Arts & Culture Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay.

Okay. Just say here if once I say your name. Start with Chair Carlson.

Here.

Commissioner Hargis. Here. No money. Commissioner Randall?

Here.

Commissioner Renestead? Here. Commissioner Schatzko? Here. Commissioner Turic? Here. Commissioner North? Commissioner Alaniz?

Here.

Commissioner Cusack? Here. And commissioner Dua?

Here. Great. I would like to let's we're gonna move to I'm really good at this. The approval of the agenda. Did everyone have a chance to see it? Okay. Can I have a

Motion to approve?

Second. All in favor of approving the agenda?

Aye.

All opposed? And now the minutes, I did say there was one change to the minutes, so if do we need to make the changes first? I don't know how that works. So, there has been a change the minute. It said I was here, Oh. And I Well, no. It didn't say I was here. It said that I called the meeting. But I didn't call the meeting.

Yeah. As long as we talk about it and then we can just pass it. And then I'll make the changes before finalizing those minutes.

Excellent. Were there any other changes? Okay. So, I'm now gonna call for

Motion to approve revised minutes.

I second that. All in favor of approving the minutes?

Aye.

All opposed? Okay.

Thank you. Sorry. So now I'm over at the Mayo intro staff report. Looking at this, Natalie? Oh. Or are we going Sorry. We're because we don't have the mayor here. What do you

oh, I I meant it. I don't know how that got on there. Ignore that. Go go down in order of things. That was that was

here to speak. There's no consent agenda. I'm just moving on. So I think we're just at the regular agenda and I can pass it over to you. Yes?

Yes. So, the first item on the agenda is the the ones I'm here once again asking you to appoint a CELCO representative. I think we didn't Did we make I We couldn't figure it out. Did we make it official? No. Okay. Because I was like, I think we need to actually do this fully. So do we, I guess this, well, maybe this is for the chair, but do we have a, do we have any questions about one, the role, any interest in Great. So if somebody wants to nominate themself.

Or you could nominate me.

Or somebody could nominate Can

I nominate Anne? Yes.

Fantastic. Say it all the way. Anna. Oh, there you go.

Sorry, was

It's great.

Opening my cell

phone Thank at the same you. So, then I

So, now we would call for

I think you need a vote to, yeah, to confirm her appointment as the CELCO So

all in favor of voting Anna as our CELCO representative please say aye.

Aye. All

opposed please say nay or no. Opposed. Okay. We have Anna you are our Selco representative. You. Thank you so much. Despite how we're all acting about it, Selco is awesome. Selco is the organization that our Southeast Library Coalition

I see.

That if you need a book that's at What was missing? Fairbow or right. And you can have it come here, like, that's one of the reasons why I just love CELCO. Can get any book available. So our participation is awesome. So thank you. We're now going to work at Did we get

an actual motion on that? Did somebody somebody made a motion or did you just call for the vote?

Just called for the vote. Okay.

I think

We need a motion.

Yes, sir.

This is you, hon. You you're the guy that does all motions.

You got a motion, we got a second, and then we've Second. Already got the Okay. And we've already got the votes, so Perfect. That's Thank you. We just need it for the minutes who who did what. Okay.

Sorry. Continue.

And now, we're gonna look at the library boardwalk plan. Is that where we are on our

Yeah. I I put this in not to spend a lot of time on it. One of it was sort of just like a reminder to folks that, hey, we're doing we're doing this. As most of you know, probably remember that we are meeting bimonthly so that we have this space held for subcommittees. And for me, it was intentional to be able to engage our youth more in what we're doing even though we don't have voting youth members.

So the subcommittees are open for all of our youth members to attend as they see fit or as they are able. They meet on the even months. And they are kind of as needed. So we a rough schedule of an idea of activities through the year. But it will change based on level of emergent need for other discussions.

So in August, and we'll talk about this on the next item, but we met to discuss needs for advocacy around the library's budget. So that one kind of typically happens I think in the, I think I had that in the schedule more in the, I actually can't remember. Sorry. I did strike through. Yeah, have advocacy normally meeting in June.

Or at least last this year. We had that scheduled for June and we did did meet then and we talked about rather than the IMLS medal nomination, which for you folks or for folks who don't remember, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, It persists, but it maybe isn't going to be doing a lot of the same things that it was doing before. So this is the federal body that does send money to states to support library services. That's money that Congress designates for library services. Some of that got a little, say, didn't run as expected this year.

But some of the other activities at the IMLS including the medal for library service is probably not happening in an agency that's been much carved out. Like there's not a whole lot of people left working there, I don't think. So the metal thing's not gonna happen. But we did talk about the Jerry Klein Prize and that is something that Library Journal gives out. It does have a substantial cash award with it, so we are motivated.

And so that committee met back in June. And normally we would just have advocacy meet maybe once or twice a year, but we needed to call folks in in August just to give them an update on what was going on. And so I just wanted to kind of check-in with people at this point because I think we've only been doing this this year, correct? This was new. So I wanted to take the temperature from the board. We'll probably continue this year as planned. But is it something that you'd like to continue? Do you feel like it's working? Do you want to make any changes? We've been doing it for most of the year.

May I ask, do you think it's working? I love it. Okay. Then I like it.

Well, now.

No. I like it a lot.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think it's it's a great use of time and a great space for conversation and growth in in the library support buckets that you mentioned. So I like it. Okay.

Yeah. I would add, I think the conversation's great but also there's a lot more time to expand on a topic. So I think there's kind of learning all around the table with different ideas, different opportunities, things like that. So I think it's been a really helpful thing.

