SPECIAL JOINT CITY COUNCIL & LIBRARY BOARD MEETING

Will the clerk please take roll?

Good evening. Council Member Barrett.

Present.

Council Member Castro. Present. Council Member Delgado. Present. Council Member Means. Present. Mayor Inegren.

Present

Library Board Member Michelle Barrett. Present Library Board Member Kristen Blunt.

Present

Library Board Member German Chatzky.

Present

Library Board Vice President Ola Bateman. Present. Library Board President Morgan Kent. Present.

Next is public comment, do we have any speakers?

We have one speaker card mayor from Jim Hooley.

Good afternoon, good evening. Jim Hulley from Memphis, Tennessee. Love the weather here it's 117 with humidity in Memphis so I ran this morning didn't sweat I'll be coming back so this is a great time. So I'm with NUMO we're a government contractor would deal with all aspects of governments at all different levels excited to be part of this process especially libraries we have a big footprint here in California and just encouraged to learn what you guys want about the library so thank you for being here.

Thank you Okay, next is presentation action discussion item 5A to consider Moorpark City Library goal setting workshop and provide direction to staff. Mr. Laurentowski.

Thank you mayor and members of the city council and members of the library board. I'm not sure how to work this but I'll figure it out. OK great. So I'm just going to give you some background and our city manager will take over in a little bit to go through our goal setting opportunity while it's primarily why we're here so but a little bit of background most of you know this but I would just kind of go over it briefly. So starting around 2005 the city considered withdrawing library services from the Ventura County Public Library system The city's concerns were related to several operational changes that were implemented by the county.

These changes impacted property tax revenues at the time, and the city felt that the library was operating at substandard levels when compared to other county libraries. So 2006, the city hired a consultant to conduct a library operation study which confirmed that leaving the Ventura County Public Library System Would essentially be cost neutral and would not require any additional subsidy from the city. The primary decision to leave the county centered around local control of library operations in order to provide by the best level of service for Moorpark.

Ultimately, the City Council made the decision to withdraw from the county which was effective January 1st in 2007. So in November of 2006, the city awarded an agreement to Library Systems and Services LLC to provide operation of the Moorpark library. The agreement was negotiated annually until 2011 when the first five-year agreement was approved by the City Council. The provisions of the agreement remain substantially the same for the following 10 years with subsequent agreements in 2016 and 2021.

The provisions of the current agreement with LS&S include a variety of program areas such as the acquisition of materials, cataloging, displaying, processing and selecting the library's collection. Maintaining library staff at seven-and-a-half full time equivalent positions with a minimum requirement for three full time professional librarians Of course all programming, managing the interlibrary loan and integrated library system, grant writing, performance monitoring which is the annual report which is based on the California State Library minimum benchmark requirements. And of course all professional business operations such as staff development, coaching, maintaining community relations, marketing and management of the facility so the total contract amount For the most recent five-year term was $2,995,270 which included an average 3% annual increase.

The current agreement with LSNS was set to expire in June of this year and it contained a provision to extend the agreement for additional five-year term. However rather than extend the term, the City Council approved a six month extension through December As you recall, obviously to allow time to schedule this meeting. To establish goals that can be included in a request for proposals for a library operator.

So if we go briefly back to 2007 the consultant that was hired determined whether the city should operate the library in-house or contract with a firm to provide library services provided an analysis of pros and cons related to each of those options I won't go over each of these. They are in a staff report, but the study provided similar positives such as increased control of library operations, staffing and an opportunity to increase service levels which were the primary reasons that Moorpark moved away from the county in the first place.

The consultant also looked at the potential costs of each option and concluded that contract operations were less expensive than city operations by about $60,000 per year This was because contract operations were about 15% less than the city's salary and benefit burden at that time. The city also had another opportunity to compare costs in 2017 when we were approached by the City of Santa Clarita regarding the creation of a joint powers authority to share resources and operate an independent library system with other member agencies. The JPA structure anticipated that each participating member would pay into the JPA to provide for staffing, human resources, accounting and other central services.

