Of the library board to order, please. Roll call. Council member Bowie. Council member Jalali. Yeah. Council member Johnson. Council vice president Kim. Council president Naker? Here. Council member Yang? Here. And chair Jost? Here. And we have three present, three absent with council member, and Kim being excused. And then council member Johnson will be arriving shortly. The first item that we have on the agenda is the approval of minutes, but we will skip, that item, and we'll be going straight to the staff report. So the first item that we have is staff report twenty five-twenty nine,
library safety model update. Thank you. And we have, Rebecca Ryan here to go ahead and start this presentation. So welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Library Board Chair, Joest and council members. I just wanna state upfront that, this is a really complicated topic. There's lots of nuance. And we are super happy to meet with you individually or give you further information if there's something in particular that, each board is interested in. Obviously, there will be time for questions. So, when we're talking about library safety and,
our model and our strategy update, I wanna start out by underlining and emphasizing that the safety of our staff is our highest priority. The public library has a unique role to play in our city and in our public spaces. When we think about what that means, we talk about the library as a place. It's warm in the winter. It's cool in the summer. We have bathrooms. It's a place for people to be. It's a very low or perhaps no barrier public space that people can come without having to buy anything, or be a member or any any of the ways that we might create barriers
to people being in public together. We're a space. We provide services. We, host meetings. We, partner, very effectively in some instances instances to host space for things that need that space. And then lastly, we're a content provider. You can come to us for books, materials, programs, whether that's online or in our physical spaces. That is one of the roles of the library. When we're talking about safety, mostly our community comes to us because they see us as a safe place. And sometimes they come to us for help specifically because of the reasons that I
mentioned above. There might be a particular service provider. There might be a meeting. It might be a safe place for them to be outside of the cold or outside of the hot the heat for a while. So all of these reasons are valid library uses, but sometimes they might contribute a little bit of friction to our space, depending on how people are thinking about the modern public library and how they're expecting it to be when they show up there. But in 2024 Oh, Rebecca. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. I apologize. I just wanted to announce that council member Johnson just arrived.
So We can pause if we need to take room for business. That's okay. No. That's okay. I just wanted to announce that she's arrived so that it's for the record that she's that she's here. Thank you. Yeah. So we were open over thirty two thousand hours, so we were open over thirty two thousand hours, and we had 1,200,000 in person visits. And, I wanna emphasize that less than 1% of those visits ended in what we call an incident in our libraries. So overall, our libraries are safe spaces and the vast, vast, vast majority of people that are walking through our doors every day are coming for
one of the purposes that I mentioned above. This work has evolved. This is, I think, a topic that I've noticed the most change in over my almost seventeen years of work with the Saint Paul Public Library. Everything that shows up in our communities shows up in our libraries, including the challenges. Our library staff are serving on the front lines and the job that they do evolves. So we're asking them to do a lot. And as I said, if you're a space and a place and people are coming to you for content and they're coming to you to feel safe, that's a very complicated public place.
That's a very complicated, list of reasons to kind of keep track of and be situationally aware of. And, you know, things recently, I would say, the pandemic and post pandemic, perhaps most especially the opioid epidemic and how it's hitting our cities with fentanyl in particular. The work the library and the city partners have done to reimagine how community first public safety happens in Saint Paul, and then some work that the library's been pursuing even before the pandemic. Things like, what does it mean to be trauma sensitive when you're providing customer service?
What does it mean to provide social work services in the library? What does it mean to be bias aware about the strategies that we're using to provide customer service? That is those are key ingredients that we're capitalizing on when we're talking about safety. And so I wanna underline that we definitely don't do this work alone. You'll see some of our partners here, ONS and familiar faces, police, fire, parks. That is, I think, also one of the biggest changes that I've seen in my time as a city employee is the enterprise approach that we're bringing to this conversation about public safety is,
stronger than I've ever experienced. And, a key way to make, I think, the library and our library staff feel like they're not alone in addressing some of the challenges that are in our city. So, some of our past practice that's informing our current practice, is definitely our code of conduct, what that looks like. As I mentioned, incidents and incident reports, a practice of noting and documenting what's happening in our spaces across our system. When somebody, someone's behavior is outside of the boundaries of our code of conduct in the library,
we, look at our banning guidelines and we determine if if that behavior is eligible for something that we refer to as a banning. So, for example, if somebody is, for example, smoking fentanyl in our public restroom and we know who it is, we will ban that person from library spaces for thirty days. Then in terms of how we were addressing behavior challenges in our spaces, we've had a mix of contract and security. We've had support from community ambassadors. We have done a ton of training,
with our staff. In some ways, we have improved our internal practices in addressing situations and behaviors. But really in, 2022, that none of those things were enough. We had come to the end of the things that we as a library could do on our own to improve safety. So we were granted, dollars 1,500,000.0 in art funds to help us evolve this approach to safety in the library public spaces. So our updated library safety plan, it's a key addition to the city's community first public safety work,
and we want to create a welcoming and safe city that works for everyone. So we the first thing we did when we started out is we realized we had, you know, we had kind of taken it for granted, frankly, that our community members see us as a safe space. We had never asked them what makes them feel safe. Do they feel welcome and safe and comfortable in our library spaces? And we contracted with a firm called SDK Communications, and they put together a really amazing team to help us evolve this work and
approach to help us survey our community members. And, the people on their team included people with backgrounds in more traditional security and building management. They included violence interrupters. They included people with, expertise in restorative justice, neighborhood safety, and they also included library staff and community members. And included some of our city partners as well. So, the highlights of our community feedback, emphasize that the library is a safe place. It's where we got that phrase that we've been using. They helped us come up with it, that the library is a place to do life,
that that's what people are coming to do when they're coming to our spaces. So fortunately, a majority of our Saint Paul residents feel welcome and safe and comfortable in our libraries. And what's unacceptable to us is how safe and welcome and comfortable you feel in our libraries. Unfortunately, it's, less for our BIPOC patrons than our white patrons. So as you will see, that's a key portion that we wanna continue to address when we're talking about a culture of safety in our buildings. We're gonna keep talking about it. It's a key performance indicator that we'll continue to measure.
