*Editor’s note: Seattle Public Library leadership have published a rebuttal to this article on their blog, disputing several of the claims. Some of the disputes of fact that leadership had with the three library workers and one security officer interviewed boiled down to differences of interpretation, but in other cases staff accounts conveyed factual errors or incomplete information we have since sought to rectify with corrections and clarifications now contained in the piece and noted at the bottom.

The revisions are the culmination of a long journey that began in 2018, when an article in the South Seattle Emerald revealed that the library imposed an unusually high number of bans, or “exclusions,” on its patrons, disproportionately Black and brown youth as well as the homeless and mentally ill. Well before the rollout, rank-and-file library staff were softening the enforcement of existing rules and working to change the culture in anticipation of the new codes, now called the Community Use Agreement, or “CUA.” 

Some library workers were shocked when Walton, a former Port Orchard police officer, took over and began issuing guidance that felt to them eerily similar to the old rules of conduct the library spent the better part of a decade overhauling. 

“We were thinking everything should be nicer with this new policy,” said a library worker, who requested anonymity. “I feel like we’re actually excluding people more.” 

One of Walton’s first acts on the job was to retrain library security. Library staff had been working with security to develop a more compassionate approach to homeless people sleeping in or outside of branches. Security was encouraged to do wellness checks instead of asking them to leave.

When Walton came on, she had security start sweeping the areas around the Central Library nightly, staff say. Library spokesperson Laura Gentry said the homeless encampment removals were not initiated by Walton.

“Ms. Walton never directed Security Officers to conduct nightly sweeps around the Central Library,” Gentry wrote. “In response to documented incidents of damage to Library property after hours and complaints by nearby residents that there was illegal and dangerous activity occurring around the Central Library after hours, Administrative Services director Rob Gannon asked Library Security Officers to conduct emphasis patrols at night for a few weeks in September 2025 to observe and gather data. They did not observe any dangerous activities. Security Officers stopped those patrols in late September 2025.”

Walton reportedly proposed adding floodlights and hostile architecture to prevent homeless people from sleeping outside the branch — though this proposal never came to fruition. Library staff also contend that Walton is pushing security officers to document minor infractions to justify longer suspensions, riling some librarians, who have generally shifted to imposing shorter bans. Gentry disputed that claim.

In one case, a suspended patron used a library computer under a fake name and left without incident. The man was originally suspended for rolling over a security guard’s foot with his wheelchair after being told not to smoke near a library entrance. Walton logged it in the system as “other crime: identity theft” and extended his suspension by a month. Library workers say that using an alias to skirt a ban isn’t serious, much less criminal, and that they originally logged it under an existing violation category called “Return under active suspension,” but Walton escalated it.

After publication of this article, Gentry said that this patron has repeatedly assaulted two security staff and injured one, earning them a two-year suspension, and that violating the suspension was a serious safety concern in this case.

Library staff says Walton is imposing suspensions of several months on people who act out nonviolently while in a behavioral crisis. They’re calling these bans unnecessarily harsh, arguing that long suspensions exclude people living on the streets from one of the few public spaces available to them.

“For some of our patrons, a month or two or three is a very long time,” a library worker said. “Most of these people don’t mean us harm. They are ill and may not know what they are saying. There has to be another way.”

Some library staff say they also feel pressured to call 911 more often. In a January Q&A about updates to the library’s 911 guidelines, a staff member said that the new guidelines seemed to be a reversal of course. When the staffer started, they were told that the library was moving away from calling the police, and emphasized their concerns, particularly for communities in South Seattle who have had negative experiences with the police. 

Walton likened library staffers’ reluctance to call the police to a “domestic violence mentality,” where library workers “feel responsible to protect [their] perpetrator because they had a bad childhood.” During the Q&A, library staff said she told them that security and other staff did not call 911 because their coworkers “didn’t like police.”

Another library worker, who also requested anonymity, said their reticence stemmed from real-world experience, citing an incident a few years ago where security called the police about a man who threw a metal can. Officers arrived and tackled him in the middle of the library.

“The minute we call, we surrender any sense of control and de-escalation,” the library worker said. “They didn’t listen to anyone.”

Moreover, calling 911 can mean a steep penalty for the patron: a one-year suspension. A security guard said that Walton added a new category to the library’s incident-reporting system titled “Police called for assistance.” If library staff call 911 on a patron, they can be barred from all Seattle libraries for a year if police for a year, with the decision out of library staff’s hands at that point.

Gentry explained that a one-year suspension occurs automatically if police apply trespass charges, but in other cases the library team would have the discretion to log the incident as they deem appropriate in accordance with the CUA.

“When Library staff call 911 for SPD assistance to resolve an incident with a patron, SPD typically issues the patron a one-year trespass and it then becomes a crime for the patron to return to the Library during that one-year period,” library leadership wrote on their blog, following publication of this article. “When SPD issues a one-year trespass, the Library issues a corresponding one-year suspension. This was a recent adjustment made to reduce confusion between trespass vs. suspension lengths, which were previously out of alignment.”

The security guard gave an hypothetical example where a situation with a patron is escalated and they are asked to leave for the day, but they refuse, so the library staff call 911. Ultimately, the person leaves before police arrive, the call is canceled, and the incident is resolved peacefully. That person could still be banned for a full year, the guard said.

In a written statement, Rob Gannon, the library’s director of administrative services, denied that the new guidelines would result in more 911 calls, pointing out that the criteria for calling the police are stricter than in the 2023 update. He also cited language added to the document less than two weeks after the call, giving staff discretion to call 911. It now states: “The Library trusts staff to determine when calling 911 is appropriate. The vast majority of Community Use Agreement violations can be appropriately handled by Library staff and Security Officers without calling 911.”

But library staff say it’s not so much what’s in the CUA or the 911 guidelines, but rather that they’re being made to feel like calling 911 is their best or only option in many cases. They contend that the CUA wasn’t rolled out with adequate training. One library worker said they were given an online training lasting 30 minutes, while managers were trained for three to four hours on the new policies.

“We also don’t get routine de-escalation training, so we aren’t investing in any strategies that would help prevent having to call the cops,” they said, adding that de-escalation training is only available on request and not mandatory.