However, the city ultimately determined that the potential savings did not provide enough of a benefit to warrant changing that service model. So this slide identifies the estimated year-over-year savings for library operations under that JPA model It's interesting to note that a library operations contract was projected to cost about $656,000 in fiscal year 25-26 under the JPA model.

However, the actual operations contract is about $33,000 less which essentially offsets any estimated savings to join the JPA. We expect that lower actual cost was most likely attributed to the city's ability to negotiate contract increases, which was the case in 2021 when the last agreement was executed. So finally, the library budget. Library operations are funded through an allocation of property taxes.

When the city took over from the county, the county agreed to transfer 100% Of the portion of the property taxes that they were receiving from properties within the city limits and 50% of the portion of property taxes allocated from property taxes in this surrounding unincorporated county. These amounts equal about 20, 22% of the total property taxes that were transferred to the city.

And although it fluctuates each year about 87% of total library revenue is funded through the property tax allocation The remaining 13% reflects other revenue sources such as investment revenues, donations, grants, printing fees and lost item fees. So as shown in that chart on the slide over the years a city has been able to maintain expenses so that there are no impacts to the city's general fund and as such library revenues generally outpace expenses. The remaining funding is maintained in the library's operation fund for equipment replacement and other one-time expenses Currently, the fund balance in that fund is about $1.7 million. So that is a brief background of where we are today and with that I will hand it over to our city manager.

And before I get up there, is there any questions from the council or the board regarding the history or the background or the budget or finances?

Yeah, I have one question please. Thank you so much Jeremy for the presentation it actually provided a lot of background very valuable Can you help me understand? You made a comment about The benefit not that there was that there was a balance that benefit that made it not a

Yeah, so that JPA model. I think that's a chart you're looking at right there. Yep, so if you look at fiscal year 2526. That JPA model estimated a certain cost escalation over 10 years span when that model was first done. I don't remember the first year there they just projected that cost increase based on CPI and variety of factors but we negotiate that contract every I'd like We just stayed where we were. So at that time, we were contracting with LS&S. We had this opportunity to look at the JPA model. We didn't do it regardless anyways, just because we didn't think the cost benefit really was there.

But then when we looked back at our actual costs, we realized that the model was off by about 33 percent That would have negated any savings that we thought we would have gotten at the time anyways. Thank

you so much for giving that detail.

So long as Board Member Bateman got us started on questions. You mentioned there's a balance of $1.7 million in the library fund from That's great. The first time I've seen a budget that was surplus for the city. Come on, Tom! That's fair. What types of things do we use that fund for and how is that fund deployed? Could that be used as we build out this new library to enhance the structure or is it for programming? Where would it go?

It is really up to the City Council. So you know that money that's been collected, we don't expend it every year. We have used it to buy computers and things like that for the library. We don't have anything on the docket right now of things but we've always thought Keeping that balance healthy, especially as we move into the new library is something we've always thought would be very important. We're expecting library operations to remain the same when we issue an RFP in the future. You know, we have seven and a half full-time equivalent staff members that will be assigned to that library through a future contract.

We've designed the library so that we could Hopefully maintain that staffing level. But as a library becomes more successful there may be a need to increase staffing and so we're going to have to look at that in the future to see where we really sit and we may have to dip into some of those funds in the future for things but then there's also a lot of things we've been talking about the library I think as our city manager goes through our goals and our goal setting There's a lot of things, technology and other types of equipment that we'll need as we need to support future programming.

But as far as now there's nothing I can tell you that we've got $500,000 set aside for these things right now it's pretty open for

And as we go through our annual budgets, do we expect to have a surplus that's going to go into the reserves? Or are we happening to have a surplus because perhaps our operator is being more efficient than we otherwise would've. What leads to us having a surplus and not maybe deploying those dollars into services?

