Good morning, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is a commission's weekly online event, webinar, webcast, online show. We do this here every live, every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central time, but if you are unable to join us, that's fine. We also record our show every week and post the recording to our website afterwards, so you will always be able to go there and see any of the previous shows we've done that you weren't able to see on Wednesdays. We do a mixture of things here, presentations, book reviews, many print training sessions, demos of various products and services. Basically anything a library related, we are happy to have on the show. We have a Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do presentations, but sometimes we bring in guest speakers as we have this morning. On the line with us remotely from just west of here Hastings Public Library is Jake Rundle. Hi, Jake. Good morning. Good morning. He's there. Is your title there, Technology Librarian, or what is your, is that what you're called out there? Technology London is my official title. Okay, and what does that exactly mean? Well, it's kind of the catch-all. Sounds nice and vague and open and ended. I'm in charge of collection development. I'm in charge of the ILS. I oversee the circulation coordinator, and then she oversees the desk, so I'm kind of the de-backed all over the place. Yeah, cool. Ooh, nice.  And Jake's with us this morning to talk about, as you can see there on the slide, the Central Nebraska Digital Co-op, which a group of libraries getting together to do some discounts on purchasing certain products. And I'll just hand it over to you to explain it all to everyone. Sounds good. Well, good morning all. Like Krista said, nice Jake Rundle, Technology Librarian at Hastings Public Library, and I just want to talk about the Central Nebraska Digital Co-op. It's our little group of libraries. We're actually 20 small now. It's just kind of a small group compared to when you talk to some libraries who do other consortial work. But we're just a group of libraries that work with vendors to get the best deal for all of us so that products and services mostly offered digitally can be made affordable for everybody. So the one page of history that I have is in 2013, Karnagarnal and Hastings and Holdrich got together at my request because I wanted Xenio magazines from my library, but it was too expensive to pay the platform and pay for the content all by ourselves. So I negotiated with our vendor to let all four of us go together. We would split the content. We'd each play a platform fee, but we'd get more content for less money since we were splitting it. And the other three libraries thought this was a great idea and the vendors said sure, that seems reasonable. The only thing we'll do is say you have to have at least a hundred titles, which we thought, well, that's reasonable because we wanted a big collection anyway. And so we did that for two years, pretty low-key, and then some other libraries east of us outside of Central Nebraska found out about a group and wanted to join in because they were paying through the nose for Xenio and they thought, and they rightfully so said, hey, can we join you? And so we talked with our Record Books Rep and they had no problems with it. So we added Raulston and Papillion and Bellevue in York and Columbus. And I feel like there's one more in there, but I just can't think of what it is, actually. Because we got to ten. North Platt. And then when we added Raulston and Papillion, they also had one-click digital, which is streaming audio through Record Books. They purchased subscription content, so it's about 6,800 Recorded Books downloadable titles that are simultaneously check-outable with a two-week due date. So when they joined, we rolled that product into us as well because they didn't want to lose it and again, we could split the cost of the subscription and make it cheap for everybody. And I'm sure Recorded Books didn't want to lose it either. Lose all those deals with them, yeah. And since then, we've used our group buy-in power. When the state signed deals with EBSCO for all the new databases, some of us who were purchasing novelists on our own didn't have to anymore. So what EBSCO did is said, hey, we'll give you all a discount. The way it worked was they said, hey, we'll give you a discount, but you don't have to participate if you don't want to. So we got the group purchase price for, without having the whole group have to go in. So we got novelists select. I and some other libraries and I believe Carney did. I believe Columbus took us, took up on that. But it was just a nice way for us to get a discounted price at, without having to have the entire group go in. And since then, we've had conversations with people at Hoopla, Midwest Tape. We've had some conversation. I had a webinar the other day with the Gale Virtual Resource Library for their book platform, 3M's Cloud Library, and who's the other one? A few others. Oh, Access360 through Baker and Taylor. So it's just, it's a nice way for us to all get demos and potentially go in together and buy cool digital products to offer our patrons the best for the lowest price. And so the important part of this whole presentation was I was going to show you the kinds of things that we have, because it's always better to show than to just talk for an hour. So the first one I wanted to show was Xenio magazines. So since the other libraries have joined, we have increased the collection from 100, we started with 115 magazines, and now we are up to, I think, 137 to 145. It kind of changes year to year as titles drop off and new titles come on that we want to buy. I like to explain that we have magazine titles for all types, gifted and challenged.  