City Council - Regular Meeting

This meeting. Thank you, Shane. All right. Welcome, everyone seated in the council and everybody online. Today is the Tuesday, the June 16th meeting of the Liberty City Council. I would like to please ask everyone to stand for our invocation. Father in heaven, we are grateful for this opportunity to come together as a community. Inspire in us imagination and wisdom to do the right thing for the people of this community today and tomorrow.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America as to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Right on. All right. Thank you, council members. There is an agenda before us. I'm sorry, I'm out of order. We need to do a pledge allegiance. I apologize. We just did it. We just did it. It's a good day for Dan. You got this, Dan. I got this, no doubt. All right. I would call the meeting to order then and begin with a roll call. Council Member Darrell?

Here.

Council Member Cedars? Present. Council Member Fall?

Here.

I am Dan Dunn, Mayor Pro Tem. Council Member Klingler? Here. Council Member Kurtz? Present. Council Member Fisher?

Here.

I WANT TO RECOGNIZE AN ABSENCE. TONIGHT OUR MAYOR IS ABSENT. DO I HAVE AN EXCUSED ABSENCE FROM THE MAYOR?

MOVE TO EXCUSE THE MAYOR.

SECOND. I HAVE A FIRST AND A SECOND. ANY DISCUSSION? ALL IN FAVOR SAY AYE. AYE. OPPOSED? IT'S UNANIMOUS. WE EXCUSE THE MAYOR FOR TONIGHT'S MEETING. THE AGENDA IS BEFORE YOU. I WOULD ASK YOU TO TAKE A LOOK AND SEE IF THERE'S ANY ADDITIONS, CHANGES OR REARRANGEMENTS THAT YOU'D LIKE TO HAVE FOR TONIGHT. ANYTHING OUT OF GENERAL BUSINESS CONSENT FOR EXAMPLE FOR ACTION?

Motion to approve.

Second.

We have a first and a second. Is there a discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? It's unanimous. We have an agenda. We're now to the citizen comments section of our meeting. This is the first of the two sections. You'll have three minutes to be able to speak and address the council in a non-dialogue fashion. Are there any people here tonight in the gallery who wish to address the council? Any little yellow sheets out there? Shane, Mark? I don't see any. Okay. There'll be another opportunity near the end of the meeting for public comment. Shane, is there anybody online who wish to speak?

All right.

That moves on in our agenda to the next item, announcements and proclamations. We do have a proclamation tonight. Rochelle, as clerk, if you would read our proclamations.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Whereas July 4th, 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the founding of the United States of America. And the Washington State Legislature established a semi-quintessential committee in 2022 to coordinate and provide guidance for Washington's official observance of the 250th anniversary. and appointed the Washington State Historical Society as the administrating agency for all America's 2050 planning. And the Washington State Historical Society has a mission to partner with our communities to explore how history connects us all and has directed to assist and encourage cultural and historical organizations and efforts throughout the state. And preserving, studying, celebrating, and appreciating our shared history helps strengthen communities as we work together towards the ideals of liberty and equality embedded in the Declaration of Independence. And the 250th anniversary provides an opportunity to celebrate and recognize the significant contributions Washingtonians have made to local, state, and national history. And Washington State Historical Society desires to focus attention during the commemorative season on local communities, local histories, and local voices through its community partnership program, historical initiatives, educational resources, and promotional support. And the city of Liberty Lake, Washington, founded in 2001, has contributed proudly and significantly to the history of the United States of America and the state of Washington for 25 years.

Wonderful. So at this moment, for procedure and our tradition, I would look for a council vote of support of the proclamation.

Motion to approve.

I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Rachelle, do you got notes for the minutes of who? Great. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? It is unanimous. We are in support of this proclamation. I'll continue then. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Mayor Dan Dunn, pro tem, of the City of Liberty Lake, Washington, do hereby proclaim that the City of Liberty Lake will engage in commemorative activities during the United States Constitution semisquicentennial year of 2026 and call upon all its residents to reflect upon the significance of this commemoration and the role our community and its diverse people have played in the history and the development of the United States of America. Declared the 16th day of June 2026. We have a proclamation. And everybody's looking forward to Founders and Fireworks, right? Oh boy. Um, for those have been part of that planning process, and I want to say a heavy thanks to the staff. Um, there's a wonderful experience lying ahead. So. Um, I should everyone, everyone should look forward to that. All right in our agenda that brings us then on to reports and inquiries will lead with city council. Are there any city council members who wish to provide a reporter inquiry? Pretty quiet here tonight. I would offer that it is garage sale weekend, everybody. Please be kind and obey our traffic laws and obey all of the important no parking signs. Our staff work very hard on Friday to array around the community to preserve public safety. We want to make sure that even though it is quite carnival and there'll be many people coming into our community from all around, that our first responders and those who have to really get around can. So, with that, get out there and get some stuff. Are there any other City Council?

Rick? I would just say that in our meeting this evening, the Public Safety Commission, we discussed the new micro mobility regulations that are coming out. And I think this would be a timely time. Timely time? opportune time to remind folks that those will go in enforcement on July 1st. This timing has just been to provide education and remind folks. So, you know, the garage sale. enjoy those last moments if you haven't gone ahead and you know registered your golf cart and things like that but be aware that july 1st ticketing will start and then um it'll escalate after that you could potentially have your cart towed and then you would have to pay to get it out of impoundment so um we're doing this for the safety of the community which is one of our number one priorities according to all the surveys and feedback so um forewarned is forearmed wonderful

Hey, no, I'm grateful, Rick. I just compliment that the city's done a great job in its social postings as well as on the website to provide guidance and instruction, even a quick handy little matrix, I think, referring to vehicles and what is possible. So please, if you can, share that in your circles and then to see that, yeah, visit the city's website and get to know if you have not already. That's awesome. All right. There is not a mayoral report. I'll turn to city administrator, Mark.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Shane is going to pull up the list of things that we've got on the administrator's report for this evening, and we'll just echo Councilmember Klingler's comments regarding micro mobility. There is a web page linkable through the police departments. site on the city's page that has all of that information to include links to the RCWs and city ordinances. So if there are questions, that's a great resource to go to first. And then if there are follow-up questions, certainly you can pose those to anyone at the PD or anyone at City Hall will be happy to answer those. A couple of reminders that are coming down The road here we've got starting later this week. Another reminder about the spring book sale. This is put on twice a year by the Friends of Liberty Lake. And so on Friday, the 19th, it is going on from noon to 6 p.m. And then the following day, Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. You'll see immediately below the observance of Juneteenth, which is Friday, June 19th, the library and city hall will be closed in observance. And so we said this the last time, the book sale is still going on. It's still at the library. But if you go to the main doors, those are going to be closed. So just going around to the entryway that's facing Mission there, that's where the sale is being conducted and you'll be able to get in there. Next week, Tuesday through Friday, is the annual Association of Washington City's annual conference. Thankfully, this year it is in Spokane, so very close to home. And I know a number of our city council members are registered to be there. If you happen to be looking for a session on Thursday, I'm co-hosting one on City Academies. And so maybe look for that one if you're looking for something to do. That's always a good conference, very informative, allows for networking to occur with other elected officials and people from similar sized cities from across the state to see what's happening that we have in common with. So that's always a good conference to attend and be part of. And then following or in that week, but on Thursday, we have the deadline for applying to be on either a for or against committee for the public safety sales tax ballot measure. So if you're interested in being on either of those committees to help write the ballot language or the for and against language, I'm sorry, the for and against language that goes in the voter's guide, this is what we're recruiting folks to apply for. So if you have any interest in that, visit our website. There's an application on there. Feel free to submit it, and we will take that under consideration. And then Friday this year is the observance of the July 4th holiday, Friday, July 3rd. So again, library and city offices will be closed, but our July 4th celebration actually starts before July 4th. So there's a lot of stuff happening. There's schedules for all of these things that are going on that we are – putting under the umbrella of Founders and Fireworks 2026. That's the name of the celebration this year. So that actual day-long event is going to be on Saturday, July 4th at Pavilion Park. But there are other events that are going throughout the couple of days surrounding July 4th. So check out our website for a full schedule of those things. That's going to be our biggest event of the year. Again, as a reminder, we've combined this year the July 4th celebration with Barefoot in the Park to also include the city's celebration of its 25th anniversary of incorporation. So all of those things are being done at Founders and Fireworks 2026 this year. Any questions about those before we move on to the briefings? are the fireworks on of course saturday night then on saturday july 4th yes and if there are any questions about what day an event is scheduled to occur or what time during the day an event is scheduled to occur we have a full schedule available on our website that you can go to and verify all of those things and if for some reason there isn't clarity on there give me a call and i'll let you know any other questions All right. So I'm going to invite Kyle up to the podium. If you all will remember during the budget development last year, we had an item on there that was specifically talking about replacement of the accounting software that the city uses. And Kyle is going to spend a few minutes updating you on that. process.