Well I...as of now we haven't seen the need Right? And so we haven't seen the need to increase our staffing levels in, in our particular library. And a lot of that is space constraints and really, you know, maybe having more direction on where library's going. You know, it's interesting. We've looked at our library compared to other libraries just recently, we looked at Calabasas and thousand Oaks because they're actually in house staffing supporting those libraries For instance, Calabasas spends about a million dollars more than the city of Moorpark for a much less population 22000 versus 35000. So I think as this library grows, I think we have a real opportunity to look at how we expend those funds and how we should be using those. But as of now, there's no anticipation that will be increasing those costs

in the amount of revenue coming in is always going to be twenty two percent of the property taxes. That's

that's what we have we have it could change right the City Council could decide that we should not be taking 22% and putting it towards the library I don't think we've do we have a policy on that per se. I think that's just been our standard practice so the city council may want to take more and support library operations or potentially take less if that's desired in the future. So,

yeah. I think it's gonna be my last one. As we project Hitch Ranch getting built out a number of other developments getting built out property taxes and overall increasing a population that will hopefully increase with it or at least stay steady and not decline there may be more need for the library However, we also might be getting more tax dollars in. Would we expect this to expand and the amount going to reserve each year to grow with an expanded property tax base? Or would we try to find ways to fulfill those dollars or turn those dollars into services? Or is that ultimately gonna be a discussion that we have tonight?

Yeah, I think I don't really...I think I have a great answer for that but I think it would be anticipated There's a need for more services. We would be spending more money towards library services, right? And whether that's more staffing or you know, more programming which obviously is going to take more staffing so I think that our expenses are going to increase over time for sure especially as our population grows but again, I think a lot of it is gonna be on how successful our library is in the future as well I think we're all anticipating that it's going to far exceed where we're at today. So thank you very much.

Jamie, I have one more question related to the library fund. Have we established what that minimum balance should be? Because 1.7 feels pretty healthy but not necessarily for a business. Was there an understanding of the minimum balance we need to be healthy is X and what in excess are we at this point at 1.

We haven't done that type of analysis. I think how we've looked at it is just making sure we're, because I don't think from a staff perspective we've actually ever thought that we should be keeping a healthy balance in that fund per se. Our goal has always been to make sure we're being as efficient as possible and staying within the revenue that we get every year.

And so I think efficiencies that the fund balance has a byproduct of just being as efficient as we can. And you know and again with that that fund also includes maintenance costs. We do know that you know the new library is going to slightly increase our maintenance costs so there will be some additional expenditures in there but isn't it really never been really discussion about what that fund balance should be and what we should really be using that for in the future.

There's a separate fund for development impact fee as well, right? And that's for library expansion.

Correct.

Is that

correct? Yeah. So we did the fee study several years ago to provide a nexus for future development impact fees. That nexus is now strictly Towards the expansion of our library in the future. So any of those development impact fees that we get in the future will go towards expanding our library. So a lot, those funds would be somewhat restricted on how we use those.

It's a little different in our development projects that have development agreements. Those funds are a little bit more What's a great word, but there's a little bit more unrestricted on how we use

them. Is that something we did for a particular reason? For making an expansion versus dollars we could deploy?

Because when you do a nexus, when you do a fee study there has to be a nexus on why you're taking those fees. So when the consultant looked at how would we be taking development impact fees and what they should be going towards It has to go through something specific right. And so the only nexus that they can make was for knowing that you know based on a population of about half of a population half a percent per you know total total population growth knowing that will some may be at 44 45000 people knowing that that would equate to about a 22000 square foot library The only nexus they could make would be from the expansion of what we're building now to that 22,000 square feet. Okay, thank you.

Mr. Chavsky? Go

ahead. I had a question. When you have this unused balance were you aware that there was going to be an unused balance based on the budget or was it a difference between operating costs versus projected costs?

It's just the balance between actual costs and revenue. So there was, like we mentioned with Board Member Bateman, there's never been a big discussion about that excess revenue where it should be and what we should be using it for. Like I mentioned before, I think the discussion we've had internally is Knowing that we're moving into new library, knowing that we're gonna need more technology, more equipment, whatever it is.

That's what we've always expected that balance to go towards. But like I said there's never been an overwhelming discussion about a fund balance and which we should be specifically using it for.

Yeah that was gonna be my follow-up question is whether or not you were planning to kind of accumulate this amount knowing that the new library

Yeah, and I have a feeling that again our main focus is making sure we're staying within our revenue projections and making sure expenses stay under that so we're not impacting the general fund more than what that balance would go towards.