But the community members' highest priority is for the library to be a welcoming and respectful place. And what that looks like to them is, sometimes things that I think seem simple and are not, like, being greeted when you come in the door, Being able to identify who is a library staff person. Having a comfortable place to sit. Knowing the library is cleaned regularly. These are the things that matter to our community members when they're thinking about a welcome and safe space. So our safety plan, which we evolved at the end of twenty twenty three and we've been working on
since, has three pillars, and I'll go into depth in some of them. Really, we're talking about building a culture of safety. That's all of our work in the library. It's a welcoming environment. It's knowing who library staff are. It's displaying and using community agreements, which I like to think of as a friendlier face of our code of conduct, perhaps. It's something we worked with, community members to inform. If you've been in our libraries, you'll see them when you walk in the door. You'll see staff. I didn't wear mine so fail on my part today. But you'll see our staff wearing our lanyards,
that we had all staff wear. So it's easier for patrons to be like, oh, that's a staff person. That's a person I can ask my questions. We wanna cultivate relationships with neighbors and community. And we wanna set a positive tone in our spaces. The second pillar is really about consistently responding to those safety challenges. So we wanted to make safety roles internal staff positions. We wanted to respond to incidents consistently and fairly. We wanted to document and learn from that response. And we wanted to create site specific playbooks that are really dialing into,
crisis and emergency management in each of our buildings. So I'm going to invite up and I spent much of 2024 working with HR to develop those new safety rules. So I'm going to invite up our new library safety manager, Alex Corey, and, one of our safety specialists, Robert Edwards the third. And Alex is gonna tell you, some of the improvements that we've made in our specific safety practices at the library. Oh, thank you, Rebecca. And this is so exciting because I know this has been worked on for a
long time. So I'd like to welcome, Alex and Robert. Thank you for being here. Board chair, Chos. Fellow council members, thank you, for your time. As introduced, my name is Alex Corey. I am the library safety manager. A little bit about myself because I don't think I've formally spoken at this yet. I have been with the library since May of twenty four. Before that, I was working with Saint Paul Public Schools doing similar work in emergency management and crisis support and helping our schools develop safety plans and practice those skills.
So I'm excited to help support that in, in the library spaces. As we, in addition to that, we have budgeted for, but we also, onboarded five safety specialists in December. So we've been we'll talk a little I'll give a little time to talk about that later. First, I wanna talk about, a couple of things that we've implemented so far. First off, we talk about what was called the safety playbook. So this is what is could be considered like the emergency response guide, the emergency action plan. This tends to be the one stop sign the one stop source for,
the response guide for libraries at their specific sites. While while management and administration can give can give guidance on what to do, it doesn't always give that clear instruction on how does this work in my space. So So that's where we give the site specific playbooks to give that opportunity to say, this is the these are the goals that we wanna hit. These are the goals we wanna hit when we are responding to a situation, but these are the things that we have to consider in our spaces. So that's, what the goal of those playbooks are. I would say that they are also living documents.
We've made countless changes since we first since we first implemented them, but that's because we want to be able to be responsive to the realities of the space. What we've also done is implemented some trainings that, staff have the opportunity to, participate in to enhance their knowledge. The first one written on there is, well behavior management. This is, this is the this is helping in terms of, like, deescalation training when we have escalated situations in our spaces while also prioritizing the personal safety of our staff members while they are,
interacting in those situations. And sometimes the answer medical emergencies. Specifically for our safety specialists, we have them trained and prepared to administer, Narcan or Naloxone in our spaces if need be. As we have identified that that is a continuing and growing problem in our spaces, we want to make sure that we can respond to that. And then that last one on there is what we call the standard response protocol. It's a major port major area of our safety playbook, and I'll give a little bit more information on that on the slide deck here.
The standard response protocol is a, is a set of universal building wide procedures, that we have we have and we are currently working on implementing in our library spaces, which allow us to have, these five universal actions that allow us to respond to a myriad of situations. So, for example, we may go into a secure for something that's happening outside of our building. That key there that we train our staff on is if there's something of concern outside, secure may be the right tool for you.