Excellent. Thank you, Mark. So yeah, as he alluded to, we had started this process last fall, certainly during budget development, but kind of as we're continuing to implement priority-based budgeting, there's other factors that we started to consider, and certainly along the process improvement side, that our current accounting software just doesn't have the We've been with Springbrook for 20 years now, and that accounting software has served us very well. I think we are starting to outgrow it a bit. And so that led us to kind of evaluate what other options were out there. And so we looked at six different accounting softwares and found out pretty quick there are some that are kind of this full suite of service where you're not allowed to pick and choose which ERP modules that are going to benefit the city. And so you get this all-in service for a pretty exorbitant price. And so those aren't the ones that we were in the market for. And so we did find out that... Tyler, who did recently acquire our priority based budgeting software, has that a la carte method of kind of picking and choosing which modules would benefit the city. And so we don't have to pay for the ones that aren't going to do us any good. And so that was immediately preferential among staff's review and consideration. And so Some of the main things that are covered in accounting software is obviously accounts receivable, receiving, budgeting, financial reporting, records management, the HR function. Just the core of the finance and admin services service delivery really lives within the accounting software. And so we found out with Tyler's AP feature, accounts payable is almost fully automated. And so right now that is a massive issue. That's a massive burden on our staff just to conduct that. And it's not just finance and admin. It touches every single department because every single department is reviewing invoices, they're paying, they're coding, and they're analyzing that against the budget. And so all of that takes a pretty considerable amount of time. I would say on the order of 60 to 80 hours a week all in. And so their AP automation feature is going to drastically reduce the effort that the city takes in delivering the AP process. And so that's, that's something we have to do. There isn't any getting around it, but it's largely an analog process for us right now. And so that was a major one. Time and attendance is another big one that takes a lot of time for us right now really to, to To deliver and so that again, yes, there's a big impact. Having finance and admin deliver the payroll services, but it touches every department because directors are approving time cards. We have to program all of the different. hours, timesheets that across the entire city. The police department alone has probably 15 different schedules. And so customizing that really in a analog environment that we have been just takes a lot of time as well. So, so just the AP automate and, um, the time and attendance feature within Tyler is going to be a massive, massive, um, efficiency game for us. And so, uh, we programmed $75,000 into the budget for 2026 for implementation with $50,000 of ongoing, um, service. The implementation for this is going to be $79,000, but one of the considerations to get us on board was that they're not going to charge us for 2026. And so that falls well within our budget, understanding that, and then we'll start those services. The services annually, year over year, are going to be about $48,000 a year. And so just in, I would say, probably less than a three-year period, we're going to realize a return on that investment just with the human capital and the efficiency that's saved and not paying staff to continue to do these just really time-intensive tasks that have to get done. And so along with all of that, it will talk to our priority-based budgeting software. There's expanded reporting capabilities, and so that's obviously a benefit. And they're built for the 21st century. And so again, Springbrook has been fantastic. It's a very simple accounting software. I mean, it can largely still do what we need to, but it's very constrained in what it can do. And so it's staff's unanimous recommendation that we move forward with Tyler and begin implementation in July. That will take about eight months, I would say, to fully implement. And so we would then plan a hard cut over sometime in March with the new accounting software. And that has all those major service delivery modules I just mentioned built into that rollout. And so I wanted to get that out in front of you because I'm planning on putting it on the agenda for July 7th just for the implementation with the actual software as a service costs starting up in 2027. And so if there's anything specific you want to see, I can take notes and bring something back on the 7th. But otherwise, this was just kind of letting you guys know that this was our intent to bring this forward on the 7th. Go ahead.

Just any equipment upgrades needed, anything like that?

No, it's pure software as a service. And so, yep, no need for any hardware.

So, yeah. So 75K for implementation, are there abouts? Does that include training staff on usage and things like that?

Yes, it does. And it's purposeful. We could probably... pack this all into three months and have a relatively disjointed rollout. But the eight months is intentional just to make sure that staff understand how to use the software as we're kind of there will be a little bit of a parallel effort. I mean, there's no way around that. So if we have to continue, we'll do budgeted development with Springbrook for 2027, so this fall. But we'll be running both systems in parallel, so it's gonna be an easy transition when that time comes.

And it's an AI-driven, so is it a cloud-based solution then?

Yes, yep.

And interesting, you know, I mean, there's lots of applications for AI where it's improving efficiencies. My company does the same thing and it allows nurses to operate at the highest level of their licensure instead of spending time on non-value add kind of things. We define that as an ROI and present that to our customers and where some of those activities are that they're gaining back value. Have you guys thought about that? And is that something just out of curiosity you can share with council and the kinds of efficiencies that you hope to gain, what that's going to mean in terms of decreased cost and where those efficiencies lie?

Yeah, absolutely. So we brought on a... a procurement coordinator slash AP coordinator a year and a half ago, I believe. And so they have been pretty much mired in the AP engine. And so, yes, they're doing procurement. They're helping with some of the bidding documents for Public Works, but not to the extent that we intended. And because AP has become such a monster for us and it's so much of it is just data entry. that can be avoided if we automate and same with time and attendance, the data entry piece of transitioning all of the time cards from our current software into our accounting software, because they don't talk to each other. Um, it's just, that's an extraordinary amount of time that can be saved immediately. And then as you say, you know, as we implement and as we see, um, some other services that can be delivered, there's, there's going to be, um, several additional opportunities to automate and streamline other processes that we haven't identified yet.

So, so it's a growable system. Yes. Yeah.

It's a global system and it's, yeah. And it's a system that, that allows us to take advantage, um, intentionally rather than having, okay, we have, you know, 50 different applications on our software. Um, City of Liberty Lake might use six. And so we're not unnecessarily paying for all these other modules that we're not gonna need.

But you can bolt them on.

Yes, yep, we can bolt them on as needed.

So perfect. And I guess my last question is, when you were evaluating software, did you look at an option to outsource AP and those kinds of things as a comparative? And how did that line up with, you know,

We did. And so private enterprise, I think is more suited to take advantage of that. There are just, there's so many additional requirements and hoops to jump through as a public entity that you have to ensure that your internal staff is aware of, and you're not outsourcing sensitive material or not necessarily confidential material, but, but yeah, And there's a super premium for that that we found when they're outsourcing that.

Yeah, and I can imagine the comfort level of just having a line of sight about that information and having it in-house versus outsourced is a big factor. Thanks, Kyle.

Appreciate it. Regarding the exit from Springbrook, are we at a convenient point regarding any contracts or support?

We are. It's a 30-day notice. So we'll purposefully engage them later in probably winter and then plan a kind of a simultaneous offload when we're cutting over probably in March of next year. Great.

Excellent. Are there any other questions for Kyle? All right.

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Right. And so the final item I have by way of briefing is just a reminder that and the mayor mentioned this at the last council meeting. Believe it or not, we are on the front edge of getting ready to start talking about budget season again. And so David Gaynor is going to come to the podium and just kind of give you an update on what we're planning and some early opportunities to engage the community with respect to the 2027 budget.

Hello. Last week, we put up on our website the copy of the three-year community satisfaction survey comparisons of 2024, 2025, 2026. Put it up on Facebook last Monday. I'm assuming most of you have, if not all of you, have seen or at least had access to that. This is a really good comparison of what the trends show about what the people feel about the questions we've been asking for the last three years. Good summary. Take a look at it. You can see trends. You can see where things are increasing. Things are maybe going another direction. And that's kind of the basis what the public is saying about this of the questions that we'll be using to engage the public with online starting probably as early as next week. Online, we're going to start asking these questions like we did a year ago, two years ago, asking the public various questions related to the budget. And I want to give a little bit of credit where credit is due on this. We had a community engagement commission meeting about two plus years ago. We were looking at ways to engage the public. And it was Sam Rudera who came up with the nugget of the idea of what eventually became something that we've called for the past two years, Talk Back Tuesdays, that is a feature that appears throughout the summer during our budget season during summertime. We'll ask a question and then we'll have resources available through the Zen City resource where people can respond to a multiple choice question, give short answers. The questions and their formats will vary from week to week. But you'll see the first of those, I think, starting next week. And I would also offer the invitation for any of you folks to contact me if there's a budget issue that you would like to find some information on, find out what the public is feeling about, give me a call and we can maybe look at that as a potential topic for a question during the summer. Mark, anything else I need to cover on that?

Really just an introduction to the fact that you're going to start seeing budget engagement starting, like David mentioned, next week and really designed to get some early indications of what the community is feeling about different aspects of service delivery going into budget development so that we have that sentiment well in advance of putting numbers before you.

And this has been useful in the past, but sometimes we've had people who come up with an idea that we as staff have not come up with or a concept. Sometimes it has led to another question to ask the public about. So it's very interesting to see some of the responses we get on this time of year. Any questions, comments?

David, is Talk Back Tuesday on the podcast or is it? No.

Okay. It's on our Facebook site.

Oh, okay.

And then I think we share that to the community page too as well. Okay. Okay. We can have you on the podcast though to talk about Talk Back Tuesday.

God, I set myself up.

Anything else? Yes.

Does the social media page redirect to the city or how is that presented? Can I get to it without being on Facebook?

Oh yeah, good point, good point. That's available also through, we have this button called Engage Online on the homepage. There's like these three circles on top of the homepage. Click the Engage Online button. You will see the various things that are available to the public through Zen City. That will be one of them. And I don't know if I've done this in the past before, but I think this year I will also add it to, there's a... rotation of three items at the bottom called News Flash. And during those times when we don't have three events that we're trying to promote, which could have some openings this summer, I think I will have a permanent placer in there that will promote the Talk Back Tuesday questions. And those questions, I should also add, those questions, you know, they change from week to week, but they also stay up. So if somebody wants to come back and respond to the question in August that appeared in the middle of July, they can do that.

Great. I just want to preserve the ability for people to engage who don't care much for Facebook. So thanks.

So the ask of staff for the council would be just as you're aware of these things being out there, just encourage people to give us their input because it does become useful, especially when we start developing the budget.

Great. You don't need to go to Facebook to do this. We have it through the homepage.

Thanks. So Mayor Pro Tem, that concludes my report.

Excellent. Thank you, Mark. Next on our agenda, we try to recognize the Sewer and Water District. Shane, do we know if you have any members? All right, Bill, step up. Welcome.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, Councilman.

It's been a while.

What a new face. Great to see you. Wow.

