Good evening, everyone.

I'd like to call to order the um July 27, 2026 meeting of the uh library board.

Can we have a call of the role?

Yes, Mr.

Peterman.

Present.

Miss Johnson, present.

Dr.

Martada, present.

Dr.

Classio.

Present.

Dr.

Riolo, present.

And there to write.

Probably.

Would you have a quorum?

Excellent.

Uh, good evening, and welcome everyone to the July meeting of the Indianapolis Public Library Board of Trustees.

My name is Ray Bieterman, president of the library board.

Uh, I'm looking forward to a productive meeting as we continue to advance our mission, vision, and values, and goals of the Indianapolis Public Library.

I'll start by sharing my gratitude for the staff of our historic East Washington branch for hosting us tonight.

We'll hear from the branch manager in a few minutes, but first I'd like uh to recognize our library staff across the system for another outstanding summer reading program.

Their hard work has made this uh memorable summer for thousands of readers throughout our community.

It's hard to believe that one of our most beloved uh summer traditions is wrapping up this week.

Our summer reading program once again inspired our community to embrace reading.

I'm pleased to share uh that we have exceeded our goal of 22 million minutes uh as a reading community.

Uh, we're actually as of today at 25 million minutes.

Whoa.

Yeah, so that's great.

And 24 million of them were Dr.

Classians.

Can you believe that?

It's crazy.

Uh, with a few more days, there's still time to log your last bit of reading uh minutes before the end of summer.

I understand there are still some prizes to be claimed, so please visit your branch by August 1st.

Thank you to everyone who participated and helped make this year's program such a success.

Uh the conclusion of the summer reading program signals the start of the school year for Indianapolis students K through 12.

I know that because my kids are already talking about it and how how little they're looking forward to getting back.

So there we go.

Um, Indianapolis Public Library is ready to support the students through our shared system, which connects 91 public and private schools, museums, and special libraries with the Indianapolis Public Library.

This massive collection provides more than two million physical items, plus more than 340,000 ebooks and downloadable audible uh audiobook titles along with research databases and other essential reading resources.

This uh robust shared library collection.

Uh through through that, students can access their school library materials as well as all of the resources of the Indianapolis Public Library.

On behalf of the board, a special thank you to our partner schools and to our librarians, library staff, and collection management professionals who make this work uh possible.

Together, you're helping strengthen literacy and expand opportunities for students across Indianapolis.

So thank you to the shared system.

As the school year begins, I encourage students, families, and caregivers to carry the joy of summer reading into the months ahead.

Our branches remain ready to help with personalized reading recommendations, homework support, research assistance, and welcoming study spaces where students can learn and thrive.

Um so before we get to um the branch report, uh Dr.

Mertada wanted to give a special thank you.

Oh, yes, yeah.

Yes.

This past Saturday, um, the staff of our central branch and others across the system had a wonderful event, and it was an opportunity for chess champions around the whole region.

And we saw young folks, older folks, folks from every kind of background there playing chess, thinking about chess, wishing they could play chess.

It was just an awesome event.

And so I just wanted to give a shout out of appreciation for the staff that pulled it together and stayed for hours.

Even our board member Lisa Dr.

Riolo did how many hours, Lisa?

Eight hours.

Eight hours straight.

I wasn't there for eight hours straight.

But it was such an impressive event.

Um and I I just want to just applaud the staff and the word that got out about it and the representation was just awesome.

Another memorable event was tied to what you announced in terms of the 90, the opportunities for reading and the millions of minutes that have been clocked for our reading program, our summer reading program.

I had an opportunity to go over to Wayne and to read through some little ones outside on the on the lawn there at Wayne.

Just on a wonderful event.

Encouraging more people to go out and read to our young people.

Let them see us as part of what we do as a community.

And it's not all on the library staff to do it.

As members of the larger community, our opportunity to read, to engage the young people is awesome.

And let's do even more of it.

I I had a ball at Wayne, and I think we can do even more to support literacy.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um now I'd like to invite uh Ms.

Sparrow to the microphone, who's the manager of uh the East Washington branch.

Uh one of two Carnegie Libraries in our system.

Welcome.

Right.

President Biederman, members of the library board.

Welcome to East Washington Street Library.

My name is Lasada Sparrow, and I'm the branch manager here, and I would like to share a few things about my library today.

Um the first East Washington team.

First, the East Washington team is made up of seven team members with two full-time librarians, which also includes the branch manager, um, uh one full-time uh circulated supervisor, one full-time computer assistant, one full-time library security assistant, and we also have one part-time library assistant to, and one hourly library assistant too.

This library is located in the near east side of the Inglewood neighborhood.

Currently, the population is at 13,910, which has decreased by 2% since 2023.

East Washington library service area is made up of a multiracial community with 46% of the population made up of people of color.

Our service area includes two high schools, one middle school, four elementary schools, and three pre-kindergarten schools.

We partner with service area schools through outreach by attending their back to school events, resource fairs, and planned story times.

Joseph Luthaltz, our juvenile librarian, does an excellent job at attending these events and promoting our library services.

He also does outreach story times and crafts twice a month at the Westminster Community Center.

Other ways we serve our community are with our library services.

Our branch has over 16,000 registered borrowers.

We have seen an increase in patron visits in 2025, even with our library being closed due to AC repairs that year.

East Washington Library has some new and long-standing community partners.

One of our long-standing partners is Westminster Food Bank, who has quarterly pop-up food banks in the parking lot here.

We have health focused partners, which are Step Up Inc.

who tests for STIs and provides resources for individuals in need.

For some time now, we have been a point-in-time count site for CHIP, and the volunteers capture a local census of who is experiencing homelessness on a given night of the year.

He schedules story times and game nights twice a month.

And the last couple of years we started having a summer reading kickoff event, which we had a great turnout this year.

Our team programs are run by Taylor Midori, who is a flirt public service assistant too.

Taylor has managed to encourage teams to come into the library with her program, Teen Zone, and Teen Writing Group.

She creates crafts and games for them to play.

Linda Nieves, who is our computer assistant, present present a tech program twice a month, which is named Intro to Devices, which helps patrons learn more about their personal devices.

Our newest adult program started this month with this Wednesday matinee.

It was originally made to encourage our regulars from the men's shelter to engage with library programming.

They vote on a small selection of movies and whichever movie wins, we watch in the community room, and we enjoy some popcorn.

And that is all for my presentation.

Are there any questions?

Any questions?

Thank you for everything.

You and the team those here.

Yeah, I I echo it.

Thank you very much for coming out.

All right.

Also on tonight's agenda, we have a report from our communications and marketing department for all of their uh digital marketing efforts for the public library.

Uh, would Miss Barr come forward?

And Justin Clark and all of your reports and all that great stuff.

We're looking forward to it.

Thank you, President Fiederman, Board of Trustees, Mr.

Hill.

Thanks for giving us a little time tonight to talk about our department.

My name is Mary Barr, and I'm the chief communications and marketing officer for the Indianapolis Public Library, and I head up a mighty team of marketing professionals.

Tonight I want to tell you a little bit about a certain function of our team.

The communications and marketing team is responsible for our digital marketing channels.

These are our websites, our social media channels, and our email marketing, and these are activities that we do in addition to our public relations and our earned media work that we do.

Together, these channels, all of them could create a consistent nearly daily presence that keeps the Indianapolis public library's positive story in front of patrons, prospective patrons, and taxpayers.

Our team has a unique vantage point across the system where we can see these great stories and then have the opportunity to amplify them to new folks.

Tonight we're gonna spotlight one area of our communications and marketing effort, our digital marketing.

At the heart of this is one of our most valuable assets that you guys might not see or know about, and that's our 200, more than 200 opt-in subscribers to our email marketing newsletters.

This is a highly engaged audience.

