just where the growth is in our city, there's gonna be some libraries, obviously, that are gonna have a lot of uptick because we're adding more people to our city.

And I know that when we come back, probably in 2023, or 2033 for the new levy, depending on if we do six years, seven years, who knows, but just making sure that our maintenance is on point for those libraries.

and wanting to know, obviously, from you all, and this might just be a comment or a question, and you have said, Director Fay, Chief Fay, that we do get money from the state for potential different capital needs, and just leaning on that.

Honestly, you know, we don't have, and I know that council, our chair Rivera has done a phenomenal job.

I want to thank you for this because I know that we're under a cap.

There are a lot of different needs in our city affordability and you just done a great job.

with Mayor Wilson and putting together a really great package.

But that was like one of my things is like, hey, if we're deferring maintenance, what other areas are we looking to, federal, state, county, whatever it is, to be able to make sure that the buildings are great.

And that's why I'm also just an advocate of always pushing for turf fields.

We call them sustainable fields.

They do not have the rubber in them anymore.

They're the corks, okay?

Because everyone was like, we don't want that.

They're corks.

But those generate two to three times more revenue for our city when they're turf.

And when they have lights, it's four times more revenue.

And so knowing that when we build stuff and we have our libraries are open seven days a week, which is phenomenal.

Some of our community centers are not open seven days a week.

and so those are getting more wear and tear and people are using those more.

Wanting to make sure that we have enough funds to be able to continue them being open and all the work that you do.

So I just wanna thank you all.

I just wanted a quick comment just to highlight that as we're looking at our comp plan in phase two with council member Lynn.

leading the charge.

And we're looking at all of our buildings in Seattle that our libraries are one of the most important pieces because they are a public space that are open seven days a week, unlike some other places as well that have the libraries, the restrooms, the cold or the hot areas for people, depending on the weather.

So thank you, Chair.

I know we want to go on to the next presentation, but I just wanted to highlight that, that that is one thing that I'm looking at strategically for this levy and then beyond.

Thank you, Council President.

It is on everybody's mind because of the aging infrastructure.

And it is something that I was very engaged in conversation with Chief Fay in terms of what do we do about this aging infrastructure?

How much can we do?

with this particular levy, and also where is there other funding that we can tap into because the need is always greater.

I mean, this is true not just with libraries.

It was true in the FEP levy.

It was true in the transportation levy.

The need is greater than these levies can provide just in general, even though the size has increased.

exponentially from the last time we did all of those levees, the need is still so much greater.

And so what else, where else can we pull from to be able to address the need?

And to your point, can the existing buildings accommodate all the new growth that we're having at the city?

Like, are we going to have to create, you know, add buildings because you know, there are going to be more people and libraries are important.

They're an essential service in the city.

So, um, all those questions are on the table and things that we need to solve for together.

So thank you.

Thank you all for being here.

Deputy Mayor Suraj, Chief Fay, your team, um, and, um, we'll continue the conversation.

Um, and now I'd like to call up our central staff.

Tom Mikesell, Edin Sisic, and Eric McConaughey to talk about the levy, how the levy capacity works, our levy lid capacity, which keeps coming up, and then also any issue ID.

Good morning, and thanks for letting us get situated.

Yes, thank you.

We'll go in reverse order, the way how we do our introductions usually.

My name is Eric McConaughey, I'm with the Council of Central Staff, and the kind of main point of contact for the Library of Lovey, but of course, you can turn to all Central Staffers to get support on this, as evidenced by my colleagues to my left, who will let them introduce themselves before we jump in.

Oh, Ed and Sisich, Council of Central Staff.

Good morning, Chair Rivera and members of the committee, Tom Mikesell, central staff.

All right.

We're going to start with Tom and Ed and Wright with the levy conversation, the financial part, and then we'll go to Eric to talk about the issue ID.

That sounds great.

Okay, sounds great.

Take it away.

Thank you.

I think my way of intro, and also just give Tom a moment to bring the slide deck up, the property tax overview provides context to this conversation because sort of hovering all around this is the issue of levy capacity.