I think we have us weekly. It's been a while since I looked. Your Star magazines, so we've got your, yeah, we do have us weekly. So if you want to show Adelgos up in your Charlie Sheens, that's great. We have a number of magazine titles in Spanish languages like Vanidades, USA, and Rolling Stone, and Esquire, and Cosmopolitan, the Mexican or the Spanish language publications of those. Because we wanted to be able to offer a diverse collection for all patrons, and it just worked out really great that we could do it cheaply. The other nice thing is that since we're all sharing the content, we can all buy kind of those specialized titles that we wouldn't have. So we have a diabetic cookbook magazine. We have a skateboarding magazine. We've got the Smithsonian Magazine, and that's just this page. But it's trying to work together to make cheap all the good things. Magazines are simultaneous access, so that means that myself and 6,500 other people in the various communities can all check out Marie Claire and Men's Health, and we can all keep it forever. It lives in the cloud. I can download to a device. I can open up the Xenio app on my iPad, on my phone, and read it there. I can read it here on the web. The great part is that it's really the simultaneous access. Magazines in libraries have a very finite shelf life because they're not printed on the best stuff and they're not that sturdy.  So this is a way for us to offer magazines where the people want them, anytime they want them. The other thing I wanted to show with Xenio is our admin portal.  It's excitingly, and also terribly, is when we added the 10 new libraries at the end of October, we added them to Xenio. So they each had their own barcode so that you could create new users. And so the way that most libraries are filtering their circulation checkouts are by barcode. So now it's just a lot more sorting than I'm used to because I have 10 extra library barcodes to dig through. So in this way, can each library see their own statistics then by using that? Yes. Yep, so I just opened it in Excel, which in my Mac has numbers so it's going to be weird. But then I just sort out, see because it has your library's barcode right there. So if I'm 20604, I just find all of those and then I can just get my monthly stats right there. Group monthly stats for the month of October, November, excuse me, holy cow. We checked out 1200 magazines between 20 libraries, which is really healthy circulation for magazines truthfully. The other nice thing is the admin portal lets you add other kinds of filters. We do primarily barcode filtering so that your library's barcode prefix and the length of your barcode can be made so you can create a username. You can also do HTTP referrals. So if you just want someone to be able to sign up by coming from your library's website, you can do that. If you want to have an IP address range, be your filtering, you can do that. And then, that's not the fun one. The other great thing is Record Books makes a lot of marketing stuff available. They have users guides made up so you can just print those straight off and give them straight to your patrons. They have an entire marketing site you can go to and pull up posters and stickers and shelf talkers and desk mats and the whole shebang essentially. To explain to your patrons that you've added this great service and that this is how you access it. Additionally, we put our Zineo collection in alphabetical order because it's just easier for all of us. But from here, you can also rearrange your order to be whatever you want it to be. And if you join the group and you already have Zineo, then you get rolled in as a child library under the parent of the co-op.  It works out really well because you don't have to do a lot of sorting because you still have your own dedicated website to get there. Krista, can I kind of go out and turn in and ask if there's any questions about Zineo? No, of course. Does anybody have any questions about Zineo? Yeah, does anybody have any questions? You can type into the questions section of your go-to-webinar interface if you have any questions about this service. Because as you said, you're going to show each of the services that you guys have in the group. Nobody's typed in anything yet. But if they do, I will be sure to interrupt you and let you know. Perfect. The other product we have is one-click digital downloadable streamable audiobooks. Kind of the theme of the co-op is to access items that don't have a weight limit on it. So for instance, we all have access to Overdrive, but since we shared that with the billion other libraries in the state of Nebraska, there's times where you want to check something up, but you have to put it on hold. Not the end of the world, but sometimes inconvenient if you wanted something right now. I'm waiting for an audiobook and I've been waiting for two whole weeks and it's killing me. And that's not even a long time. Yeah. So I'm just going to wait patiently for it to get here. But the nice thing about a majority of the one-click titles is that they are all simultaneously accessible and downloadable. So again, you and me and Krista and everyone else could download the Discourse for Mr. Ravenhurst and listen to it and then it'll return when you're done. There's a small collection of materials in one click that are not simultaneous access because libraries who have a recorded book stand in order where physical product comes to their library have the option to bundle it with the digital for about 10% more off the physical price. For 10% more of that, you get the digital copy and those are one-to-one. So like we have, I think that's how you spell it, Google 50 Shades of Grey again. There it is, to that. So Grey is a bundled title. It's checked out right now, so I have to place it, oh it's not checked out right