They give us uh we get a direct chance to reach out to them.

They are already supporters, um, and it allows us to reach out to them in a different way from a social media algorithm or from uh news coverage, so we can go directly to them.

It's a quiet but very powerful tool for us.

Within the past year to amplify some of this, we've added a new position to our team.

I'm very grateful for.

And I'm pleased to introduce Justin Clark, who is heading up our digital marketing efforts.

His title is Senior Marketing Manager of Digital Marketing and Strategy and Analytics.

Um, and he's gonna walk us through uh yes, I saw that's a long one.

Did I mention a library bit of it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There is an and in there as well.

He's gonna walk us through some highlights from the first half of this year just to show how that works.

I would like to introduce Justin Clark.

Thank you, Mary.

Um, good evening, library board, um, as well as our CEO.

Um, and uh all the all that are in attendance today.

So the first things I want to talk about are some general first impressions.

Um, impressions are extremely important, um, so it's kind of a pun.

Um, impressions are extremely important in digital marketing.

Um, it's a great gauge by which we measure our effectiveness as a team.

Um, and so um our digital marketing strategy is comprised of multiple tactics, which are integrated together.

Um, and when they're deployed, and then we track them for effectiveness and see how effective they are.

Um, that includes email marketing, as Mary said, social media, website updates, um, and uh when kind of comprised together, we get an idea of the number of impressions that all of those come, that all of those integrate together.

And so the big takeaways I wanted to give you guys tonight was that our email marketing and our social media accounted for nearly 97% of all impressions for Meet the Artists, McFadden and Juneteenth, with over 1.5 million impressions across all of our um email marketing and social media, um, which was a big push for all three of those major events that we have here at the library.

And the second is that starting in March of this year, we moved to publishing two all patron newsletters a month.

These go out to our over 200,000 email subscribers.

And what this has led to a 55% increase in impressions from Q1 to Q2 of last year.

So let's speak a little bit more about kind of talking about breaking that down a little bit.

So first we'll discuss Meet the Artists, which is the one on the left.

We had over 319,000 total impressions across our digital marketing channels in 2026, which was a 17% increase from last year.

For McFadden, which is the one in the middle, we had over 589,000 total impressions across our digital marketing channels in 2026, which is a 78% increase from last year.

And finally, Juneteenth, which is on the right, we had over 624,000 total impressions across our digital marketing channels in 2026, which is a slight decrease from last year.

Having said that, while our overall impressions may have been down for Juneteenth from 2025, our email marketing saw a 3.9% increase in email openings and an 18.8% increase in the click-through rate.

We also saw a large increase in attendance from 222 to 345, a 55.4% growth over last year.

All right, let's talk a little bit about email marketing.

So as we noted before, um, we started moving the strategy towards doing two all-patron newsletters a month starting in March.

We put it one out one out on the first, we put the second one out on the 15th.

And this gives us an opportunity to really reach um what is in many ways our most indispensable digital marketing pathway, which is email.

Um, and what we've seen is that we have delivered over 2.1 million emails through our all patron newsletters uh in the first two quarters of 2026, which is a 54% increase from Q1, Q2 of 2025.

We've also seen a massive increase in total openings of those said newsletters, with over 589,000 total opens in Q1, Q2 2026, which is an 84% increase from Q1, Q2 2025.

And the total clicks, people clicking on things.

We have over 84,000 total clicks, which is a 104% increase from Q1, Q2 2025.

And my final impressions are that email marketing truly is an indispensable tool for our brand and for our patrons.

And we'll continue to make data-informed decisions for integrated marketing decisions.

Thank you very much.

Woo Any questions questions, sorry.

Um I wanted to mention Justin talked about the electronic newsletters, and this week a survey went out.

So all those people at home, dry and warm and comfortable.

Make sure you fill in those surveys.

I think it'll be very helpful.

I did mine.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Dr.

Biolo.

In fact, um, with that survey so far, we've received over 280 responses.

We actually got one in Spanish too, which is fantastic because we did create a Spanish language survey as well.

Thank you.

Questions, comments.

Oh, please.

I'm just curious.

So how do you those are lagging indicators?

What are your leading indicators?

Are you moving around or shifting to make this happen?

What are you?

Sure.

So for email marketing, it truly was doing the two newsletters a month.

You know, um, moving from one to two has really um done in Mary's phrase a jump leap for our email marketing approach.

One thing that's really great about it is that it allows us to highlight specific events.

Um for example, you know, with the June 1 email, we could focus on Juneteenth, and then the June 15th email we could focus on, say day of play, right?

So those are two major events.

If we only did one, we'd really only have one of them be the main story.

But having two newsletters, we have two main stories has really increased the click-through rate.

The other thing that we've also done has simplified the newsletters a little bit.

Um we have tried to make them more visually appealing with with um with sort of snappier language, um, which is especially important, um, giving that more more and more people are looking at generative um engine optim optimization, um, where people are reading the email summaries of their AI summaries rather than just going through.

So having those sort of quick bullet points along with really, I think, you know, uh provocate uh good branded images will help with that.

In terms of social media, one of the things that I'm really big about, because I love Instagram, is um doing more Instagram stories the day of.

So this is something that I've tried to institute at all of our major events this year, has been doing, especially when it comes to Meet the Artists and with McFadden and um with Juneteenth, is I'm doing videos, I'm doing photos all day long.

We got really great engagement with quick video clips we put in our Instagram stories, for example, of um New York Times bestselling author Tony Adime, who was the um the keynote lecturer for Juneteenth.

Um, those got a lot of reach.

And in fact, um I think they in sp in some respects have inspired other um media to uh to kind of take notice.

And so, you know, they so the Indianapolis Recorder, a great publication.

Um, they ended up doing some videos of this the book signing with Tommy that looked kind of like mine, which was great.

Um, so no, it's like it's so that's been the real big thing has been making sure that we do a lot of stuff day of.

So if we're not doing necessarily a live stream of the event that we're we're doing clips, we're doing photos, and we're talking to people, and we're getting good uh we're getting good snippets.

Um so that's one of the big things that's also been uh dynamic for us.

Okay.

Any other questions?

All right, thank you very much.

Thank you.

We'll clap again.

I had a quick question.

Oh no, Mary, Mary, just a quick question.

You had mentioned the 200 subscribers that are select group.

How are they chosen?

Um they're opt-in subscribers.

So these are folks that um on our website, they can opt in to um receive our newsletters.

So it's as simple as that.

And and the diversity of that group.

Um these are still early days benchmarking some things.

Um I don't know if we track that quite yet, but we can uh look into that.

We can certainly look into that.

I mean, uh some of that you we have to make sure we're not you know violating like privacy rules or anything like that.

But but but but that's something as we move, um, especially to the Vega Promote platform that we will probably get more robust analytics um that we can certainly look to into in the future for sure.

Yeah, I'm thinking about young people and what do young people really track into.

And so, how do we capture their input?

A lot of times it's the older folks that really we pay attention to, but the young people are using our libraries like crazy.

And so, how do we make sure that they are giving you that out of that 200 group that we have some young people up in there too?

These are still early days with Justin here too.

Um we're benchmarking some things.

Um, the beauty part is the more that we can segment, um, segment to our teen audience.

We're looking forward to doing that.

Um, part of our strategic plan, as you know, is having the uh Spanish community outreach.

We're still organizing some of that as well.

Um so that's another opportunity for us down the road.

So, like I said, I'm very grateful having Justin here to be able to be dedicated to uh looking into some of the analytics that can data be the data inform and informant um for some of these things moving forward too, for sure.

Thank you both.

Thank you so much.

Thank you again.

Thank you.

All right, uh, let's move on to public comments.

Uh Angie, do you have any public comments for Mr.

Bader?

All right, there we go.

Moving on to the next item, um, approval of minutes.