While the freshly updated 911 guidelines state that the library “trusts” staff to make the call, library workers are hearing mixed messages. The language in the guidelines was also updated to say that staff are “required to” call in specific circumstances and to “err on the side of caution.” Library staff said they couldn’t get a straight answer from Walton on whether this would mean they would face discipline if they didn’t. 

A SPL spokesperson said the department overhauled its incident reporting system shortly after hiring Walton, noting a 2024 ransomware attack that shut down the system, leading to skewed 911 call data for 2024 and early 2025. In 2023, SPL logged 215 calls, compared to 127 for 2025. However, the number of calls recorded from August to December was greater in 2025 than in 2023, which seems to indicate an upward trend after the enforcement surge that coincided with the Walton hire — or at least a more concerted effort to document the calls.

Library spokesperson Laura Gentry said the uptick in calls in late 2025 stemmed from a change in reporting procedures that logs patron calls, not just staff calls: “We did a deep dive analysis of the Q4 2025 incident reports involving 911, and the uptick appears to be related to additional data gathering of 911 calls made by patrons themselves for various reasons, something we did not capture in 2023.”

Some library staff question the selection of Walton, an outside hire and former police officer, over the other finalist, who has worked at the library for nearly two decades and supports the direction that the CUA represents. They wonder if she’s the right fit for the library’s culture. Despite transitioning to civilian life, Walton appears to have had a hard time shedding her identity as a cop. Library workers bristle at her use of words like “perp” to describe patrons in behavioral crisis. Once, when referring to police responses, she reportedly said: “We’re on the call. We’re here to win.”

Gannon declined to comment on why Walton was chosen, but wrote that she is a “compassionate, diligent, conscientious, human-centered leader, with a deep commitment to the values that are the foundation of the Community Use Agreement and of the Library’s mission.” 

Similarly, a library spokesperson defended Walton’s conduct and said she was acting in accordance with policy and with the full confidence of departmental leaders.

Another potential red flag is Walton’s presence on the Kitsap County Brady List, a list of officers who have potential credibility issues that must be disclosed to defense attorneys during a trial if they give testimony. Gannon called these allegations “unsubstantiated,” but the Kitsap County prosecutor’s office provided The Urbanist with a 2019 disciplinary report, showing that Walton was found to have lied to her supervisor.

“[Walton] is the 100% wrong person to be at any position [in the library],” a library worker said. “It just shows how privatized, bureaucratic, and undemocratic the organization has become.”

Corrections and clarifications: The original version incorrectly stated that all 911 calls would result in a one-year suspension. This is only true in cases where the Seattle Police Department applies a “trespass” charge, which library spokespeople say is only applied in certain circumstances, such as when patrons are causing safety issues or violating suspensions. Additionally, we clarified that Seattle Public Libraries applied new reporting procedures in late 2025 that may have been responsible for the spike in the 911 calls in the data and emphasized that the ransomware outage appears to be responsible for the low baseline for suspensions in 2024. We also clarified that Gentry said Walton did not initiate encampment sweeps outside Central Library and that the identity theft suspension case had involved a patron who the library says injured a security officer in an assault. We regret the errors and omissions.

The post Seattle Library Workers Raise Alarm About Security Crackdown Hitting Homeless People first appeared on The Urbanist.

The Seattle Public Library, the city’s jewel of a public library system, is engaged in a strategic planning process. For over a year, Chief Librarian Tom Fay has been listening to community input set to shape the next decade of the system. It’s not going to be an easy time, as laid out in a vision document prepared by the consulting group Houston Foresight. Libraries have become a focus of cultural debates, safety issues arose from the pandemic, and the ever looming recession destabilizes library funding. 

I talked with Tom Fay, Chief Librarian for Seattle Public Library about the shape of strategic planning in this atmosphere. Our discussion has been edited for length and clarity.

Ray Dubicki: I don’t know that a lot of people understand what a chief librarian does. Is that any different from an agency head anywhere else in the city?

Tom Fay: I guess, technically, it would be the same as the director for any of the other city departments. I think the library is a little unique in that we’re a city department, and in the city charter, we’re also a creature of the state. So there is a little bit of separation there. The library does not report to the executive, we have a Board of Trustees who are appointed with all the policy and fiduciary responsibilities. I also work with our Board of Directors from the Library Foundation, and our Friends of the Library group as well. So a little bit different than most of the directors who don’t have some of those functions.

Coming to the Seattle’s Chief Librarian role, your background came through Henderson, Nevada. Where did you start feeling drawn toward the more management side versus the public facing librarian side?

Fay:  Well, I have a long career, 40 years. Thirty of it was in in Nevada. I actually had a lot of experience in the public service realm. I moved on to the IT side, and I was also in the construction, infrastructure management portion. I really saw myself having more interest in administration and management. At that point, I did get the Masters of Library Science degree, and moved forward into that administrative realm of libraries, and ultimately into some of these director roles and chief operations roles that I’ve held as well.

When you talk about the back end of the library, how does that overlap with the Library’s Strategic Planning process? What is the Strategic Direction in a nutshell?

Fay: I look at it as really the framework for how we’re going to provide services, how we’re going to provide programs. And then what are our spaces? You can talk about a library or branch and say, “It should be this.” Well, how do we know that? We want to have a strong framework to help guide where we’re going and also be able to say, hey, let’s check-in. Let’s engage with community a little bit more in some areas to find out if the needs have changed. So yeah, that’s how I really look at it in a nutshell.

My planner brain appreciates the idea of having data and being able to check-in over time to find what’s effective.

Fay: I think that’s what we’re also trying to define in this Strategic Direction. What’s going to have the impact is the outcomes, so you’re going to have those activities and those resources that are going to push toward those impacts. As we actually look at the outcomes, we want to know that they are measurable. 

That may be truly data or that may be more qualitative analysis or discussions with a partner that we engage with. You know, for years, libraries, public libraries across the country, prided themselves on saying “we circulate 15 million items.” Okay, that’s cool. But to what end, to whom? Getting deeper into all that we do, the better.

Now, you’re gathering a lot of input from different corners and consultants and staff and library users. What are the gaps that you’re seeing between those groups?