And as Tom and Ed will go into this, there's a calculation that's shared and agreed upon by central staff and CBO and finance that there's about $780 million of capacity over the next seven years for levies.

This library levy would take 410 of that, so there's a subtraction there.

And that leaves sort of capacity for other levies that would come up in the future.

Some of those are mentioned, or excuse me, those are identified in the memo that I shared with you all.

I won't do that now.

But that's just my way of framing how we get to this next bit and maybe segue on to Tom.

Thanks, Tom.

Thanks, Eric.

So we're going to now, kind of after having the more detailed discussion about the library levy request, kind of pull back and look at just overall capacity within property taxes, our ability to levy taxes here in Seattle.

So to start off, just going to give a view of the context of property taxes with respect to the total revenue for the city and for the general fund.

So in the 2026 adopted budget, property taxes are about 17% of the total, so of non-utility revenue.

So if we subtract City Light and Seattle Public Utilities.

And similarly, when you kind of drill down into the general fund, the kind of general services fund, the general services levy is about 16% of property taxes.

So it's a fairly substantial source of revenue to the city's financial program.

So when we're going to talk about property taxes, and we've already heard some of these terms this morning, but we're going to hear them in a bit more detail with this presentation, there are some just key definitional things to clarify when we talk about property taxes.

First is the tax levy.

So that's the amount of revenue that you expect to receive the amount of revenue that's used to fund programs.

That tax levy is subject to a statutory restraint on how much it can grow each year.

And I believe you're familiar with this.

It's a 1% statutory allowance that we can increase taxes plus the value of any new construction that occurred, plus any decisions made by the voters, put forward by the council, to lift that lid.

So the 1% is a lid on how much it can grow.

The request of voters is the lid lift.

So the library discussion from this morning is a lid lift in that context.

And I kind of did talk, I talked about the lift.

It's the voting criteria for that is a 50% plus one.

And that is an authorization by the voters to increase that cap on growth.

And that increase could either be a single increase that then is maintained at that level for the span of the levy period.

So in the case of the library levies, seven years, or it can be a multi-year lift.

And we don't traditionally do those here at the city, but they are an option for levies.

And generally, those lifts can be for any general public purpose, but they're traditionally for a specific purpose defined in the ballot question.

Next is the concept of assessed value.

And so this is the, and when you're thinking about taxes in general, this is the base for the tax.

So you apply the rate, to the base, you get your levy.

The assessed value is intended to be the full market value of any property in the taxing district, and that's determined through an annual survey done by the King County Assessor's Office.

And so the levy rate is kind of the amount per 1,000, so it's expressed in terms of $1,000 of assessed value that is charged against all assessed value in the taxing district to generate the tax levy.

capacity.

So this is kind of the key concept that we're trying to express this morning with this presentation.

This is the maximum amount of property tax rate that the city can assess for its levies.

For the city of Seattle, the maximum tax rate is $3.60.

So that times the amount of assessed value in the city equals the total dollar levy that we can generate.

So I've talked about restrictions a bit.

There are some cases where there are levies that can be passed that are not restricted, and those are called excess levies.

So a really great example of that is a levy that is intended to repay debt.

So we have a couple of those.

We have one for the seawall, and we have one that's nearly expired or nearly been paid off for library construction.

So these are different because they are not subject to the cap that I mentioned.

So they're not part of the 360 rate limit.

However, they do require a higher voter threshold for authorization.

So it's 60% of voters in the election need to approve an excess levy.

And then finally, there's the concept of pro-rationing.

So we won't get into this in much detail, but it matters in cases where a jurisdiction such as Seattle is faced with a tax levy that requires a rate that exceeds our cap.

So if we got into a situation where the total amount of levy that we adopted for the budget exceeded, when divided into the assessed value, exceeded $3.60 or exceeded some of the other rate limits that we'll talk about this morning, there's a process by which levies need to be reduced in order to come under the cap.

So we haven't hit that in the past.

We don't project that we're going to experience that here in the near future.

But as you'll see with some of these graphics that we'll show you, we're getting closer to this.

So it kind of becomes part of the discussion to understand that there's a process by which that takes place.