Um is there a motion to approve the minutes, the regular meeting held June 22nd, 2026?

Is there a second?

Yes, minutes have been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, we'll have a call of the roll.

Ms.

Johnson, approved.

Dr.

Martada, approved.

Dr.

Placier.

Approved.

Dr.

Riolo, Dr.

White.

Approved.

And Mr.

Badam.

Approved.

That's uh motion carried.

Now we'll move on to the finance committee.

Dr.

White, you're chair of the finance committee.

Thank you again for that appointment.

No, at this particular time, um we uh need the uh public hearing uh to convene, and then we have some resolutions to follow up.

All right, so I heard that there's a motion to uh adjourn, not adjourn, suspend.

Thank you.

Uh I don't know why I'm writing that.

The regular meeting and convene a public hearing.

Is there a second for that?

Second.

This been moved and seconded.

Are we uh all in favor?

Do we need a roll call for that?

No.

Are we all in favor?

All right, anyone opposed?

No.

Okay.

We are now in a public hearing.

Welcome, everybody.

Please come forward.

And um Jesus and Jason Council, he's with Baker Tilly, he's our municipal bond advisor.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mr.

President, members of the board, Mr.

Hill, Jeff Qualk, and Bush with Barg and Thornburg.

This is the second public hearing that we're having on this project and financing.

And as we've talked on June 22nd, and we'll mention here as well, this is required under the in under Indiana law whenever you have a project that is going to be financed from bonds uh that exceeds a certain cost threshold.

And so the project tonight is for primarily the Irvington branch and the remodeling and reconstruction and transformation of that building, but also to do some other improvements across the district.

And then at that point, we'll answer any questions you may have.

At the conclusion of that, you should open that up the for public comment specifically on the project and the financing only.

And then at the conclusion of that, as Dr.

White said, there will be two resolutions that will be in your board packet that is for presentation in your consideration.

The first one of those is called a reimbursement preliminary determination resolution.

That's required to then put a notice in the paper that you make a preliminary determination to move forward with the project and the financing.

That then triggers a 30-day period during which the community can ask for additional processes to apply.

In addition, the second resolution is called the appropriation or additional appropriation resolution.

While you have an additional appropriation, an appropriation process for your regular budget when you do that, because you don't do bonds when you do your regular budget, you do those at different times of the year.

And so we have what's called an additional appropriation process.

And this is what's been done by the library board and other governmental entities across the state whenever they do bond issues.

So we'll talk more about those resolutions once we get through the public hearing.

But with that, I'll turn it over to Mr.

Tanzle to talk more about the financing.

Thank you, Jeff.

And thank you, members of the board, for having me here this evening.

My name is Jason Tansell, and I'm a managing director at Baker Tilly, and we represent the library as your municipal advisor.

So now that we've had an opportunity, opportunity to hear from Mr.

Quakin Bush about the needs of the project, we will now review how the library could pay for this project through the issuance of a property tax supported bond in an amount not to exceed $19 million.

It's important to keep in mind tonight that we are reviewing maximums that would be within your resolutions this evening.

But these are maximums we cannot exceed, but we can come down from.

They include the borrowing amount, repayment term, interest rate, interest expense, and annual payment.

But it's also important to note that the library has positioned itself to be able to issue these bonds without increasing its debt service levy or tax rate.

So we have a presentation here that summarizes the maximum parameters, and we will then review the debt service fund of the library.

This is slide two.

Slide two is a summary of the 10 bonds currently outstanding of the library, and you will see that each bond is represented by its own individual color, but that in its totality in 2026, the annual payments of the library are approximately 21 million dollars.

This 21 million dollars is what drives the debt service levy, which is ultimately what drives the debt service tax rate.

So to the extent that you see those declining debt service payments in 2027, uh the lot you could see that the library has the ability to replace these payments if it so chooses, with while maintaining its current debt service levy and rate.

Also just want to note that the library has always chosen a very rapid immunization schedule, and all debt being repaid within the next five years does position you to potentially take on additional debt if it's uh so chosen.

Our next slide is a calculation of the general obligation debt limit of the library.

These are general obligation bonds.

They're direct uh credits of the library, and there is a limitation as to how much an entity can issue.

This limitation is two percent of one-third of your most recent and assessed value, which you can see uh for an Indy Public Library is 434 million dollars.

We also factor in the currently outstanding bonds that were on the prior slide, roughly 38, 39 million dollars are outstanding.

That does leave 395 million dollars available to the library.

So the 19 fits within this constraint.

Slide four is a summary of the maximum parameters within your resolution.

You'll see the maximum borrowing amount is not to exceed 19 million dollars.

And we estimate that after bond cost of issuance that roughly 18 million, seven hundred and twenty thousand would be available for the projects.

The maximum repayment term is going to be established at six years, but currently the library is anticipating repaying this sooner within a four-year term.

The maximum annual payments 13,610,000, and the maximum interest expense is 3,615,000.

We use this 5.5% as a maximum interest rate, and uh current current markets today is a little bit under 4%.

So we do feel like that is a conservative estimate.

Again, you can see that the current debt service tax rate for the library is 3.18 cents, and we are not anticipating an increase above that or the current levy of 20,711,000.

And finally on slide five, this summarizes the 10 bonds outstanding in blue with the proposed repayment term of the $19 million being discussed here this evening in red.

And you can see that we are keeping in line with the current debt service structure of uh no bonds outside of 2030, and that the debt service levy is not anticipated to increase above 2026 levels.

With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions uh the board may have.

Any questions from the board?

No.

Okay.

All right.

Um, so at this time I'll ask um anyone from the public uh if they wish to comment on the bond uh or the project.

All right, there being none, I'll consider a motion to close the public hearing.

Second.

It's been moved.

Is there a second?

Second, it's uh been moved and seconded.

Um all in favor of closing the public hearing, uh signified by saying aye.

All right, thank you.

All right, the public hearing is adjourned.

Now we'll move on to resolution 26-2026.

Um, the preliminary determination reimbursement uh and bond resolution.

Uh Mr.

Kakamush.

Yes, so as I stated previously, this is a resolution that you've seen uh in other projects and other financings over the last several years.

This uh resolution does three primary things.

First of all, it makes a preliminary determination to approve the project and the financing pursuant to the parameters that have been set forth in the presentation this evening.

In addition, it then authorizes the chief executive officer and the chief financial officer to take any and all actions necessary to present this to the city county council for its consideration and approval and also to publish the notice of preliminary determination to trigger the 30-day community request process.

Finally, it authorizes uh you all to the extent that you incur expenditures for this project prior to the issuance of the bonds to reimburse those expenditures with bond proceeds once the bonds are issued, and that's a necessary federal and state tax requirement that it allows you the flexibility that should you incur does design costs or other purchases of equipment early on before you actually issue the bonds later this year.

You have the authority to be able to reimburse those at that point in time.

So those are the three primary things that resolution 26-2026 covers for you.

Um the finance committee uh considered this, and we recommend the do pay us to the full rule.

Great.

Uh resolution 26-2026 regarding the preliminary determination and reimbursement and bond resolution.

Um, the 2026-2027 Irvington branch renovation and multi-facility long-term capital improvement and equipment update project.

Received a positive recommendation from the finance committee, so the chair would request a second such recommendation.

Second.

It's been uh recommended and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none will have a call of the roll.

Ms.

Johnson approved, Dr.

Martada approved, Dr.

Pasio.

Approved.

Dr.

Yalo, approved, Dr.

White?

Approved.

Yeah, Mr.

Med.

Approved.

The motion's carried.

Moving on to resolution 27-2026.

Uh, the appropriation resolution.

Mr.

Quackambush.

Yes, so this resolution, as it states in the preamble, is required any time you're going to do a bond issue because you do not include in your prior year budget approval the appropriation of bond proceeds because you haven't yet authorized the issuance of the bonds.