Oh, I'll start off by saying, you know, we have tours of our sewage treatment plant and we will gladly take all you new folks over and show you how we do it because it's your treatment plant. And it's one of the best in the state of Washington for the size of our community. And it's built to handle full build up the city. So we thought ahead when we built it. And so if anybody's interested, just call the district, we'll set it up. I'll help you with that, or I'll take you on the tour from where it comes in to where it goes out. Anyway, so Kennywell, which is right over here by Ace Hardware, has been drilled and capped. And we're out to bid for the pump house. And that's the next phase. It'll be the pump house, the pumps, the electrical part of it, and the controllers. So that's kind of a spendy part of this whole operation. And the reason we do that is for redundancy. That's our best location for water in the city of Liberty Lake. And it's also one of our best locations for drawdown. We hardly ever have any, so pump away. But be careful because now we're in the summer season. So, you know, monitor your water. You know, when you set your sprinklers in the morning is the best time to do it. Maybe every other day for a while until it gets really hot. It's starting to get hot now. But, you know, we tend to overwater. Last year we pumped 1.7 billion gallons of water. So keep that in mind when you're Water and most of its irrigation, surprisingly. We have across contamination programs, the backflow checks. So everybody in the city of Liberty Lake in our water and sewer district has to comply to a backflow check. And that's so contaminations don't get into your water supply. Because if that happens, then it's a lot of trouble for us to clean it up. um that's about all i have um i do have on a personal note uh the paving job that ben and the folks did over here is spectacular and there's something about fresh pavement in a community like ours that adds so much to the community i mean it's

thing and it looks good and they did a good job so i thank them for that any questions just a comment go ahead you know i'm a fan i've done the two i know yeah so if anybody hasn't done the tour Have you done the tour?

I have not done the tour, but it's on my bucket list.

Everybody should do it. It was one goose.

So we're a bio facility. So that means that we use bugs. So we can't bring anything into our system that would kill the bio part of our system. So that's the interesting part of this whole process is you get to learn how it's all done and how we take care of the sewer edge.

Okay. Question. I just, I'm just going to double down. I took the tour as part of the city Academy and it was, it was a great tour. And it was really neat to see how everything worked, but also just everyone working there was really awesome, very knowledgeable. And it was actually a lot of fun and learned a lot. So I think we should have a lot of pride in that facility. And thanks for, we do. Thanks for that.

It's all for you also.

I'll throw a question. Sure, Dan. Bill, we're headed into a really hot and dry summer. And to my recollection, I can't think if we've ever had restrictions on water consumption in our district. Can you, I don't think we've ever.

Really?

I'm just curious in any vision of the future, what, you know, water restriction might look like for Liberty Lake.

You know, the city of Spokane is going through that right now. And we are not I guess, you know, in our pamphlets and our website, we encourage water conservation. It's just part of our thing. But we're not anticipating any restrictions. We have good water flow. We have a good source. I mean, we're right here. So, you know, just as an interesting fact, so we drilled this last will, and we went down 150. 175 feet and found good water. We went a little extra, went to 200 just to make sure it was sustainable. But you'd be surprised how deep wells have to be drilled, even in Spokane County and places like Flagstaff where they have to go 1500 feet to get half the water we get. So we live in an area that has abundant, really good water. So... That's my pitch. Great. Good.

Thank you, Bill. Sure. Thank you.

Great.

On our agenda, that brings us to our next report from the Parks and Arts Commission. Do we have a representative? Nancy, welcome.

Thank you, and good evening, everyone. I have a presentation I'm sure Shane is going to pull up. But first thing I want to do is talk about our review list of our ongoing projects, which we're slowly but surely checking off. So we'll see that list, starting with the town square goat sculpture. The artist is working on that, and we're still hoping for a fall install, and that's going to be at our town square. Our city birthday art, many fingers crossed, is going to be ready for the unveil at our 4th of July celebration. It's on the schedule, so I'm sweating a little bit about that, but I think it's going to come in. Our Pavilion Park ticket booth, an artist agreement will be coming to you sometime probably in the next month. For those of you who are not familiar with that, we have the mural on the concession bathroom building, and then between that and the stage is the little old ticket booth. And so we're just going to have people in the windows of those, like tickets, takers so it's going to be kind of cool and i believe it's the same artist that did the uh the mural so that's going to be really nice uh baseball field story walk we had a very interesting presentation from the students at spokane valley tech they came into our last meeting they have made a prototype because every time we do a story walk we have one in rocky hill that we had in Orchard Park, and each of the Spokane Tech classes says, maybe we can improve on that design a little bit. So this last group have made it a little more artistic, they said, and it's scheduled, they have, it will be a next school year project for them. They do their tool orientation, and then They'll start on that. So because of that and because of installing in the ground, it probably won't be until spring. But that will be a long country vista there by the baseball fields, which is really trafficked between the two elementary schools. So we're excited about that. The Rainbow Bridge, I know Mara at Popular Companions is working with a landscape architect to get some kind of conceptual drawing of that, which we'll bring back to council to approval. So that donated project is still being fleshed out. We'll keep you posted as we get more materials. Orchard Park restroom building mural. We actually have selected an artist. We'll be doing a mural on three sides to that concession restroom building there. We're not going to do the back because it's fenced in and mechanical stuff is back there. And so we're going to be bringing an artist agreement to you soon on that. And similar to the Harvard Trailhead restroom mural, there is, I understand, Greenstone is doing a park next to that. And we've had some discussion with them on their theme of the park. So we'll tie that mural into the theme of the park. And it's really going to be a nice splash of color as people enter our city coming from the north. So we're actually probably more excited about that just because it's one of our entries into the city where people will get to see that. And then the long talked about Pavilion Park historical outlet, which was originally a budgeted project and then it turned into a donated project, is actually being manufactured now. And that's going to go in, unfortunately, I would wanted it before our July 4 celebration. I don't think it'll be closed, but I think it'll be after because that's located right there kind of in front of the ticket booth. And I'll give kind of the history of that. So next slide. ongoing projects. We have the artist getting ready to start work in early July after the holiday on the Rocky Hill basketball mural. There'll be some prep for the court being cleaned and then she'll get on that. She's very excited about the project. And so are we. And that'll add a big splash of color as you come into the parking area. If you're familiar with Rocky Hill, you can see the parking lot there and it's just right off the parking lot. And she selected the red color to kind of tie in with a kind of barn red color of the restroom building and the barn theme. Yes.

What is the actual court material made of? Is it actually sports court material?

That is a concrete court.

It's a concrete.

Yeah. The one that, which that, the one we did at Pavilion, that's like asphalt or something.

I guess, I mean, this is going to be painted.

Oh, it's paint, but it's a special paint. We learned a lot. When I was first inspired by this project was when at Riverfront Park, Hooptown did that mural there and they had terrible trouble painting with keeping it up and stuff. And so since then there's been a lot of research on the paint and they add some kind of gritty kind of material into it and they've had a lot of luck. And I was just walking on that the other day and other than bicycles doing wheelies and donuts on there. The paint is actually held up very well. So it's a special paint and that's what this artist is going to be using.

Do we know what the time or how long the paint is expected to last before we need to? I don't know.

we'll find out pavilion will be our guide but we do have money in our maintenance we've added a maintenance line item every year and uh so we'll have and it should be just touch up not a redo i would assume as things maybe get damaged yes this is the one that the paint's twelve thousand dollars right the no no the paint is not twelve the artist contract is twelve thousand dollars and um And the paint is in that. The cost of the paint has gone up since our original estimate. And so we may use some of our contingency budget to help offset the cost of that with the paint, but that's mostly the artist's fee. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope it lasts. Well, it should. So far, Pavilion Park and she's using the same product. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was quite a bit researched. Next slide. And we have another project completed. This is our maintenance fund. I'll have to give credit to our city administrator who said, maybe you should have a maintenance fund. And that was a great idea. Thank you. And so we've used some money of that. We just had the original artist come in and touch it up. It's not a redo. It's a touch up. Obviously, skate park gets heavy use. It's a little bit more than dribbling a basketball and running on a court in tennis shoes. And so that looks really nice. If you have a chance, the pictures don't really do it justice. It looks very nice. So that's a checkmark completed. Next slide. Also completed, we have our signal box wraps at Kramer Parkway and at what I call the original entrance to Legacy Ridge. And those turned out really well. We had the patriotic theme at Legacy and at Kramer. We just picked some not just kind of colorful art that would blend in with the sculpture there. All right, next slide. And speaking of the sculpture, Public Works did a great job with the landscaping. Thank you. I want it to grow really fast, but it will. And we have some solar lighting that Jen Camp's team has put out there to kind of illuminate the fused glass medallions at night. And I've heard a lot of positive feedback from friends that have driven through there. And I'm really excited about that as kind of something that people are going to see as they enter our city from the West. Next slide. We have the donated project through Liberty Lake Better Together Foundation. And I know a few of you were at the dedication and it was very well attended and the school kids enjoyed doing the rocks. At our parks and arts booth at the July 4th celebration, we're gonna have rock painting seems appropriate. And they may take them home, obviously, or they can come and place them in the garden. And it's really exciting because I think the elementary students in particular, and even the high school level, I can't remember the number of schools that have already contributed rocks. So it's a very exciting project and it has room to grow and it kind of adds a spot of interest on that corner, which is a busy corner. So project completed. Next slide. Then we have our, for those of you that are new on council, we have a rotating student art project that we established with Ridgeline High School. And it's as you walk into the rotary room at Trailhead and we have room for six pictures every year. We switch them out at the end of the school year. It's been a kind of a fun project for, I know the art teacher there loves it and, and the kids do too. And we've had some great artists. We rely on, on the, on the teachers there to make the selections. And then we just give the people from the last year, we give those kids their art back and we put the New York yard art in, and then it's on display again. for a year. So if you haven't seen it, it just went up in the last week or so. So rotating project, done for another year. Check. Next slide. Oh, excuse me.

I did see that today. We went into Rotary, and I can tell you there are some real artistic kids out in the community. I was just stunned.

Yes, they do a great job. They do.

So if you get a chance, even if you go over to have dinner or something, just pop in and look at that wall. It's It's very powerful.