And I'm going to hand off this to Eden to cover the next six slides or so.

And I'm just going to quickly say before you start, thank you, Tom, before you start, and the reason why I thought it was important to have this conversation now, colleagues, and we don't always have this presentation at all our levy conversations is because we're so we're getting so close to that levy cap that I thought it was important for us to understand where we are with it and for the public, for that matter, to understand now that we're getting closer.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Ed.

Thank you.

And I know we're almost out of time at 11.30, so I'll breeze through these as quickly as I can.

I might even skip over some slides in the interest of time, so...

I think we have a few more minutes.

Staff checked.

We have a few more minutes, so go ahead.

Thank you.

Seattle has two core levy types that fund city operations.

We have the general purpose levy.

This is the city's base property tax.

It does not require voter approval, but by state law, its annual growth is limited to 1% plus the value of new construction, often called the statutory lid.

and revenues go to the general fund to support the city operations.

And then we have the voter-approved levies for specific purposes, and voters can authorize us to go above the statutory lid for targeted programs, essentially, hence the term lid lift.

They pass with a simple majority, and these can be time-limited or permanent.

and rates can increase in a single year as authorized by voters.

Funds are deposited into special revenue funds and only used for the voter-approved purpose.

And Seattle currently has five of those.

We have the...

FEP levy, the Move Seattle Transportation levy, election vouchers, the library levy, and I'm missing one, housing levy.

And so for capacity-constrained, the combined levy amount of the general levy plus all the lid lifts cannot exceed the $3.60 maximum rate.

Can we go to the next slide?

So two more levy categories matter for the overall bill that the residents see.

So some districts are created under state law and may require a vote.

For example, the Seattle Metropolitan Park District.

And so these are not constrained by the $3.60 cap, but they do count towards the broader $5.90 cap, which is the local government limit.

that also includes rates set by the county, the school district, and other local jurisdiction levies, and special districts.

And so, even if the city is under the $3.60 cap, the overall local stack has to stay at the $5.90.

And then there's excess levies, which Tom already covered a little bit of.

So when voters approve bonds for capital projects, they require a 60% supermajority, and they're not restricted by these statutory limits, so they sit outside the 360 and the 590, hence the term excess levies.

I will, in the interest of time, skip over the next couple of slides, which are for calculating how the rate is calculated, and we can do individual briefings on these, and the slides are pretty self-explanatory, but I was gonna go into them, unless there's interest.

I think it'll take a second, so why don't you go ahead?

Yeah, maybe I can just do the Move Seattle levy, the example one.

So, because we didn't have the information for the library levy at the time we developed this, we're using Move Seattle as an example.

So in this example, the levy would collect $189 million per year.

The city's total assessed value is about $306 billion.

So if we divide the $189 million by the assessed value, again, expressed in thousands, per thousand, we get a tax rate of about 63 cents.

And so now, the one below, looking at an individual household, if we apply the 63-cent rate to a median-valued home of $833,000, that household would pay about $525 for this levy, which is the second highest of the five voter-approved levies that we have.

And we show those details on the next slide, but essentially, we combine, we do this kind of calculation for all the levies similarly, and the total of all of those is the combined bill that the residents pay.

And so this chart shows how much a median value home pays specifically to city-controlled levies in 26. The total city portion is about $2,871, which corresponds to a combined city levy rate of $3.45.

And the largest portion of that is, of course, the city's property tax and the general purpose levy, which makes up about a third, 30%.

of the $2,800 number, followed pretty closely by the FEP levy at 20% and the Move Seattle levy at 18%.

And one quick note I'll add here is that you see the MPD levy, the Metropolitan Park District included, and while it sits outside the $3.60 cap, but it is what our residents see on their bill, so it is included in the $2,800 number.

similarly with city general obligation bond debt service.

These are excess levies approved by voters and are part of that as well.

And this is just for the city?

Correct.

This is the city portion.

So the next slide.

I just wanted to add one thing because we mentioned the $3.60 rate cap.

and you see here, we're looking at this combined rate is $3.45, so it's kind of like, oh, eye-opening, 15 cent difference.