And so now that we've authorized that issuance, you would then take the step to approve the appropriation or the expenditure of those proceeds and the interest earnings on those proceeds.

So while we approved a bond issue not to exceed $19 million in principal amount, we hope you will earn some interest on those bond proceeds while the project is going forward.

And so that's why we authorize the appropriation to be a larger amount of 20 million uh 605,000 dollars.

I don't believe you'll necessarily be able to earn over a million dollars, a million and a half dollars of interest on these bond proceeds during the project.

If you do, I do want to talk to your advisor to figure out how I can spend my investment my money.

But but we want to make sure we have that number artificially high so that you don't have to go through this process or accidentally exceed the amount that you actually spend on the project.

So that's why we have it at that amount.

Yeah, the finance committee uh discussed and review resolution uh 27, and we recommend the new payoffs to the full board.

Great.

All right, resolution 27-2026 regarding the uh preliminary determination reimbursement.

Uh that's not right.

The appropriation resolution for the Irvington branch um in multi-facility long-term capital improvement and equipment update project received a due pass recommendation from the finance committee.

So the chair would request a second to such recommendation.

Second.

It's been um recommended and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, we'll have a call of the roll.

Ms.

Johnson, approved.

Dr.

Tata approved.

Dr.

Placio?

Approved.

Dr.

Yellow, Dr.

White.

Approved.

And Mr.

Vigman.

Approved.

The motion is carried.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you both very much.

So we do our comprehensive finance report for 2025.

All right.

Well, good evening, everyone.

Good evening.

I'm here today to provide you an overview of the audit for counter year 2025.

We did have the opportunity to meet with Dr.

White and our CEO to walk through the audit results in more detail.

This is intended to give you a high-level overview of the results of the audit.

But the more focus on qualitative rather than quantitative.

The reason that we focus more on qualitative is the information you get throughout the year.

It's in much more detail, you know, budget actual information, real-time information.

One thing I do want to point out about the audit is that there was nothing that came to our attention that would change the results of the monthly information that you're receiving from the finance group, which is important as you're making decisions throughout the year.

The second thing I want to note a high level based on last presentation is that uh the debt structure and so forth is really the driving force of a lot of the activities that you'll see in changes for the audit as far as year-to-year comparison, which is normal because you're on a growth and rehab tight focus over the next few years is evident from the prior presentation.

Uh we could uh clicker, yeah.

First thing I wanted to point out is that our scope of work included auditing the 1231 2025 financial statements.

One to recognize that the library for the 30th, 40th, 50th year possibly, uh their participation in the GFOA certificate of achievement for excellence and financial reporting.

I'll also give you uh some information at the end about uh standard communications with the board.

But the most important thing is we do provide a clean or unmodified opinion related to our audit, which is the highest form of opinion that you can receive, and that means that uh we believe that the financials and the note disclosures meet the appropriate standards, and we believe are materially correct for the year into 1231 25, which is as expected.

You know the next slide.

But the highlight here really there's two areas that we're really focus on.

Um is the general fund, which is on your day-to-day operations, and the second is the bond and interest redemption fund, which ties into directly though to your prior presentation.

Um the general fund had a fund balance of 54.2 million, which was an increase of about 2.8 million year over year.

The bond and interest fund, you'll see that the property taxes are really the driving force for payment of your debt, as I think they mentioned that your property taxes were somewhere in the range of 21, 22 million dollars.

You can see that that receivable represents a one-year uh advance that's offset by a uh deferred inflow.

So, but it does represent a typical year.

Overall, your total funds had fifth 98, I'm sorry, 94.9 million uh fund balance, which grew by about 8.9 million for the year.

We go to the next uh slide, the income statement at the fund level.

Um this shows the revenues and expenses and the financing sources during the year.

Once again, you can see the general fund has approximately about 59.9 million of revenues and about 56.6 million of expenses, resulting in 2.25 million prior to uh uh additional proceeds from uh uh debt essentially for the general fund.

The total net change was 2.9 million uh for the year, which is a positive.

The bond and interest fund typically should be around break-even or somewhere around there each year, depending on timing.

But you can see that the debt service was about 21.1 million for the year, which is very comparable to what Baker Tilly just presented going forward around that range.

It's nice to have consistency there, right?

Um lastly, uh, you can see in the total governmental funds uh 8.9 million increase.

A lot of that is driven by bond proceeds of 15 million that were received during the year.

So you probably had a resolution about this time last year to issued that up to 15 million.

Um as you can see at the fund level, all of your capital outlay, 11.5 million in the total governmental fund is the uh all the expenditures you made against bonds during the year.

So overall, uh an increase of 8.9 million, primarily driven by the bond activity and status of expenditures for the year.

Otherwise, your activities were pretty consistent year over year, which I think is consistent with your budget actual.

All right.

Full accrual.

So that's fund level, kind of modified cash basis.

If you look at the organization with all its debt, um you can see that the organization as a whole has 365.7 million of assets.

That's driven by about 100 million dollars of cash and about 194 million dollars of capital assets.

So across your system, the the net book value of those historical assets minus depreciation is about 193 million.

That's something that's added on for the full accrual financial statements.

Another area that is added on for the full accrual financial statements is your bond debt and other debt.

So the 49.8 million dollars is your bond debt.

Uh, you have other lease and subscription liabilities, compensated absences, and net pension liability, which are not recognized at the fund level, but they do increase your overall liabilities.

So overall, if you were comparing this to an outside private company, it would reflect that you have about 227 million of uh equity or net position.

Most of that is driven by your capital assets less the debt that's associated with them.

So your capital assets minus the debt are approximately 172 million.

You have some restricted funds, which are primarily for debt service and some capital, and lastly the unrestricted net position of 47.4 million.

Um you can see there's a growth uh year over year in that.

But I have to say a lot of it is due to timing.

Uh capital activity really drives your activities throughout the year.

Um, you guys are monitoring your operational throughout the year, which is critical.

So um, so really nothing that's out of the ordinary as far as your results uh comparative year to year, both at the fund level as well as at the full accrual level, which would be more comparable to a private business.

We can go to the next um slide.

This just shows your full accrual uh statement of activities, not much change there, it's just driven by the differences between how capital is treated and how debt is treated.

And lastly, auditor communications.

We're happy to report there are no material adjustments to uh to during the audit.

Uh we're happy to report that the information that's uh goes along with your audit is consistent, you know, as far as comparing the information that you put in your annual report package versus the financial statements.

Um we do ask management to provide representations about any uncertainty or any unknown unknown or unknown uh items that could impact the financials.

Management has not reported any items they believe would uh impact the 25 financials.

And lastly, I'm not gonna read all these bullets, but uh if any of these matters were to have occurred, you probably would have heard about them already through the finance committee.

But we're happy to report there are no such items such as difficulties or disagreements or contentious matters noted during the audit.

Uh and we did have asked the same questions of uh Mr.

Hill and Dr.

White during the finance committee.

So that concludes my presentation.

I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Any questions from the board?

No, all right.

Thank you very much.

Oh uh sorry, sorry.

This it's just uh clarification question on the full accrual statement of net position.

There's the minus 15.3 percent shows at the bottom.

Yes.

Is this a is it supposed to be negative or positive?

Uh just uh your liabilities and net position is would be negative because of the the increase from year over year.

Okay.

The thing that you want to look at, I think that's the more important number would be the number right above the 22.8 percent, which is the increase in your net position, would be a better indicator of performance during the year.

And that's reflective of an increase of 15.7 million on a full accrual basis.

And the primary reason why the full accrual basis increases 15 million, whereas the fund level is less, is because capital outlay is an expense at the fund level and it's not an expense at the at the full accrual level.

Does that help?