So the advantages of using this is that we get to use the same language in all of our branches. We have library staff who are helping out their other branches to either, you know, stay open or they're going over there to, you know, promote a program or whatnot. So our goal is for our library staff is if you hear lockdown, if you hear secure, you know what that means and you know what the goals are of that action. Additional benefit, our partners in Parks and Recreation are working on adopting this as well. And our, and our students who will go to Saint Paul Public Schools,
are very used to this. So when they come to our library spaces, they have that information as well. This is one of the key areas that the playbook specifically articulates. How do we successfully achieve a lockdown in that in our spaces, or how do we successfully secure in our spaces? So, those playbooks have that answer for, buildings, and that's what I'm helping branches develop that thought process. One more thing I'd add in terms of implementations that we didn't get on the slides is, some infrastructure that we are working on is the vapor monitors in our in our bathrooms. We've identified a lot of
smoking or vaping that wants to be, done in our in our bathrooms. We are coming to the end of our pilot, over at Rondo in Arlington with those vapor monitors. And our goals, which we think we've met, is that we've reduced the amount of, cases of unnecessary exposure for our staff where, oh, I think someone was smoking in there. Oh, let me go take a sniff. That's we don't wanna do that because that's not what we want our staff to do. This lets us understand that from a safe distance and respond safely as well.
Council President Naker. Thanks, Georgios. I, I appreciate this update. And I remember when we funded the vapor monitors, I believe the plan was to implement them in all libraries. I thought right away, but is that not the case? Thank you. A couple other than that. To my understanding, we have the funding for it, but we wanted to make sure that we had the proper rollout of it. Like, what we've un what we've learned when we first started at Rhonda was that there is a lot of technical details in the, like, software suites and how much information is there,
and that's almost been a little overwhelming. So we've been trying to filter that down so it's more accessible for our staff who need to respond to that. So once we have that dialed in, we're writing a operational guidance for that, and then we can roll that out to the rest of our staff a little more efficiently without as many bumps. Director Hartman? Thank you. Just to clarify, the funding for the pilot locations was in the 2024 budget. And now in the 2025 budget, we have the funding to bring them to the remainder of the locations. So we'll be working on that,
as soon as we can. So So we also wanna talk about our safety specialists. And I'm gonna talk very briefly and then pass it off to Robert here. But the overall purpose of our library safety specialists is to help support the overall safety strategy. So those three pillars that, Rebecca talked about, you know, supporting that warm and welcoming environment, being in the spaces, knowing who is in the space, and, quite frankly, the community knowing that we are in the space as well. The the the, you know, safety specialists are helping develop some of the trainings and the,
and the guidance that we are that we talked about earlier. And then, further along, we're also looking to, talk about more of that restorative more of that restorative justice piece and how we can implement that into some of our work as well. But I'm gonna stop talking, and I'm gonna pass it off to Robert to talk a little bit more about what his work looks like. Hello, council members and board members, and thank you for listening to me, and allowing me space to share my experience. My name is Robert Lee Edwards the third, and, before coming to the library, I had attained a criminal justice degree in 02/2019 because I wanted to help those
and serve, that other population that I think is underlooked and underserved like myself growing up. And so I first started out, as a substitute teacher. I have a substitute teaching license in Minnesota and Wisconsin. And, through my journey there, I found myself wanting to be a little bit more criminal justice involved. So this last summer, before I started with the library, I was working at a, child care center in the Rondeau community. And there, I was the school age leader, and I had brought my own restorative justice program where I wanted to teach the youth about,
Rondo history while merging, restorative justice to manage their behaviors while giving them kinda like a different type of learning from from planets to neighborhood community stuff to just, Rondo and everything in between. And so I found ourselves at the library. In the library, this is my first time post pandemic, experiencing the library, and the environment, definitely seemed a little different when we first came in. The typical library I'm used to is just seeing families or people studying or people hanging out,
but there is kind of a different clientele that I noticed, a little bit and, it made me question my safety a little bit. But being in the environment and, Rondo did a great job of having separate spaces and everything, and so the library was a safe space where me and my kids used the library every day. And we did learning, we did research. The library provided us with plans, materials, coloring sheets. I felt like I bothered them too much because every day I came, I needed something different. It's like, hey. It's me again. Can I borrow this? Can I have that? But they were open armed.
They were welcoming, and it was a safe space for me and my youth to hang out for me to teach them in an environment outside of our daycare that showed them a little bit something different. So it was a pleasure to be at the library every day. Fast forward a little bit. I had seen a library, safety specialist position come about online. I wasn't sure what it, what it meant or what it was, but I was interested in it, with my criminal justice background. And after interviewing and figuring out what I would have to do, I was more than excited to bring, safety and customer service together to deliver an experience to the community that they have
not had before. When I first stepped in, I was not sure what the job looked like, but you better believe that mister Alex and the library folks made sure we had all the training that we needed. And let me tell you, when I tell you all the training, I mean, from how to check out a book to well training to just the how to find the back ends of this and that. Trust me. If there is a training, I did it. So after being trained out, no offense to anybody, for about two weeks, I was ready to get to work. And I was very excited. My one question was is that,
how can I start my day every day? What does this look like? Or how do I do my job the right way? To I believe it was, miss Maureen. She just said, just greeting people and saying good morning is just a good way to get it started. So I work currently at Rondo on Mondays and then I work at, George Latimer Central, throughout the rest of the week. And I start my shifts by sitting at the welcome desk and every person that comes to the door, I greet them. Hello. Good morning. How are you? Hello. Good morning. How are you? And most of the people reply back with a hello and a good morning. Some people don't. I don't get offended.
I just kind of keep it moving. And I found value in that because as I found myself navigating the library space and actually doing the job and having to approach uncomfortable situations or situations I was not sure about, my customer service and my grace in the way that I saw people as humans, led every interaction. And so, first interaction I would like to share one day, I was just freshly new. There's a gentleman who, was in the library and I was walking by and he says, Steph Curry. I looked left, right. I said, that's not me. He's like, Steph Curry.