now, awesome. So I can check that out. Once I check it out, if you went to try to check it out it would say there's a hold on it. I can check it out anywhere from one to 14 days. And then I have the option to renew it as long as no one else is on hold for it. The other great part about the two collections that we buy for one click digital is that they are always adding titles. We have the adult collection and the children's collection, which essentially means the adult collection is about 5,000 audiobooks at this point and the children's collection is somewhere around 28 at this point. So they're pushing closer to 8,000, 9,000 audiobooks all the time. It's not doing. But it's not like I have to pay more. I pay my subscription fee every quarter. They add their additional audiobook content and that's just available for me. They're slowly making a lot of the recorded books back catalog available. And can you add specific titles if you want ones that aren't automatically being added or is it just what they want to put in there? No. There is the ability, I mean everything that recorded books could get you physical or digital. You can also purchase. I think Glass House is one. Somebody needed it for a book report they were doing and the physical copy was checked out and our audio copy was checked out. So I got on here. It was inexpensive. I bought it. My library paid 40 bucks for it. And so, again, it's a one-to-one copy. It's not the simultaneous access. But if a library wanted to go in and purchase a run of a series that their patrons liked and would want to see, you share that content with the group. But it's a smaller group than Overdrive's group and it really only benefits you because other libraries are doing the same thing. So everyone wins. So you did like adding the Green Glass House one was like an on-the-fly edition. How long did it take for you to get it actually from when you found out this person needed it to have it available in the collection? It was available in the collection 20 minutes later. That's awesome. Because when I do my Overdrive Advantage purchase, it says titles will show up up to 24 hours later. So this is one of those things where it said there would be a lag time and then we were standing around and I checked and there it was, ready to go. Nice. It's a nice quick turnaround. And that's always just neat. And it sort of allows you to be super flexible with your collection development. If you need something now, buy a copy. And it shows up and you can have the patron walk out the door with it on their phone, on their iPad. Checked out and ready to go for them on their computer when they get home kind of thing. Registration for both products is really simple because it's library barcode prefix. All you need is library card number. You make a username and a password and you put in some personal information. And then you can go and you're done. A lot of personal information is mostly so that if you have, you need to reset your password or if you've forgotten your password and you need one of your new library's administrator to reset your password, they have some things to find. And they want your zip code because one of the reports in one click is downloads by zip code, which is nice for us out here. But more tricky for libraries in the East who have patrons in three different zip codes with other libraries in those same zip codes. Let me just show you the admin portal. So the dashboard is newly added audio and that's newly added for recorded books to sell me. So I can look at the top holds for my library. I can look at what's popular. Some titles have a circle alert. None that we have purchased so far. But if you wanted, if you had any that had a number of circulations before it expired or went for two years and then expired, you could get those kinds of things. You can do an advanced search if you're, for instance, searching for titles that you wanted to purchase. That's just, I mean, everyone loves Baldaqi books. $60 for the audiobook. If you happen to be purchasing it with a physical bundle, titles are much cheaper. It's interesting in that record books has made it so that it kind of behooves you to buy both because to not do it is, I mean, to buy the physical by itself and then the digital by itself is twice the cost. So if you just do it all at once. And I mean, that's smart business on their part, but it's also really good for the library because it makes everything a little cheaper. I can do patron search. You can set up rotator ads. So if a library had a specific event that they wanted to promote, they could make an ad so that on the front page of when the patrons go in, it would show up that thing, show up for that library. We haven't done that yet since we're kind of a disparate group of people all across the state. But I think it's something we're going to work towards because if the patrons are going to be there grabbing your stuff, you should be telling them about your other things too.  Too bad, so sad. Oh, someone does have a suggestion for that because you did say that you guys are all, you know, separate libraries. You could advertise the One Book One Nebraska statewide program. Put a little thing in there about that. And is the One Book One Nebraska in there? That would be a question. Oh, what is it? Well, it depends on you mean the current one or the upcoming one. What's the upcoming one? Let's see. You think I should know this off that minute. Right now it's the Death Zones and Darling Spies. The upcoming one for next year will be the Meaning of Names. Let's just see if I can buy it. Oh, goodness. Who's the author? Karen Gettert, G-E-T-T-E-R-T. Wait, Shoemaker. Karen Gettert, Shoemaker, actually. I'm not sure which is considered, she's got two last names. Try Shoemaker, I guess, S-H-O-E-M-A-K-E-R. But Karen, yeah. That would be something to ask about then. Maybe they could add that if they don't. But that's the one that's going to be the one for 2016. And the current one is the Beverly Kiefer's Death Zones and Darling Spies.  