I'll take it. Thank you. I really, I like it because one thing I was hearing from this group when we moved to council chambers was feeling disconnected from the purpose and the building and the staff. And so the subcommittees do give us the chance to reengage with the library because we are here in council chambers and it's a very different vibe. So and it is like I think to Mason's point, it's the chance for me to do a little bit more of the board education outside of this meeting too around some of the issues that the library might be facing. So I appreciate your time and showing up for those meetings. Thanks. Okay. Well, we'll continue then. I don't have any like major changes.

I was gonna say we should meet in October for a subcommittee. And ordinarily, I would, but I have two conferences two weeks in October that are back to back and they both would make that pretty much impossible unless I just beat two people or so I I will I will I will ask you now to follow city budget conversations over the next two weeks. Will check it in November.

That the what's like the

Yeah. That's Tuesday, right?

Uh-huh.

Yep. And then the twenty third.

And are you able to give us

September 16. Sixteenth. Sixteenth and twenty third. Yeah. We'll we'll get into that a little bit more on my report.

The twenty third is? Tuesday. Yep.

Those are just just, you know Upcoming. Upcoming council meetings.

Mhmm. You.

Depending on how those council meetings go, might we need a meeting before November?

It's possible. So I guess I would ask how open people are to meeting on a different night and time. Because I could certainly make that work. It's just they both conferences happen to start on a Wednesday. So I was like, oh, well. So much for that schedule. Part of the subcommittee was to keep our because we we had subcommittees before and it'd be really hard to schedule because people have, you know, lives and they're busy. And so I wasn't trying to add, like, another meeting on top of the meeting. And then we've got somebody on Selco, we've got somebody doing this over here. And it just felt like a lot of demands to expect people to come in and, like, workshop a policy with me on top of all the regular meetings.

So if we went to this bimonthly schedule, we could keep them on the same night and time. But this would be one case where we might want to meet like that, know, if the advocacy or budget and or, you know, folks who are really invested in that want to meet with me the first week in October, I'd be totally open to that. We can talk about that offline too. But if if you know, again, than quorum want to join me, I'm happy to continue that conversation.

So you'll talk about what we're because we're kind of like walk talking around an issue. But it's the idea board that we our services may be needed if depending on how the City Council votes, Right? Because it might greatly affect the library.

And if

it greatly affects the library then I think many of us would want to gather to see what we can do to help support so before the vote in November.

Yeah. Would agree. I'd be fine with an early October meeting if

If it's needed. Yeah.

Makes sense.

Yeah. Certainly works for me. So, I appreciate that. In fact

Shall we move to the next agenda item?

Yeah. Think so. As long as everybody's fine marching forward with the bi monthly. So basically, the only last thing I'll say about that is we will meet in November. That'll be basically our last meeting of the year.

So at that point, I will do my darnedest to have a work plan for 2026 so that we can talk about that at that meeting. And then you know what '26 is gonna look like, subject to change, obviously. But, you know, for the most part, we can kind of plan our lives around that. And that is now officially the last thing I'm gonna say about that. And now to be more direct about what we were just talking about, I guess.

So, as I mentioned, the library board This is on to the next item. The library board ad hoc advocacy subcommittee met last month just to get an update from me on budget outlook. So if anybody other than Judy reads the Northfield News, we would have seen my column. I have it if

you wanna read it.

Yeah. My column this month, I wrote it sort of as a follow-up to last month's. Last month, I talked about return on investment and the library's ROI and what that looks like, what that means. And then I thought, well, let's follow that up, given that it is budget season, with a little bit of a dive into what we investment, what is being invested here. I also spent way too much time on the library's podcast this month, which dropped this morning.

If you want to listen to that and you want the long version, the forty five minute version, which I'm gonna do my best to not do to you tonight, on how library budgets work. But I will say to our guest members too, if you have not gotten, well, listen, you know, forty five minutes about how library budgets work, it sounds thrilling. I make it fun. But I I've one thing I I say in this podcast is that libraries are not free. And that's the title of the column.

Libraries are not free. We do our best and for the most part, we're pretty good about not charging for a point of service. There are a few things that we charge for, printing, passport services. But in general, library services are no cost when you need to access them. But they do cost it does cost money to run that, to run the library.

And to run it well, it costs more. Right? So I know I do a breakdown here of, like, fully 70% or more of our budget is personnel. So when you're talking about potential cuts to library budgets, one of the places where we're gonna look for savings without cutting positions because nobody wants to do that. I can tell you from experience, it's very, very hard to get those added and it's impossible to get them back once you've let them go.

So positions, don't want to cut if I don't have to. But the first thing you're gonna look to is probably reducing your part time. And one thing libraries tend to have a lot of is part time. So when we present to the public and what went out in the budget meeting in August is that the libraries would need to close on Sundays during the year. So during the summers we're closed. We've never been open during the summers on Sundays, which is something I kind of hope to change. It sounds like we might might have to go the other direction. And Sundays are kind of the gold standard for libraries, for service. A lot of libraries don't have it. I think we're the only one in Rice County with Sunday hours.

We haven't always had them. They have been pulled back. I think when LGA cuts, and that's local government assistance cuts came through in the in the 2020 2009, 2010, I think. If anybody remembers it was around city government in Minnesota then. I wasn't. But I've heard about it and people still have the battle scars. But when that came through, think that was when library Sundays must have been cut. And then they were restored in 2014, I believe. We haven't always had it. And that's something that will, as a cost savings, it saves us in our part time.