Yeah, we'd like to do a little more student art at some point. But I just love this, that it's rotating. So a lot of students get to participate. And because of the architecture and the trailhead building, we had discussed when we first started this to go with a Pacific Northwest theme, which kind of fits well into the building. And the kids have really embraced that. So yeah, it's a great project. So we'll see a new one again in another year. Next slide. Liberty Lake Parks Ride that we had a lower turnout that was on May 30th, I think, started at Orchard Park and they went to all the parks and the people that participated in the ride with our Parks and Arts, Katie, the bicycle safety woman, she's amazing. And they had really had a great time on the ride. And we're looking at ways how we can guide bikes safely through the community. We had cooperation with Scope when they were on a busy road because of the construction on mission made it a little more challenging. But it was a great ride and we'll look forward to our bike safety committee doing some more things like that in the future. Next slide. And finally, this is probably our most important thing that we're going to talk about tonight. Remember, we're all getting a new city hall. And at our previous meeting a few months ago, we'd all discussed the theme for the art in that building, which is past, present, and future. And that was sent out through our art consultant. And we did a call for artists. The call for artists now is closed. We've received submissions and I haven't seen any of them, but the art consultant said we received quite a few. She's going through them and sorting them and organizing them for a selection committee. So because this is such an important project, it really shouldn't just be the Parks and Arts Commission. We want everyone to be involved. So we're looking at Parks and Arts Commission members, a few staff, because they're going to live and work in the building. And we would like two city council people to be on the selection committee. So we have a good pool of people to sort through that. I don't think it's going to be a huge commitment, but we do have... You know, a number of pieces of art to look at different areas in which it might go. There's more of a statement piece. There's more of the portable art. So I would like through whatever process is appropriate to get. To city council people to join the selection committee. I already see a hand up. I don't have an exact timeline other than probably sooner rather than later. So I'm imagining we'll at least meet for the 1st time sometime. in early July, but I don't, I'm waiting to hear from the art consultant a little bit more on that and then we'll figure out some kind of schedule. So.

To clarify, this would not be a matter that the council would need to vote formally on. This would be just a matter of giving consensus for these two members.

Do we have volunteers? I don't think so. What do we do if we have a lot of volunteers? Mark? You know, Mark, I'd suggest if you are interested, maybe Mayor Kamiskis, we could work together to try and pick two from who's out there. If you guys are agreeable to that. make your interest known to Mayor Kaminskas. And I think I can work with her and we'll reach out and maybe draw straws, but we'll pick two of those. If that works for everybody.

Question? Yeah, I had a question. I think the rotary, the kid does art and stuff is really amazing. Yeah. Have you guys ever talked to them or thought about maybe doing an auction of their art when you're ready to switch out? I think that'd be a huge confident boost, you know, and potentially they could put that towards the car that they are saving for or their college or whatever, depending on what, you know, year in high school they are and stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean, that's a great idea. I don't know the logistics of a city doing that. managing an auction um how that would work it'd be nice to have a non-profit kind of do that kind of thing and i don't i don't know if this enough about what the students want if they're excited about getting their art back because this was a special project for them and they want to keep it but i mean that is a great idea i i just don't have a feel i mean i could ask the art teacher and you might need to get mom and dad beating on it i would hope so

That's great.

Yes. Kind of along the same lines with youth. Have you thought about maybe having someone, a youth in the community or a couple of them as part of the selection committee? Part of the selection.

Well, that's interesting because we have a student commissioner. Megan was doing it this year, but she just cycled off. They're usually only here for the school year and we don't have someone for next year. That'll probably be something that will come to you guys and late September meeting, I'm assuming. But that's something we could maybe go back to somebody like her who is somewhat familiar and see. But that's a great idea.

More questions for Nancy?

Right on. Hugh. Nancy, more of a comment. So this is a comment on the rock garden that just Really kudos to the Parks and Arts Commission and kudos to art in the community. I drove by and observed a father and daughter walking around that the other day. There were the only two people there and it just gave them a moment in time. The daughter was pointing at rocks and I could just imagine what the conversation was and just to offer citizens, just a moment in time, there was probably peace and connection between father and daughter, just awesome. And I know every art installation, that's the goal. And so just good work and excited for what you guys are doing.

Thank you. I'm always especially excited about interactive art, which that truly is, where it really involves uh, the community to be part of it. So yeah. Very deep. So yeah. Thank you.

Can I answer your question? Yes. So the goat at the rock garden is pretty cool. Is that the same artist that's going to, is doing the ones for town square?

No, that artist was, um, obtained through the Liberty Lake better together foundation. I'm not familiar with that artist. It's a different local artist, um, local to Spokane County that is doing the, uh, goat piece at town town square right but this one was donated right yes yeah that's so nice yeah i it that was kind of a last minute thing because it was supposed to be just the rock garden and we talked about the ability of you know having it to grow and then they were going to play some boulders and they said we need a goat and they're the goat to me is you know liberty lake goats how we got the town hall goat but in this particular case it's more they thought about the goat the the foundation did is more

greatest of all times but greatest artist of all time kind of thing so that's that's how the goat came into fruitation there but yeah it's kind of cool great nancy i just followed that if the spokane valley tech students are in need of any funding in support of that uh the kiwanis can back them up so oh let me know if they are short anything in materials or support to put that together

Yeah, I mean, well, we have a budget, so I think we're paying them. But if there's something else that...

Some supplement that way, sure.

These three young men that came and gave the presentation, I mean, one was more like a project manager, one was more about construction, and one was more about art. And it was really a nice... presentation that was really meaningful about how important this was to them. And it's another, I just love it when we can collaborate like that. So yeah. Well, if you want to work on the process of providing to council members, we'll work on the timeline and then can get that to you. So that'll hopefully be helpful in the process.

I'll be sure that's done properly.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you.

Thank you, Nancy.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, All right.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Next in our agenda library board of trustees. We have a representative of the trustees. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Welcome.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, We have a slide presentation. You want to bring that up. PB, Lupita D Montoya, Good evening. I haven't met all of you. I'm Barb Richardson, and I'm one of the five trustees that the City Council appoints to serve as a trustee for the library. Jandy and I are going to give you a report. I know we're halfway through 2026. Hard to believe. But since we only do a report for you quarterly, this is the time that we will go over some of our statistics for 2025. So you have a better idea of how many patrons we have and all the different things that go into running a library. So our other trustees are Michael Bota, Jennifer Chase, Brad, who's here along with us, myself, and Anna Voloshin. Next slide. Our first slide really is to help you understand how many active patrons we have. We had just a really slight increase in 2025 over 2024. Anyone from the age of five, if their parent agrees that they can have a library card up through adults can have a library card so we had about 7 500 patrons who had active library cards in 2025. the number of visitors and was up very slightly to about almost seven thousand excuse me seventy thousand In 2024, Post Falls Library closed. They had a catastrophe, basically. They had a huge flood, they had a frozen water system, and so many of their materials were ruined. And we did see a spike in how many people in 2024 came to our library. But we maintain that level. So I don't know, Post Falls is back open. So I don't know if it was just local people in our 99019 or 99016, I think is the other zip code, or if we still have some Post Falls patrons that are using the Liberty Lake Library. Next slide, Shane. If you have any questions throughout, just raise your hand. Don't wait until the end.

Yes, absolutely. So the next thing I'm going to talk about is our meeting room reservations. So we've had our meeting room since 2022. We started out with about 100, just under 200 users in 2022. And this last year, we saw a huge spike. We went from about 450 users in 2024 to over 812 last year. So huge increase. A reminder that the library has a meeting room that accommodates 39 people, and then we have a study room that accommodates 10 people. We do have an online reservation software for people to make reservations on, or they can call the library and we'll do it manually for them. The library is the only free meeting room space in Liberty Lake. Anywhere else you go, you have to pay. Even trailhead, golf course, you have to pay. Mode, any of those places, you do have to pay to use their facilities. So that is a question that we do get from patrons. Sometimes they'll look and they don't see something and they'll call us on the phone and be like, hey, do you really not have any availability? And they'll ask us where they can go. And we don't have any other free resources to share with them. So that is a struggle that we currently have in our community is just a lack of free meeting space. Next slide, Shane. So I have our physical book usage and our e-book usage for the year. So in 2025, physical books, this is books, DVDs, audio books, all of our materials, 92,000 checkouts for the year. And then our e-book usage, this is e-books and audio books, are at almost 36,000 for the year. The national average is about three out of every 10 people prefer e-books over physical books. Liberty Lake is, we're just slightly above that trend for the year, where about 35% of people are using e-books versus physical books. Obviously, there are tons of people that probably use both as well. The biggest challenge with e-books is that less than 10% of e-books are produced are picture books. So if you want to be an e-book user, it's largely for adults and maybe teens that use them. Most parents don't want their kid learning to read on a device. They want to give them that physical book. So that's the biggest challenge that we see. People are just like, we don't need the library. We can just go to e-books. That really leaves the kids hanging. And so that's why largely there's still a huge value with using physical books. And you can see it's slowly increasing year over year. These last few years, our usage was pretty much exactly the same, 36,048, 35,900. We're kind of maintaining that rate. The other challenge with e-books is that they are much more expensive than a physical book. I can buy a physical book for the library for $14.99 all day long. If I want to buy that ebook, it's $150. And that was only good for 10 checkouts. I buy a physical book. We can use it for the next 10 years or until somebody spills coffee on it. And when they spill coffee on it, it's only $14.99. But for that e-book, it's like streaming. You have to continually make that payment. So it's $150, $100, $80, only for 10 checkouts. So it's... it's a very expensive model that's really hard to maintain.

And you'll see that with our e-book usage for the year. So if someone checks out an e-book, it costs the library $150? So no, it doesn't cost us

individually. We team up with all the other libraries in Washington state. And so we pay a yearly subscription.