So we've kind of touched on this a bit, but this is kind of the Seattle total tax bill, but there are a few levies on here for the Metropolitan Park District and the excess levy for bonds that are not part of the $3.60 cap, and that's like about 45, 50 cents of this total amount here.

So when you take those pieces out, it's more on the order of like $3 compared to the 360 cap.

So just wanted to explain that piece.

Thank you, Tom.

And so this slide zooms out.

It shows the full property tax bill for the median home value in 2026 across all taxing jurisdictions, not just the city, and the total is $82.54, which corresponds to an overall levy amount of about almost $10, just 9 cents shy of that.

So even though residents often think of property taxes as city property taxes, We're only about one-third of that.

The rest is for school, state, school district, county, and regional agencies.

Next slide, Tom.

I'm going as quick as I can.

And so we also thought it'd be helpful to write some recent historical context in terms of how median assessed value and total property tax bill have changed over the last several years.

The reddish line shows the median assessed value, and the blue line shows the total property tax bill for a median assessed value home.

And I won't...

go too in-depth into this slide, but the blue line generally moves in the same direction, but on a smoother trajectory is the important thing to know, and increasing from roughly $4,800 in 2017 to about $8,300 in 2026. And the important point here is the relationship between the two lines.

While the property amount is generally correlated with assessed value, the main driver of a property tax increases for households is the voter-approved levies and not the rising property values.

I will turn it back over to Tom.

Thank you, Ed, and I'll take it from here.

So now we're going to drill a bit into the capacity question that we kind of alluded to.

But to start that off with a foundation, we'll look at the history of assessed value over the last 20 years using this graph.

And just to orient you to the graph, the left axis is kind of is so up to $350 billion is the total assessed value in Seattle.

And then on the right side is tracking the percent change in that total assessed value in each year.

That's tracked with the dashed line.

There's a few takeaways here.

There's lots of data, lots of things to see.

But the key things to see here are during the Great Recession, Seattle saw a 10% decline in its total assessed value in 2010. And that was followed by smaller declines, but still declines of 3% in the next two years.

So that's a 16% total decline in assessed value.

At the time, our rate was not such that there was any sort of pro-rationing or any reduction that was needed.

But had we been closer to that cap, so it could have been the case.

So after the Great Recession, we experienced, fortunately, a boom in growth in the city, as you can see, tracked by the kind of upward steep growth in the solid line and that dashed line that's hitting close to 15% in several years.

So that had the effect of really expanding our tax capacity in the city of Seattle.

And so that That trend continued until around 2020 or so.

And then in more recent years, we've seen a slowdown in growth in the assessed value for a number of things.

But at the end of the day, it's truly kind of forming more of a constraint on our capacity than we had seen in the last decade.

In fact, we had a slight smaller 2% decrease in 25, and it was essentially It was essentially flat through those years.

I think it's about 2%, 3% in the 2026 projection.

But essentially, every time assessed value grows, it adds capacity.

Every time assessed value declines, we lose capacity.

So before I show you the next graphic, Ms.

Chair.

Tom, that's because as assessed values decrease, you're still collecting the same percentage on that levy, but now you have less, the households are paying more because the assessed value is less, but the percentage is high.

It's basically, if you think about the, well, we'll show you the graph, but it's basically $3.60 is the maximum rate that these, the levies we're talking about, the general expense and the lid lifts, that's the maximum rate that those combined levies can, that we can use to generate revenue.

And so you take the $3.60 times the total assessed value projection, and that is the total amount of revenue that we can get.

So if we ever get into a situation where the total amount of revenue that has been built into the budget exceeds that cap, then something needs to happen to bring us down below that cap.

So it's not so much a matter of shifting burdens between households, but it's more just an effective limit on the total taxing capacity that we have.

So because it's important, and as the chair alluded to, I mean, we're getting up close to this, even though this is the last lid lift in the series of lid lifts that we have at the city before we continue the next cycle of renewals.

We are looking at a kind of a different situation projected out than we've seen over the last few years.

And so we were kind of refreshing.

There was a prior discussion in the finance committee headed up by CBO where we talked about the capacity.

