I'm minin Hartman I'm the library director of the St Paul public library and can we just appreciate this incredible vehicle behind me yeah uh thanks for there uh there is a voting contest going on right now for the nickname for this vehicle and I can see that some of our those gathered here have a preference but you make your choice that's what democracy is about um so great to have you here today and I'm so pleased to introduce uh our library board chair Sara Jo um we I have love yeah woo I've Loved loved working with her this year and looking forward to many more years of partnership and I'm going to turn it over to her uh thank you director Hartman uh I also want to thank all of our library staff that is [Music] here our library staff help make St Paul what it is every single day I also want to thank Beth Burns and our friends of the St Paul Public Library uh the friends of Library are community members who uh Advocate and fund raise to make sure that our libraries have the resources that they need so my name is Sara Joost I am the council member from ward [Music] 3 and I am proud to serve as the chair of the library board and this role means so much to me because I grew up in St Paul uh going to our libraries so I have memories uh with my sister at the Highland library checking out and reading books and then playing basketball at the community center and now I get to experience the libraries as they are today uh as a mom Through The Eyes of My 5-year-old son Jer which has been just such a special experience and I asked them this morning what is your favorite part about our libraries and he said I like to go there to play fun games and make friends and we have been having a lot of fun at the library so far this year we kicked off the year with the laser loon library cards woo I want to thank our staff for that idea and for distrib Distributing thousands of library cards to new patrons uh all throughout the city so thank you so much [Applause] and then I got to participate in this year's read Brave program where we read man of war by Corey McCarthy and I had the opportunity to meet the author and now every time I jump into a swimming pool I think about his amazing [Applause] story and most recently I got invited to read at storytime at Highland Park Library alongside Rose who is an amazing performer and Storyteller I'd encourage you to go check her out out and it was so much fun to see our kids jumping up and down and dancing and just getting really excited around our stories and around being together and now we have this amazing mobile Library uh woo that makes sure every corner of our city has access to what the libraries have to offer and on this primary day I would encourage all of you to vote for what you would like the library to be named as director depart just mentioned I think you have until the next few days to be able to vote okay thank you and the other highlight of being the library board chair has been the library board meetings themselves for those of you that have come to a library board meeting you know what I'm talking about our library board members my Council colleagues are very enthusiastic and excited about supporting our libraries and that's because we understand the value that they bring to our community you've heard director Hartman and our library staff say that the library is a place to do life so whether you need to check out a book or print something off send a fact that's one of my favorites um or take a citizenship class the libraries have everything that you need to offer and can answer pretty much any question that you might have and so our council members our library board is committed to supporting our libraries and we're especially committed to supporting the three transforming libraries projects here in St Paul which include Hamlin Midway uh Hayden Heights and Riverview and those projects are really important to us thank you and we want to see those through to make sure that all of our kids have a place to go and play fun games and make new friends and make sure that our community has a quality library that is accessible to them no matter who they are or what part of the city that they live in so I'm confident with our partnership uh with our Council colleagues my library board who I want to thank very much uh our library director our staff the friends of the library and our mayor that no matter what challenges that we face in the future we will continue to invest in the values that are important to us to make sure our city is a great place to live and play and Thrive and we will do that by continuing to support our library so they can be an anchor to our community for years to come hi my name is Melvin Carter and the council member just gave my library address for today so thank you so much I am so excited to be here um for the um Library budget address um if you could just silence your phones um and council members uh about the the the the naming contest that' be helpful welcome to to the St Paul Public Library you know there's a rule we give a city budget address every year and then separately we give a library budget address every year and the library budget address has to be at a library so welcome to the St Paul Public Library cuz if there's one thing I've learned from the incredible team of folks who work for the SA Paul public library and I certainly have to give a shout out uh to our director Moren Harman thank you so much for your passion your leadership you know our our whole mission in the city and I see our um Department of Public Works director Sean Kershaw here I see our uh office of technology and communications director Jamie wascal here thank you for being here our our whole I see John McCarthy our offs office of fincial Services director um our whole mission is to say that every single City Department give it up for right track woo our whole mission is to say that every single department is responsible for helping us to drive a vision towards the world forward like we're not just about putting books on shelves or we're not just about making spreadsheets equal zero we're not just about uh filling potholes we're about making the world better for our community members and let me tell you director Hartman it's been really um heartwarming and inspiring to me to see the way that you U put values into action along with of course your incredible team within the libraries as our library director please give it up for our library director Marine Harman what I was going to say is if I've learned anything from our team is that our our library if if if we are just operating a library system that says hey look there's a building over there and there's some walls over there and through that door over there there's some books well then we won't be scratching the surface of what our community needs from us our community does need books our community needs homework help our community needs a place to to to to to uh put together a resume or just a safe place to be during the day our community needs and asks for so much from our Public Library System system and our Public Library system is always there to help you know in a lot of ways the challenges of the pandemic have required the whole rest of the world to catch up with libraries because as we were trying to figure out how to create a a a imperson environment that can compete with the virtual environments