Fay: I think the interesting piece in this has been not as much gap as you think. I think you’re seeing the community organizations, partners that we work with saying, “Yes, we understand this connectedness that you want. But we also understand the library has to have its priorities and staffing needs.” Quite honestly, the community partners are probably right there and the staff are saying the same thing. I think the values we’ve laid out to become a community hub have been resonating with people.

I see you’re in the iconic Central Library by the diamond windows behind you. Did the Central Library give an idea that we have a complete library? We don’t have to worry about that for a long while! We’re all set up!

Fay: I think in any type of massive capital project, like it was for the Libraries for All Levy, that was a pinnacle. The Central Library’s an iconic building known around the world, people still come to visit it, and still want tours and spend time here. 

The building’s 20 years old in 2024. The architects of time said, hey, it’s designed to move over time, you will need to change, you’ll have to remodel, you’ll have to do all these things. Now, it’s hard because people say it’s so iconic, you can’t touch it. Well, of course you can. And that’s not just Central, that’s going to be every branch.

Which brings us to the question, is the Strategic Direction looking at more branches or fewer branches?

Fay: We’re not there yet. One of the things that we’re looking at, is what should a branch be? We have some very small buildings, are they the best thing to be “a full branch” or should they fill another need? We’ll also look at alternative services. We have the lockers now. We’re also looking at kiosks – pretty much little robotic vending machines. Can those be out in areas that don’t have branches or customized to specific communities or age groups to serve the need of that physical material that folks still want.

And it’s not as if there’s a lot of unbuilt space in the city. So we also have to be realistic that we may not get the chance to go build another massive building. Positioning to take an interesting opportunity is something we look at. There’s always the question of if the locations are in the right place. The urban village concept is great if urban villages materialize. In some cases they have, and some cases, maybe it didn’t or maybe the community has shifted. All of those things come into play. As the maturity level of the city and of the library progress, we need to be able to say “Yeah, let’s do a little self examination.”

Urbanists think about food deserts, gaps where no grocery stores are located. With the library itself, the branches are pretty evenly spread throughout the city. Is there a different kind of desert or a gap we should be thinking about?

Fay: I think it’s third spaces. You really see the library being, in many cases, that only third space that people can go to that is free space, the place just to be. There used to be a lot more of them, and I think what you see is the library taking on that role in so many areas of the city. Sometimes we have a facility that can accommodate that. And then sometimes we don’t, depending upon size, maybe amenities like air conditioning, things like that. So I think that in almost every US city, you really see that lack of third spaces where people can be and there’s not a pay to play. It’s an important part for libraries, an important role.

Which, of course, brings us to the safety question. Over the pandemic, when we saw Starbucks shut down and never reopen their bathrooms, the library may be the only place to go. How is the Strategic Direction dealing with the safety issue?

Fay: Well, I think it’s not only the strategic plan, but it’s also the now, the immediate. In our planning, part of it is acknowledging safety is an issue. As Seattle becomes more urban, the problems aren’t going to go away. We know that every US city faces spikes. And we will see the same in Seattle. 

The library can’t put its head in the sand. I don’t hide things that we do. Like when we look at having issues in our restrooms from smoking various drugs, we’ve had to put in sensors. That helps us manage, makes sure we talk to people and say, “Hey, things have happened in here. Let’s not have that happen again.”

We need to catch up on our security side of things. We do need to have additional security officers. We have a particular format and style of security today, is that the best suited? We look at our rules of conduct, it’s the same thing. Do we have rules of conduct that actually create conflict that’s unnecessary in our spaces? Those are things that are being reviewed right now. 

Acknowledging when some of the things your teams are doing are working and when the greater city helps make areas safer, that’s also a big part of it. It’s truly multifaceted. We acknowledge that we will spend more money on safety over time, without a doubt.

Have you seen a model anywhere else that you think could work for Seattle?

Fay: Not yet, I’ve seen bits and pieces of it. We’re often consulted from across the country for the way we approach security and really bring humanity forward first. Really looking at the behavior and saying, “How can we work with you on that to make sure you’re successful?” It’s an approach now that many tried to do in their spaces. 

I think it’s the best approach. Everyone coming in is trying to accomplish something. For those who want to talk about those who are insecurely housed, that is the time people want to point fingers. Guess what, most of time people just want to come in, have a space where they have some quiet peace. Maybe some warmth, or cooling. How is that different than anyone else?

I think we’re by far pretty successful with that. As I remind folks, even in areas where we might have troubles or hotspots, it’s still a small percentage of the human transactions and interactions.

Does the Strategic Direction process draw attention from taking care of these issues today? Is this the right time for a gap in services?

Fay: I don’t see any of the work that we’re doing stopping. So we have been on this path to creating more equitable opportunities for people for a good seven to 10 years now. I think what the Strategic Direction is trying to do is take that to the next level. By being more plan-ful, more intentional, and more resource-focused on those efforts. So I don’t see us having a big lull.

What I see us doing is a lot of things in parallel, from good to better. We need to work on the next Libraries for All levy, having some additional staff capacity, maybe some other resources that come to bear. But that’s all going to be in parallel with the things that we do now to make better options. The rules of conduct underway now. We’ll be finishing by mid-year. So I’m not going to put that on hold. Look at Books Unbanned. How do we fight censorship and control of information? Put more information out there. Why would we stop? There’s no lull.

I think people want identify, “This is going to move to That.” Transformation never works that way. Many things are in parallel as you move through those transformative states. And the Strategic Direction is really a 10-year look at how we get from where we’re at today. We believe we are doing good. Not everything. But we believe a lot of what we do is good. 

Then how do we move it to that better and best, really hitting that aspirational state. And that takes many years, and it will most certainly require additional resources and additional prioritization of current resources as we move forward in time. But as that all happens, nothing really stops as we go along.

I like the aspirational. What’s your pie in the sky? Beyond if a future library levy passes, but also the library hits the lottery as well.

Fay: When I look at what we’re trying to do with the Strategic Direction, we’re talking about the transformational impact of belonging, and of being a resilient community. That’s everything — that’s from staffing, to those who support us, to the public at large. That is going to create more equitable opportunities for all. If you believe you belong, it’s a better place to start than feeling that you’re an outsider. 