We're using the same information, but just to kind of refresh that and discuss that this morning of how that projection was produced.

So again, we've talked about the rate cap at $3.60, but we're not including the bonds.

We're not including the parks district because those are not included underneath the cap.

And then there's really two ways we've looked at it kind of internally and formally.

There's one, the full capacity at $3.60 rate.

And then there's a 90%, which says, hey, we've seen that the assessed value can drop as much as 10% in the past.

So to be more conservative, perhaps using a different planning horizon, this might be prudent in order to avoid having to reduce the amount of revenue from levies if we ever come up against the cap.

So an assumption that's being made in the projection that we'll see is that all of the levy lid lifts are renewed in future years according to the renewal schedules, but they're renewed only based on the growth in inflation.

And so that's important because Well, there are multiple reasons why there could be a need for higher revenue.

Inflation, cost of things going up is a clear one.

Another thing to consider is population growth.

So as the population growth grows, your amount of revenue per person declines.

And so we're only doing inflation to keep up with the cost of living, and it's important to just point that out.

Finally, and this is kind of going from a different perspective, the assessed value has only grown at 3% per year in the future, which is a conservative estimate based on the numbers presented from the forecast office, which is more on the order of 5%.

It doesn't have an effect of limiting the amount of the library levy discussion we've had this morning.

It's just more because there's a lot of uncertainty with regards to commercial office vacancies and the mortgage rates constraining the housing market.

and central staff in tandem felt it was more conservative to use a 3% projection in the future.

So those assumptions stated.

So this is the graph of how this looks.

And it's a very colorful chart.

And the colors mean different things.

The bars are essentially the levees.

So you can see how back in recently, as recent as 2020, there was a lot of capacity.

So the bar chart in 2020 includes the general expense levy and all of the voter approved levies under $600 million.

And then you can see the kind of the lines grown at the top.

There's the magenta line and the blue line, magenta being the capacity.

So the total levy capacity at $3.60.

And then the blue line is the 90% of that kind of accounting for the fact that assessed value can drop.

And so you can see as the different separate levy lid lifts have been renewed, we've gotten closer and closer to that, to both of those lines.

And then here, if you go then from 2026 to 2027, you can see, so the library levy is the kind of bright orange levy.

We haven't included an assumption for that in this graph, but there is the shaded, the top, segment of the bars from 27 through 2023, that is the kind of essentially the capacity, the amount of revenue that can be generated from property taxes using the 90% of the full capacity limit as the constraint.

And when you kind of graph that out, you come to about $111 million per year of effective taxing ability.

And so the library levy, as discussed, as presented by the mayor, would draw about $56 million per year of that 111. So there would be about $55 million of taxing capacity based on these projections in the future.

And again, these are all projections.

It's all just a point in time.

And hopefully, assessed value will outperform these numbers.

However, if it goes down, then the picture, of course, changes.

Yeah, and finally, I mean, we talked about the pro-rationing, but if there's at any time that the city levy would exceed $3.60, then the city would have to choose which one of the levies to reduce to come with underneath the cap.

And that's just impacted by the assessed value, some change in the assessed value if it were to decrease.

That's correct.

Okay.

Thank you, Tom.

So that's like one of the big takeaways on this and also to show how closely we are getting to that capacity piece.

Correct.

And again, it's not intended to be kind of like a scare tactic, I guess, for lack of a better word.

It's just kind of a, we are getting close to this limit and we just want to ensure that we're expressing the full awareness of that fact because 10 years ago, completely different context.

We were looking at lots of a wide space of capacity.

We were just no longer in that situation.

Yep.

And that's the second takeaway, really, is we had a lot of capacity in the past, but we don't today.

And so we need to be eyes wide open when we make decisions on how close we are getting to that capacity.

Because if there should be a need to levy a different to do another levy for a different purpose, it starts to impact our ability to do that.

I mean, so as we're just, it's a reality.

It's not a scare tactic, it's just a reality.

Thank you, Tom.

I'm gonna roll along to Eric, because I know we're at time here, but we'll go to Eric and then if folks can stay and wanna ask questions, that's great too, I'm here.

