The Clearwater Library Board met on Thursday, November 6, 2025, at 10:15 AM in the City of Clearwater Main Library Council Chambers. The meeting covered approval of minutes, a presentation on merging advisory boards, setting the 2026 meeting schedule, and the library director's report. No public comments were received.
Library Director Jennifer reported on several items:
Board members raised questions about the seed library program (available at countryside and East Library; expansion being considered) and the status of the art space at main library (council rejected initial proposals and will reissue a request for proposals with a six-month window in early 2026).
Oh no, you're a new cover. Oh, you gotta move on. Uh, my name is Tanya Landry. Okay. My name is Kelly Malicia. Good morning, and my name is Loretta Mitchell. So thank you. We do have a quorum today. So our first item of business. Take a look at the minutes from the last meeting. Do I hear a motion to approve the minutes of the previous meeting? I so move. And do I hear a second? I second. All right. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. And minutes are approved. All right. Do we have any citizens to be heard regarding items not on the agenda? Seeing none, we will move on to new business items. Merging of advisory boards, Rosemary call, city clerk. Come on up and tell us what's happening. Well, good morning. First, I would like to thank each of you because I know you guys take time out of your busy schedule to volunteer to serve on this board. So I do appreciate that. But as part of this year's budget exercise, staff was tasked with finding efficiencies and specifically with the advisory board. So I worked with several with all the departments who have an advisory board, and I we've identified boards that either were going to be sunset, and we found two boards to sunset, and then there was the issue of consolidating some boards to improve efficiency. But I think of it as an opportunity to improve our community engagement. So the library board was one of them with the Parks and Rec Board and the Environmental Advisory Board to consolidate it into one. One of the issues that we have is that when these boards were created, specifically the library board, I think is and EAB and Parks and Rec, those are the three, they were created at a time when we lack the professional expertise, and 40 years ago, public meetings were probably the best way to get public feedback. That has since changed. It's where we've become more technological, um, so that seems to be more efficient, even just getting applications, individuals to apply. I can post it on our website. I can post an ad in the paper. Not that I would add put an ad in the paper for that specifically, but we don't get any feedback. But when we post it on social media, that's what triggers it. And so we're just trying to find better ways to improve that process. But one of the things identified by staff is that the most of the boards have become more of a council is no longer requesting tasks of you, and so that's how the boards were initially created because that was really the best way 40 years ago. Have a public meeting and you seek the input. So it really has I would say um has shown the power of one. It just happens to be an individual on an advisory board, make a recommendation or share an observation to improve a service, and it just happens to get done. But there really are no actions or asks of staff. It really has just become staff updates or project updates. And as we were discussing, is that really the best use of time of board members, not just staff, but of board members to come to a meeting and approve minutes, but just really identify recommendations that either a can be easily and for the most part, does not require really true discussion, and that may not be the case in this in this board, but current garner true discussion among the board members to um have staff adopt that that recommendation because that's one of the things I think that makes us our staff really good at that. If you know somebody, you call them up, you can call Jennifer and make that recommendation. You saw this, or I would like this.