I think in my nine years here, I believe it’s something that Seattle has been trying to create. We have a lot of immigrants who come here as well. How do we really make sure that people feel like they belong? How does the staff member coming into the library feel like they belong? How do we look to bring in folks who work or live in these communities who may not have the traditional sense of what libraries are? As we re-craft and re-mould what libraries might be, how do we make sure that we create that sense of belonging if we want diversity, equity and inclusion, like we talk about?

So yes, in my ideal world, we would actually be leveraging all of our networks, all of our partnerships, to really move to that impact of belonging. Really creating a resilient city so that minor little bumps along the way are not going to stop it. Just keep moving and getting better.

Is there something you still look for every time you go into the library?

Fay: Oh, every time I go into the library, I’m looking for what are they doing to activate the space to really engage people of all ages, right? Because I think that is the biggest challenge. We serve everyone from before they’re born, and they’re still in the womb, until the time they pass away. I always look at, is there something in here for everyone? Is there a way for everyone to engage?

Correction: An early version of this article misspelled Tom Fay’s last name. Apologies. We regret the error.

The post An Interview with Seattle’s Chief Librarian, Tom Fay first appeared on The Urbanist.

Currently, both the Seattle Public Library (SPL) and the King County Library System (KCLS) are conducting surveys to inform future operations. The SPL survey is to inform SPL’s future strategic plan and the KCLS survey is more of a general patron satisfaction survey. Both surveys close soon, so now is the chance to make your voice heard.

• Fill out the Seattle Public Library survey by November 15th.
• Fill out the KCLS survey by November 17th. 

Given that both library systems are in the midst of conducting surveys about their future direction, now is a good time to discuss the role libraries could play in the future of our region. Here are six ideas to make them more useful, ranging from climate change adaptation, to better multimodal access, to broader hours and use cases.

1) Strengthen library facilities for extreme weather events.

Build community resilience to extreme weather events by adding solar panels and battery storage to each library facility. To be clear, both SPL and KCLS are already weatherizing and making other physical improvements to their facilities, but adding solar panels and battery storage would provide some energy security, allowing facilities to continue to serve the public following an extreme weather event. Doing so could even pay for itself, thanks to possible energy tax credits available under the Inflation Reduction Act for local governments and nonprofits.

Urbanist contributor Clifford Heberden recently wrote about the city’s plans for resilience hubs. He mentioned the role libraries play in this. With the libraries carrying out community engagement now, followed by the city’s Office of Sustainability and the Environment in 2024, it will be important to be consistent and disciplined in asking for investments in infrastructure like this as part of supporting community resilience.

2) Double down on community activation

SPL and KCLS should reform the library’s community use policies and do everything possible to use the spaces as much as possible. This could involve targeted engagement with community organizations, schools, and nonprofits to encourage them to use library spaces. It would require an expansion of imagination in terms of what library spaces are and how they can be used. Some ideas:

• Use parking lots for community events;
• Trial weekly coffee and tea hours;
• Use meeting rooms for yoga classes;
• Trial food trucks at the most popular locations during busier hours;
• Trial flu shot drives;
• Add community gardens to libraries where there is space;
• Continue the trend of makerspaces;
• Consider recording studios;
• Add outdoor playgrounds at locations where the surrounding neighborhood lacks them;
• Add lending libraries for tools and niche household items (or provide awareness about existing similar programs at other area libraries).
• Lend board games;
• Add art classes;
• Replicate what the Oodi Library in Helsinki has done and add a small kitchen for cooking classes or to be used in conjunction with larger events;
• Add performance spaces for meetings, seminars, community theater groups, etc.;
• Add a small café in larger locations and structure the contracts so that small business owners are competitive in winning them.

3) Plan for future capital bonds

Start planning now for the next capital bond building program, focusing on how libraries will adapt to serve more dense communities. With more density, people will seek out more ‘third places’ like libraries, parks, and cafes. This is where the library can step in and really help to cement individuals’ sense of place and community. To do this though it will be necessary to plan for the physical improvements necessary for this to happen. The priority should be on expanding locations which experience consistently high usage (See #5 about library statistics), expanding in historically underserved areas, and adding new locations in areas which are zoned for high density and have large numbers of apartments planned or under construction. 

This could take the form of adding by default a new library in conjunction with new light rail stations in areas where libraries are lacking or already experience high use. Junction and Judkins Park come to mind as places where this would make sense, as does the area surrounding the NE 130th Street Station in North Seattle if the area is to get a significant rezone though that is very much up in the air. Uptown and South Lake Union also lack a library branch, but will get light rail stations once Ballard Link is finally completed.

Regardless of the type of expansion, new ideas like off-site or basement book repositories, smaller libraries in ground floor commercial spaces, and building multi-story libraries should be considered (historically libraries in the Puget Sound Region have been largely single story). Each of these ideas has pros and cons but ultimately they all boil down to ways to expand service and improve the user experience by providing more space for studying, working, and reading in an efficient, user-friendly way. 

4) Physically connect communities

Build safe walking, biking, and transit connections between library facilities and other major destinations. This will help make it easier and safer for community members to travel to and from the library and help to build out the region’s non-car transportation infrastructure. This does not necessarily have to cost the library systems money (municipal departments of transportation and state and federal grant funding could cover the costs), but it will require planning and staff resources to kickstart action, apply for grant funding, and do whatever it takes to get it over the finish line. 

Libraries are key amenities to every neighborhood, and making sure it is safe and easy to walk, roll, bike, or take transit to the library will help to better connect the city not just physically but socially by improving library access for all.

5) Track library use

Both SPL and KCLS report annual usage statistics in the form of total numbers i.e., 140 nonprofit groups used free meeting room spaces, and 27,509 programs took place which served 620,509 attendees. Shifting these key performance indicators to figures which represent engagement per day and per location and per program would be more helpful in making programming decisions. In the same vein, KCLS currently breaks down circulation by region. The same should be done for programs, attendees, and program hours.

6) Stabilize funding streams

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, sort out and stabilize the funding structure and funding streams. The KCLS’s last lid lift levy expired in 2018 which, combined with inflation, has eroded the library’s ability to adequately fund operations and personnel which translates into a diminished user experience.