Great, thanks very much.

Once again, Eric McConaughey and the Council Central staff.

A lot of the things that I would bring to your attention in a normal sort of presentation on a bill like this have already been brought up, the size of the levy at 410 and some of the history.

This levy follows on from the 2012 and 2019 library levies that were successfully passed by voters in the past.

I think that heritage is sort of understood.

There was a 1998 Libraries for All bond measure, which my colleagues have talked about the difference between bond measures and levies.

That was used to remodel nearly all the libraries, build four new libraries, build a central library that was also a successful measure.

And the presenters from the mayor's office and Seattle Public Library noted that a lot of those structures that to me still seem new because of my age and history with the Seattle are actually 20 years old.

So that becomes a part of this ongoing discussion.

So with that being said, I think I'll just sort of frame up sort of two issues for consideration.

One, I'll just say out loud, levy capacity that's already been well covered.

So that checks one box.

Two, it just has to do with the governance and budgeting with regard to the Seattle Public Library, as is true for every fall when the council has its budget deliberations based on the budget delivered by the mayor.

Well, we just here in central staff, we just like to remind the council and the public that the governance for the library is different.

that the library board has that exclusive control over the finances of the library.

That kind of comes out of the city charter and also out of state law.

And so the way that the ordinance itself is written for the library levy, the categories and examples for spending are illustrative, and they give sort of the leeway to the library board to make those decisions through time.

That being said, of the past levy ordinances, and this one would have the library come in and report on the progress for achieving the aims, the categories that are declared in that levy ordinance to the council yearly.

They have done that on a regular basis, unfailingly, and also as evidenced by two meetings in your committee, Council Chair, the Library, Education, and Neighborhoods Committee, and then also the first meeting of this committee, there was an extensive report out on the 2019 levy performance that flows from that.

So those are sort of the main things that I want to cover, maybe just to sort of sort of touching on going forward.

You'll all be here again on March 31st.

That's sort of next steps.

My understanding, based on conversations with the chair and what she's communicated to you all, that there'll be a time to talk about potential amendments.

I want to thank you for the internal deadline, which is really to help me help you get things done on time.

So please reach out to me.

Really, we're looking kind of midday tomorrow.

It seems like a quick turnaround, but hopefully You'll have the information you need by then.

Of course, we'll continue to work with you.

This is really just to abide by the council rules that say that 9.30 on the day before the 9.30 meeting, so that would be the 30th for the 31st meeting, that all those amendments are distributed to your colleagues and the clerk and people like me.

Other than that, in recognition of the time, I'll just say that this schedule that we're working on that's established for the Select Committee is set to be successful, to have this levy be have final consideration before the council in time to send it to the King County elections by May 1st.

So that's why we are sort of minding the time.

With the last meeting as scheduled on April 8th, this could go to council on April It still does leave another council meeting in there as sort of a last ditch.

It's not advisable to go past that 21st meeting of council.

And I want to say that that is, I'm just sort of framing it as in my role on central staff as sort of like the parameters.

The plan is set up now as April 8th.

with a vote at council on the 14th, but it does leave a buffer that would be a reasonable amount of time to get things processed to get it to the county by May 1st.

That next meeting on the 28th really is too soon before the 1st to achieve that.

And I think I'll stop there, because I'm out of steam.

Thank you, yeah.

Thank you, Eric.

Can we follow up on that 21st?

Because I had a different understanding from law.

Yeah, and I don't mean to introduce sort of a wrinkle there.

The plan is set up in the select committee, as you well know, is that the last committee meeting is April 8th for a vote of counsel expected on the 14th, right?

Yes, correct.

Right, but perhaps the unanswered question is there, what if we don't make the 14th?

I just want to suggest that the 21st remains something that we could consider.

We could follow up on that later, of course.

That would be great, because that was not my understanding, and so we have different understandings.

I want to make sure that we are clear especially for my colleagues and getting this through.

I want to be clear.

Thank you, Eric.

Colleagues, are there any questions for Tom, Eden, or Eric, either about the levy cap or the process and the issue ID?