Okay thank you.

I'll circle back with one more. Right now we've had some discussion about arts and public places being used to enhance the children's area of the library, would these funds be available if we as a council and with the guidance of the Library Board be available to deploy in that way library dollars going and invested back into our library? Absolutely. Thank you

Great. Thank you very much.

Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers and the Library Board. Good to have you this evening on this very important topic. So in front of you, you have hard copies of the PowerPoint slide. I do want to mention that those hard copies when they were printed out did not include board member Barrett's library goals so there is also a separate packet Library goals forms that all of you submitted in advance of this meeting and I know Member Barrett, you also provided your goals listed on there as well.

So the hard copies does not reflect the most updated information with Member Barrett's feedback but the PowerPoint slides up here were updated to include the feedback from Member Barrett so I just wanted to let you guys know that. So we are kind of moving into the goal setting process of tonight's meeting. I think the mayor and the council are probably familiar with how this thing goes, because we've gone through several of these city council goal workshops and it's kind of facilitated in a very similar way.

The goals forms that we collected in advance helps when we have a council retreat for instance when you guys provide the council goals helps myself and the mayor sort of help guide and direct the discussion, and navigate it during that workshop. So in a similar fashion we kind of replicated that approach this evening and collected some of your initial thoughts ideas about goals objectives or just vision statements or whatever you guys had in mind about what the future library should be doing For this community. So in the slide here, it does break down sort of the role of the council and the board this evening which is to really provide us sort of the vision and high level goal statements and categories that we can then include in the RFP.

Right. So when the council directed staff to schedule this joint meeting and also issue the RFP for a library operator, it was very specific that we would include these high-level goals in that RFP document so that the respondents could then submit proposals that could substantiate how they could achieve the goals of the council and the board Uh, with specific objectives and metrics and things like that. So the library operator role after we conclude tonight's meeting which again our main goal is to try to get those high level goals agreed upon by at least a majority of this body this evening but as soon as those goals are then identified and then we issue the RFP the library operator as I mentioned will We put together sort of a specific work plan and objectives, implementation strategies.

And our staff will work with that operator that is selected to fully develop that, present it to the board, present it to the council for review approval feedback. What's really helpful is that many of you identified a lot of goals or excuse me objectives already in your library goals form. That should help the respondent and perspective operator to get some key ideas and some very literate cues, so to speak from you directly about what you're looking for.

And then we will be requiring that operator to provide the performance measurements and metrics so that we could measure how well they're doing in achieving those goals that you identify We were expecting them to provide progress reports, and then one of the key things that the contractor will be providing us is a long-term strategic plan. So tonight's meeting is really providing us some of these sort of short term or initial goals that you guys are thinking about but that contractor is expected to go through a strategic planning process which includes feedback from the community, gathering that community input as well as your input, the board's input into really putting something more long-term that is something a little bit more permanent than kind of what we're doing tonight.

Some things could change or not change between the goals we identified tonight or through that strategic planning process But what is definitely absent in this is the community input which we typically Require or include as best practice when we do it through that type of process. So any questions for For me for right now. Yeah

I see up there it says City Council and Library Board role. Those are two different roles, perhaps you could help us all understand where those roles are and then additionally under City Council and Library Board role vision and goals but I believe there's also oversight The responsibility on both of those boards that I see mentioned numerous times throughout the different comments. Could you talk about where oversight comes in and then what the relationship would be and what the stages of oversight might be between these two bodies?

Yeah, absolutely. So the City Council has final authority over the way the library operates and if it's meeting the community's mission. The Library Board has sort of that oversight authority at a lower level to kind of look at some of the operations and things that are programming and things like that and providing any feedback to staff in the operator about things to improve are enhanced at that kind of very detailed, specific level.

But ultimately the City Council has full authority of how the library runs. In terms for tonight's meeting we're sort of getting all your feedback from both the council and the board to gather and develop those goals together Now, we do have a future discussion on the role of the Library Board which is something that the City Council has requested staff to discuss at a future council meeting.