A lot of these ideas are reliant on adequate staff to plan, organize, execute and provide service, but even excluding this, the library needs to be able to fund its operations. It is understandable that KCLS chose not to try to pass a levy lid lift in 2020 due to the pandemic, but three years have gone by and inflation continues to eat away at the library’s budget.

While SPL’s budget is more diversified and has not fallen as significantly in recent years, both systems experience similar issues. 

Before we can expand the library’s mission it is necessary to stop the bleeding that is currently occurring and ensure sufficient resources exist to maintain and normalize current services. This would include the normalization of library hours – ideally seven days a week and regular hours, i.e. 9am to 9pm – instead of the current shifting schedule which is confusing for patrons and makes it difficult to build the library into one’s daily schedule.

In 2019 there were 1,218 employees at KCLS, but by 2023 staff levels had fallen to just over 800. This clearly needs to be addressed because while some shrinkage might be justified, to lose 35% of your workforce should not be something that is done lightly and will undoubtedly affect morale and the library’s ability to serve the public.

Looking ahead

Purists will argue that the library should stick to its historical function of providing books and study spaces. Yes. But, the world has changed and libraries must adapt. The Puget Sound region has some of the most successful libraries in the country. Let’s keep moving forward, and make sure we are investing in and positioning our libraries to continue to serve the public well into the future.

The post Op-Ed: How to Create Libraries of the Future  first appeared on The Urbanist.

All branches of the Seattle Public Library closed this past Tuesday for a city-wide staff meeting. The organization was brought together to review the system’s new Strategic Direction. SPL is engaged in a process of laying out its programs and values for the next decade, and where it fits in a world shaped by the disruptive technologies, environment, and censorship that’s now part of our everyday lives.

Set in motion with funding through the 2019 Seattle Library levy, the new Strategic Direction initiative has moved through several phases. SPL engaged University of Houston Foresight program to identify the potential future of libraries and what steps are necessary to achieve them. Through that, over 50 stakeholders and partner organizations provided feedback through workshops and surveys. Now, with consultants Territory North America, the system moves into a phase of creating implementable steps.

This is the messy middle of the strategic planning process, according to Laura Gentry, Seattle Public Library’s Head of Communications. “This is the part where we’re starting to identify some core themes. But now we need to socialize those core themes among the people that are going to have to carry out all the work.” 

Seattle has the second largest public library system in the state of Washington, running about half the circulation of surrounding King County. (Combined, they would lap the nation’s largest system in New York City.) Just over half of SPL’s $88 million budget comes from the city’s general fund, a third from the voter-approved Library Levy, and the rest a combination of grants. Two-thirds of that budget pays for the system’s 700 employees, with the rest divided among buying materials and building upkeep.

It’s those employees in each of the system’s 27 locations who will be carrying out the implementation of any library plan. “We do start a lot of really cool ideas at the library that then become really challenging to scale to 27 locations across the city.” Gentry says, adding there is a need to zoom out “and identify what is the community role here? What are people asking us to do? How do we define what the impact is that we want to have in the community based on those needs, and then, how do we allocate our resources to do that?”

It’s that scalability that makes it too early to determine if new (or fewer) branches will come out of this library planning process.

“We haven’t had those kinds of concrete conversations yet,” Gentry says. “We haven’t come to any kind of strong conclusions about physical spaces, we haven’t even really discussed it. But I imagine that we’re going to be having a lot of very reflective conversations about everything that we do, to make sure that what our strategic plan says we want to accomplish — that we can actually accomplish it.” 

SPL’s current strategic direction was developed in 2017 and reupped in 2020, and included a number of goals like access, community engagement, and establishing measurable metrics. At its core, the system built the direction around the idea that “the library makes a difference in people’s lives and in the greater community.”

Gentry also sees the new strategic plan process as a test for what she calls “library bias,” or the traditional library way of doing things. An example she used was charging overdue fines.

“For many, many years, our bias was that by applying a fine every day until you brought that material back was going to be an incentive to bring that material back on time,” she said. “Once we did conduct a test to identify the impact of that thinking, we saw where the impact was landing was on disenfranchised communities. Folks who are already struggling are struggling more because of this policy. And so we took that policy away and received a lot of concern from folks who thought that the books won’t come back, or I’m gonna have to wait longer to get my books. That did not happen. The return rate is the same as it’s always been, and we were able to reinstate 18,000 accounts, so increasing library access across the board.” 

The Future of Libraries

One thing that was not included in SPL’s last Strategic Direction is the library branch’s role as a neighborhood anchor in the turmoil of a global pandemic or its focal point in the culture wars. But the last four years has seen both of those things, with free Covid tests in the lobby and protests about Drag Story Times. While it doesn’t appear that these threats should apply to very liberal Seattle’s jewel of a library system, these are important constraints facing the organization because they change the concept of libraries.

That University of Houston Foresight report included a lot of very interesting observations, identifying a number of drivers of change facing the system going beyond Covid and conservative grifts. Funding models, including voter approved levies, create unstable revenues. Staffing issues stem from demanding librarians serve patrons needing social as well as information services. Straight up censorship is exacerbated by reduced access to information because of the rising costs of journals, e-books, and other corporate controlled intellectual property.

The Houston group produced a couple possible outcomes, including a preferred one. The Taking a Stand alternative sees libraries taking a stand for community values, but facing increased competition from fragmented and very biased competitors. The Trusted Third Space alternative leans on technology to offer a lot of services, but without some social services and at a pretty hefty expense requiring new funding. The preferred scenario is called Ecosystem Anchor where the library becomes a green hub for community organizations with other parts of city government operating social services with the library as liaison.

They’re all pretty cool, and quite visionary. What’s different about this analysis from many others is that the possible outcomes were set out at the 10-year horizon, then the authors included midpoint scenarios before getting to that final mark. These interstitial scenarios ask what happens as the library applies its values to all the steps happening in the meantime. It doesn’t yadda-yadda-yadda over the difficult path to get to a preferred goal and crosswinds that stand in the way. Or, put another way, it answers the question of precisely how one profits from stealing underpants. 