I kinda look again and it was okay. He's like, no. Fresh Prince. Fresh Prince. Come here. Come here. I'm like, me? He's like, yeah. Fresh Prince. Come on over here. He's like, what's up, man? How you doing? I'm like, hey. What's up? He's like, yeah, man. I just wanted to tell you, man, that there's something about you, and I'm not sure. But, man, you you sharp, man. Like, how woah. Woah. What's up? And I'm like, thank you. I appreciate it. I'm like, you know, I'm Robert. This is what I do, and just tell him about my job. And he's like, man, you're super cool, man. Thanks for talking to me. I'm like, not a problem. Just kept it pushing. It was kind of a odd encounter, but I wasn't worried.
I was here to greet people and build relationships. And so the next time I seen the guy, he says, Fresh Prince coming over here quick. I'm like, alright. I got time today. So I've gone over. I say, hey. What's the matter? He said, you see that lady over there? She needs help with something, man, and I don't know what it is, but she just needs help. You go over there and ask her. And I'm like, okay, man. So I go over to the printer and I'm like, hey, ma'am. How are you? You need anything? And she was like, oh, actually I do. I'm trying to figure out how to print this and do that. And I'm like, okay. So again, I have plenty of training so I know how to print.
I know how to find a library book. I know how to look up. So I got you covered. This is easy. So, hey, you drop the money in the printer, you click this button that and magic. So I found myself magically navigating the system pretty nice. So I go back over to my friend. I'm like, hey. How'd you know she needed help? He was like, oh, man. You know, sometimes you just put stuff together and and it all works out. And I was just like, yeah. You're right, man. Cool. So see you later. So my final, encounter with this gentleman was recently and he had, said, again, Fresh Prince, come on over here real quick. Come on.
What's up, man? And he's like, what would you say about a person or to a person who's never paid bills, who's never had a house, who's never graduated from school and never tried? He was like, you probably would, you know, say they're a little and I was like, wait a minute. I was like, woah. I would say to a person like that, it sounds like you never had an opportunity to take advantage of renting a house or going to school or paying bills. But it seems like if you had the chance to do so, you would do it. So I would I would encourage you to look into it if it's something you want. And he was like, he just kinda looked at me and I was like,
yeah, man. Like, you got it. And he wasn't expecting that, you know, reply. But it he was like, well, I'm I'm getting ready to get housing and I'm excited about it and I can't wait. And I was just like, dude, that's awesome. Like, I'm excited for you. So it's like, if you don't see me around anymore, just know that I'm safe. And I was like, not a problem, ma'am. So I've seen him last week and I approached him and I'm like, hey, how's your housing going? Like, how's everything? And he was like, how's this going good? I got an interview and I'm so excited. And I was like, man, I'm proud of you. If you need an advocate or anybody, let me know. And and he was very grateful.
And so, that gentleman is just somebody that, really stuck out to me and made me feel proud to know. And there's other times when I am in crisis or in situations where I have to solve things, one thing is important is my body language. So everybody I approach, I approach them calmly and we work things out. And why I started to notice compliments from my coworkers about my ability to do my job in such a way, and I appreciated, you know, those compliments and it's really just about your energy and how you present. There is there was a gentleman who was banned from the library.
He wanted to come back, and and we had to I had to reask him to leave. But while asking him to leave, he was convinced that I was that he was like first of all, he was in denial. He's like, yep. It's not me. Wrong guy. Wrong guy. Blah blah blah. But I knew it was him. And so instead of, like, being aggressive or pushing, I was like, hey. This actually is you. It's the right person, and this is what's gonna happen. Walking him through the process of how he could come back or what it would look like. He was like he stopped me. He was like, nope. This isn't real. And I'm like, why isn't it? He's like, because you're you're you're convincing me,
and you're doing such a good job of being so nice that this can't be real. And I was like, no. It actually is real, and I don't have to be mean and aggressive for you to kinda see that it's real. It just kinda is what it is, and this is how I'm gonna handle it because that's who I am. And, immediately, the dude was he was just so thrown off and here we were just having a stare down and I'm like, hey. Yeah. It is what it is. And, you know, eventually, he started to move and as he left, he just was like, hey, man. You know, I could tell that you were not kind of a guy that I was gonna be pushing or trying.
So he was like, you know, thanks for being cool. And I reassured him, not a problem. If you would like to come back, here's the process. You can appeal this. We can have a conversation, and we can move forward. And one of the last stories I would like to share is that, it's not always easy at the library. Whenever we're dealing with these patrons and individuals, they're not willingly going. These conversations, I'm getting cussed out, called all kind of names, And recently, I was spit at on Monday at work. And, but that didn't deter me from the work. I didn't act out. The situation had happened.