But technically, the authority of overseeing the Library Board from the State of California as a general law city is assigned to the City Council. And then, of course, those general law cities could decide to establish a library board like we have here to then provide even more specific oversight for library operations. Any other questions? Okay. All right, so moving on to the actual feedback that we all received from you individually. I've actually put them all together in this slide in your handouts of the high-level goals you've all identified. So I simply just copied and pasted what you guys put on those forms.

There were some goals that maybe needed more clarification on here and added a little bit more information For the most part it's copied and pasted directly from the forms you submitted. And so what I plan to do is just kind of go over one by one, by each council member and each board member your goals and you could either provide any context or additional information to share with this body about what you meant or what you're looking for in your statement of those goals You all obviously added more detailed information for each of those goals, which are again handed out in your packet. So you could always refer to that.

But if you wanted to pick something out or highlight something here that you wanted to clarify, feel free to do so. All right. So I'm just going to kind of go through this one at a time here. Mayor Ennergreen, you provided your goals listed here. Is there anything you wanted to highlight? Provide more context?

As you can see I put a lot of pages into these goals here. I figured I was going to just describe them anyways. But overall if I was going to I mean, I have a sustainable library operation provide more stem focus events as obviously as an engineer like to see more science stuff going on anyways. is that we've got a brand new library and I want to look at ways to think outside the box of a typical library. To me, a typical library you go in it's quiet there's books there people are studying but in reality a library is a place of knowledge that's what it is. It's a place of knowledge collaboration And I want to see more community engagement there. We got a lot of great service groups like they see the meeting their more events that are going on there and then also just just more education in total.

So I think a lot of other members put in some some some good objectives in there for educational opportunities. I know, Dr. Castro, you put in was it? Yeah. Job seeking Digital literacy, things like that are great to have. So I want to see that but I think if I was just going to provide just a brief goal for you know the applicants that are coming in to run this library I would say I want to think of ways to think outside the box and run this library as a future library and not something of the past

Okay. Great, and I also want to note too if you wanted to add something that you hadn't thought about when you're filling out this form and you want to include it tonight, this is sort of a workshop. It looks really formal right now but for our workshop it is pretty flexible so I have our Assistant City Manager who could add or make any changes here. We're also taking notes so if there's something you do think about this evening that you hadn't included please let us know that. So great thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Castro?

Yeah, I think just broadly what I was trying to get out was that the library where it's centrally located specifically in the downtown area connected to our just general policy outcomes not necessarily actually its objectives and outcomes but as of an outcome. We know that a lot of the housing that's being developed around the downtown area is low income, and there's a nexus of connection between income and overall education. And so my overall hope is that there's just this kind of framing of pipelines versus platforms. Generally we are very oriented to being a pipeline. We prepare specific programming But with this new space, which ties down to the space and environmental design I think is a city where we're positioned to be able to be a platform.

To be a convener and a hub so those programming elements that are up there I don't necessarily suggest that they would only be the responsibility of the city or the contracted agency That we would be able to use our amazing connections with the school district Our local community colleges, CSU systems to be a hub to be able to offer these supports. And then one thing that would be central to that if we could accomplish these things is to have at least some dedicated bilingual biliterate staffing because again there is a connection specifically in Moorpark with the Spanish speaking population that would be able to take advantage of these services.

So generally the thought process there.

Council Member Delgado.

One of the things that really kind of threw me in our last meeting which kind of prompted this this meeting was the overall complacency I want to make sure that I'm not talking about staff. But as far as measurable metrics performance standards all of that we are going to be requiring and asking Whoever, you know in the RFP. I just want to I Wanted to make sure that that is something that we we stick to and stay with because it was complacency on our end as well To not have gone back the last 20 years and actually asked for measurable performances So I do want to highlight that and mention that and then yes all of these I just added staying relevant in the digital age because that's coming quickly. It's here and it's past us now so we need to catch up.

Great. We'll move to Council Member Barrett.