The two midpoint scenarios emphasize the importance of getting transitions right. The collapsing Libraries for Some scenario sees the unstable funding of levies as a primary threat, forcing the library to go mostly virtual in a cost-cutting spree. Culture war nonsense puts staffing under a microscope, tight budgets close branches, and new hires are mostly security. Alternately, the Pushing the Limits scenario embraces the library’s value to be at the core of the community. Though still short on funds, the library does make new programs quickly, but is transparent that they may be cut just as quickly. “Volatility is the norm” under this scenario, but the community sees a restored footing for the library.

It’s a fascinating type of interstitial planning. Instead of just throwing a plan into the water and seeing if it will float, the future study asked a couple important questions about what happens in the meantime. What’s it like if it takes longer to get up on the diving board? Is the water immediately deep? It’s a uniquely thoughtful approach that really highlights the gaps in many other plans. Yes, the goal is worthy, but can we maintain our values as we get to that end result. What happens if we don’t? 

Those mid-point futurist check-ins appear to be translating to the new Strategic Direction. SPL’s new plan is expected to identify near-term goals and objectives for the next one to three years and longer-term goals and objectives for years four through 10. The Foresight report also identified questions about whether pursuing a single preferred scenario is better than supporting common attributes of several scenarios. It will be interesting to see how much of that appears in the library’s draft documents when they open for public perusal later this year.

Of course, the library’s planning is not happening in a vacuum as Seattle is undertaking its own comprehensive planning process at the moment. Gentry says there are members of the library plan’s core team working with the Office of Planning and Community Development to coordinate between the processes. “Our draft plan is expected to be released later this year as well, but it won’t be finalized until after the first of the year. We do, though, have a window of opportunity to incorporate elements of our plan into the comprehensive plan. And so that’s what our hope is.”

Even with all this talk about threats to the future of libraries from censorship and security and technology, one cannot step away from these studies without a feeling that we have a good thing going with Seattle’s libraries. Gentry sees that too. “What we sort of came to as the conclusion, both for staff, stakeholders, and for partners, was that the library’s that community hub, a community connector. Those are really strong identity profiles for the organization that we should be focused on.”

So far, by recognizing the many things that may knock it off track, the Seattle Public Library’s Strategic Direction appears it’s heading toward that goal.

The post Seattle’s Public Libraries Chart a New Strategic Direction first appeared on The Urbanist.

But the pandemic changed things. To stem the reduction in revenue due to Covid-19, the City approved a 2021 budget that reduced the amount of support that the library receives from the City’s general fund by 10%, reducing the overall operating budget for the library by over 7%. Offsetting general fund revenue reductions with dedicated levies was something the City did in numerous departments. Stable property tax levies presented a bit of a budget life raft.

Now, as revenue projections are looking much rosier going into 2022, Mayor Durkan’s final budget would restore that general fund revenue base to the Seattle Public Library, adding $5.1 million back. Paired with $700,000 in cost savings that the library has on hand as it has reopened branches this year, that should amount to a full restoration of general fund support for SPL, paving the way for expanded operating hours.

The Seattle Public Library is currently conducting a survey on how those hours should be restored. As Seattle faces a new reality around the ongoing pandemic, SPL is seeking to better understand how the community uses its libraries and how they might like to use them in the future. The library survey is open until next Monday, November 8th. If the library system ended up adding all of the operating hours as envisioned in the 2019 levy, they would operate around 1,500 cumulative hours every week, an increase of more than 20% over the lowest point of the recession in 2010.

Back in 2019, the city council made the decision to exclude funding for additional weeknight hours at the Central library due to cost. Compared to operating the branches, operating the downtown library for even one additional hour is considerably more expensive. But given the high numbers of people who depend on the Central library, that may be reassessed with the results of this survey.

The next few years are poised to be full of changes for the Seattle Public Library. In addition to these levy-funded operating hour expansions, the search is on for a new City Librarian. Earlier this year, Marcellus Turner, who led the library for a full decade, departed for a job in North Carolina overseeing the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library System. By early next year, the library board of trustees will choose a new City Librarian who will have to fill Turner’s very big shoes.

The current library levy won’t be up for renewal until 2026, but it’s about time for the city to ask: what’s the long term vision for the system? Despite large increases in population, Seattle hasn’t added a new branch library in a decade and a half, and several of the areas of the city where added housing has been most encouraged don’t have a library branch, including Uptown, Belltown, South Lake Union, Denny Triangle, and Eastlake. Will the next City Librarian take up the issue of expanding the library system to serve growing areas of the city?

In the meantime, work continues to improve the existing system. Next year the library is scheduled to complete the first of three planned seismic retrofits to its branches as promised in the 2019 levy. Green Lake’s branch is expected to be closed for eighteen months and then the University branch will be upgraded in 2024 and the Columbia City branch in 2026.

The City Council is also considering a few amendments to SPL’s budget for next year. One amendment, proposed by Councilmember Alex Pedersen and co-sponsored by Councilmembers Herbold and Sawant would fund the addition of air conditioning to two high-use branches, Northeast and Southwest. This past summer the City depended heavily on its library branches to operate as cooling centers during the record-breaking heat wave, but there were large geographic gaps between areas where residents could find an open library with air conditioning. Using libraries as cooling centers only underscores their importance as community assets: libraries with HVAC systems can also provide relief from poor air quality. These needs are only going to increase. Seattle must ensure that it is adequately supporting its library system so it can serve the Seattle of the future.

The post As Seattle Public Library Sees Funding Restored, Survey Seeks Input on Library Hours first appeared on The Urbanist.

In times of economic downturn, federal and state governments have a choice. They can go hard into austerity measures that cut future productivity and harshly impact people’s lives. Or they can take advantage of lower borrowing costs and available labor to build projects that improve the community, keep people working, and set the stage for a more livable city.

It would be irresponsible to live in denial that the economy will continue to expand forever. Whether or not this week marks the beginning of a recession we can start formulating a HoneyDo list for our governments. It’s not to just ride out an economic downturn, but to correct long standing needs that will improve our community. Here are some ideas.

Sidewalks

Though Seattle annexed portions of Arbor Heights and North Park as far back as 1907 with the promise of adding sidewalks, the city is still about 11,000 blocks (or 26%) short of a complete network. The budget under various levies only corrects that by about 25 blocks per year.