And it doesn't force us to really pull back on services. Again, I don't have to eliminate a position at that point. Now, depends on the level of cuts. But that's why like you'll hear this when libraries are asked to cut their budgets. That's the first thing they put out. We don't put this out to scare people. We don't put this out because when we're trying to put out something that's unpleasant and we could cut something else, we don't have a lot of discretion in our budget. There's not a lot of squish. That is a luxury that libraries are typically not afforded. So that Sundays is not something that I take lightly either.

Just because it is the kind of quote unquote easiest thing for us to cut, that doesn't make it easy because nothing is. Because everything that we do is valuable to somebody. And Sundays, for many people, is the only day that they can use the library. And so for that person who's probably working a couple of jobs and the only day they can come in and maybe they don't have a computer at home because it's too expensive, they come to the library. That is the only day that they have access to that. So we have effectively cut off access to this person. It is also it is not our busiest day. We don't have a lot of meeting room bookings. We typically don't have programs and it's mostly a depend on our part time staffing. So that is where cost savings comes in.

It is a cost savings with a cost, to be clear. So everything. So what we discussed in the advocacy was this and what that looks like and how deep the cuts might be. If you're interested in the full story, I would say just tune into the budget work session on Tuesday. We'll be talking about it at length. Listen to the podcast or read an article. But this is mostly just to summarize the conversation for transparency too, since these are not public meetings, the subcommittees, so we do like to report back. If folks have anything to share from that meeting that you wanna share in the space, I I welcome that, but yeah.

Well, I think the context is on the city council website. It's a little deep, but there's a slideshow that kind of walks through like the budget options that were laid forth. And then to note for students those weren't the only options, those are just the options that the city staff laid forth. So to review those with a lens for this was one set of ideas, there could be other ideas. And that's what the next session that they're gonna have on the sixteenth is where the further ideas could be offered. Is that fair?

Yeah. Where I will think I think that's where council will get the full because we what we were getting at that last meeting was direction to departments on what options to explore. And so that's when I'm like, okay, this is what this option is and this is what these options mean. Those things that were presented at that meeting were very preliminary. Like, if your department had to make some cuts, what would you start with? That's where we would start. And so that was the thing that kind of floated to the top. And that is not, again, that's not like, at least for for me, that's that's not to shock people. That's a very real that's a very real space and a very real consideration for us. So and that's what was put out.

So there will be a lot more discussion because frankly for us that doesn't get us to the cost savings that they are looking for. So then it's a discussion on like how deep does that go?

And the sixteenth is is that a only watch online or is that a go and sit in the

So it's a work session which are open and you can attend. But there's no public comment at work sessions. But you can, I mean people can reach out to their representatives whenever? And that's the other, that was kind of the other point of the meeting was like, do you know who your word representative is? Do you know how if people as a board member, if somebody came up to you and was like, I heard the library's cutting Sundays.

I don't like that. What do you say to them? Well, you say, you know, that's one option that is being explored as part of cost cutting. You can make your voice heard best if you reach out to your word representative, and that is how you show people the map and help them navigate that who are the people who you can reach out to. I think a lot of people actually don't necessarily know or that, say, the At Large representatives represent everyone.

The mayor represents everyone. So those are some steps that people can take, but it isn't the responsibility of the board member to justify actions. We were talking about this a little bit actually with our youth members before the meeting. What is the responsibility of the board members out in the wild if somebody comes at you and doesn't like something that the library is doing if they don't like a book or a decision we've made to listen? You can direct people to the best person who they should share their concerns with, if that's me, if that's their, you know, in certain, most cases that's going to be me, and then it may come back around to the full board.

Occasionally it's something that's really out of our hands, then it may be going up to local or state representatives. Maybe people need to reach out to their senator and their congressperson, right? So that's where that advocacy conversation comes in and who are the people who we should be directing these questions to and what are the questions that we need to be asking. I

just have a thought. I think it was in a conversation with you in a group or something about something the public doesn't maybe really know, and it has to do with Carnegie. And that I think we in America are used to hearing about Carnegie set up all these libraries. And so, other people like Carnegie and the Friends of the Library support the libraries. However, if you want to take it from there Sure. That the people had to

do something. Yep. So, he gave with the condition that there was a match requirement and you had to actually run that library. Like your city had to run that library. Your whatever your governing authority needed to run that library. So he didn't come and build these libraries and then they just ran themselves. And so that's where I think sometimes we get this idea that everybody who works in the library is a volunteer and all of the books were donated. I've actually had people ask me both of those things more than once. So the, I think there is sometimes a perception that they sort of just magically appear and endlessly serve until we get caught back. And then it's like, what's happening to the library?

Well, we do run on a budget. And that is finite and sometimes it goes back instead of forward. So, but I think that one of the, I think one of the best things Carnegie did with that gift was require that commitment that the city would fund it. Because I think that's why we have endured so long as that was baked into how you cared for something was for the long run, right? This becomes something that people will depend on.

I don't know if that was the thinking at the time, but I think that the result of that was that you could count on your library being run by your community. And there was ownership in that and a responsibility to that. And so here we are talking about library budgets and how they work. Takes, it takes, I will say we're, we need our city budget to operate. We get a lot of community donations, a lot.

We we get a lot of support from the friends. We get a lot of grants. None of that support would be used or possible for us to work with if we didn't also have the taxpayer funding. So that's what I kind of mean about that match. It's only as good as your ability or willingness to support a thing.

We couldn't subsist on the donations and the volunteers. The collection would look a lot different if it were donated books. Again, we are very grateful to and acknowledge the vast amount of support that we get from this community. It's a very this community really supports the heck out of their library and they use it and they get a lot of value from that. So that's one of the reasons that return on investment is so high here is because our use is so high.