Oh, okay. But what do you mean it's only good for 10 uses though?

I mean, any ebook that they, so we basically, all the libraries put their money in a pot and we will pull from that pot to buy the eBooks. After every 10 uses, we have to pay another $150 if we want to keep that book or we choose a new book. It's a lease.

Publishers. Treat ebooks like leases, not a product like a book. Yes.

So if we move on to the next slide, you'll see what our physical collection is. Can we go one more? I want to do the E and then we'll go back to the, yes, scroll one more. So if you look at what our electronic collection is, if you notice in 2023, we had over 100,000 ebooks. And now we're sitting in 2025 and we're at 76,000. It's just, it's been a huge challenge for the state to maintain that high level of service when we're having to pay $150 for each of those eBooks. Because look how many we own, 76,000, that's a lot. And we're having to pay $150 for each of those items every 10 checkouts. So our collection, has kind of gone down for the number of materials that we're able to maintain for the year. And then if you look at our audio materials, they've been cut in half. So we're about 35,000 right now currently for 2025. So it's a very highly used model. You know, we have over 2000 patrons every year, every month who are using these just in Liberty Lake. It's just extremely expensive to maintain.

So, yes. That's a cost share though.

Yes, it is a cost share. So that is a huge benefit because there's no way that I could maintain this level of a collection. So that is the benefit is that we are cost sharing with the other libraries.

We're planning to take that out of your salary. How many libraries contribute to that to make that price go down? And then what does that mean for the actual price for our library?

I couldn't tell you exactly how many libraries, but we belong to the Washington State Digital Consortium, and it's for all small libraries. So if you look at Seattle Public or King County, those are two of the biggest systems in the state. They have to maintain their own collection. They're not invited to the party. This is for just small libraries. So I want to say last year we contributed $14,000 to it. And it is largely based on how many patrons that you have in your community. The smaller number of patrons you have, the smaller usage you have. And then when you look at King County, which is the second biggest system in the whole United States, they have their own system.

$14,000 didn't buy you just... X amount of books because you had the contributions from the other ones. So it expands your purchasing power.

For sure. For sure. So we are extremely glad that we can belong to this consortium because it gives us the ability to give all of our patrons, you know, 76,000 resources and 30, you know, a total of 150,000 resources each year.

Just makes me think of my Amazon subscription. My e-books are $14 and I own those bad boys forever. They're in my collection.

Yes.

Yeah. Thank you for clarifying.

So these things, they're like a Kindle sort of, right? Yes. Yeah. So how long, like, do they physically last? Do they, you know? How long does a Kindle last or the ebook itself? Well, the ebook, I mean, how long, I mean, before it's just toast, you know?

So it's digital. So it's just, it's a PDF or an EPUB. So it's just downloaded onto their device. And then once their checkout is done, they can choose 7, 14 or 21 days. It goes away. Okay. And then it's just, it's just in the cloud is where the book is. So, yes.

Gotcha. Okay.

Jenny, these eBooks, they're lent to people on their own devices. We don't necessarily have physical devices. We give out for people to consume eBooks.

Yes. So yeah. So some people use their phones. Some people have a Kindle. A lot of people use the audio books and they just stream it on their phone and are able to, you know, listen to it in the car or wherever they want to. Yes. So Shane, let's back up one slide and we'll do the physical collection. Oh. Digital. Physical collection. So this is the physical items that we own in the library today. If you look across the last three years, I have 23 through 2025's collection. Our collection is largely stagnant. It goes up and down slightly each year. Obviously, each day as books are getting checked in and checked out, we're looking at those books if they're getting into rough shape. we're deciding if we're going to replace that item or if we're going to get rid of it and get something new. But our biggest challenge with expanding our collection is just that our shelf space is out of room. So at the end of the day, for every book that we bring in, we have to take another book out. So currently, our level of service is two books for every individual who lives in Liberty Lake. Right now, our population is at 14,000. So to maintain that level of service, we should have 28,000 items in our collection. We are slightly below that at 24,000 items currently. Obviously, that number is going to go up and down a little bit. But if you're thinking about that long term, if our population is supposed to be over 20,000 at build out, Our collection should be expanding to over 40,000 items if we want to maintain that same level of service. And we are not able to do that in our current facility. So each year, year over year, our level of service is going to go down. And at build out, we will be half of what we are today. So we will have one book for every member of the community instead of two. So that's just where things are today. So electronic collection.

I'm going to back up just a second, though, because I'm on the electronic collection. It does mention Canopy Streaming, which was a fairly new service to us last year. And that's a free, well, it's free with your library card, streaming service that provides documentaries, all kinds of classic films. And so families who trying to cut back. They just can't afford to have this streaming service and this streaming service and another one can use Canopy because it provides programming for all ages. So it's been a really great service and the uptake has been really good since we started using them. Okay. In terms of operating expenses, I don't know how often people come to you and say, yeah, came in under budget. But we did come in under budget and most of the library is funded by our property taxes, a little bit through fines and fees very little bit. The total expended in in 2025 was $700,067. I also want to say that the Friends of Liberty Lake Library, sort of our support group, raises funds and we do use those funds for a lot of the programming for the library. So we're really fortunate. I know Jandy has talked to some of her peers and they're just astounded at how much that the Friends of Liberty Lake Library contribute in terms of programming for our library. Okay, next slide. Wanna talk about challenges other than space?

So these are the current challenges that we're facing at the library right now. One of our biggest is our lack of parking and our meeting space. So we offer story time four days a week. We average anywhere from 50 to 75 people at each of those story times. And they are meeting in a meeting room that accommodates 39. And then after storytime is over, they're going to our children's room to play with toys. And that room accommodates 45. So they're moving from one room with all their kids and their strollers and their car seats, lack of space to another room with their strollers and their car seats. And it's... It's a real challenge. Our storytime is heavily attended, which is something we are very proud of. If you go to some of the other libraries, they don't have as many people as we do. So we're really grateful that our families enjoy coming to our storytimes. They enjoy our librarians who do those storytimes. But the room gets hot and sweaty and crowded with, you know, 50 toddlers dancing to Baby Shark every day. And it is loud. We have patrons that come to study and they know to wait till 11 a.m. to come. Otherwise they're getting wheels on the bus and baby sharks. So, um, with that, um, our parking lot is also an issue. We do have patrons who will park at the police station next door or park at legacy church, or they will park down Madsen, um, or in the scan of all parking lot next door. So depending on that, we have a lot of patrons that will show up at 10. Cause they know they can get a parking lot. They can get a parking spot at 10. If they come at 10 35 and they're late. They're hiking in. So that's a challenge that we've had for the last several years at the library. The next challenge is our computers. So currently we have four public computers that patrons are able to log on and use. Throughout the year, we give them two hours that they're able to work, work on emails, Facebook, work on homework, whatever it is that they want to do. Last summer, we were so busy with our two-hour space limit. We had a lot of people that were coming in. We're turning them away. We're turning them away, telling them to come back in two hours. somebody could have two hours, use 40 minutes, and then they're done. And we told them to come back in two hours. So this year, starting in June, so we've already implemented it. We are reducing our computer usage for the summer from two hours to one hour. Um, we have a lot of patrons who come and use our computers every single day. We know them by name. They come in every, I have one patron that comes in every day at one. That's their time. They come in. she gets her computer usage for her two hours for the day. So I think there sometimes is a stigma that we are a more affluent community and everyone has a computer, everyone has a laptop, everyone has a tablet, everyone has a printer, and that's not actually the case for our community. We do also have a lot of patrons who just no longer have a printer. every time you set it up, the ink dries up or something doesn't print. So we do have a lot of patrons that will come in specifically for printing, print off their Amazon label, print off their UPS label, print off their kid's permission slip, and then go. So we have had a huge influx in just printer, which is pretty fast grab and go. We do have mobile printing now, which is nice where they're able to scan a QR code and then upload the documents that they need from their phone. and then it just prints from the printer. So that's something we are trying to use to kind of combat that. But our biggest challenge is we have four computers, and we really should have eight. But we don't have anywhere to put four additional computers, A, because of space, and B, because of a cement floor, which makes it challenging to extend the power throughout where we need it to go. Where the power is is where the power is. And so that's been a challenge. The last one I wanted to talk about is a dedicated teen space. Parents want somewhere safe where their kids can go after school to hang out. that isn't running around in golf carts or whatnot. And the library is one of those resources. So we do have a group of teens that comes every Tuesday for our Teen Tuesday programs. We have another club that's starting on Thursdays. So we do have dedicated times where teens can come to the library, but it would really be nice to be able to offer them a spot that they could come any day of the week that's just for them. And currently, The teen area is the dedicated study area for everyone in the library. That's where we have our tables and chairs set up. That's where we have power. And so the adults have kind of taken over the teen area because it's the only place that we're able to offer a quiet study area. So that's something that we really would like to be able to offer our teens on a daily basis in the future is just a dedicated teen space that's just for them because they don't want to hang out with the grownups. And they don't want to hang out in the kids' room with trains. So that's something we would really like to be able to offer them in the future. Next slide, accomplishments. Yes, sorry. It looks the same color scheme. One of our long-term accomplishments is we now have power in the YA area. So this spring, Public Works was able to get some power poles installed in the library. You might have seen them in an airport. But basically, it's just a metal tube that goes from the ceiling to the floor. We have four of them now because we could get power from the ceiling. We just couldn't get it, you know, coming up from the floor. So we have four power poles. One is at each table. I should have taken a picture and I didn't. But one is next to each table. And so we have two power outlets at each of the tables in the YA area in the library. This is a huge accomplishment for us because people were only able to work with their laptop or their phone or their device as long as their battery allowed them. We didn't have any power in the middle of the floor. So that's something that we're able to offer patrons now. And that's huge. And we're really glad about it. The next accomplishment that we had for last year is we have weekly programs for all age groups. You've heard me talk about story time. We have that four days a week right now. We also for the last two years have had Teen Tuesdays, which every Tuesday they can come to the library for a teen activity. We've now expanded that to our school aged kids. So every Wednesday is Kids Club and they're able to come to the library from four to five for a free activity. And that's something that we have recently started and we're really glad to have so that we're able to offer families in our community they know each week there's something for each age group at the library that they're able to come and participate in. This also we're hoping will help with crowding. Um, you know, our, our school age activities would fill up really quickly because we were only doing two a month. Now we're doing four to five a month. So it's spreading out, um, who can come and we're able to offer it to more kids in the community. So, um, that's something we're really glad about. The last one is canopy and mango usage. Barb touched on this briefly, um, Libraries generally always offer databases. So we offer a lot of educational databases. Consumer Reports is a huge one. And our usage for our databases over the last 10 years has not been that great. So last year, me and Michaela really tried to come up with something that we thought our patrons would actually use and they would value. And the two things that we came up with were Canopy Streaming and Mango Languages. So Canopy Streaming, like Barb was saying, you can download it onto your TV. You can also stream it on your phone or your device, but it has access to over 30,000 films, TV shows, BBC is a big one. They have the whole PBS Kids library. So it's for all ages. And we are averaging over 100 users each month, which is huge for our library. The other one is Mango Languages, which is very similar to Duolingo or Pronunciator. It's a language learning app that you can use on your phone. It does also work on desktop. So that's the other one. We added them both at the same time, and we're seeing about an average of 150 a month between the two combined. So one month, one will be higher. The other month, the other one will be higher. And it has over 50 languages that people are able to learn. And I had a patron come in just last week. She had heard about Mango at the farmer's market. She wanted to get it. She was from the Valley. And so she was not technically eligible to use Mango. We do now offer paid library cards. And so I said, I'm so sorry, you don't actually have access, but you can get it from the Valley Library. And she said, no, the Valley Library doesn't have Mango anymore. So that's why I came to you. And I said, oh, well, you can get a library card for us. You can pay for one. It's $30 for a year. Is that something you'd be interested in doing? And she said, absolutely, because Mango on its own is $13 a month. So after three months, I've already had my money's worth. So it's... It's a great product that we're really glad that we're able to offer to our patrons right now. And it's something that we're hoping to get into the schools for next year, making sure all of the language learning teachers know that it's something that we offer and that the teens could sign up to practice whatever language it is that they're learning at school for free.