Yeah, thanks.

Yeah, that's a little misleading.

I'm glad you asked.

Make it seem like it's a negative, like it's a negative thing.

Yeah, it's because in the older liabilities and all the current liabilities is uh in parentheses, so it's a negative 30, yeah, 34.8.

Yep.

But so I was a little confused with that, but I was I was simply gonna hope to add clarification.

So negative liability would it be indicative of an increase in the positive.

It's kind of opposite.

Yeah, yes.

Right.

I want all my liabilities to be negative.

Thank you very much.

Yep.

Next item.

Thank you.

Um next, uh Mary and I will present the trend report for June 2028.

I mean, is it June 2028?

You know, I'm working on the budget, right?

So I'm looking I'm looking at budget two years from now, so I'm sorry, but for June 2026.

Um this is a monthly financial update.

We'll provide a brief overview of the organization financial performance.

Um I will review the revenue and Mary will review the expenditures.

So um I'm having to record that right down um as of June of 20 uh 2026 that we're favorable.

We have 54 percent, uh, which is um at June, that'd be 50% of our um budget.

So if you remember previously we weren't meeting our um budget, uh so right now you see we have 54 percent, and which is um about 26 million that we have, which is great, and it's a little bit more than we expected at this time.

Um, as due to some we got just a little bit more property taxes, as well as we earned uh more interest um this month.

So uh for property tax, we uh received 23 million, and for intergovernmental, we received 2.2 million, and for charges and services for public printing, we received about 43,000, and the interest that we earn was 11,000.

So again, it's at 54 percent.

Um for the interest, you can go to the investment report, which is page 41 of the board document to review that um the yield is for it's 3.7 for who should find and trust Indiana's 3.64.

Um, I did notice that trust Indiana yield is a little bit higher than it was last month, um, about four tenths, and that was um a little different, but I said good.

Um, and then um I invite you to review the the remaining of the treasure report, like the rainy day, the LERV and the parking garage and share system that we have, you know, uh that we share with the IPS and other systems to show that the other revenue screens that we do have available for the library.

Um, on this next slide, um, the revenue and both on both sections for the month to month and year to date, you'll see that it's just the same.

If the cadence is in the budget, it's just similar to um previous year, so there's not quite difference or anything that would stand out that would say um any surprises or anything like that.

So um it's good to have the revenue um budget to align because it lets you know that our proposed and our predicted amount is good, it's right in line with everything that we proposed to be.

Um 2026 is a little bit more than 2025, it's about one million more, and again, that's from the property taxes and the um interest that we earn from um so compared to last year.

Um review the expenditures on expenditures for the month through the operating fund, personal services and benefits is the largest category at 68 percent of the total expenses, and uh as you can see uh year to date we've spent 42 percent of the budget.

Supplies um are a smaller category at 2% of the total expenditures, and um that's only spent 31% of the budget so far.

Other services and charges that includes legal security, cleaning services, equipment, supplies, and technology.

It's 24% of total expenses, and it um has spent 34% of the budget and capital outlay, which is um largely for books uh the for the library, and um it's budget, it's six percent of total expenditures, and we've spent 34 percent of the budget so far through June 30.

And it's budget, it's 6% of total expenditures, and we've spent 34% of the budget so far through June 30.

Let's see.

And then we have the bar graph showing the month, comparing this month, June of 2026 to June of 2025, as well as to the budget.

And so we are very favorable on personal services and benefits, as well as the other categories.

And then on year to date, uh is over on the right side in the line graph, with the budget being in yellow, blue being 2026 year to date, and the orange last year's.

So we are um running under the budget uh pretty consistently year to date.

Do we have any I'd like to add something to the personnel services and benefits?

Um we are under budget, and it's at 42%, but just be mindful we do budget for vacant positions as well as during the time of budget.

We had negotiation period for the medical um benefits, and I looked at our medical um benefits that we're um under budget for that because I was a little bit for sure um where we've gone land, and so that's like um maybe a little bit, maybe one million under the budget.

So that consists of the 42 percent.

So we also I think have 27 pays this year.

And 27 pays this year, so is there a motion to accept the report of the treasurer for June 2026 for filing for audit?

So move.

Is there a second?

Second.

Uh any discussion.

None will call the role.

Ms.

Johnson, Dr.

Matada.

Up Dr.

Cosio.

Approved.

Dr.

Yellow, approved Dr.

White?

Approved.

And Mr.

Badaman.

Approved.

The motions carried.

Uh now we'll move on to resolution 28-2026.

Resolution uh 28 uh 2026.

Uh acceptance and database renewal.

Uh the finance committee.

Uh did recommend to the full board the dopads on this particular information.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening, Mr.

Members of the Board, Mr.

Hill.

Um, I'm proud to bring um this resolution for renewal of Marion County Internet Library Databases for the 27th year that we've been doing this program with funding from the library fund of um the Indianapolis Foundation and uh the Indianapolis Public Library Foundation and the Indianapolis Public Library are grant administrators for the Marion County Internet Library, and the grant serves um databases that serve high schools and universities all throughout Marion County.

Um, and we also have staff who are dedicated to providing technical support and setting up um and training new um libraries that are participating, reaching out to new libraries.

We added 39 new libraries in 2025 and 2026 through that year, and um we're gonna continue to work with that person to help us um as a trainer and onboarder for new databases, and so for this year um that was 39 new schools.

Um then um for this year we'll be renewing um 10 databases for the cost of 486,233 um as shown on the resolution.

Nope, not on that one, on the the um board briefing.

Um, everything um from black studies and video and black cult thought and culture through the Gale and Context databases for homework and research, uh the Indianapolis Star Um and World Book Online are uh serving students throughout Marion County.

Um, these supplement the Inspire databases offered by the state, which are primarily EBISCO databases, and this provides um a user-friendly uh alternative.

These are all curriculum curriculum aligned, and they support the library's um strategic plan through objective L5, educator support, um, by connecting educators with resources and training that strengthen classroom integration and student engagement.

Um and even though the the library foundation, I'm sorry, the um Indianapolis Foundation and the Library Fund are always reviewing the databases, they're also fund other programs out Marion County, and um we appreciate the all that they do to help us support um students throughout Marion County.

So we're asking for the board to approve um the resolution to renew these databases and accept the Marion County Internet Library funding from the Indianapolis um foundation.

Um resolution 28-2026 regarding the Marion County Internet Library Grant Acceptance and Database Renewals received a positive recommendation from the finance committee.

So the chair would request a second to such recommendation.

Second.

Hearing none will have a call the roll.

Ms.

Johnson approved.

Dr.

Martada, approved.

Approved Dr.

Riolo, Dr.

White?

Approved.

And Mr.

David.

Approved the motion carrying.

Thank you.

All right, moving on to resolution 29-2026.

Resolution uh 29-2026 deal with the uh liability renewal.

Um again, the uh finance committee recommend uh approval of this particular resolution.

Um contracts of insurance coverage for the risk of various exposures related to tort theft and damages, destruction of assets, errors and omissions, job-related illness illnesses or injuries, work to employees, natural disasters, cybersecurity incidents, um, incidents, the library contract with the insurance burger Gallagher uh who analyzed and recommends coverage.

Um here is the analysis of the coverage, the workers compensation pause for just a moment there, a little excitement.

Is it coming out?

We'll continue with the meeting.

Um here on this slide is the premium rate analysis, which is the first one is work with compensation.

There was an increase of um about 16% that is due because the increase in salaries over time, and this will continue to increase if we give raises and um add more positions.

Um I can bring to attention the automobile um insurance that increased um about 47%.

We um added vehicles, 17 to 23 vehicles, and plus we have some um law activities, you know, these due to accidents.

Oh, I'm sorry.

And um, let's see, there was another increase for um the general liability and the umbrella.