It's not a bad idea. Oh, for two today. Some of the other great... I clicked on Purchasing Tools, so we'll go to that one first. But the reporting tools you can record books makes their upcoming audiobooks e-books. One-click digital used to be downloadable, and then there was a second one-click digital that was for the e-book portion, because recorded books got into the e-book game, just like everyone else did. So we don't currently purchase e-books, because e-books have a lot of the weird stuff, 24 checkouts or two-year contractual obligation stuff. So it's mostly one-to-one, whereas a lot of this is all simultaneous access. But it's potential to be another avenue for e-books is there, should the libraries want to spend some money on it. And they recently made it so that those two apps could not work as just one app, so they really kind of overhauled their whole tech system. And then as far as reporting, you can get patrons, so you can sort out how many patrons are using it from your library. There's a patron recommendations feature coming soon, so that titles that are not in our collection, but available from recorded books will pop up like Overdrive used to do. And then that will feed to the admins at the libraries to make those decisions. I can do holds, I can do checkouts by zip code. The one I do to find out how many things have been checked out from the library is patron downloads. And then you can sort again by your barcode, and then you can just find your checkouts right there. There's me. But yeah, so those are the two products and they're two admin portals. I guess probably the important question that a lot of people have is price. Yes, definitely. Yes, and so what we do is we put your information into what we call Steve's magical formula. Steve Fosselman from Green Island Public Library made this great formula that takes your library's legal service population, your total annual operating budget, and your total circulations as reported on the library statistics for whatever year is most available. It sums all those things together and gives you your score. And then you pay the percentage of the sum, essentially. So Norfolk is 9.27% of this total criteria score, so they pay 9.27% of the cost of the stuff. So right now, all of our things cost around $37,959, so all these libraries pay this much. If, for instance, Blue Hill, when you put their data into the formula, they come up as paying $97, I think, for the whole kit and caboodle because they're so small. So what we did was said if you were under that, under $500, you just pay a $500 buy-in, like the lowest buy-in for overdrive. So it's like a minimum kind of fee. It's a minimum buy-in of $500. And then if you're over that, then it's a percentage of the total. And what's nice is that as we add more libraries, your percentage drops because you add more people. So last year, Hastings paid $3,500 for Zinio in one click, and this year we're going to have to pay $27, so it's dropped substantially because we added North Platte and Norfolk and Levista in Sydney and Beatrice and many intend all these other libraries. So the more people we add, the cheaper it gets, and really just the more fun we can have because it's a bigger group, so then you can go do other vendors and say, we're this big now. We have this much purchasing power as a big group. What kind of deals can you address? Yeah, so and obviously, so looking at this one of the questions I had was who can join and is that me? So who can join this? I mean, it's called the Central Nebraska. Obviously, that is not a definition, a description of who is in it. That's just where it started now. Yeah, any accredited Nebraska library is we kind of went the overdrive route and thought that if you have accreditation from the commission and you're in Nebraska, you're welcome to join. So any accredited public library has to be public? Yeah. Yeah. Because it's public library accreditation as we do. We don't accredit any other types of libraries. You know, I don't think we ever really met that distinction. I suppose if a college wanted to join, we wouldn't be opposed. Nobody's asked yet? Nobody's asked yet and I know most of the colleges in the state have a public library in their community that services them. Right, this kind of thing, they would send their people there anyways. Yeah, plus it's more public library content stuff. Definitely, yeah. But I go to Hastings College all the time and let students know that we have 147 digital magazines that they can check out if they just sign up for a library card with us.  And that's how we sell ourselves, look sexier. Exactly. The only stipulation is we can't have Lincoln or Omaha joined because they're too big and they would pump us up to the next payment tier. Not Lincoln or Omaha, but we can essentially take anyone else because all of us together couldn't possibly go over the next... Yeah, Record Books uses circulation as their criteria for charging people. And what's nice is that the... Since we go straight off of the public library profile done by the commission based on everyone's statistics that they've sent in, any vendor that's doing any kind of work, with the exception of the vendors who use active borrower as their magic number, since that one's kind of a waffley number depending on which library. But we've got the data right there, so if they say, oh, well we do based on legal service populations. So we say, okay, well we serve, boom, this many people. So I haven't summed that column. Any questions for the good of the... Did anybody have any questions about the pricing and how they're doing this? Type