Next slide. This slide just really demonstrates our youth programming attendance. which has increased dramatically between 2024 and 2025. It held pretty steady. I think with the addition of some of the new programs, so an additional program for school-age kids. Also, we offer a bilingual story time once a month. So we have a storyteller that comes in and does stories in Spanish. So I think we'll start to see, again, with the increase in the programming, we'll have a number of increase in attendance. We also offer things for adults. We haven't talked much about that, but there's lots of great programs for adults too. Yeah.

Are these numbers strictly the number of kids that are attending or is that kids plus parents?

everything else is strictly kid or adult, whoever's participating. But for storytime, it's easiest just trying to count everyone in there.

Perfect, thank you. Yeah, next slide, which is really our total program attendance, which was slightly up. And that does cover our early learners, school age, children, teens, adult and family programs. Next slide.

The last thing I wanted to touch on with just the programming attendance is total for the year, we offered 308 free programs to our community, which I think is an incredible accomplishment. All of those programs are free, and they were largely done by a staff of two that has now been expanded to a staff of three for 2026 with the addition of our new children's librarians. So I am really proud of our staff and all that they were able to accomplish last year. Unearth a Story. This is our theme for summer reading for 2026. As you know, each year we offer a summer reading program. It's for ages 0 all the way to 100. The theme this year, of course, is dinosaurs, as you can see from the graphic. We just kicked off the program yesterday on Monday. We always kick it off the week that school gets out. For the program, kids, teens, adults are able to read throughout the summer. Obviously, we're encouraging kids to continue to read and maintain those literacy skills that they learned throughout the year. Summer slide is a huge issue and it's something that we're always trying to combat. With our program for kids, they're able to earn three prizes during the summer for their reading as an incentive. This year, they get to earn a book, a gift card for an ice cream cone, or a pizza from some of our local businesses, McDonald's and Papa Murphy's. And then their level three prize is, of course, a Beanie Baby stuffed animal. You might have seen me talking on the community page. This is something we started doing after COVID and we're too scared to take it away. The kids love it. We put all of the Beanie Babies along one of the top shelves right next to the checkout desk and the kids will come in yesterday and they will look and be like, this is the Beanie Baby that I want. I'm going to keep reading. I'm going to hurry and read so I can earn my Beanie Baby. It's very... It's a great incentive. Success. Yes, it's a huge success. Yes.

Can the adults qualify for the prizes too?

We have different prizes, I was going to mention. So the teens have a similar program where they read a certain number of hours and they get to come in for three prizes. Michaela has some grab bags and treats and gift cards and different prizes for them. For the adults, we have a punch card where you're able to get five punches and then you earn a free book for your prize. And then you get entered in for a grand prize drawing. The grand prize drawing last year was pottery classes at mode. So it's usually like a, it's not just like a coffee gift card. Like it's, we try to come up with a really good prize for the winner for the adults to make it a little bit more fun. easier. It's not just books that you can read to earn prizes for. It can be books. It can be attending a program at the library. It can be trying a new recipe. It can be using a, you know, going to like a cultural event throughout the summer, using a museum pass, different things that adults are already doing. Because sometimes for those adults like hearing, oh, I got to read five books. in a little under three months can be daunting. So that's something we also, oh, and as well as reading with their kids, if they read an hour with their kids, that's another way they can earn a price, a punch for their cards. So it's something that we're trying, that we try to include all age groups on. Next slide.

We're really fortunate that we have so many people that are interested in volunteering at the library. We have, in 2025, we had 229 teens volunteer.

229 hours.

Hours that the teens put in. And they do a lot of great stuff, particularly for younger kids. So they help to organize the STEM camp. They designed and put together decorations for the big Halloween party that the friends help contribute to and the library puts on. They help set up, they help tear down. help stuff bags for our summer reading program for the prizes so the teens are really involved and we also had 648 hours from our general volunteers who do things like helping to reshelf books um they if a book comes in they can make sure it goes on the hold um Bookshelf, yeah. Or keep checking those to make sure if somebody didn't pick it up that it needs to go back. And they just help clean up, tidy up the library. So we're really fortunate to have so many active volunteers in our community. Okay, we're getting close to the end. Yes.

So this is just acknowledging our switch from the Cooperative Information Network to InlandShare, which is our new library consortium that we belong to. I came from a library in Utah where what we had on the shelf was all the materials that we had. And that could be really frustrating, especially in the summer because the kid would want to read Harry Potter and we would only have one copy of Harry Potter and I'd have to tell them, well, you can get it in eight months because there's eight people on hold for it. So I love that we belong to a consortium. The large benefit is that we share resources. So we have a courier that comes twice a week delivering books back and forth to the different libraries. So our courier comes on Tuesdays and Fridays. And so generally I'm able to tell people now Oh, that book's checked out. Darn it. We can get it for you here on Friday. And that's much more convenient and they're able to get their resources really quickly. And so in October of last year, we switched from the Cooperative Information Network to the Inland Share Network. If you'll notice, librarians are very punny. And so on our logo, it's a bunny reading a book because part of the word share is hair. We're just hilarious over here at a library. So that's our mascot, a hare. So these are just highlighting some of our new services for the year. I already talked about the mobile printing that we have through the Princh app. We're now offering proctoring and tech appointments. Proctoring is something that libraries have done for many, many years where we, you know, the librarians can proctor like a nursing exam or some sort of test that you need someone to physically watch you and make sure you don't cheat. Michaela has expanded that to tech appointments. These are one-on-one with her and people are able to sign up, they schedule a time with her and they're able to come in and say, hey, I need help setting up Zoom. We had a patron who's like, I've never used Zoom before. I have to do the Zoom interview. Can you show me how to use Zoom? And she'll say, absolutely. She'll sit down with them and teach them how to use that product. It's been heavily used. We average about five tech appointments a month, which is pretty good when it's just kind of a service that's just on our website. It's not something that we have like super heavily marketed. It's just when people come in and they need help. Hey, let me get you over here to Michaela. She can help you with that. The last one is AuthorTalks and I'll have Shane go to the next slide. So this is new for 2026, but I wanted to highlight it for you guys today so that you know about it. I think I brought it up in January, but this is our site for AuthorTalks. We belong to, it's like the library speakers consortium. um they get authors from around the country who will come and do an author talk it's streamed live so you are able you are able to sign up to watch it live submit your questions have a little bit more of a back and forth dialogue in the chat or you're able to just go on afterwards and watch the recording of the author talk they've gotten some pretty big authors like kate quinn jason reynolds like it's it's not bunch of people that you've never heard of like they get they get really good authors for these and we've been really happy with our results so far um for quarter one we had 130 people participate some of those people we get stats of who watched it live and people who go back and watch it afterwards so um author talks are something that we have heard from our community that they want to When trying it, obviously we're not able to get like a big name like Kate Quinn. We just haven't seen the return on investment for it. And it's, so this is another way that we thought that we could try offering it to our community. And so far we've gotten pretty good usage from it and we're happy with the results so far. So each month they have two to three authors. they're able to watch. And you can go back, say, today and watch somebody who spoke in January. So it does go back throughout the year and the catalog. So that's really nice. So a new service that we're trying and we're happy with it so far. Are there any questions for me and Barb? Yes.

First on deck. So some of the authors are probably children's authors.

Mainly marketed towards adults. Jason Reynolds, who was the author last month, has some juvenile teen and adult books, but I have not seen someone who's specifically like a picture children's author. That doesn't mean they don't have them, but so far it seems like it's more garnered for adults.