So the more you use a thing, the more valuable that really becomes and the less, the more impact you get out of the dollar. One that's the return on investment is the dollar of tax. The tax dollar comes back as $5 in value. The more you use it, the more that goes out. In case you're a library, I don't know. What else do I need to say about this? Does

anybody else have questions or comments about this? So I think as a library board we do sort of agree that we'll support. May I have, so the twenty third is when they vote on what packet? Like if it's gonna be a 3% or

a 16%? Bill evi will be set, so that's the meeting that I think it's state law that by that date, you've set your max levy. So it can always come down from that point.

Okay.

But that's the maximum. So you're really locked in if you set it to a certain point. Like, that's that's what you're working with. If you if you I think my understanding is they can set it higher and then staff can work on getting that down, but that gives you a little bit more time to work on that. But then that's, you know, it kinda it's up to it's it's up to council's direction. So yeah. Yeah, the twenty third is when that's official. So the sixteenth is the work session when they really dig into the budget itself and discuss what what that's gonna look like. The twenty third, they just vote on it. There's usually a lot of public comment at that meeting.

Okay. Which one?

The sixteenth. This twenty third.

Oh, the twenty third.

Yeah. Because that's the full meeting where they're setting the levy. I think that one or it's the one in December because that's when they adopt the final levy. So there's budget seasons basically all year. I don't know why I would call it a season But it really ramps up in July and August. So And then, yeah, it goes through Like I said, they set the max lobby in September and then there's usually work to get under that if it's possible. And then they they set the final levy or whatever that number is in December. But I think the the statements go out before that. I I shouldn't go because I I get kinda squishy squishy on the dates, but I think that, yeah, I think you get your property tax abatement before that actual final one goes. I can't remember.

So if we haven't already written or contacted our city council representatives, it feels like right now would be a pretty good time. If you feel so moved. Yes.

Mhmm. I I have one another question. Wait, then my then no. Wait. I'll get back to it. But I was going in, and then you talked, and then I forgot. But oh, I know. Now I remember. Are we are being cut. Is everybody being cut? Everybody have the same? You gotta, you know, or is there some that don't face the cuts that we face?

I don't know how the percentages shake out, but this would be across the board. Across the board. Yeah. But that assumes that this, because it's not a foregone conclusion, but I think that assumes a certain level of cutting. That yes, we would feel this. I think there's some equity. I don't know how that works. I'm glad that's not my job, I guess, to figure out how that gets distributed. But we're essentially it's it's like the equivalent of an FTE and that's a full time equivalent. So it doesn't have to be a position, but it's roughly that amount.

So that's where, again, we start with Sundays and then we look at our collection. And one of the pieces of that is looking at those resources that are probably not gonna be, and I don't say this because, well, those are just in our field, so that's what we're gonna cut. It's because those are things that we don't get as much value out of something that we're the sole purchaser of. We work with CELCO, which is a cooperative, a consortium of member libraries. There's about 40 of us in this consortium.

We pull resources and we get a lot of value out of that. So what we pay CELCO, which is between 30,000 and $40,000 a year, we get more than $100,000 worth of value out of that. So I'm gonna look at something like Hoopla or Canopy, which we have to limit to local cardholders because it would be so expensive for us if we open that up. We would look to those because we just don't get as much value. We're responsible for paying for that whole resource.

We're not sharing that with our consortium. Whereas Libby, we're paying into something and we're getting a lot more back out of it than what we pay in. So we're not gonna pull back on that cause people are getting that value from the shared resource. And if we pull back in the short the shared resource, at some point with collections and things like that where we're part of a cooperation that Selco's gonna look at that and say, you cutting your budget on this because you think you can rely on the shared resources? Because now you're just a drain on the system.

And that's not fair to like Cassin or Lonsdale or these tiny libraries. I can't even remember some of the other names. These little tiny libraries out there, we're the heaviest borrower from that system by a lot. We pull in almost 40,000 items through interlibrary loan a year just to this library. So we're gonna pull back on something that, like, we're not getting that shared value out of.

So we've already, pulled back on Hoopla because it was eating our whole digital resource budget for the year very quickly because of the pricing model that they use. It's just unsustainable for most libraries, especially smaller ones. We will probably eliminate that entirely. And like I said, Canopy and a few other things like, I would hate to cut the New York Times access because I know that's getting used. But it's a very local resource.

So anyway, all that to say is that there's a list of things that come with a certain amount cuts that we would look at and weigh very carefully. And we would not pull back on something like outreach to underserved communities because that would not speak to our values or our mission or equity from this community and we are committed to that. So that's where Sunday hours are not ideal, but I don't want to cut Oasis hours in favor of staffing the downtown location because I know that the Oasis is providing a different community who doesn't necessarily make it downtown access to the library. So we'll keep our bookmobile going to places that are really underserved. We might not take the bookmobile to, you know, Market Fair or third Thursdays or something like that where we would prioritize the underserved communities, if that makes sense.

So those are some of the considerations that we still have yet to make and we'll get a fuller picture of that next Tuesday.

Can I just wonder, did the city staff and city council fully understand the passport services income that the library brings in? And then is that represented well in their conversations?

I it's if it comes to that, I think that I think that would be very clear. So basically, passport services allowed us to move a couple of part time positions to full time without an impact on the budget. So we didn't have to go and ask counsel for extra money to hire or promote to part time people. So don't think that it's also not a ton of money. I mean we're killing it on passports.

It's great. And that it is a tremendous service to the community which is the main reason. It also supports the staffing that was required to do it because it is so busy and that would have required hiring a person essentially. We were able to promote two people to full time instead of hiring one person just to do passports. Made more sense for us.