into your questions section of your go-to webinar interface. Or if you have a microphone, I can unmute you and you can use your own microphone to ask your question as well. We can do that. Well, we're waiting to see if any of you does have questions. Right now you've got just the two products, the Zinio and the OneClick. But you said you've talked in talks or have talked to other ones. Do you know, have any idea about what might be coming up or that's still in process too much? It's still in process. The Zinio and the OneClick are the two products that are the requirement of sorts. So the whole group has agreed that these two products will purchase. So as we get bigger or as other vendors talk to us, there might be additional products that if as a group we decide we want that to be a required product, we'll add that to it. And so a lot of what we're doing right now has just been we come as a group and say we're interested but we can't all buy in. And then they give us a breakdown kind of of a group pricing up. The other one I couldn't think of earlier was Linda.com. Oh yeah. So what we did is they looked at our total group and said okay, this is how big you are. So if Carney wanted to do it, it would be this much money for this many seats as opposed to having us all buy in and do it that way. Which is also really great because then it gives flexibility because if Lexington, for instance, doesn't want to do that, then they're not forced to buy something that they're not interested in because they want those other products for free because they want Zeno on one click but they don't want the Gale Virtual Resource Library. It's not that you have to do that. We're just kind of a clearinghouse for cheap deals and trying to find the best fit for the best libraries and vendors. Right. So much of the group things that we do here at the commission, same thing. We try and coordinate it on behalf of the library so they don't have to each do it on their own. Exactly. I was just too impatient to ask the library community to do it first. It's okay. So you just came up with this idea and thought it would be cool for a few libraries. It's kind of been a victim of your success. But you're still doing okay. You're not overwhelmed with it, I hope. No, it's not too overwhelming because outside of making sure that everyone knows what they're being invoiced and making sure invoices go to the right library, I really get to be hands-off on it and I leave a lot of that to recorded books and to... There's not a lot of collection development along, needed to be done because it's all collections already pre-made. Yeah. And then in January we look at what magazines checked out, what magazines didn't check out and I send a big group email to everyone that says, okay, here's the top-circuit magazines, here's the bottom-circuit magazines. Here's the list of everything that's available. What do you want to add? What do you want to get rid of? What are we keeping? I mean, that's the hard part but that's all group consensus which is super fun. For the most part the collection stays the same except for we drop off, you know, three magazines that didn't check out anymore and then the library wants to add one and we say, well, okay, perfect. It balances out, yeah. Exactly, exactly. So when you were just a small group, I think you started with four. You started with four libraries. I've always thought that, we've always had trouble that a lot of these bigger vendors don't work with small groups. It's just not worth it for them. So that's why we've had to try and set up groups that are statewide from commission or sometimes even working in conjunction with other states groups and things. How did you convince them to do something just for four libraries? I'm curious. Well, the benefit was that this was a brand new thing recorded books was doing. Ah, okay. They were trying to just get anyone interested in it and so I said I'm interested, these libraries are interested but this is the only way we can do it because we want a collection that's worthwhile because otherwise it was pay a platform fee and then we'd have enough money for 15 or 20 magazine titles, you know, which is nice but it's... Not a lot, yeah. Yeah, it doesn't give you kind of the range of motion to say, look at all these various topics we can provide for you outside of our print magazine subscriptions. So... So you got lucky and noted in getting into the Zinnio that it was a new service that they were, yeah, just trying to get the word out and once you guys start using it, I know it's definitely become a lot more popular. I hear it all the time from libraries talking about it as this new thing and also a couple of that you mentioned. And so we benefited from being early adopters through all of the kinks that existed and then it was too late we were already a group so they couldn't split us up. Nice. Now they're stuck with us, which is fine because now... I mean there's... I mean just at the conference I got to talk to Chris who's the recorded books rep for Nebraska and he was showing a comic book resource that's coming through recorded books soon and there's gaming. So you essentially download a program and then you can check out games for free like Lego Marvel and Lego Batman and I mean cool games and silly games and kids games and big kid games. And so it's other opportunities for us to even be able to play with something. I mean sometimes you look at something, a product coming out from a vendor and you know right away it's out of your price range. But you can say hey I belong to this group, can you give me a demo because this is something I can take back and we encourage... And we can show it to many other libraries. Exactly and we encourage all libraries to talk to any vendor and bring anything they want to the group. The Gale Virtual