Everything it went through, and I solved it and and moved on from it. I don't have bad days with this position because every day is a new day to serve. And some days when I reapproach people, they don't even remember the last time. So some it's even more important for my energy to be on point. And so within that though, I still do find joy for the job because just three days ago, when I was working and what I often like to do is go through youth services and if there's a group of kids just hanging out, I like to sit and reading books. And so I was sitting in youth services,
walking through and I've seen a group of, special ed youth that were there from the city of Saint Paul, and I asked her if I could read them a book. And, it it it brings such joy to my heart to be able to do so many different things at the library. And reading books to the youth and just interacting with them, is one thing that really brings joy to my heart. And, I find myself reading this book and there's a young lady sitting next to me and she's, like, repeating the words and she's really excited and, it truly is a blessing. And so for me, I show up to the library every day ready to serve,
not knowing what will happen, but know that, if my presence is there and my energy is right and I focus on being a light, that any good thing is possible. So I've been with the library since, the December, and like I said, I haven't had a bad day. I love going to work every day. Every day is a new day and every day is an opportunity to just again be a light. So thank you all for listening. I appreciate it and yes. Thank you. I should have known I shouldn't follow-up the end of the presentation from the left or so I think you can hear,
from what Robert is saying that restorative practices are sort of the next pillar that we really need to implement in 2025. When sometimes when we ban people, it's because we have no other tools in our toolbox. And so we're hoping that leaning into restorative practices like chats and circles can be a way that we can, rethink some of our banning process and rethink some of those kind of lower level behavior disturbances in the library. I think, my best example of this is the ETHOS program in the city attorney's office where they have, really,
I think, figured out what are the situations that respond really well to restorative practices and circles. And, you know, I think there are things like dog bites and noise complaints. And, frankly, a lot of the things that I see, like, happening in our space, it's not a big thing that it's not a crime, for example, for for the crimes, we call the police department. But for, something that's crossing boundaries, we we need to have other ways than banning to address it. Especially if you're coming to the library to do your life,
it's pretty hard if you get banned for a period of time that could be thirty, sixty, ninety, even hundred and eighty days. And last but not least, continuing to think about, as a trauma sensitive organization as we're, you know, we're exposing our staff to trauma through their jobs. And so then it's our responsibility as employers to think about what are the tools to address that trauma. So Robert has figured it out, but, it is, not great to hear about staff getting spit on and things like that. But, so those are the things that we're looking into right now.
We have a staff well-being committee that's exploring what are the options that are gonna help staff address some of those challenges that they can face. I do wanna talk about how we wanna measure the success of this work. So this is a lot of information. You know, when you do a big plan and a strategy, you really get to love coming up with the key performance indicators. But I think these are just indicators that we can use to measure how successfully we're doing our work. This first one you'll see is the equity inclusion and anti racism one. When we resurvey our patrons,
we're planning to do a safety survey on an annual basis. We, hope that the inclusion of different, things that people have told us they wanted, a welcoming, safe environment, safety specialists, staff they can pick out, help our BIPOC patrons report feeling welcome and safe and comfortable at a rate that's more equal to library patrons overall. I won't, go too far into all of these. They're in the PowerPoint. But I do wanna point out that, we are super hopeful about our safety specialist model. Our incidents in some of our locations have fallen and our bannings have fallen as
well, which, frankly, I didn't expect to see as soon as, as soon as we've been seeing it. And, so our work for 2025 is really that full implementation of that safety strategy and model. Add to our existing team of safety specialists, launch our restorative practices, and finish that playbook process with all of our locations. We're gonna continue to partner with others in the city's community first public safety goal. We're gonna continue to evaluate our model to gather that qualitative and quantitative data and identify a sustainable funding source for it.
And lastly, we have identified an architectural partner and we're developing a timeline for some staff and community engagement for our welcoming and safe, RONDO project, which, as you recall, is, some funding to potentially move the bathrooms and make some space changes at the RONDO library to contribute to CPTED. I can never remember what it stands for other than environmental safety. So we are really happy to take questions. And Councilmember Johnson, we're happy to provide any kind of ward specific data.
I said this to the other council members before you were here. So Okay. Any questions? Councilmember Naker. Thanks, Chair Jones. A couple of questions. First of all, thank you so much for the presentation, Robert. It's especially great to meet you. I feel like we often don't get to hear from people who are working directly on the front lines, and it's really great to hear your experience. So thank you for everything you're doing. I I'm glad you talked about how we're measuring success because that was gonna be one of my questions. And I'm curious what you're hearing directly from from frontline staff. How are they feeling about safety? How are they seeing these measures playing out?
Out? We don't have safety specialists in all of our buildings. But in our buildings with safety specialists, our staff, are already telling Alex and me and the safety specialists themselves how much they appreciate the work, how much it is, contributing to that welcoming culture of safety. Quite frankly, in some of our buildings, we need folks whose only job is to contribute to to pay attention, to interrupt behaviors before they get out of control, to keep that constant situational awareness that sometimes the rest of our staff are they have
other jobs. And I think that is part of the reason that the model is succeeding so far. I also think with the advent of Alex's regular trainings in in the behavior management, the incident management, first aid and CPR. It can be a struggle to implement those trainings on a regular enough basis to help staff remember how to do it, quite frankly. And I think, that's been a key piece of what we've been able to do with, expanded capacity on our team to bring things that we as library staff don't have
expertise in. Councilor Nordinger? Thanks, Chair Jones. And sort of a follow-up question. I'm curious if I know you talked about surveying patrons to see how they feel in the libraries as one of the metrics, but I'm wondering if surveying staff is also one of the metrics. Yes. That's definitely part of the, our key performance indicators is surveying staff and, particularly in, how they feel about their role clarity. What what is their job? What isn't their job? Where do we lean on our, community safety partners, for example? Where do we look to put, safety specialist positions,
etcetera? And how they're whether they're feeling safe as well. Okay. And then finally, Chair, thank you. I'm just curious. I know we've talked about, staffing in libraries in our budget talks many times and the fact that staffing itself is one of those where in libraries, for example, where we don't have library safety specialists because we're not going to have those across the board, just having enough bodies on hand to deal with the situation when it comes up is key. How are we doing in terms of staffing? And how are we tracking how often libraries have had to close early or open late or close due to lack of staffing?