So and I will say Francisco was one of those people but, Honeywell's been. So we have now a bilingual library assistant on our outreach team to Francisco. And we also have a bilingual passport agent which has been like I will say clutch for people who have come in needing passports. For children who are born in The US, having somebody who speaks Spanish but also I think they trust and feel safe with, I think that's been really important. So yes, I think that they understand and I think I don't think anybody I will say I don't think anybody in council doesn't understand the library and the value.

I think we have seven people who support the library in council and I'm grateful for that. I think where we're is we are part of an ecosystem in the city that I've, you know, I've I've never lived in a city that had super well funded libraries and really terrible roads or vice versa. Like, it's usually all or nothing on that. So I'm just I don't think we can have the world's greatest funded library if we don't also take care of other things. I don't know I think that in a lot of communities, libraries kind of become a stopgap.

And I've worked in libraries like that too where you're shelter and social services and other things for folks. And that's a space that a lot of libraries occupy by necessity, but it's not really what we should be doing. I think a strong community has a strong library, if that makes sense. So yeah, like I said, I don't see anybody not supporting the library. I just I think it's it's important for me and I'm not directing anybody to do this.

It's mostly just about information because that's what I do, right? To share information with people in the library. Who to who to reach out to when you have a concern about something and who to share to make sure that they do hear from people because I think a lot of times they only hear from people who are really angry about stuff. And if you're just like, the library's really, really important to me or my community or people I know for these reasons and they hear that variety, I think that's just important. And as board members, you can do that.

So you're empowered to advocate, and I appreciate that. Staff report. Yes. And I had one that I was supposed to share preferably. Well, first let me ask, while I search my email real quick, are there questions about anything in the report that anybody wanted to bring up at all. While you're you're

searching, I'd love to know how our Hispanic heritage Sorry. I do not know the exact title

of this. It's been a heritage celebration. I'm gonna

turn that one over. That's what I'm thinking. Can let Steve Collins

is here.

How's it going? Do you need Exactly. Sometimes in the past, the board has like counted people or things like that. Do you need anything from us?

It's going great. Thank you for the opportunity to talk. No. It's going great. Everything is set. We just finalized the map last week. We have four different food trucks along with I believe it's five different food vendors that'll have like a little booth. Plenty of community partners. We have four kids activities this year, which usually we only have two. Last year and this year, had Steam Quest, which is a Saint Olaf professor that brings down a bunch of little physics things that they make to teach kids about science.

Gets them really excited. It's actually pretty cool. I checked it out. I mean, I'm not a kid anymore but I was very excited about it. And then, as well as last year and the previous years we had Angie's face painting, which kids just love. Of course. Mean And the parents love too because free face paint. I mean, don't gotta pay for it. And then this year, two new kids activities is we paid for, I believe it was a 100 or a 150 small pinatas that kids can decorate and take home. And then, we will also have an Alebrije workshop.

Alebrijes, if you went to the parade, were those kind of animal looking things that were on top of the bikes. They won't be that big. But, you will get to make a smaller one to take home as well. So, we have that going on. We have a whole agenda of different performers that we'll have. We're still gonna have the pet costume contest. So, there is still time if you have a furry animal at home that you would like to dress up and compete. And there is a prize for the pet. It's a little gift box from Chuck and Don's. And from previous years, they're very generous with what they donate. And even if you don't, we will be taking donations that we will give to Was it Prairie's Edge?

Yeah. Prairie's Edge.

Prairie's Edge. The animal shelter. We're excited. 11 to four. Please tell all your friends. It's gonna be great food, great music. And what can they win? Oh. Yeah. Yes. Sorry. And then this year, the Minnesota Loons. That's our Minnesota soccer team, which relatively kind and new to us. They're doing great this season, by the way. Go Loons.

We're nice enough to donate four tickets to I believe it's September 20 against Houston dot IMO, it might be. But it is September 20. Four free tickets that we're gonna raffle out to two winners. So, one winner will get two tickets each. Completely free. You just gotta come to the information booth, sign a little slip with your name and an email address and we'll call out the winners towards the end of the event.

They have to be present to win.

They have to be present to win. But yes, thank you to Minnesota United. Yeah.

That was the only Minnesota sports team to respond to requests for.

I reached out to almost all of them.

And I'm gonna say, my twins. I am disappointed.

At least get back and say no, you know.

For real. Well, I'm disappointed in them for a lot of reasons, but

Francisco, do you have enough volunteers?

We have a lot. We could always use more. Let me see if it's still open. We did have a little form that went out for volunteers. You could always come to the information booth that day and if you have some time, trust me, we can find something for you to

help us you to work. Yeah. Thank you. We had also used like And I think we haven't really asked people for this in the past, but if you come and hang and you have your little device in your pocket and it takes pictures, Take some pictures. Post them to social media, tag us, or just send them to us and we're happy to have them. It's nice to have different people's take on the event. So, yeah. I invite you to come and and we have, do we, you all have name tags still, right? Like, not name tags but like the board badge thing. Yeah. We still need

I have hand

those. Yeah. That's great. And look, thank you. We we can let you wear them and if you want if you wanna actually like rep the board at the event, that's awesome. So and you can we'll have them. I'll have them. I'll be there. I'll be there, and I'll have them. I'm gonna give some remarks on the stage. This year, Isaac, I haven't actually ever done that, which is weird. I should have. But Helica does such a great job. I'm like, why would I? Anyway, more of a behind the scenes kind of person, but I am gonna I am gonna read a a brief statement of welcome for folks, and not only in honor of the event, but in honor of welcoming week.