Resource Library phone call came because they called North Plat and North Plat said well you know we're part of this group so here call Jake and have a chat with him and it looks really cool and it's simultaneous access reference materials and non-fiction materials and it's all indexed and I mean it's certainly something that I think some of the group would be interested in and Gale is willing to work with us to make a price that works for everybody. So I mean I think my favorite part about this whole experience is that at some point you kind of think the vendors are trying to get as much money out of you as they can which you know is kind of the game because that's how they get paid but they're not the bad guys because they're trying to sell you something they think you like and so they want to bend over backwards for you if you can show them that you're willing to spend money.  And hopefully this will get their attention that they started small with just the four and it can benefit them in the future. They need to look ahead that just you know they could do this in other states just find a small group or offer to do something like this and then it could eventually grow like this one has and hopefully will grow even more I assume. And I think for anyone listening who's interested in any kind of consortium or co-op stuff it never hurts to ask. I think that's the one thing that I did was it all started when I asked my boss hey can I talk to these other libraries into Carnegie Grand Island and Holdridge about you know doing this and then they said yes so then I went to record a book and said hey can we do this because you want to sell it we want to buy it so it never hurts to ask and I think the other benefit is that being in the state when you say well I can get these four libraries together and we're the same size as Hastings and you sell the Hastings so you should sell to us too.  So it's not hard and it's doesn't hurt to ask. I think that's good to hear from you that I know I'm sure a lot of the smaller libraries are unsure of what to do afraid of that you are intimidated by these big companies and they hear that the vendors are just there can everything's too expensive they'll never sell to anybody small like us so why even bother it's just too much to do. But you guys pulled it off without any sort of big organization behind you backing you up or any extra funding or anything you just kind of you can do it and if you want in on some of this stuff we've got something going here that could be there that you could just join in with. Exactly. I didn't put up my contact information. That was going to be my other question my last question I have here is how can somebody join? Is it called Jake? Yeah. Basically. Come on internet. Call or email I assume. Call or email yeah. I'll put up my contact information as soon as my connection to the internet stops being persnickety. Goodness.  It's two things at once trying to talk to each other. But yeah certainly give a call or an email and I can put in your numbers using Steve's magical formula to figure out what your library's where your library's obligation would be. We kind of have kind of right now we're in two windows to roll in because right now we get invoiced twice once in October for the one click and then once in February for Zinio. So for the smaller libraries it might be one five hundred dollar payment at once in February because the small libraries that join got to be 250 and 250 and if you're a bigger library it might be something we wait until October because that's we're striving to get everything to do in October so it's everyone's fiscally your start over. Nice. And that can all be well and good. Krista can you steal the screen back and throw out my contact information? Because I don't mind. Is that possible to add that to the slide? I'm sorry to ask. No no that's okay. Hang on just a sec here. I can't seem to do it today. I've got your contact info here that's at the library. Or is there somewhere on the library's page where you've got your info or should I just do what we have here? Just do what you have is probably best. Yeah. Yeah if you can't get your stuff. But before I do that, does anybody have any last questions for Jake? Anything about the systems? About the services they have? About the co-op? Do you want to see him show anything? Well I don't know about that now that your internet's not doing well. But. Tape in any questions you have here and I will move this over. Yeah I'll pull back, present your control to me to show my screen for your contact info for now. But as you see something you want to show or anybody asked anything I can switch it back over not a problem. So this is Jake's info here. Phone number at Hastings Public and his email address. Is that the correct info there I've got? That is correct yeah. So. That's me. If any other questions are coming up. And you'll see here I'll just get this out of the way for a second. I have as I do for all our shows in our delicious account I have put in the URLs that you're putting up there for each of the services. Awesome, thank you. The Zinio and the one click digital that are the specifically to Central Nebraska digital co-ops collections. So if you're interested in wanting to know what kind of things are in there to see what you'd have access to. Those are their specific links to those. And. In your initial email if you want a test I mean if you want to dummy barcode so you can give the services a test run yourself before you make any commitments for your library. I'd be happy to get you. People can get a trial. They can just use exactly what they'd be buying into so they know exactly what they're getting into. So. I like it. I think it's great. I mean it makes me kind of a salesman type of person when I want other people to do it. But