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you to, as always, our fantastic central staff team.

We really appreciate you and your work.

I wanted to just ask a quick question about the reserve that you've presented as an option.

It's my understanding that that reserve reflects 10%.

Is that correct?

Yes, Councilmember Foster, that is correct.

And can you share more about how you decided on 10% as the number there?

I do see the graphs that show previous fluctuation.

And looking at that graph, the only time I see a fluctuation quite so steep is when we had the Great Recession.

So I'm curious as to why you landed on what, if I were looking at this graph, I might call an outlier number of 10%, as opposed to more maybe what I might call an average number.

That is a great question, Councilmember, and it's essentially because 10% is the most extreme experience in the last 20 years that we've seen.

And so it's just kind of, at this point, just used as an informal guideline based on what the past experience has been, because even though it is an outlier, if it occurred, and since we have seen it happen, It's basically just using past experience to apply that to the future.

Got it.

That's very helpful.

It's sort of the past.

if I may, worst case scenario experience that we've seen here.

And do you know what sort of an average fluctuation is?

I'm seeing some of these minus 3%, minus 2%, and then going up as high as 15, which was also an outlier.

So do we know what kind of, just trying to get a sense of like, is 10% the right number if we were to be considering a reserve?

Council Member Foster, that's a great question.

I don't know the average, so I would have to take the average of the declines because we wouldn't necessarily be too concerned about the averages of the growth.

So, I mean, I could eyeball it, but it would be probably on the order of 5%, perhaps.

I appreciate the eyeball because I have an MSW, not a math degree.

So I think that's very helpful.

And then just the other thing, and I think this is maybe more statement than question, but something I really appreciated in the slides earlier was the understanding of how much of the previous library levy, or excuse me, how much of this existing levy represents growth versus what represents sort of a shift from the general fund over to the levy.

I just am curious, did central staff do any analysis when you looked at that sort of levy growth of helping us understand where that reflects new programs or expanded delivery versus where that reflects shift from general fund into the levy?

Yeah, and I'll share some numbers with you, but really, I'm just relying on what the Seattle Public Library developed and what they shared today.

So forgive me if this doesn't answer your question.

Go ahead.

Sorry, actually, I got the library numbers.

I was wondering if we did it for the broader levies that were presented today.

Oh, excuse me.

No, I haven't done that.

We can take that as a question and follow up with you, yeah.

Okay, I'm happy to do that.

Unless Tom and Ed have that in their hip pocket.

We'll follow up on that.

You never know what central staff has ready in their hip pocket, so I figured I would ask.

Sometimes we can surprise you, yeah.

I'm happy to take that as a follow-up.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Councilmember Lin, you're recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

Could we go back to the assessed value slide?

Yeah, value history.

And we can follow up later, but any idea in terms of assessed value, the differences between residential versus commercial or industrial in terms of our tax base?

Thank you for the question.

So I have a number in my head, but I would need to confirm it.

I think it's on the order of 15%, but I will follow up with a more specific breakdown from the 2026 tax rolls, but I think it's around 15% of the total is commercial, and then the remainder is residential.

The bulk is residential.

So when we see these drops, I know, for example, there's been a recent drop in value in office, so I'm not sure how much that plays into these versus the residential.

Looks like the 2008 is probably mostly the residential drop.

And then just in terms of...

impact and you know this might be a follow-up as well you know oftentimes we show the impact to the average homeowner or median homeowner could you just talk briefly about impacts to businesses to renters and those are probably a little bit harder to calculate but just want to acknowledge that there is an impact to it's not just homeowners

That's absolutely correct.

The rate applies to commercial, rental, and owned residential property equally.

So in the past, we've looked at the rental impacts.

It becomes a little bit difficult because it's per unit instead of per building.

And so it's not going to be that meaningful to tell kind of a per building impact, but we looked at the per unit amounts.

We can follow up with those stats because it requires kind of looking at some commercial real estate information or like basically rental.

CoStar is the name of the company that we look at to see what the kind of averages, what we should be even using as the basis to give you that number.