So we we can be we can be very welcoming here in Northfield. And we are, I think. Not everybody doing that right now, but I thought I was like, somebody cut my mic off. So staff report, I wanted to bring up something for Laurie because it didn't make it into the packet. And so I just wanted to make sure that I had a chance to share Laurie's updates from Circulation because we haven't been including a Circulation report.

It's something we used to have, but I just got out of the habit and it dropped off her calendar. So I'm going to add that back. But Laurie has been doing a great job keeping track of the Minnesota State Parks passes program which have been lending. It looks like we lent 18 in July and 14 in August, so that's pretty good. So that gets a lot of folks into our state parks, our lovely state parks. And passport services, as I think Well, some of you know because you've seen it. I can't remember if I've mentioned it in the last meeting because I

don't think

it was open yet, but our passport office is like done and running and it looks great. Have it's nice to have the extra space. We probably need to work on the soundproofing between my office and the passport office. So sorry to anybody who has to listen to my phone calls when they're in there. But we we so far this year, and this was at the August, we have accepted 1,078 passport applications in 2025. Wow. Which is a bunch. That is a bunch. That is a lot of that is a lot of people going places, and that is great. And we have taken 1,228 photos.

So sometimes people come in for renewals, and they do the photo only. So that is awesome. And that actually translates into a little more than 50,000 So that's supporting the Staffing Edition. Yeah, we're really very, very quickly I'm amazed at how fast that went. So when I had first talked to our folks at the State Department, the office of Minneapolis, they were really helpful in getting us set up.

They estimated Northfield would do between 2,003 passports a year. We started this early 'twenty four. And we're already basically on track for that lower end estimate, which that's quick. People figured that out fast. We're one of now four. We make it four locations in the South Metro Region. It was a big region. Faribault's included in that. And I believe unless I think they may have added some evening or weekend hours in Faribault. I'm not sure.

I should double check that. But when we started, we were the only passport acceptance facility in the South Metro that had nights and weekends hours. So I think that was a big reason why it shot up. But we have the ability, that's one of the reasons they really like to work with libraries, because our hours allow us to serve folks who would have a harder time getting in. You have to make an appointment weeks or months in advance and take your kids out of school if you're going to do it during the week when they're open, if it's during the school year and you can't wait until the off time.

And then you get all the way up there to like Burnsville or whatever and you're missing a document, you gotta start over again. Just can't. It's, I think people have found, especially with children, the library to be a much more inviting and convenient place than some county services building. And that's great because we are very welcoming to families. So not that they aren't, but I mean our space is more set up for that.

So anyway, it's been successful. I will say I want to share Emily Torres submitted a little bit of a report in here too on Laureate's report. She says, Our circulation staff serves patrons not only through daily check-in but also they're being cross trained in processing materials when they come in, get wrapped, get put on the shelves. Disc cleaning, so CDs and DVDs do have to be cleaned fairly regularly to keep playing. Book repairs, interlibrary loan procedures which are continually being updated to keep the workflow smooth and efficient.

I think Emily works on those trainings and that documentation. It made several improvements to our processing procedures including this is what she said creating a detailed manual that outlines how every item in our catalog is handled. These updates have streamlined our workflow supporting training new staff and allow us to process and catalog materials more efficiently. As a result, the turnaround times are now shorter and our collection is a lot easier for our patrons to discover in the catalog. These improvements help us serve our patrons better while keeping materials updated and uniform.

That is that behind the scenes work that doesn't often get celebrated. So I am glad Emily submitted that as part of the report. And what else did I wanna add to this before I take up your whole night? I'm sure you've all read it from beginning to end. So I'll just highlight a couple of things that are exciting. We have staff who are gonna be presenting at conferences this fall. I am attending a couple, as I mentioned in October. I'm not presenting. Mm-mm. Not me. I took this year off. I did enough writing right now without having to try to write a presentation. But their chapter was submitted. Hopefully, it will be okay. They accepted the proposal but it's peer reviewed.

So we'll see if that gets kicked back to me. But we wrote it, it's 3,000 words on our internship program. Nadine and Angelica are going to represent us at Reforma which is a conference for library workers working with immigrant, Hispanic, Latino communities predominantly. They are gonna present on the internship program and I'm really excited for them. That's in Huntington or Long Beach, California. I keep getting that mixed up. And this is one that we've presented on at least once before. But they've kind of done their own take on it. So it'll be really neat to get a report back from that and get a chance to attend Reforma, I've never been to. So I think that'll be a cool experience for them.

I know that CELCO is paying for at least one of them to go. That's another benefit to being part of CELCO. So they make scholarships. Actually it sells, it does that but they're connected. Make it available to us to go to conferences without, you know, because we're mostly small and rural libraries tend to not have huge budgets for training, especially for sending people to out of state conferences.

So they support that a lot. They send a lot of to conferences and that's awesome. We also, M. Lloyd, one of our children's librarians is presenting on the TEL Library Program at the Association of Rural and Small Libraries, which is one of my favorite conferences. And actually, if you want to listen to a deeper dive in conferences and stuff, you can listen to our podcast which dropped this morning wherever you get podcasts because I have interviewed Kat, M, and Nadine on the podcast about their sessions.

So Kat is also presenting with Martha Lundin who was our Youth on Words Coordinator and left to pursue a Master's in Social Work, I believe. We missed you, Martha. But welcome, Emily, in that role. So Martha and Kat got to know each other and work together a lot in that capacity. And so they are co presenting on community partnerships.