My wife is a first grade school teacher and she does a lot of work on writing stories and creative expression and things like that. I could just see something like that in her classroom would be kids would just gaga over. And then the rest is just a comment. I love your presentations. You always do such a great job. And I'm gonna guess about you a little bit. I did the tour and I love the fact that your mom was a librarian and you're a librarian. and you just come from this this background it is such a passion for you i love to see how much you put into it so much creativity so much energy and that you do so much with what probably feels like so little a lot of the time um i think I would love to hear more about what visions you have for the future, if we could make up our mind as a community about the library and all of the extraordinary benefits, why we need it in such a dramatic way, and that it needs to grow with us as a community. I'd love to hear about your vision sometime. Because I think there's just so much more that you want to do and could do and that the community would benefit from it. So I, again, I apologize for gushing there, but I just didn't always love your report. So thank you. Thank you.

Other questions for Jenny. I'll just reinforce Council Member Klingler's objectives or descriptions. Your enthusiasm is wonderful. And I'm just going to say contagious. So thank you for your work, Jenny.

Me and Michaela, my teen and adult librarian, were just talking the other day after a reference question, and she was just saying, how many jobs is it like, well, I read this book when I was in sixth grade, and it was really good, and I'm going to recommend it to the sixth grader. Like, how many jobs do you use information that you have as a kid? Like, it's just, it's crazy. But yeah, we both love working at the library. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thanks very much. Thanks, Jenny. Thanks, Mark.

Excellent. All right, that concludes the reports and inquiry section of our agenda. We're going to move now to item nine, our workshop discussion, specifically the governance manual. Mark, I think we've all received here at our place at the dais the description of our actions previous and our actions next.

Could you further explain that? Gladly, Mayor Pro Tem. So we are at the place in the governance manual where we have gone through all of the what I'm going to call the chapters that either contain new documents. material altogether or significant changes to material that was already in the Rules of Procedures and have also gone through a couple of chapters in addition to that in our previous review. And so where we left off with that is at Chapter 12. And so the goal with certainly with tonight's workshop is to see how far we can get. And this isn't to minimize the importance of these chapters, but these are chapters where there were relatively few recommended changes to what is currently in place. And so we want to see how far we can get in tonight's workshop to understand whether we need another half hour. We can put via email with some recommendations from the attorney that everyone could provide consensus to or whether we need another full workshop. So with that, I would turn the floor over to the council and allow you to start discussing the remaining chapter starting at 12.

great i see the draft on the screen um i think we can begin then um page 52. are there any any initial observations on chapter 12 or we can slowly scroll through what we see posted A lot of what I see in Chapter 12 is familiar as parliamentary procedure, just drawn in clarity for how we wish to interpret it.

So what is an example, questions of privilege? It's on 53.

If you could roll to that section, Rochelle.

I'm sorry, go downward?

Yes, please. To 53 per Arlene's observation. Question of privilege is the question.

Yeah. I haven't seen that phrase before, so I'm not sure what that means.

Upward or downward? Specifically where? Can you point us, Arlene, upward or downward here?

Motions that do not need a second.

Yeah, motions that do not need a second.

I think that's above where we're at right now, so scroll downward.

One more. There you go. Right there. Right there. Right there. Right there.

So this would be akin to a point of order. It's similar in that regard.

Okay. Yeah, that's a good one, Arlene. That is not immediately familiar to me, but I recognize point of order as an action, not requiring a second. Right. Agreed. Okay.

Well, Mark, then what is it and why is it there if it's the same as a point of order?

It's not exactly. It's of the same magnitude as a point of order. It's a question of privileges, something that procedurally would maybe find its way into a proceeding. I'll have to find you an exact definition, so I'm not giving you wrong information, but I've got a perplexity answer.

Go for it. A question of privilege is a special motion used to urgently address the rights, safety, comfort, or ability of the assembly or a member to participate in the meeting. There you go.

A question of privilege. It's too cold in here. I'd like the heat turned up. I mean, that's a concrete example of what that is. Brilliant.

Yeah. Okay. Good.

Great.

Go downward.

Please. Okay. These are familiar.

And Mayor Pro Tem, maybe it would be helpful to interject a question here. Please. One of the things that we were hoping is to be able to go to maybe recommendations for changing wording or clarifying questions like Councilmember Ball just offered of a term, or I guess it was Councilmember Fisher offered for a term that was unfamiliar. And then determining if there were any objections to any of the language on its face with the understanding that the city attorney is going to review the entire document for form and for consistency and for synchronicity, if that's a word in this context.

Thank you. I liked your idea, Mark, that maybe over the next week we could email any Anything to you that we have that we think stands out. And otherwise, it'd be nice to just see a final document or not a final document, but see it amended, edited document that comes from our city attorney.

You can absolutely do that. And I would say in advance of that in the in this workshop, it did. Did anyone run across anything in your review of these chapters that stood out as something that you wanted to discuss in this forum that we need to review now?

Linda. So I'm jumping ahead, though, to page 60.

Which chapter is that in? Chapter 14.

Chapter 14. Okay, so conflicts of interest, appearance of fairness doctrine, and liability of elected officials. Yes, I'm trying to find where it is in there. Okay, under dual roles. Dual roles. There, okay. Council members often engage in volunteer service, so on and so on, which is great. To avoid the perception of bias, council members shall not make any presentations to the council on behalf of community organizations. That's kind of weird because, and I don't have a problem with it, but like Dan will talk about the good work that Kiwanis is doing. And Arlene has mentioned the good work that, is it Rotary you're involved with? So that makes it sound like they can't say that, you know?

I would agree. Mayor Pro Tem, were you going to address that?

I saw a member's hand as well. So if you have an observation, and then we'll hear from you.

I think the distinction in this case is that offering council comments that include upcoming items or upcoming scheduled events of groups that they may be affiliated with is different from bringing a presentation before the council on the behalf of that organization yeah I see what you're saying yeah I just wonder if there's a way to make it say that more you know maybe Sean could tool that a little bit sure we could maybe ask for some clarifying language on the line there

I just, you know, I wouldn't want he shouldn't be talking about that. You know what I mean? From somebody new, for example, that, you know.

He just thought you could just say, shall not make formal presentations. Oh, no, something very simple that I think I think that's the.

Should not make formal presentations to the council on behalf of them.

So I sit on the hub board.

Oh, true. Right.

So, um, if we're. wanting a presentation from the hub, it should not be delivered by me from right.

It's simple. That's kind of what I'm saying. Just this can't, you know, be on the yeah, up there.

But his dad's and dude's nights coming up. Just want to let you guys know. That's okay. That's okay. So yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Good question.

See, Does everybody understand why that's in there though? The dual roles, like the importance of it.

I do.

Okay.

Okay. Then I had one on page 61 to review ordinances reviewed by city attorney chapter. Oh, next chapter 15. Sorry. He's 61. Okay. So review by city attorney, no, no, no. All ordinances shall be reviewed. and finalized by the city attorney before appearing on the agenda. No ordinance shall be prepared for presentation to the city council unless requested by the mayor or three council members. That struck me as odd. I mean, I've never had have yet to have a situation where three council members, I don't understand.

That's our current procedure, actually, that in order for an ordinance to come before the council, there have to be three of us that would sponsor. We can't have four because that would be a quorum deciding something. but a resolution um i'm trying to remember if a resolution can be made but i think we need three for that too but we can't i can't just say i want an ordinance and bring that forward there has to be three of us that are on board to bring that forward and sponsor it together okay but then why does it say the mayor or so the mayor can bring forth an ordinance the mayor is ceo yeah yes so yes she can okay

So the distinction there council member ball is the mayor singularly can bring forth any ordinance for consideration, whereas if it comes from the Council to council member Curtis point it has to be brought by by three.

Okay.

And then in Chapter 16 it's the same for resolutions as well.

yeah chapter right. Okay. Okay. Great. And?

Are there other observations or questions specifically that we can discuss as group?

Summer. I still sort of hold that I'd like Sean to go through it before I start nitpicking on things, because for me, I have a lot of I have a lot of questions I feel like he's going to address. So that's kind of where I'm at at this point. I will read through this again. If I have any glaring issues, I think I'll send out a little message to Mark. But that's kind of where I'm at now because a lot of my things are things that would be like as defined by or, you know, that sort of thing. Because there's a lot of vague things I have a feeling he's going to pick on. Okay.

Okay. Well, Mark, I guess, or Linda, go ahead.

Okay, so one more, and this is in Chapter 20, page 75. I'd say in Chapter 20 is called Council Representation on Committees and Boards. Well, yeah, I wrote down, actually... This whole chapter, this whole chapter. Didn't we just go through all this? I mean, we just formed these committees. And then, but then this speaks of, you know, governance manual committee, ordinance review committee. And it sounds like these are just kind of maybe ad hoc, right? Like not continuing. Is that correct, Mark?

So it addresses those standing committees for sure. And we want to make sure that this section aligns with the rules that you all just adopted. Right. But then it also addresses other things. It addresses regional boards and some other things. But certainly in this section, talking about standing committees and Any other named, um. Committees it has some distinct rules associated with those. So, again, it would be. It would be something that you would either want to see made uniform or. If you have a particular concern with the way that the rules. um are offered here that may either prevent or neglect to prevent something that you're interested in talking about we can do that right specifically we don't have these committees right now this new information like it's they're new we don't we didn't do have an ordinance review committee until what two years ago right and that was like

we've never done it, so we should, right? And I think part of the thinking with putting something in here is we should be doing that more often. We should be going through our ordinances and redoing those. So making sure we're saying that we intend to do that as a council and this is the mechanism that sets that forward because we didn't have a mechanism before other than somebody being like, man, we've never done that, we should do it. Same thing with the governance manual. I think part of the governance manual is putting together all the rules and procedures for us, but then also going through a quality assurance process and continually improving that. And if we've made mistakes in this, if we don't like the way it fits when we implement it, we need to have a mechanism to change that. So that's putting a mechanism in to review that, to have a process to do it. And so if it's something that whatever timeline is in here, you guys don't like, we don't feel like it fits, then that's what we want to talk about. Because I don't think we want things in here that we're not going to do. But we also want to have things in here that make sense for right now. And then if we, you know, by next year, we go through and we review the governance manual again, because it's brand new, then we want to make some changes. And this is the way we can do that by putting it in writing. Okay.