The stated cost of full curb and gutter on all sidewalks at SDOT’s estimate of $350,000 per block would be about $4 billion total. This is approximately two-thirds of Seattle’s annual budget. (However, it is about eight years worth of WSDOT’s highway maintenance budget, and sidewalks are a much better use of that money.)

But, with the cratering bond market, municipal bonds have dropped from 3% annual interest to less than 2%–that’s below the inflation rate making the real costs of borrowing effectively zero and potentially negative. For a thirty year bond on $4 billion dollars, that is a difference between paying $228 million per year and $198 million per year. Or 3.8% of the budget versus 3.3%. It is a lot of money, but it’s an excellent example of how taking advantage of these interest rates allow us to finish a project that’s been put off for 113 years.

Underground power lines

Though we live in an active fault zone that can see high winds and storms, only a quarter of Seattle’s power lines are underground. Part of this is the expense, with few neighborhoods taking on the improvement districts to tax themselves for the improvement. Most estimates put burying power lines at $1 million per mile. It’s often more expensive than that, since we are not a greenfield development and multiple lines will need to avoid varied obstructions on any given block. 

The opportunity here would be that many of the roads that need sidewalks also need to have their utilities buried. Two birds with one pour of concrete or brick pavers.

Our overhead wires are not just ugly, vulnerable, and dangerous in an emergency. They are also an impediment to better street trees. Mature trees are regularly butchered or removed to protect overhead wires. Street trees can improve the conditions near the heat-island causing asphalt. And with 3,500 miles of roads in the city, lining them with trees will get us closer to the 30% tree coverage goal than a tree ordinance that could be easily manipulated to stall and harass new housing.

Continue to expand transit

Buses and the people who drive and repair them are expensive, as are continuing to expand light rail and pursue high speed rail. We must continue to fund all of it. 

The first benefit of continuing transit is that we continue to employ thousands of well-paid professional drivers and mechanics who are part of our community. We don’t need to shoot ourselves in the foot trying to save a few bucks. And if we take good bus operators away, it’ll be harder to get around with a hole in our foot anyway.

Second, let’s boost transit capacity so the system will be better as need returns. We’re going to have the sidewalks being built and wires buried, let’s paint the streets with bus lanes and add new and upgraded bus shelters while we’re at it. These are relatively inexpensive improvements that can be undertaken community-by-community.

Slightly larger, we must continue to develop high capacity and high speed transit. This is literally the best time to borrow the money to complete large projects. Hundreds of construction and engineering employees are at work on these projects. We still have a responsibility to work toward reductions in traffic and emissions. There’s also history, like the Shinkansen coming from Japanese post-war reconstruction and the TGV development during France’s long recession in the 1970’s.

On the flip side, there are going to be arguments against continuing big projects. They’re expensive, long-term, and suck money that can go to cutting taxes. But bad public policy comes from capitulating to sob stories about waning corporate profitability. We must clearly state that our hard-won light rail and high speed future are not negotiable.

Finally, improving transit capacity allows it to remain ubiquitous. There will be people changing jobs in any recession. Getting reliably to new workplaces is vital. Doing so dependably is compassionate. Connecting to a new job should be the lowest concern for people returning to work.

Honestly, this would be a good time to make transit free. We have experimented with sixty years of free highways and all it has done is spread people out and kill a lot of folks on the road every year. When loud special interests start making noise that minimum wage or local taxes are too high–as they inevitably will–we can point out that logic dictates transit should be free first. Reducing that literal out-of-pocket cost for most neighbors will mean real improvement in their lives. Vastly more than ephemeral property tax savings.

Home Improvement Bank

The city and county’s ability to borrow money at historically low levels can be used to improve the buildings along the sidewalks too. A revolving loan program seeded by the city can provide building owners low interest loans to make improvements. The city can use this to target long standing goals like reinforcing masonry or improving energy efficiency.

During good economic times, it is very easy to overlook the danger of unreinforced masonry in a seismic zone or the amount of wasted energy that is pouring out old windows. Seattle has over 1100 masonry buildings that could sustain dangerous damage in an earthquake. Large swaths of the city are covered by buildings constructed in the 1910’s and 1920’s, with the suspect insulation and antiquated systems that go along with them. Fully a quarter of the city is still heated by oil.

As pointed out in the City’s Unreinforced Masonry Program policy documents, the cost of seismic retrofits are rarely recouped. Energy efficiency does not fare much better in times of low gas prices and weak federal policy. In many ways, fixing brick and windows are the epitome of shovel-ready projects because they are just sitting there waiting for funds.

And the benefit goes further than just helping homeowners and landlords. Not every construction contractor can take on public infrastructure projects. While building sidewalks and rail can help larger firms hire staff, many smaller projects like windows and doors will help smaller firms stay robust and keep employees.

Open the libraries and community centers

We have talked about shovel-ready projects in terms of constructing physical infrastructure. But we can also talk about it in terms of not demolishing progress. After all, why spend the effort to tear something down when you’re going to need to build it again later.

When recessions hit municipal budgets, the first thing that is on the chopping block is often the basic services of libraries and community centers. Certain parts of the political spectrum will lecture about political realities and how much of a luxury it is to have a place to play basketball or read a free book. Such a mindset threatens to demolish another kind of infrastructure.

In his book Palaces for the People, Eric Klienenberg details how community gathering places are the real infrastructure that create healthy and vibrant neighborhoods. These are the social infrastructure–physical places where social capital develops. “When people engage in sustained, recurrent interaction, particularly while doing things that they enjoy, relationships inevitably grow.”

These relationships don’t just make folks happier. They save lives. Klienenberg details the event that got him researching the topic: a deadly 1995 heatwave in Chicago. Neighborhoods with safe, healthy, common places saw a fraction of the deaths that occurred in neighborhoods without that social infrastructure. Churches, barbershops, and block clubs functioned to help people check on their neighbors and fight the isolation that kills so many people in slow-moving catastrophes. 

Neighborhoods with safe, healthy, common places saw a fraction of the deaths that occurred in neighborhoods without that social infrastructure. Churches, barbershops, and block clubs functioned to help people check on their neighbors and fight the isolation that kills so many people in slow moving catastrophes. Just like we must keep our bus drivers on the road and our homebuilders working, we must keep our gathering places open in a recession.