And they do this wonderful metaphor of the three sisters, the growing three crops together and how that speaks a really great metaphor for partnerships and that kind of work, so collective impact I guess. But anyway, that's really fun. So I look forward to hearing everybody's reports on conferences and I do mention this in here, but we do have a new social story which just dropped on our web site. It dropped a lot tonight because we're always doing this. And it's lovely.

I love how it turned out. It was definitely a team effort. Pat, I mentioned this in the report, but Pat took beautiful pictures around the library showcasing that space in a very beautiful but very literal practical way because the social stories were meant to be pretty utilitarian introduction to visiting an unfamiliar space for the first time with maybe an unfamiliar or new set of expectations. It's a way to familiarize somebody who might have anxiety or sensory processing differences, people with autism. So Pat took the beautiful photos with Ben, Ellis and Hannah Kotuk, two of our summer interns.

And then I worked with staff on developing the visual story that we now have. Tyler did a lot of work on the back end to make it very screen reader compatible, which it was a fairly complicated slideshow. So he did a lot of work there to make that. And it is fully translated to Spanish. So let let me tell you, it's lot of work.

It is in memory of Tonya Yarmakov and her family and friends donated in her name to make that happen. So we're really happy to get it out. So that I think each, well, the other part was the best part. Rocky, Cassia Segueye, is one of our favorite local artists that we work with and he's wonderful to work with, worked with the family to do an illustration of Tonya so she could kind of be the tour guide through your experience of the library. So she is there providing some helpful pointers to people throughout and helping you navigate the experiences the library.

So anyway, we're happy with how it turned out and I hope that that's something of a comfort to the family and that's useful to people in the community too. And then Amy's report on the kind of summer, I asked her to do a reading challenge wrap too. So were there, did anybody like one, did you, what'd you think? And also like, do you have any questions about that, the summer reading program? Thoughts on that part at all?

I thought sorry. This is really important. Mhmm. I thought you were gonna have her come and give a rap, like our AP, which, yes. Oh. That would be amazing. Right? No. It sounds really successful. And I like the adult. And then what yes. Did y'all get to see did did anybody I am ashamed to say I did not participate. I know. I'm so sorry. But I will next year for sure because it looked very exciting.

Well, in that Karin was grabbing some of the older adults in Northfield, and then you saw this jump in numbers and I was like, I could visualize who it was. That was amazing.

I that was my my kind of my favorite part of the I mean there's always something that stands out to me and I think like, you know, one of the things that I emphasize with our service is how much it's tailored to the community that we're working with. So with that, she's built this relationship with older adults through outreach and was really thoughtful about wanting to involve them in summer reading. But the way she talked about it was like the prizes that we're giving away might not really be that useful to them given their circumstances or their living situation. So she worked with them to come up with prizes that were reasonable but made sense to them and I think ended up with a really beautiful house plant for our winner. And park pass.

And a state park pass. Oh, they did? Okay, right on. So I thought that was really thoughtful and just kind of shows how much staff are trusted to go out kind of independently and build these relationships to support their area of expertise and that we have experts at every level. And I love what she's done with our home delivery and I think she's really built that up to be something really special. So I wanted to uplift that, too. But the whole program was very popular. People had a blast, I think. I didn't participate either. I'm just going to say that.

Summer was like it just whizzed by and I'm like, did I read? I read, but I don't know. I I didn't.

Sorry. I didn't. May I ask, especially with our older population, what about like a it could be for anybody I just but what about a wintertime? I just find the wintertime is when we all kind of I don't my own parents like you don't see as many people in the winter, like all that kind of stuff. I don't know if you've ever contemplated and I haven't heard of it like another library but it seems that

Some do a winter reading. Usually it's focused on adults. Yeah. I think Cincinnati does this. I feel like Well, color is so good. Yeah. That's a good suggestion. I think we used to do kind of a winter reading, but it was more like it was more of like a trivia challenge. They stopped doing it partly because they didn't get a lot of participation. And it was a lot of work. But I think that it would be something worth revisiting too that's more reading focused and maybe more with our outreach folks too. I think that's a great suggestion. I'll mention it to Karin for sure. Mhmm.

I was also really pleased this is changing, I'm glad you included the pictures because you said the half the half pint, the half glass full. Seeing the picture of how many people were involved in that, that's amazing. That's Yeah. Really

That one's gotten super popular. I mean, the setting helps. I mean, it's awesome and they're great for hosting us, but it's really fun to actually see our book clubs in action. We have a bunch that have been around for like Joan Ennis still runs our contemporary women's writer, contemporary women writers book club. Theirs was their twentieth year. I know. It's a big group. We have the mystery book club too. Steve Sci Fi book club, those folks are loyal. So it's pretty neat but there there's a great bit of community there.

And I don't remember if I included the quote. I'll have to share that if it's not in here with the Glass Half Full Book Club. The I don't think it's in there. But somebody shared a message with Alexis and gave permission for us to share it. That she had been felt so I'm paraphrasing that way but she felt so bogged down by just sort of political things and the doom scrolling feeling that we probably all have a little bit of right now. That she'd found such comfort in the book club and a chance to escape from the feed, the news feed. And that was, I was like, oh, this is literally why we do this. This is amazing. She put down the phone and tapped into community. You don't even have to read the book, just come hang out.

But it was it was really nice to get that feedback too. So that's a whole lot of people attend those book clubs. That's a nice, I don't know, that's nice affirmation of the work that goes into that too. I also included our stats. Again, I've gotten bad about putting those in. But Karen compiles these for us. And throughout the year, it's kind of does this sometimes. But I will say our numbers are interesting because you're like, holy cow, your circ has really gone up. No, it hasn't. I mean it has a little bit.