And Linda, are you practically talking about how we discussed this last meeting and there's still things in there that we don't have? Are you speaking to that? Because I felt like you were mentioning that some of these committees we don't currently have. Is that correct?

Right, right. We made a finance committee.

Right. So last, and we're not working on a live draft. We're working on still a previous draft that is not a living draft. This is our previous draft from January, so I don't think we've seen any actual edits to this document.

No, there's some in here, aren't there?

Not since our last. There are some. So if I can clarify that specifically. So you made you, meaning council, made a change to the current rules of procedure to create the standing committees and the appointment process. So what we would envision would be taking that language and putting it in here.

Sean would do that, I'm assuming.

Yes, but it would be taken as it was adopted in the current rules of procedure and put into the governance manual because you deliberated on that process, those committees, that appointment process, and I assume you want to preserve that in the governance manual or just make its way over here in the final version.

Yes.

Yeah, that's accurate.

That's all I picked apart.

Great. So to reiterate or emphasize, please reach out regarding any other significant changes as email. Otherwise, I think to respond to the staff's objective, we recognize then the rest of these sections and they are ready for consideration by the city's attorney for detailed review. Does that sound right, Mark?

It does. And I don't want to speak for Sean, but I'm going to say that we're going to need probably about a four-week period to do that. And if we need more than that, we'll update you at a future council meeting.

Great. All right. With that... I'll conclude the workshop section of our agenda, item nine. That brings us on to general business consent agenda. I would entertain a motion for consent agenda.

Move general business consent agenda items A, B, C, D, and E. Second.

There's a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed nay. We are unanimous. The consent agenda is accepted. That moves us on to general business action items. There are none tonight. That moves us to council comments. Are there any council members who wish to provide some comments?

Yeah. Linda.

What's his name from Liberty Lake water and somewhere I forgot.

Bill Genoway. Yeah. Okay. Bill kind of took my thunder away, but I just was thinking about how funny it is, how, you know, people were moaning about mission Avenue being only one lane and, you know, and then, when it opened, it actually surprised me. It's like, oh my God, suddenly it's open and it's done. And I'm like, wow, it's smooth. I can see the lines, you know? I mean, it's just, it's amazing. And so Ben. You're right. We got to keep this road thing going because that was a thrill for me to go down Mission Avenue. Thank you, Linda. It was really, really nice. Thank you. Yeah, I loved it.

I want to be your secret Santa. It seems like it's pretty easy.

No, it's not actually.

I think that's great. Yeah, so that was it.

He stole my thunder.

Roads, I believe, are one of the most important things the city does. So when we get a chance to have them in high visibility location like that, it's great.

Oh, yeah. And one more thing, Ben, the purple flowers in the medians on Appleway. Oh, my God. Who did that? Was that our new Dan? Oh, my God. Wow. Bring him donuts tomorrow or something. Yeah. No croissants. Okay. That's it. Right on.

Other council comments tonight? All right. On into public hearings. There are none. Resolutions and ordinances. There are none. Neither emergency ordinances. Neither introduction. Well, let's talk through upcoming agenda items. Mark.

July 7th.

July 7th.

Is that our next meeting? Mark, is there nothing happening July 7th?

There is a regular city council meeting. There's no scheduled workshop. Okay.

So I see the Pavilion Park play structure on the 21st. I think that would be the most immediate action for consideration.

Another question. I think the report for the shared response to homelessness MOU came out. Is that something that we're ready to talk about sooner rather? I know there was a message sent out too, but are you ready for that or not yet?

That really is a question for the council to provide us some insight on. We can certainly invite the gentlemen that were here originally proposing that MOU back. As you've all seen with the recommendations that I sent out to you from the Safe and Healthy Spokane Task Force, there's a lot of content there. And there are a lot of recommendations that were classified as both immediate opportunities and then more longer-range things that they're going to have to focus on into the future. And so... We can certainly get maybe call it a progress report on on the shared response to homelessness MOU as it fits into the broader framework of what came out of Safe and Healthy Spokane. That that may be a good idea. I don't know if there are specific. deliverables yet that the shared response has produced, primarily because the federal process is taking longer. It's been within the last, I think, 30 days that we got an update from HUD, but that might be a good opportunity to check in and have them give us a progress report. If you would prefer to do that sometime in July or even early August, we can schedule that.

And I think originally when I asked for it to be on our future workshops, it was more because if we're part of an MOU, wanting to make sure the report was done and all that, that's all been done. And so I would look to the council to see if we even need this agenda item on here anymore because the work has been done by the group or if it is something where you guys want an update from somebody. Otherwise, I would say we could take it off if we don't need it because we did get the report. Hmm.

I'd be fine taking it off.

Hearing no objections then, Mark, that can be removed. Any other observations or additions on agenda?

Linda. Well, since we have, you know, some time, I mean, we're going to be, it looks budget September 15th. Why don't we do the social media while we're, you know, because we're, Just finishing, hopefully, the governance manual, that would kind of, to me, be the next logical step is to tackle that.

Okay. If that's the council's preference, we can certainly get that on the calendar and relay that expectation to Sean so he can be prepared to lead that conversation.

We should get busy on that. I think it's reasonable. Okay.

It's all budget, budget, budget.

Thank you for putting the budget dates in here this early. I appreciate that. Yeah, I agree. And some of the dates of like, you know, changing our meeting and potential special meetings. That's helpful.

We, as hard as it is to believe that we are now back into thinking about this, we wanted just to give you a picture of what was coming. And I appreciate that you appreciate it, but that's all Kyle. So he updated the matrix.

Okay. Great. All right, concluding then agenda review, we're on to the section for citizen comments. This is the last section of citizen comments for our meeting. We have two speakers here in chambers. Lynn, if you can step forward.

Thank you, Council. Lynn Atkins, resident of Liberty Lake, but not only a resident of Liberty Lake. I am also a part-time library clerk at our library, so I have some unique insights onto what happens inside that building. I also am very familiar with what the challenges are that go inside that building. I'm also a member of the Friends of the Liberty Lake Municipal Library. I am also a member of an organization that is the Liberty Lake Library Advocates Group, which is a grassroots organization made up of other citizens in Liberty Lake and all we want to do is engage with the community and share with them information about what the library has to offer and about the challenges that our library currently faces. So I had not originally planned to speak this evening, but Jan D's presentation impassioned me a bit that I wanted to make a couple of things aware, you aware of. First of all, the cost of outgrowing our library. So the library is no longer limited by demand, it's limited by space. And as our community grows, the library's reached a point where it cannot provide the level of service residents need because the building is simply not big enough. So what is the impact? Jandy mentioned the circulation that we are at maximum capacity on the circulation. Well, let's put this in perspective for a few minutes. What does that mean? So that means other than not having the ability to add more to the collection because of the space, It also has the impact that popular books have longer wait times. Our patrons have fewer choices when they walk into the library or when they pull up the catalog online because books are out. Also, there are fewer items that are checked out because fewer items are available on the shelf. That reduces the velocity of the circulation, a rate at which the library materials move throughout our community, not because people stopped reading, but because the collection has reached its physical capacity. Now, technology has also become a core library service and residents rely on the library. um and you've heard that we only have four computers well most of the time we only have three and that's because one is out of service at one point or another and then the other part is the programs within the library the programs within the library that use the meeting uh reservation service in 2022 it was 156 reservations in 2025 it's 812 reservations Now, demand for the space and limiting opportunities for community organizations, educational programs, nonprofits, and civic meetings. So I just want to say we need to find a way to get this library bigger. Thank you.

Thank you, Lynn. All right. Brad Hamblin, step forward.

Good evening. I wanted to mention a couple of things. And again, Jandy, being a member of the Board of Trustees for the last five years, I've had the pleasure of working with Jandy through difficult times, I mean very difficult times, and less difficult times, and working through a very challenging physical facility to deliver services to our community, the kind of services that she and her staff deliver daily to everyone in our community that go above and beyond the duty, and it was very nice to hear Council Member Klinger actually recognize that and say that to Jandy about her passion and her ability to manage all this and provide all these services to our community. I just can't tell you how much I appreciate what she's done. I will say that being on the Board of Trustees six years ago, that I brought back to life the assessment that was done. There was a need that was identified eight years ago. that this, we were going to be at a point where we are at now where the services are going to start to decline for our community because of the facility, the lack of space and the ability to provide those services to our community. So I would, I would encourage you as we enter the, uh, the season of, uh, developing a budget that we, put our heads together, we find a way to source the monies and the extra maybe grants, whatever it is, to try to come up with some sort of a plan to be able to expand the library to continue to meet the needs of our community as they demand the use of our library. So there's ways to do it. It's been done in many other small communities throughout our state. So I would encourage us to really give that some serious thought as we move forward. Again, thank you, Councilman Klinger for recognizing Janity and her staff. Appreciate that. One last thing I want to say, and it's about the e-bikes. I will say that the education has been working. I live across from the settler, and I can't tell you how much the traffic of e-bikes has decreased since all of the education. It's been really dramatic. And so the effort worked. Thank you.

Thank you, Brad. That's great. I'm glad to hear it. Right on. All right. Is there anyone online, Shane, who would like to make a comment? No. All right. That concludes the citizen comments. There is no executive session. And with no additional business coming before the council, I'll call this adjourned at 8.08.