It seems strange to talk about places of social interaction as a remedy to the recession caused by COVID-19. We here in Hygge central will survive by pulling up to Netflix and detaching from the community for a while. However, you are unlikely to attend a community event with your neighbor one day, then beat them mercilessly for toilet paper the next. Even if that community event was DIY hand sanitizer party.

The worst effect of the slash-everything mentality that pervades cities during recessions is the perception of a zero sum game that turns our community against itself: Cut your services so I don’t lose mine. But improving sidewalks around Haller Lake does not take library funds from Roosevelt if we think ahead and prepare for what’s coming. Think how much cheaper it would have been if you bought the big bottle of hand sanitizer two weeks ago.

That is why we need projects in the pipeline. Projects that require staff and preparation will round out many sharp edges of economic trouble. Preparing a lot will let us see that overlap between sidewalks and buried power lines. We can replicate, repeat, and get good doing many things, quickly. Shovel ready is not having a weapon to use against our neighbor. It’s being there as neighbors ready to make our community stronger. 

The post To Stave off Recession Ready the Shovel-Ready Infrastructure Projects first appeared on The Urbanist.

The proposal is mostly a necessary continuation of vital programs offered by the Seattle Public Library: the expiring levy, approved in 2012 at $123 million over seven years, would need to increase to $167 million just to provide the same amount of services for 2020-2026. The mayor’s proposal would add an additional $45.9 million to fund a small set of additional operating and capital projects, or less than $7 million per year. That extra funding is getting devoted to a few different areas of focus.

Added Operating Hours

Currently several Seattle Public Library branches are closed on Fridays, one last vestige of an earlier period of austerity at the library. The levy would reopen the New Holly, Green Lake, Delridge, and Wallingford branches on Fridays.

In addition, several branches have abbreviated hours compared to larger ones: South Park, International District, and High Point would see additional morning hours (some days those branches open at 1pm) and evening hours (some days they close at 6pm).

All other branches would see an increase of only one hour per week, opening at noon on Sundays compared with the current 1pm. The Central Library would not see any additional hours according to the current proposal, since it opens at 12pm on Sundays currently.

The levy proposal would not, however, bring all library branches up to the same hours, with areas serving marginalized communities like the South Park branch not being open as many hours as branches like Ballard or Capitol Hill. The City’s modest levy proposal doesn’t propose filling those gaps in access to library service, much less making full access citywide a goal.

Several library systems (like Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Vancouver, BC) are extending hours until 9pm at some branches to accommodate the schedules of working families, for example. Libraries throughout the King County Library System already meet this standard (not to mention openings at 10am nearly every day), even in small communities like Enumclaw. No Seattle Public Library branch is open that late any day of the week.

The levy also permanently funds two security officers that had been added in the 2019 general fund budget but not the 2020 budget. In 2019, this was $194,500 for the year, so it should make up around $1.5 million over the life of the levy. The additional security staff allows four security officers to be on staff at the Central Library at all times, according to the 2019 budget.

The data on who gets excluded from the library based on “code of conduct violations” is worth digging into, as Erica C. Barnett did last year.

Eliminating Overdue Fines for Print Materials

One relatively small line item is grabbing a lot of attention: the proposal to eliminate overdue fines for print materials. Just over $1 million per year in proposed levy funds would go toward filling the line item currently occupied by late fees.

From an equity standpoint, eliminating fines is a no-brainer. Flat 25-cents-a-day late fees are regressive, and the fine structure itself can be a deterrent for lower income people to use the library system at all to check out materials.

Over a third of the accounts at Rainier Beach, New Holly, South Park, and Delridge branches are currently locked due to cumulative fines over $15. Without continual fine amnesty, these patrons are unlikely to return to circulating materials.

Seattle is following a national trend on eliminating fines, which has now been proven to improve access to public library materials: library systems in Bremerton, Port Townsend, Friday Harbor, and Marysville have all eliminated fines in recent years, as well as library systems in major cities like Nashville and San Diego.

Fines in general have become a declining revenue source for the library, with the transition to digital materials, which don’t accrue fines but instead simply stop functioning after the check out period has ended. The hit to the bottom line should continue to go down the longer the no fine policy is in place.

Additional Investments in Technology

A new levy would continue the Seattle Public Library’s investments in digital access to all citizens, fulfilling one of its most important functions. Desktop computers at branches continue to be a major way that a segment of Seattle residents access the internet, with the computers taking a lot of wear-and-tear in the process.

Recent data showed that in 2018, in-person computer sessions at library branches were down 38% compared to 2012 (pre-levy) levels, but this doesn’t include patrons using WiFi at branches, nor does it include the HotSpot program, which since 2015 has provided three weeks of internet access for use at home. According to a 2018 survey, 42% of patrons who checked out a HotSpot did not have internet access at home, a population segment that is only 5% of the general population.

The library has added laptops and tablets that can be checked out and used in the branch, allowing more flexibility than the desktop stations. Moreover, it has started setting aside dedicated hotspots for use in Seattle’s sanctioned homeless encampments, as an alternative to a discarded proposal to install permanent WiFi at the camps.

An additional $715,000 in levy spending per year would allow these services to continue to expand to meet the needs of citizens. This amounts to $5 million across the levy’s seven years.

Seismic Upgrades to Library Buildings

The proposed levy also includes capital funds for building improvements at three branches, to provide seismic reinforcement: Columbia City, Green Lake, and the University branches were all Carnegie endowment libraries and are some of the oldest branches in the system. $13.9 million of the $46 million in additional funds would go towards ensuring they don’t collapse in an earthquake. That’s almost a full third of the proposed levy increase amount. Considering Seattle’s backlog of reinforcing outdated buildings, ensuring our libraries, which could serve crucial post-distaster functions, stay standing seems like an obvious call.

Unlike what the rhetoric coming from the troglodytic Seattle Times Election Board would like you to believe, this proposal is very modest. More modest, perhaps, than the citizens of the city of Seattle deserve. Relying on a volatile revenue source like real estate excise tax (REET) to operate our critical library system is a recipe for further system cuts down the line. We’ve been there before, and it’s clear that Seattleites values their libraries too much to allow it to happen again.

The post New Library Levy Proposes Small Steps Forward for Access first appeared on The Urbanist.