Um that's because the increased exposures that we had um in the past as well.

So the total amount of um increase for the general liability insurance is 12.14 percent um, and that is a total amount of 59,512.

And speaking to our um insurance broker, and this is in the market as other um insurers that this is um consistent with the market of this type of increase.

Um, this is something that um it is what it is.

Um, so it just is the market right now.

But the good thing about it is the total amount I have already put this in our budget, and that we have enough to cover it at our operating.

thousand five hundred and twelve dollars and speaking to our um insurance broker and this is in the market as other um um ensures that this is um consistent with the market of this type of increase um this is something that um it is what it is um though it just is the market right now but the good thing about it is the total amount I have already put this in our budget and that we have enough to cover it at our operating so um this is for 2026 beginning august the first so it's you know it's good that we um bring this to the board today okay resolution joke for comment uh mr chair um the finance committee did have a question about the number possible vendors that really went after this yeah and uh our response and looking at the increased calls of the vehicles etc uh was that was very reasonable but in the future it would help if we there they have a little more competition for our business and so that that was the point of uh information and we'll be looking at that in the future great thank you uh the finance committee I did speak with them they say they usually go to the market every three years and they that's when they provided um benchmarks to related to the property and automobile to show that we're right in market with the increase so uh compared to other um agencies so resolution 29-2026 regarding the 2026 2027 general liability insurance renewal received a positive recommendation from the finance committee so the chair would request a second to such recommendation second it's been uh recommended and seconded any discussion they're mopping back there they're mopping back there just wanted oh yeah I I did have one other point to make um so there was also the contingency of time for securing competition that's we we had a very short window time yeah we said um make sure they will start earlier yeah okay great great um any other discussion uh hearing none we'll have a call of the role miss johnson approved Dr.

Tata approved approved doctor Riolo approved Dr.

White approved yeah Mr.

V approved the motion's carried thank you uh last on agenda this quick update um I will have a budget presentation on August 11th on the finance committee and um we could we are continuing to work on pursuing the 2026 bond for the coverage of the um our return renovation that's it thank you thank you that's it all right yeah good job maybe um all right that does that conclude the finance committee for excellent thank you all right uh big thank you to everybody who's helping mop in the back um it's uh a unique that's probably one of the more unique board moments we've had the manager is working it back there yeah thank you very much thank you very much sharp that's exactly what we were talking about all right moving on to the uh diversity policy and human resources committee um drasso do do we have anything for today we don't have any updates for today all right moving on to the facilities committee any updates for today well it just erupted yes other than right now breaking news no nothing else great okay then we'll move on to the library foundation update that would be my report um the news for this month from the foundation is that circulate night at the library is coming up on Saturday August 15th at Central if you have already bought your tickets thank you very much if not still go ahead and buy those tickets they're available online at the library website and the foundation website the foundation likes to thank 213 donors who made gifts this past month and our top corporate donors are the Beatle Financial Consulting Downtown Optimist Foundation Indiana Humanities Indianapolis Indians and the Braveheart Foundation and the Office Performing Arts and Film the program support for this past month has been more than 3000 from the foundation to the library and the major initiatives for this month have is included summer reading program public library association conference for library staff CBLC Black Health Fair Digital Creativity Stations Library Card Campaign team package programs intro to gardening and pathway to literacy and I will add that the foundation staff prepares the report every month and I only present it but I'm going to addend their report this month to say that we are very fortunate again to have our president Ms.

She is an alumnus of IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs and was just recognized by her alma mater as the distinguished alumna for this month.

So they value her skills, but we are really fortunate that she connects and she has committed her career to our foundation.

So I recognize her.

I mean that's it.

Thank you very much.

I will move on to the report of the CEO.

Mr.

Hill.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, uh President Bieterman, members of the board.

First is confirmatory resolution 30 2026 related to financial travel and personal matters.

That is that occurs between each board meeting.

It's in its typical format.

If you don't have any questions, I would ask for your approval.

Is it there a motion to approve resolution 30-2026 regarding finances, personnel and trailer?

All right, thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none will have a recall of the roll.

Ms.

Johnson.

Dr.

Matada.

Approved.

Dr.

Palacio.

Approved.

Dr.

Riolo approved.

Dr.

White?

Approved.

And Mr.

Bitterman.

Approved.

Motions carried.

Mr.

Ill.

All right, thank you.

So we will have a truncated review of the board packet, the board report that is in your packet.

On your screen, you will see a quick agenda.

We'll do a typical day at NDPL.

We'll do key engagement metrics, a patron experience survey, the heart of every neighborhood.

We'll recognize NDPL staff, and then Miss Mary Ann McKenzie will give a quarterly operational report update.

The first is a typical day at NDPL.

Again, these are averages over the month of June.

So for the month of June, on any given day, we welcomed 113 new card holders.

That was a 6% increase in new card holders compared to this same time last year, June of 2025.

The next one down is patrons checked out 24,495 items that included e-circulation.

Circulation is down about 0.38% compared to June of 2025.

ECERC is up about 5% compared to June of 2025, and physical circulation was down 3.9%.

So with the uh ECERC being up about 5%.

That that helped our circulation numbers for the month of June.

We greeted about 8,108 visitors.

That is a 5% increase from June of 2025.

And so that is uh very good news right there.

And then I just want to speak for East Washington for the month of June.

They had roughly about 6,000 visitors who came through the door, and they circulated about 2100 items.

We also hosted 27 programs attended by 607 patrons, and again, this is on any given day.

We had 27 programs with attendance around 607.

Uh for the month, we did have 19,906 people who attended our programs, and we had 837 programs.

Additionally, we had uh 1289 patrons who used our public PCs.

Next is key engagement metrics.

Uh Michigan Road had a community at the art garden program, uh, two local artists, Tricia O'Connor and Charity Counts.

They had received an Indy Arts Council grant, and they collaborated with grassroots projects, developed this program that was intended for immigrant families.

It drew a crowd of about 250.

Uh they had resource tables and participants had access to various art supplies and found or repurpose objects to hang on the trellis at the branch.

Uh the second one was the Wayne uh summer reading program kickoff, which Dr.

Bertada alluded to.

They had a very large uh crowd that came in on that day.

So great job, Wayne.

Going down to the next one is the day of play at the Central Library.

Uh Day of Play was an all-day event.

We had over 800 patrons who participated.

They used their imagination and played together through activities throughout the library.

Uh feature play included a yo-yo champion, a ballroom, a balloon artist, a messy play station with finger paint murals, sidewalk chart, chalk, and free play arcade.

And of course, there was much more.

Great job to the programming development area, also known as PDA for a successful day of play.

Also, we had a bird of prey, which is a partnership with Take Flight Education.

Is this held at eight separate locations, and patrons learned about raptobirds such as Falcons, Hawks, and owls.

Last on the list is the low impact exercises, better known as Chair Robix.

That is one of our most popular adult programs, and that was held in the month of June at Southport, Glendale, Fort Bend, and the Central Library.

The next item is the Patron Experience Teller Survey.

This is something we started probably about two years ago.

In the past, we had no way of uh knowing what the patrons felt about the experience that they received on a daily basis at NDPL.

So for the past couple years, uh, we've been running surveys.

For quarter two, we had 851 responses.

And I want to give a shout out to Glendale, who had 184 patrons who gave responses, Spage Park 91, and the Central Library 79.

And then patrons are prompted to share their experience in the Telesturvey via signage.

There's also QR codes, and the receipt on their uh renewal email also has a link for them to go and fill out the survey.

The survey is available in English, Spanish, and French.

So as we start to the left and work our way over, I'm gonna go through the questions here really quickly.

Did you have a positive experience today?

98% of our 851 responses said yes.

14 branches had a hundred percent in this category.

So job well done.

Number two, how was your customer service?