Yes. We are tracking that. We had a strange confluence of factors in 2024 that led to a really high vacancy rate in the library system, and we have largely rehired those positions. And we well, we closed libraries this morning due to weather. But, I believe we've closed the library once this year due to staffing situations, as you know, most and that's mostly because, I think all of us with children know that this has been a really hard winter for illness. But our staffing situation has improved, with our new hires,
and, I should call out Alex's work for, helping us bring those new hires, like, immediately on board with how we're addressing topics of, safety and space management. Any other questions? Councilwoman Yee. Thanks, Chair Jost. I just wanted to say overall, I enjoyed every part of the presentation. And I just really appreciate you all coming back and sharing with us the results of the survey. And really, it sounds like it's the beginning of an evaluation phase, which in the council here we've always been wanting to see more departments come back
and discuss that part of their work, once the implementation happens and after. And so I really appreciate you all for that. I also enjoyed hearing the real life, work experiences being on the ground. And so I wanna say thank you to you both. And Robert, you have done an incredible job being a storyteller, and I hope you continue doing what you do for a very long time. I wanna commend all of you, you know, from our library staff to the partners that you have in the room here for your work because what I am really grounded in in this moment is that it
takes so much compassion, show so much patience, and so much love for community to be doing the work that you all are doing, especially when you are facing violence, that you are facing situations that are really hostile. And to be able to bounce back and continue to do this work from a place of joy, it takes a lot to be able to do that. And so I have the utmost respect for each and every one of you. I'm really glad that you spoke about the successes and like how we measure that because that is something I'm really interested in.
One thing I wanted to hone in on is really the, is that overall, it seems like there were huge takeaways from the survey that the consultant did, is that right, the consultant did that. And I would like to, ask for all of you really to dig more into really that piece around safety that our BIPOC patrons are experiencing. Like, for me representing Ward 6 in the Eastside where it is a very diverse community and where we're having, Hayden Heights be renovated. Like, I I believe that even physical changes to our libraries is a way that folks
can feel safer. And on top of that, there's so much more that can happen, within that too that we can do. And so some of the things that I've been hearing a lot about is, how we can get more staff who are speaking different languages in the libraries, how we can make sure that, our staff are reflective of the diversity in the communities, and even, like, the materials that we have too. I know that we've had a big boost in bringing in more books that are in different languages, and that is huge. I mean, I would love to continue seeing more of that. And so those are the things that I I'm hearing from people that they really
love, they would like to see more of. But I also think that there's so much more input for us to be getting from our communities about this. And so, I know that the survey you did, you did it already, and I I hope that we will do it many more times down the road. I I would say even do it doing it at the end of the year really to gauge, that, like what differences you see. Like that is even how you can measure success too. And so that's something that I would encourage and urge us all to consider doing. And I would be really supportive of making sure that we continue,
funding, things like that so that we can actually have the resources to be able to make those, surveys and just ways of engagement happen in our library department. The I I was wondering, overall, if you have any anything you'd like to share or are able to share in terms of of, like, safety that our, BIPOC patrons are experiencing? Like, what are some of the things that you have heard on the grounds that you would like to share with us? That way, we can start thinking about the those things, especially as we start talking about the budget season for next year,
and which I I do wanna say this council cares so deeply about safety in the libraries, and and that's why we fought very hard to make sure that we did, put in more funding for safety in libraries, including the sub pool money as well. Thank you, council member Yang. That is, I think you have hit what part of what makes it so complicated is that all of the things that we do add up to a safe place for community and that we can always do them better. And that is, what I feel really committed to is to keep surveying and keep asking. Some of the things that I called out as ways that patrons said,
made them feel welcome and safe and comfortable, were things that BIPOC patrons emphasized. For example, that it's a respectful library, that they know that the bathrooms are cleaned regularly. There were some things that were, more important to our BIPOC patrons that are white patrons. I believe, actually, that, being able to identify library staff and especially who's a safety specialist, which we're still working on, is is, one of those pieces. So, thank you. And, yes, I I share your commitment to continuing to study and do better in this area.
Awesome. Thanks so much. And just one last question I have. I I was wondering, like, are we are we moving around and the library safety specialists that I know you had a few libraries on the slide there where they are, deployed right now. But if, for example, there was a situation where escalation happened at a different library, like, what how would a situation like that be addressed, or if we aren't moving the library specialists safety specialists around, then what are the ways in which you do address that moment on the spot at that library?
Thank you. The we are trying to view our safety specialists as a system wide resource. And the reality is that some of our branches need that resource more than others. We are, one of the reasons we want to hire a full complement of six is that we can have that flexibility to continue to address, what I would call hot spots. Council member Johnson is really familiar. We had the bus stop move in front of Sunray and had a, immediate increase in incidents in the library. Should we have a situation like that again, that is totally a place that we would deploy one of our safety specialists.