And then as far as businesses, it's equally complex because there are so many different types of business formations and it's largely based on kind of the amount of income that's generated as opposed to kind of the price of the house, like for residential, it's the price of the house versus businesses.

It's basically evaluating the income generated by the property.

So it's a little bit more difficult, but we will indeed follow up with some more, you know, kind of to the extent that we can develop a rule of thumb, what those numbers would look like.

But it's tricky, can be done, but with a considerable grain of salt in how you interpret the numbers.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

And just one last comment.

You know, I think there is some recent news reporting about, and there's always concern about the impact to homeowners, the impact, especially to our seniors, and displacement concerns, and anything we can do.

I know that in prior levies, for example, in the prior transportation levy, there was a specific dollar amount that was targeted towards educating families homeowners and others about property tax relief programs.

And so just want to think holistically about how do we make sure that many property owners who qualify are still not taking advantage of those programs?

How do we make it simpler for folks to qualify for these programs?

How do we do access in different languages?

And do we fund that through the levies themselves?

Do we fund it through some other way?

I certainly think it's important that we are making sure that we're working with the assessor's office, working with our departments that are already working with homeowners and others to get that tax relief.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Lin, and thank you for bringing up those points.

I mean, the truth is that many of the seniors who are living on fixed income actually don't qualify for money because of the AMI requirements.

It's just there isn't enough money to be able to provide relief, so a very small of course, segment of the population have access, but there are a lot of seniors who, like I said, don't qualify for that help and are getting more and more squeezed by the property tax conversation.

So thank you for raising that.

It's an important one.

And of course, our small businesses as well, because to your point, they pay into this as well.

and we always talk about the impacts on our property owners.

We also didn't raise the impacts on renters because I think there's a lot of people focus on this is something that property owners pay but those costs are transferred to renters and so renters also suffer from from these property tax increases, and I think it bears mentioning.

It's important.

It's just one of many considerations when we're giving to this.

So the impact on the property taxes both to property owners and what may be transferred to renters, the impact on seniors who are living on fixed income, especially those who may not qualify for some assistance, some discounts.

And then didn't this very real property tax cap that we are rubbing up against that wasn't something that we needed to worry about in the past, but it's become ever more important.

And then also we are in the middle of a war, though it's not here at home.

And all of that also tends to have an impact, obviously, on the economy and what happens.

And we all, as legislators, have to take all that into account, which is when I started today's conversation, I mentioned, you know, we have to look at the bigger picture and take all of the factors into account when we decide to move forward however much we wind up in the end putting forward to voters and you know it's a tough it's a tough calculation.

It is not easy because we want to support all the things to 100 percent every time.

And it's just it's a really harsh reality.

So anyway, thank you.

Thank you all for being here.

Colleagues.

If there are no further questions, I don't see anyone else's hands.

I really appreciate we've gone over 30 minutes.

Thank you to those of you in the audience who stayed on.

I thought all of this information was really important in the context of this levy conversation.

Thank you for the extra time, colleagues, you gave to this.

And let me do my ending.

Okay, seeing no further questions, this concludes the March 25th Select Committee on the Library Levy.

Thank you to Central staff and thank you for my team and my office and again the library staff for all their partnership on all the slides and all the information that we pulled together for you all for your consideration.

Our next select committee meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, March 31st at 9.30 a.m.

We're going to be taking up reviewing all the proposed amendments.

Please, please, please, please bring amendments so that we can discuss at that meeting.

We are on a tight turnaround and we don't want surprises.

It's important so that we all know what is happening and what we can properly discuss and if we need to make changes to any amendments.

I just really want folks to have the ability to discuss amendments and not have things come in at the 11th hour.

So I'm going to tell you to please bring any amendments to Eric.

He can work with you.

And also because Eric has to go through law, there's a lot of review that gets.

It's not just Eric, and Eric is one person.

So grateful to him.

So end of the day, what I'm trying to say is bring your amendments.

Let's discuss them on the 31st.

Let's discuss all amendments on the 31st, if at all possible.

We will have a public hearing on April 2nd at 530 as the levy process moves forward.

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

Hearing no further business is 1201, and this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you, folks.