On a five uh liker scale, 4.9 was the grade.

Five star branches included the bookmobile, East 38th, InfoZone, Warren, Wayne, West Indianapolis, and the West Perry branch.

Number three was staff communication respectful.

99% of our survey uh respondents said yes.

19 branches had 100% in this category.

Number four was the library clean.

On a five liker scale, there was a 4.8, was the overall five branches or five star branches included the bookmobile, info zone, and the warm branch.

And if we could, I like to just say again, thank you to all the branches who uh ensure that when our patrons come through that they have an exceptional experience and that uh we can kind of capture this in some of the the uh surveys that we do.

So thank you.

Next is the heart of every neighborhood.

So the next heart of every neighborhood is at Hallville on August the 17th.

It is from 5 to 6 30 p.m.

And I like to say uh thank you to Glendale, East 38th, and Lawrence.

They've uh already had their heart of every neighborhood.

And again, I I do believe that uh this event has far exceeded my expectations, and I want to say thank you as well to the board members who have participated.

I've seen a lot of board participation, I really appreciate that, and also uh participation from the executive leadership team.

I think it gives patrons a chance to not only uh get a chance to talk and meet with me, but a chance to meet with our board members and our executive leadership team if they have any questions as well.

And then with that, I wanted just to show a brief one-minute uh video from the Lawrence event.

Especially because knowledge costs so much today.

The library is a great place to gain some good knowledge before.

I started coming to libraries when I was very young.

I started my first time I really like spent time in the library was the summer of my sixth grade year when uh my summer camp at church.

We were going to the Hallville branch.

Yeah, our church is down the street from there.

So, yeah, we were uh we were playing on the computers and stuff, having fun.

So libraries contribute a lot to learn something new because you can literally find anything in here.

Anything you want to learn, you can walk around.

It's like thousands upon thousands of books in here.

Definitely in the library can be a safe space for people to feel comfortable coming here and gain some knowledge.

I mean, we see people walk in, they they know each other's names, they're asking each other how they're doing, they have a chance to gain knowledge together or even just sit together.

There's no pressure to learn anything, but even just hanging out.

The library is definitely a big part of the community.

I'm great stumbling from the library exposed me to a lot of new dollars.

All right, and a special thank you to the communications and marketing team who are at all the events and make sure that we capture uh the stories that you've seen here tonight.

Um, when you come to these events, or our patrons come to these events, it gives them the chance to meet each other.

Uh, they can get the free yard signs, of course, library cards, and just to find out uh what we provide to our patrons.

So thank you again.

And the next one again is Hallville, August the 17th.

Next is staff recognition.

On Monday, July the 20th, we celebrated staff with a reception in their honor.

Uh, these are the second quarter winners, and the reception was held in the Indiana Special Collections Room at the Central Library.

We'll start with our patron services was Jane Warley.

Our peer support is Olivia Harris.

Peer support is Rodney Isaac, peer support, Aaron Farrell.

Our community involvement is Hallie Rakes.

Community involvement, Brianna Barnes.

Team Excellence was Ford Benn.

Page Excellence was Anna Le Prada.

Other duties assigned, David Bowling volunteers and partnership was the Maiong Club.

And then committee's choice was Ceylon Liang.

And then so congratulations to all of our award winners that we can give them a round of applause.

And with that, that concludes this portion of the CEO's report.

Does anyone have any questions for me before I turn it over to Miss Mary Ann McKenzie for her operational report?

Any questions for Mr.

Allen?

All right, thank you.

All right, Miss Mary Ann McKenzie.

Good evening, everyone.

Mary and back there, mopping back there.

Along with Don't Shake my hands until I have a chance to watch them.

We'll be all good.

Well, thank you so much for inviting me once again to present on Gregory's half, the quarterly report on operations.

So again, I am McKenzie, the chief strategy and analytics officer.

You heard from my um name counterpart, Justin earlier today.

He gets the longer version of the name.

Um we're gonna run through an abbreviated version of the report.

You have the full version, of course, and your packet, and I'm gonna show you some highlights and some things that have changed since the last time we reported to you.

As always, we want to start off with thinking about card holders because that is a key metric for any library.

Um June is one of our um low periods of the year because we've exited the academic year.

And at the end of the academic year, we always see some shifts in total card holders because of changes related to schools that we support.

So this number, um, if you see the total cardholders, a little number that we normally see quarter one and quarter four, that's expected.

The metric that we always want to look very closely at, though, is active cardholders, and as you'll see, active cardholders continues to be um a growing metric for us.

Those are people who have used their card in the past year, and we're being pretty consistent with our new card holders at this time.

I wanna point out that uh this is gonna be a really interesting graphic to watch in the coming quarter, uh coming two quarters.

We are introducing a new system online that will allow folks to be able to have their card auto-renewed.

So normally you have to come in and talk to someone every three years to confirm your residency to make sure you're still eligible for your for a free library card.

Um, our new online registration system that we're launching this month will potentially allow folks to have themselves be auto-verified, so they may not have to come in.

So it just removes sort of an administrative barrier to card access.

So I'm excited to see how that will change in the coming quarters.

And of course, for a cardholder, we're hoping that you are using the collection.

So I have a graph here for total circulation.

If you'd like to see the breakdown just by physical or e-circulation, those are included in your packet.

Um, usually I'm showing you pretty steady numbers.

This quarter, I'm gonna show you that we do have a little bit of a decrease.

That decrease is driven by physical circulation.

We had two sort of power branches in the last quarter that had to have temporary closures, both Central Library and then Franklin Road for their much anticipated carpet replacement.

Um, so both of those resulted in an impact to circulation.

We also had sort of a lagging impact.

The other area that we saw drop in physical circulation is what we call web circulation, and that's folks renewing their content online.

And so if they didn't bar in quarter one, because that physical circulation was a little bit down, when they get to quarter two, there was nothing to be renewed, so that continues to impact us for a couple of quarters.

So that decrease is still being driven by physical circulation.

It's a little bit more severe than in previous quarters, but we understand it and we expect that it's temporary.

Um, but of course, the ongoing trend is still going to be um electronic circulation is growing and physical circulation just seems to be holding steady or slightly decreasing.

So we'll continue to monitor that trend.

Branch visits.

So those closures are not something that we'd expect to see over the summer, and then into our upcoming quarter.

So nothing to worry about, but if you want to see the impact, you can look at that graph over on the right.

And if you find Franklin Road and Central, you can see that there are some large percentage drops.

There was also a large percentage drop around Michigan Road.

That was expected.

That's because Nora and Pike reopened.

And so we're still seeing that there being compared to a year when Nora and Pike had not reopened yet.

And then we're seeing some big wins.

Spades Park and West Indianapolis, two of our historic former Carnegie libraries, our small but mighty branches have really seen some great growth.

Both of those, those seem to be driven by the community environment and folks coming into their branch and meeting people within their branch.

So we're excited to see that growth.

The actual metric here is pretty steady.

The trends are always the same over the course of the year.

We're not seeing any major shifts.

But we did add something new this quarter.

We added in laptops.

So every branch had two laptops that someone can come in and check out for use in the branch.

The goal is to allow them access to job interviews.

Some jobs now require you to record a video as part of the interview process.

Telehealth, of course, is continuing to be an ongoing need in communities.

So they can now check out those branches, use them in a study room to complete whatever activity that they need.

And so we see those in the second bullet point on this slide.

We had 129 laptop sessions in quarter two, and I expect to see that number continue to grow.

It is never going to compete with public PCs because it's a small number, but much like we talked about the accessible workstations.

This is a metric that the consistency and the availability is what's important here more than high usage.

But it does have a potential to impact public PCs.

So I'll continue to report it here on the slide moving forward.

Yes.

So with that program, is their availability for reservation, specifically because those interviews are scheduled, pre-scheduled.