online well our libraries have had to do that for the last couple of decades and it's really heartwarming for me as someone who sat before as a library board member as someone who has um sat through u a um a sound check for a 10piece horn horn band in one of our St Paul public libraries and certainly as a young both a young person who's grown up in our libraries and a still young person who has children growing up in our public libraries I get a chance to re re revisit our libraries and relearn our libraries you know I use names like um like the the Latimer Library I use names like Riverview I use names like Sunray but I get in the car and and and somebody in the backseat looks at me and says go to the one with the grocery store in it go to the one with the with with with the kitchen in it Go and and and it's amazing to watch Through The Eyes of my four-year-old the ways in which she sees our Public Library it's amazing to me to get in the car and see her eyes light up aresh when we go when she knows we're headed to the library it's amazing to me to see her her pull out her own library card you know she didn't pick the laser loon library card I thought she should have but it wasn't up to me to see her pick out her own library card and check out her own library books and ask that librarian she's that we've had this conversation multiple times how many books can I check out and to find out that she can check out as many books as she can possibly read you know it reminds me of when we made the decision as a community to get rid of late fins in our libraries remember that well I'm glad it made you happy didn't make everyone happy which I'll say to my grave like I can understand with some of the things that we do with guaranteed income I can understand why you just say listen that's not how I grew up I can understand with even raising the minimum wage or you say that's it's it's it's new and it's different it's unusual to me I just from the life of me will never be able to understand why someone wakes up on to to just make sure that if a four-year-old returns Cat in the Hat on Thursday instead of Wednesday we collect $2.75 from them that just it's hard for me to to get there it's hard for me to imagine somebody got on the internet and said what about personal responsibility I said what about it they said how will our children learn personal responsibility with out late fines in our libraries and I said well they can check out a book about it they can keep it as long as they want to they can read it front back back to front and check every single page as much as they want somebody said was that a hard decision to make and I said yes until I remembered that we actually want our children to read worst case scenario worst absolute worst case scenario from that fine- Free Library policy kids have books that's the worst thing that can happen the best thing that can happen is kids have books and our community meets us where we are today and I'll say this to I'm BW in the face I'm proud of it today our library use is is up our our our circulation is up our our our e materials are up our visits are up because not everybody walks into a library to check out a material our our our our our media checkouts are up library use across the across the board and across the system are up and that's something that we're really proud of and our books today and stop me if I say this wrong Marine director Hartman our books today are a little bit more likely than they were before we went to fine free libraries to be a couple days late way less likely to be a couple weeks late and what we found out is that a library isn't about late fines in the first place a library is about community a library is about connecting together around shared information and our neighbors have known from the beginning what we learned in City Hall that bring your book back or else I'm going to charge you .75 was always a worse value proposition than bring your book back because your neighbor's waiting for it and I'm proud to be part of a city that has that ethic around libraries I'm proud to be part of a city that knows when people walk into the building looking for resources they might need an encyclopedia or they might need the number to a homeless shelter they they might need a librarian they might need a social worker they might speak one of the 100 plus different languages that are spoken in our community that are reflected in our library system you need to know this if you don't know it already we have young people in our community who can't find books in the language that they speak at home and we have a library system right here in St Paul for whom that's not good enough who says we're going to commission those books written in our languages so that all of our young people can see themselves in the books in our St Paul Public Library System council member joose already said it but we are committed to our library system we are committed to building this system to building this space as a place that can stay on the front edge of our Consciousness that can keep us provoked to think and to have to expand our Horizons can you imagine a library system that didn't provoke us to expand our Horizons we have a library system today that is protested more now than any other time in my livelihood in my life and let me tell you we ought to wear that as a badge of honor because the worst possible thing we could do as a library system and you see we got ongoing maintenance the worst possible thing we could do as a library system in this day and age is to not push people past our comfort zones and so I thank you to all of our library staff for that I thank you for our community to for being a community that values libraries a community that steps up and says we are not just users of the libraries we're not just patrons of the libraries we're not just folks who drive by and see the library on our way past we're what Beth we are friends of the St Paul public library and let me tell you we have an incredible friends organization we could not have the system that we have right now without all of the volunteers all of the donors all the staff and all the leadership of the friends of the St Paul Public Library would you please give it up for Beth Burns and everybody who's a part of that great organization we're going to continue to invest in our libraries we're going to continue to see our yet unnamed mobile library on the streets of in every neighborhood of our city no undue influence please there's a quorum of the library board over here and this meeting is not posted we're going to continue to re-envision to reinvest to rebuild our Public Library system and there's there's something I've said before that I want to clear up any confusion about when I say that we're going to build a state-of-the-art multi-million dollar first class 21st century public library in our Hamlin Midway neighborhood what I mean by that is we're going to build a first class state-of-the-art 21st century multi-million dollar library in our Hamlin Midway Community are we clear on that we look forward to making that even more and more and more clear as these months we go on thank you so much for your support of our library system thank you for being in Rice Park Public Library with us here today and I look forward to continuing the work as your teammate in the work as we move forward thanks all