I think it's mostly stayed fairly flat. That is because people are now renewing their books whether they want to or not. And so we haven't been getting, I think, credit for that for a while. So this will be the year where it looks like it spiked next year. Think it levels up because when you're comparing one year to the next, then it looks a little bit more normal. So this is sort of like, you know, those post pandemic stats where I was showing you, like, pre pandemic because it wasn't a very realistic 2020. It was just, obviously, let's all forget it. But So this is this may be a similar thing where we start to show like the Well, next year you'll see. But for now, just a caveat on the Circ stats. Was like, wow, your circulation's doing really great.

And it's like keeping pace with the door count. Think, oh, a lot of people are coming in. Not necessarily. They are coming in but they aren't necessarily. That doesn't translate into checkouts always. Which is fine. We have people who have moved to digital. Nationwide adults are reading less. Northfield still reads a lot more than average. But it's just, especially adult reading is declining. So we'll be talking about more of that as we go on. But I think the winter reading is a good idea because maybe that's a way to kind of encourage people. You get into a little bit of a rut in the winter. It's like, let's have some fun with books. So there are probably other factors contributing to that.

Think I probably spend a lot more time on social media than reading books than I used to. I'm to blame. Why I'm up for everything. But our door count is definitely up quite a bit. That's really nice to see a lot of people are finding their way into the library. We have a lot of library cards and that's been pretty consistently up. Some more people are using the library and finding a lot of value there. So yeah, I think I will actually wrap up there unless there's more questions or discussion on that. Any questions?

Okay. So does this mean when you say wrap up?

For me? Unless there's more.

Okay.

Yeah. This is

So we wouldn't really have a SOCO update, I'm assuming. What about our teens? Have you all met yet or do like, do you have anything to share with us? How's school starting out? It's good. It's good? Oh, do you want my mic out for that?

Yeah. Give us the update.

It's good. It's a little bit hard but yeah, it's good. I met new friends so that's good. You have a senior and you said a junior and Cedric you're also a junior, right? Okay. Alright. So, anybody else have any updates from anything you want on our radar? School has started. That's where we are. Do you have something, Cedric? No. Okay. So, do we wanna motion to

I know Bill's not here, but I will say Oh, something yeah. For the friends is the trivia bee who's coming up.

Thank you.

Do you know the day?

I will find that so fast. Hang on.

Just at the library.

It's a millionaire. Yeah. Keep that in in your mind. The trivia bee is coming up. And it's a lot of fun. Bill usually dresses up as a bee. It's amazing.

What day is that?

I am gonna get that for you. It was November 7 at the Grand Theatre. Thanks to the Grand for hosting that. Every year they do It's so much fun. Yep. November 7 at 06:00. So we'll well we won't have a meeting before that will we? No.

What is the because there's a fee for a team, yes?

All that information is on the friend's website.

I'm so sorry. Maybe 20. I feel like he always makes a like it's the same amount. Right? Or no, that's his membership. Dollars for a team. A $100? Yeah. Tenure. Yeah. Was really wrong. It. I mean, like if you have five

people I think that's right. I think that sounds right. Wait. Yeah. Will definitely send out a note to all of you and and insist that you come because it's so much fun. Their annual meet You did it last

year, right? Well Will and I last year I was out of town for it, but the year before that Will, Sonia and I did it and it was so much fun. We were kind of bad, but it was good.

Well, I did remember from last time that the friends were looking for new members to the friends.

They're always looking for new friends.

And they were looking for three or four people to be on their board and they were especially looking for people good at social media or marketing. Well, also trivia. But if you know anyone who's looking for a way to connect with others in Northfield who also loves their library, I think reaching out through that website would be an option for folks. Yep. Just wanna pitch for them because I know Other they're

pitch now I'm realizing is that to be a friend, it's just $15 or maybe $20 for a family or something. Yes. And it change.

Right now, there's a special. If you also wanna win, I can't believe I forgot to mention this. If you look at our website, it's in the home page. Oh, you did? But you can enter to win the big wood thing that was in my office that nobody really knows where it came from. It's a beautiful antique file cabinet. It's, I It is. But even if we donated it to the friends so they could raffle this off. So for $5 you get a raffle ticket. Buy as many of these as you want. Enter to win the big wood thing. You have to move it yourself. But it's easy. It's easier than it looks. But Bill will probably Well, help I cannot speak for that.

And he's not here tonight, so I guess we can volunteer him for anything. But the $5 gets you a membership to the friends, a friendship for a year. So it is it is definitely a good time because you could And like no matter what, you get something. Like how often do you get that out of a raffle experience, right? So that's that's the Friends of the Library. That's the kind of innovative thinking that they bring to recruitment and it was

Young people, this is a chance to boost your resume. Yeah. I'm also a member of the Friends of the Library that could go

on your resumes. Probably for Probably Cheaper than a cup of coffee at most places. So, a year of the Friends and you get their newsletters. You get to attend their annual meeting which is actually open to the public. And that's the other thing I'm gonna remind folks is on September 28, you wanna hear me talk more because you don't hear me talking now.

02:00. Other people will be talking that are a lot more interesting but I usually give a little mostly just a thank you to the Friends membership at that meeting for everything that they do for us because it is vast. But the twentieth and it's it's a fun afternoon, Sunday afternoon at the library. So join us for that and I actually I feel bad, I can't remember who their speaker is but come buy a raffle ticket, get put on their mailing list and then you're gonna know all the details of this stuff, right? And now I'm done.

to adjourn.

Second. All in favor of adjourning?

Aye. Great.

All opposed? Then adjourned.