Yes.

They can do a reservation, they have to speak to a staff member.

We don't have it set up before you can reserve online quite yet.

Um, but you can reserve both the study room and the PC together to make sure it's available when you need it.

Okay, thank you.

Yes.

Great question.

Because we're talking about study rooms, I have to flash the slide up and say, hey, look, study rooms still growing.

People still love them.

Um we introduced some additional study rooms in 2024 and 2025, and those are continuing to see strong usage and drive growth.

So we're really excited to see that.

I think that will continue to be a trend until we have used every available study room hour.

Um happy to see that.

That does include the pods, yes.

And it does not include the Pike podcasting room.

I think we report that one under community space.

Um the other way that people can use our spaces though, is of course coming into the branch and using a community room.

So as always, I show you this slide here that shows you how many community room reservations we had and approximately um how they were used.

But beginning in March 2026, because of the adoption of our policies around public use of display space and tables of information in the library, we began to ask branches to track how many of partners I had coming in and tabling at their branch.

We're still in the process of going through and training all staff on the procedure of how to record that.

So these are um estimate numbers, not final numbers, but we had over 34 partners who tabled more than 75 times in quarter two 2026.

And again, this is something that we'll continue to add and report on this slide moving forward, and we expect um to see some stronger results in the coming quarter.

Tabling continues to be an incredibly valuable way to connect with folks in the library.

Reference and service assistance.

We um changed how we asked staff to report this in uh October of last year.

So these are not quite one-to-one comparisons, but I would like to highlight here our social work reference.

Uh, we went from 400 at this period last year to 1200 this year.

They had some great support from their interns this quarter.

We're really excited to see that growth.

And then actual reference assistance, so things that are more substantive questions, we um continue to see um reported growth because of these new reporting metrics.

Now you're gonna see the total number go down, but again, remember that category of other assistance.

There's a lot of things that we told staff you don't need to record this every time, so we can give them back a little bit of their time.

Um the key metrics we're continuing to see growth, which we um sorry, next to last, I have programs and attendance.

It is summer, beginning of summer reading at the end of this quarter.

So we of course saw more programs and more attendance as a result.

Uh, I did change this slide slightly, and I'll explain on the next slide why we used to report passive programs here.

So those are programs where a staff member wasn't leading it.

Um, this slide now only shows active programs.

Those are led by a staff member, a volunteer, or a community partner.

So very strong growth by those um programs that take the most effort.

And the reason that we've made this shift is because we are piloting uh measuring those passive and other activities in a slightly different way.

So this slide here is a preview of what you might see in the coming quarters as we make this transition.

Uh one-on-one appointments, so those can be um small business appointments, those could be technology assistance appointments, um, those can also be notary or tax assistance.

Uh those will be reported on the slide.

As you can see, we had just under 400 um this quarter.

And then we're piloting something called in-branch activations, which is if you walked into the branch and you saw they had a cart of games and coloring sheets and things like that, those opportunities to define a way to have a fun experience in the library.

Um, those are what we're calling in-branch activations.

So we've begun asking um staff to report how many of those they offer in their branches so we can try and gauge um how they're related to the strategic plan and if they are driving foot traffics and visits um in their locations because we understand that they're very important to the third space experience.

Uh every branch, yes.

All 25 branches reported for June.

Again, this is when we're still training folks on how to report it.

So it's an estimate.

I think when I peaked this morning for June, we're actually up over 4500 for June.

Um, so this is something that um our branch staff are really um embracing.

So lots of opportunities for the excitement and delay in the branches.

All right, are there any questions for me this month?

Any any questions?

Just excited about the things that we're starting to document.

It's a tremendous thank you.

Passive programming.

Um, what was the level of engagement before you remove that data?

What did you see in comparison?

So this is an interesting thing about passive programs.

Most of them we didn't track any form of engagement at all.

Um, the only ones we were tracking were things that were related to um long-term trends, like summer reading program is technically a passive program because you're reading at home.

Um, and then if it was some sort of donor fund through the foundation, we might have specific metrics.

And previously, we were tracking how many people actually engaged in those passive programs.

Um, we wanted to focus on encouraging staff to um offer these, and so we are asking them now to just say, Did you offer it?

Was it related to a strategic priority?

And then how many days did you make it available in your branch?

We're not asking them to track the engagement at the patron level as far as participation because they're unattended and then it's hard, depending on the nature of it, to understand that.

But we are asking them to report um qualitative data, such as do you have a story about someone who used this, or did you observe something that's some way someone benefited from this experience?

Yeah, just based on the experience.

Patrons are more inclined to use passive programming, mainly because it is it's a kind of an intrinsic self-tracking thing.

So I was wondering what that there are challenges with how you um measure and assess.

Yes.

And so at the moment, like I said, we're gonna focus on measuring the staff effort to make them available, and then over time we may spot opportunities for certain types to be able to track engagement.

For example, um, Adam is working with our um youth services team for two early literacy play spaces, um, the same technology that we use to say, did you enter the branch?

We're looking at seeing if we can use that technology to say, did you enter and engage in the early play space?

And based on your high height, where you're most likely a child.

Um, so there's some interesting ways that we're exploring can we gather um some actual you know uh quantitative data for these?

Yeah, but the stories are so interesting and valuable too.

So thank you for capturing that and looking at how do we tell the stories that can make a difference.

Sometimes we just use the quantitative and the qualitative is so important to the larger community as well.

Yes.

Thank you.

Okay, any other questions?

All right, thank you very much.

Thank you.

There are no number of invoices that concludes the report.

Great, thank you.

Uh no unfinished business, no new business, future agenda items.

Future agenda items.

This time's made available for library.

Discussion items not on the agenda which are of interest to the library board members, and an opportunity is given to suggest items to be included on future board meeting agendas.

Do any board members have something to suggest for August 2025?

Yeah, please.

First time I came, uh I had to have help coming through the back door.

Mary, Mary Barr showed me that way to come down.

Today was earlier and came through the front door.

And the asphalt on the entryway is crumbling over there.

We and I one guy who seemed to be an in-house guy, unhoused guy, was very generous in telling me to lay that in front of me.

Please be careful.

And I thought that that was great of that person.

But I also thought that situations like that should be addressed and updated to the board.

Because first impressions are lasting impressions.

If it hadn't been my first time here, I'm sure I would have been concerned about that situation.

That was one thing.

Number two, I want to thank all of you guys for the work you did back there with the water.

And no one has told me that that's a problem.

So I would hope that Adam or the facilities commander would give us an update and report about those two items.

The entryway steps, while we had that type of deluge.

And if there are city uh urban reasons, uh, I see down Washington, they're putting in new, I think uh types for circulation or disposal of water.

But I just think that that would be a good thing for us to be updated on because we do have the ability to address those uh two items in some way, and then some of them maybe there's collaboration with the city or other agencies, but we need an update on that.

Yeah, I believe the steps actually we talked about last month and after summer reading this fall, they're actually getting replaced.

Okay.

The south weather.

That's all right.

Um, but uh item two, I think uh we'll we'll talk about thank you, Adam.

I saw you back there find that water.

Uh and McKenzie and all of you, uh, thank you for your effort because I'm sure we will have a problem.

Yeah.

If you guys did not respond that quickly.

So thank you for your work.

Yeah.

Um, great.

Um let's see.

So uh that's that's great.

Any other items for August?

Okay.

Uh the next meeting is gonna be August 24th, 2026 at the Lawrence Branch, uh 7898 Haig Road at 6:30 p.m.

Um before I adjourn, I just wanted to say um it is wet back there, so be careful on the way out.

And uh, we are gonna avoid the elevator um because of where the floodwater was that came in.

Um, so we have to use the stairs.

So all right.

Um with that said, we adjourn the meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you.