Absolutely, so yeah I started out with you know increasing our partnerships and I think that the new space will certainly allow for that and I think that there's some great synergy between even some of the things that have already been brought up You know, the chamber does a lot of job training and courses that could also be collaborated with the library. And so I think there's good opportunity there to partner together. And I think some of those partnerships also help with the staffing, you know, keeping staffing at bay.

New library allows us to have some special exhibits and to have some space. And I believe there's cases and things going in for that specifically other libraries like the Thousand Oaks Library even has special collections and things that they have curated that makes them a destination, right? For those specific things. And I think that there's an opportunity to do more as a library in that space and to showcase different things. And again some of that can be done with partnerships you know with the historic society with different things but I think the library being able to be a hub for that is important.

The I put the Friends of the Library target fundraising goal in here. I guess it's not really RFP related per se, but I think you know it's important as we have a space in the library that is dedicated to them with the bookstore that you know we're mindful of that space and then the value of that space and I know they're all very dedicated to doing that, but you know, I think it's good for them to have a goal as well. Right? And what the expectation is with that space and that can be A motivating factor sometimes for people as well.

The, you know overall growth and improvement goals I skipped ahead a little and looked at council member means and he said it much better than I did in That being measured not just by what's around us, but by what's exceptional. Right? And we want to be the best and Moorpark wants to be, you know, the forefront of innovation, of new ideas, of new thoughts. We're doing it with things like the SPARK program and the community development, right? And we want that in our library.

So obviously having metrics and goals based on that. I think some sort of a satisfaction survey and having some options, something that's even ongoing is just key to keeping the pulse and something that the library board could watch. And I think that there's just... Opportunity to get that constant level of feedback so that you know when something's slipping or when something changes and we can kind of keep a pulse on that.

And then reaching people outside the typical library users, and this might mean The library, outside the library walls. I know we're building a beautiful library and we want people to come but the library can be more than that. And to be fair our library does that today right? You know with some of the community events they participate in and different things but I think there's opportunity to do even more and again kind of innovate in that space in different ways so yeah. That's what I got.

Great. Council Member Means?

Thank you, so I think I just want to start by saying this is incredibly exciting and this moment is maybe not the meeting of library board member Kent who laughed out loud at me for anybody watching at home The meeting aside, which I'm still enjoying thank you. It's an exciting time we have a new library coming that I think we all know is going to be a showpiece for our city there's enthusiasm about it there's intelligence in the way that it was built so that we can maximize staff Mr. Lantowski talked about that earlier I'm excited to maximize those things that we've done with that structure. What I don't want is to forget about making excellence happen inside the building, and I know nobody in this room will allow that to be forgotten but I do feel like we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to set what excellence is going to be.

We got a brand new library it's going to building is going to be excellent let's make sure that the stuff we're putting inside it is excellent and so many times I've heard Well, our library does great things considering the building it's in. Considering the resources it has and I cannot wait to get those shackles off of our library team and have it just be great. Our children's programming is you know gets legendary positive feedback around our community. Imagine when we get a bigger better facility and maybe we can dedicate more staff and maybe we have some more dollars so I am very excited about where we move forward As we define what excellence looks like, I want to make sure that we measure it. We set those goals and we measure it and we keep up-to-date on what's happening because it's great to say it's going to be wonderful in that economic development will come and more people will visit Moorpark and it's activating High Street all these things are going to be great secondary benefits and we'll have more participation and more activities and more programming But if we don't say what a win looks like now, clearly not only against what we want but also against what the best other city libraries are looking like then we'll just constantly go through saying well it seems like it was pretty good and I don't want that anymore.

And that isn't necessarily something that's going to, I see that it gets dropped from the goals. Those comments got dropped from the second pages of goals but I want to make sure that we really focus in on what are those KPIs? And I want to be in the top 25% of all those measurable categories. We have a brand new building and we have a brand new contract and we have money to spend on this effectively. Let's set that goal to be a top quartile organization.