Great. That's really good to know. Thank you again. Thanks, everybody, for all your hard work. Thank you. Questions? Councilmember Jones. Thank you. So, yeah, I also really enjoyed just hearing, I always enjoy hearing about these different stories and the different encounters from our wonderful staff members. So, Robert, thank you for, giving me a few things to Google about a little bit, and then also just being able to hear just how you were able to engage with community members. And so I think one of the things I take from your, your testimony today or your presentation today is really around how,
it's important to have present individuals and community members who have a trust built with you. So when they do need to ask a question or when they do need to, you know, ask, for a recommendation or for a resource that folks are there. So really do appreciate that. It was, like, multiple encounters with, this gentleman before he asked for something for himself, and that means a lot, you know, in the broader scheme of things because I know that there are a lot of, like, repeat, community members who visit our libraries and come back for our resources. And sometimes they may not need anything. Other times,
they might wanna tell you someone else needs something, and maybe one day they're gonna ask you for, assistance and help too. So appreciated hearing that. I am wondering more so for the couple things. First, I believe there's still floating, safety specialists. And so when you're just seeing those, like, with floating, I guess, like, how are you tracking that knowing that there's a lot of I'm assuming that there's a safety specialist that is floating around a different public libraries. And so I'm just wondering what that looks like from a metric standpoint of, like, how are you tracking that success?
But then also, I think just from a futuristic lens, it'll be helpful to know for those that are not currently having a safety specialist on-site. Maybe they haven't actually had a floater or if they, didn't get assigned one. Is there like, what are the metrics that you're looking for to determine whether they might be a potential candidate in the future? Like, is it only if they have a certain amount of increase in incidents? Is it we're looking at surrounding areas, crime rates in surrounding areas? Like, what kinda what kind of partnerships,
I guess, or information are you getting from, some of the people that you're working with, ONS, or just in general of, like, how to determine that? Because just just curious. Thank you, council member Johnson. The real truth is we are gonna lean into how we're gonna determine that. I think our our easiest metric is, is the metric of the incidents in the library that are happening. And are they rising in a way that we really can't explain? And then we'll reach out to our partners in police and ONS. You know, sometimes, like, every day, I'm surprised by having worked on the corner of University And Dale and then having
another piece of the puzzle kind of come into play about some of the challenges that we just experienced as a city on that corner. And Robert was like, yeah. The plasma center. Cooper are coming because they need money. And I was like, oh, yeah. So we don't have, our floating safety specialist yet. We are, hopefully, going to hire that person soon. Part of our improved onboarding, processes, I think helped us identify our sixth candidate. We were really clear on what the job was, and that was not what they were interested in. So, I think, yes. At this point,
I would say incidence because it does tend to be a measure of frankly, sometimes I think it's an early warning system. What we see in the libraries, we tend to see maybe before some of our partners and other organizations incidents in the library, it's likely that something is happening in the community. And I look forward to, evolving this work and figuring out, like, what are the data sources we should be paying attention to and what are the metrics beyond incidents in our buildings that we might look at to determine where we
would place safety specialists. Thanks. Yes. Yes. Councilwoman Williams. Thanks, Churchills. I have a question. I was wondering if you can talk a bit about how you all are tracking the incidents, like, different types of incidents that are occurring within our libraries. I think that that would be very important and informative. Like, for example, if how many in a year, like, how many incidents are drug related, it would be good to know. That way, we can also think about strategize on, you know, who more to pull in to address sort of, like, these these,
types of incidents based based on, like, you know, what category it is in and so on. Yes. Thank you, council member Yang. We, have something we call an incident tracker, and it's it's a tracker we built on SharePoint. And we can, share more specific examples with you, individually, perhaps, if you would like. That would be great. Mhmm. Yeah. I I I'm interested in seeing, like, a annual Yeah. Report on that if if that's something you all are able to share. And I I think that starting off maybe with, like, the one on one, presentation first would be a good start.
Yeah. Yeah. We will reach out to schedule something. Thank you. Well, Rebecca and Alex and Robert, I wanna thank you all for coming. I'll just say quick, Robert, I really appreciated your story and stories. And it made me think of when I visited I visited George Latimer yesterday, and I was greeted on multiple occasions as I entered each room. Welcome. And when I left, they said thank you. And I am reminded of something, actually, that director Hartman, or maybe it was Beth Burns, that's who I was meeting with, said yesterday. But you don't you know, you can't just stop at the library once to get a sense of what it's like to be there. You really have to be there for for the whole day or multiple days.
And your stories, I think, really captured that with your repeated encounter with the same person and what it's really like to work with the libraries and to, experience the people that visit them. So thank you so much. And I also, want to recognize there are a lot of folks in here that are part of our overall library safety. So there are folks from ONS, SPPD, familiar faces, emergency management, and parks. And so thank you to all of you for being there today. And with that, we'll go on to let's let's go to that that one next. We will cycle back with council member Josh here, back to our approval of minutes.
So we have minutes 20 five-ten approving 02/05/2025, library board minutes. All right. So I'll take a motion from, Council Member Yang to approve this item. Is there any discussion? Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any woman opposed? For a favor, zero opposed. The minutes are approved. The last item on the agenda is the staff report. Staff report 25 dash 03/00 upcoming library events. So we have Stacy and a few others with us, and I apologize that we're very close to end of our time, but this is still just such an exciting topic,
and I'm excited to hear from you. Thank you, library chair Dose, and library board members. We're here to share very briefly about Read Brave. And I'll just kick us off with a quick reminder of what it is, before I hand it over to my colleagues here. So Read Brave is our citywide book club. We do it once a year. We partner with mayor Carter. We purchase about 5,000 books, and we distribute them to community. The we're in our twelfth year of Read Brave. It started as a program for teens, and that very much remains a driving force. So what you have is a young adult book. We get those in the hands of school kids. Over 3,000 books went to kids and schools in Saint Paul this year.