I don't want us to compare ourselves to Ventura County. I want to compare ourselves to great libraries and maybe it's city libraries, and maybe it's our population, and maybe it's our size but whatever we collectively figure out those metrics should be, I wanna hold ourselves to being tops. I want it to be wonderful. I would also, it's a broad topic but I want a children's library that every kid wants to visit. It doesn't matter about size but so often in this county and other areas you hear about the Camarillo Library and as I visited libraries across the country and across the world, the children's library when it is really exceptional it draws people and becomes a talking point. I also want to engage those other elements of our population in the ways that have been brought up.

But, I do want to hone in on the ability to curate collections or partner with the Reagan Library or the Museum of the Mediterranean County as examples not necessarily those two organizations Where they have archives and collections of artifacts they can bring in and stories that can be told, and can bring to life the pictures and the people that have been around that particular topic. And those can fluctuate, not fluctuate but roll through every two months or every three months whatever is advised by a library operator And then I go back to the dollars.

I want to get the most out of the dollars we spend. And as we hopefully grow as a city and as our population grows a bit, what I don't want to see is oh look, we've got a population that grew by 4% and our library programming attendance grew by 4%. That's not necessarily growth, that's not growth because of the programming and the success of the library. That's growth because the population got larger so I want to see us measure ourselves on a per person or per attendee or program per population some of those metrics that allow us to know that we truly are setting a standard for exceptionalism and then if we don't hit whatever those standards may be in the goals that are being talked about Finding a way to interrupt a process and improve it.

We're not going to hit everything out of the park all the time, we're gonna take a swing at a new program or a technology idea that just didn't work. Turns out AI was just a fad and it didn't catch on. Or whatever it might be. AI told me to say that. But whatever it might be, it's okay to say that program didn't work. That goal didn't work. Let's review it however I would say annually and make sure that we're still setting goals that are meaningful not sticking to goals because we set them once upon a time and haven't changed so that is where the nexus of my input came from.

Great thank you for that All right, moving to the library board. President Kent sounds really nice there. Does it? You want to provide any input or highlight any of your feedback in the class?

Yeah, I mean, I want to echo a lot of what the council has already said. I think a lot of it is great points were, I think echoing a lot of similar things tonight. Specifically, I started again with equitable access and offering a variety Things that encourages that educational and literacy. And I pointed out STEM, you know adult programs and I know they've done some partnerships with like the chamber with college readiness things and of that nature but we have so much more that we could do with the partnerships in this town we all know there's a lot of ways to connect to that And I know they're starting to connect more with Moorpark College, but I think I encourage that as well too because they have a big library there. They're actually talking because of the 60th of their rotating exhibits in their libraries so let's pop them down here for a little rotation or you know...

So partnering with them because they're a big library too I think that gives us More access. Also, with Moorpark College I will say too again the literacy in the education and bringing those students back down the hill you know down here to integrate with our students we have such a great community college and developing that partnership even more. I know that they're doing actually story time at the zoo too so I know that's like on the horizon but I think we could do even more of that with specifically the learning and educational aspects of it Um, I think I put a customer service and you know fiscally responsible library operations obviously to make sure that we're spending the dollars well. I know we've all talked about that and uh you know really a personable face when you come to the library and a personable attitude is I think something really important and so when we look at, you know, you know whatever happens next with the contracts of like really giving that warm welcome.

And whether that's just the building itself i'm sure that'll make us feel more warm and fuzzy coming into that rather than what we have now but um I think that engagement of staff as well is important Let's see, data community feedback. We talked about that customer satisfaction. I love that idea and as we're looking for more roles for the library board, I like that pointed us out on that one. I think you know we are a representation of the community to a certain degree um and getting us to collect that feedback or having specific projects that we feel like that can benefit the library in a goal setting or decision making.

Yeah, like that I'd encourage that as well. And then last position the new library is one of more parks community gathering spaces and a lot of you know my programming background around here and I do drive my kids to Camarillo because they like the ship. You know we've been to Thousand Oaks Libraries tons of times and I think really having a space That is a centerpiece which I know we're trying to do. We just got our tour this week. Very very excited for the spaces that we have and it, I think it does you know offer more programming which is a big part of what a library is these days right? We talk about education that is a program right? We are trying to enhance our community through programming through a free community resource in the library so yeah Okay,