The rest are being distributed via our libraries to community members. So anybody can stop in and grab a book from one of our libraries. And then we'll host a number of book based programs, and there's an online toolkit as well for readers, book clubs, educators, etcetera, to guide them through this book and the brave conversations that we are inviting people to have through this read. I'll give it to Marlena to talk about the book and then quickly to Gao to talk about programs. Thank you. Good afternoon, library board chair and council members. My name is Marlena Okechukwu. I'm gonna try to go through this really quickly. I do wish we had more time because this is such an amazing book. I won't be able to do it justice in,
like, a minute, but the title that you have is Akata Witch. The author is Nnedi Okorafor. She's a Nigerian American author, widely sought after in libraries and schools. And so we're really excited to host her here at the end of the month. So as, Stacey alluded to, it's a young adult fantasy novel. It's set in Africa, which is one of the things that makes it a brave title. The genre is African futurism, which is distinct from Afrofuturism. And I wanted to talk about that a little bit more, but I won't. But, again, that's one of the things that makes the title brave is that it is written
from an African center, and it centers, African spirituality, African, mythology, magic, and then some of the other things that, like, make it, applicable to the human experience. So, the other thing that I wanted to really point out really quickly is the title itself. Akata is a derogatory term, and it is reserved solely for black Americans. And it basically means that they're outsiders, that they've lost their history and they're no longer they're no longer connected to that African history. And so it's an intentional title. That's one of the things that makes it really brave. And the plot is,
centered around four school children, Sunny, who is, she's born in The US to Nigerian parents. They move back to Nigeria. They, she finds out she has these magical powers and that she's part of this, elite sort of, secret society of folks who have powers. A lot of times, it get referred it gets referred to as an African Harry Potter, but Neddy herself pushes back on that because it has an African center. So I'll end there because I know I'm running it full time, and I wish I could tell you more about this amazing title. But I see you all have copies and I hope you do get a chance to read it. And again, thank you for your time this afternoon.
Impeccable time. My goodness. Hello. My name is Gao Yang. It's an honor to speak with, you in front of you all, chair, and council members. I wanted to especially talk about, the programming. What is at the heart of Read Brave programming? We believe that stories have the power to connect us to new ideas, to each other, to our own identities. And every year, we create programming that brings the that brings the themes of our own re brave book off those pages and into, real life experiences. And using these themes, we invite readers to explore the themes and come together and share their experiences.
One, important aspect of Read Brave that happens in spaces that aren't always seen is inside the classrooms. So from March 25 to the twenty sixth, author Neddy Okorfor will be, visiting five Saint Paul public schools, Central High Central, Harding High School, Johnson High School, Humble High School, Open World Learning Community, as well as Como Park Senior High School. These visits go simply beyond just meeting the author. They ensure that books are placed directly into the hands of students and that, it sparks excitement in reading and create opportunities for young people to engage in the
themes that they find in the books that are important for them. We also have community, based events as well beyond the classroom. We have, the African art of healing that kicks off our community events, And this is in partnership with the ocean center for intercultural healing, an organization that dedicates to the uplifting of African and African diasporic cultural practices, particularly in healing, somatic practices, and art expression artistic expression. We have another, event, ReBrave, Talk Brave, which, is,
again, aligns with the center of of Read Brave, which is that stories bring people together. On March 26, Read Brave, Talk Brave will be just doing that, bringing youth panelists into the conversation with Akata Witch author, Nadine Akporefor, and with Mayor Carter moderating. This is a space where young voices will be uplifted and where intergenerational dialogue will take place, where we listen, learn, and reflect on the ways, the book shape us all as a community. We'll also again, this is more than just discussion. It's also an experience. We will also have Kashimana,
an artist, to, perform, and then we also will be showcasing artwork created by, Twin Cities Artist Leah Rose Jackson and Filippo Dioli, whose work responds to the themes of Wakata Witch. Lastly, we also have a rebrand story time with mayor Carter, and this is, we're inviting readers to explore what it means to reclaim power, to to come to enforce the idea that stories that shape us and inspire us and connect with us can start at the library, that literacy and community engagement go hand in hand,
and that our libraries are places where those connections can begin and grow. So ultimately, every year, we do Read Brave every year. It's not just about reading a book. Right? It's about conversations, connections, and experiences that come from it. Whether it's a student receiving their first book, a young person speaking on stage next to the mayor, or a child listening to a story, these moments have lasting impact. And through Read Brave, we make the library a space where stories don't just live on the page. They live in our voices, in our communities, and in the ways we come together to learn from each other.
So just a little bit about Read Brave. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you to, to Stacy and Marlena and Gao for sharing that. And I'm really looking forward to to this year's, Read Brave. And I attended some of the events last year, so I'm looking forward to doing that again. And hopefully, all of you will join me. Since we are already kind of running up into our time for HR, I'll have to hold off on questions. But we'll reach out if we do have any. And so with nothing else to come before us, we are adjourned.