mostly it's because I want my library to pay less so I can buy more cool things. Of course. Works out for everybody yeah. But it's. It's. For the. We did the math. For a library that a small library paying $500 so for Blue Hill. They pay I think it was. A dollar for every three. Audio books. In just in one click so. I mean you can't get three out of books for a dollar anywhere so the price. Is. Super cheap. Just in terms of even if you're a smaller library. I mean it might seem like a lot of money. But when you take it divided by the. The amount of content that you have access to. It's really the it's you couldn't get it cheaper anywhere else. Some like a car salesman. Just look how cheap. Like. Really join us. I've got think here to make it easier to figure out your info your contact info. I know what I was showing before was just a mishmash of stuff but here you go. So if anybody wants to join this is Jake's contact info a copy from our system here. So any anything else you need to want to share about it were almost to 11 o'clock here. Top of the hour again. I have. I have nothing else to. Anybody have any questions anything anything you want to know about it. We've got a bunch of people online here but they I don't know if we've been answering all their questions which is great. Anything you want to know about it from Jake before we wrap up for today. Give you a last few minutes to type in what anything new. New. All right then I guess we'll wrap it up for today. Well thank you very much. Yeah thanks a lot Jake. I had heard about this over the summer sometime and I feel kind of bad. You said you've been doing it since 2013. I had not heard of it before. But I heard about it at a meeting I was at earlier this summer and I had written myself this little scribbled note. And I wasn't even sure what the name is like called Jake about the co-op thing. And I hadn't gotten to it and then it was in our state library association Nebraska library association and the school librarians association annual conference. He was as he said you were on the on the schedule there and I said there we go. I'm going to get it on the show. And I'm glad we did. This is a great service. I'm glad that you guys pull this together for everybody and are keeping it going. I hope you don't get too overwhelmed. No it should be fine. Yeah. Alright looks like nobody's got any urgent questions we've been chatting here so we will wrap it up for today. Thank you very much Jake. Thank you everyone for attending. If you want to join the central Nebraska digital co-op contact him. There is his info on our screen. Other than that that wraps up for today's show. It will be posted to our website in the archive section here. I don't say anything about the slides because you don't need to send me those two slides a year is not a problem. I will have links to the recording and those two services that are available in here so you'll be able to watch the recording afterwards. Later today it will tomorrow it will be available. And then I hope you join us next week when our topic which just got added to our schedule this week is what is Nebraska Access. Also the collection of databases and things you can use that we offer through here through the library commission our statewide database program. Alana Novotny and Susan Nisley who run this program are going to be with us next Wednesday morning to tell us all about it and how what's available in there. Lots of things have changed with it. We've got some great new services in there. I think it's really cool the resources you can find in there now. So join us next week for that to see what's new about Nebraska Access. And if you are big on Facebook we do also have a Facebook page. You can like us. Please do like us over there and I post notifications. Slowly comes up here. Reminders of when a new show is starting up like here I did login right now this for this morning show when recordings are available. I post notices on here as well for our shows. So if you are big on Facebook and want to keep up with what you're doing you can go ahead and like us over there. Other than that thank you very much for joining and we'll see you next weekend in Compass Live. Bye bye.


Now welcome to the pandemic version of Mount failure civic forum where we're going to talk about the election that's coming up on town meeting day. That would be mainly absentee ballots as we did in the last election but basically it's not in any way shape or form less important than any town meeting day is. In fact because it's a town meeting day in a pandemic being held this way it's more important. It's more important that you engage. It's more important that you vote. And we've got a great series of shows. As always we'll do city budget with Bill. We'll do school budget with Jim Murphy the president of the board. We will have our annual mayor's address of city all the way from the wayside to the baseball field and all the way from the sewage plant to the new thing that's going up on 302 that you'll find out about at that corner of two and 302 and basically that's a great show and we have the city council candidates as well as the school board candidates. So we've got we even have a park board candidate for a five-year term. So this is going to be a great series of shows. Well worth watching them all. They're all on orca media the youtube site as well as the cable channel site and tonight we have Dan Richardson a city council but a sitting city council person running in district three. Yes thank you Richard. Thank you for having me. Dan what is district three? Can you give us the parameters of district three? Sure. District three is made up of the area really south of the Moinowski River in this within the city confines. So it's the neighborhoods along Berlin street Northfield street. It involves the wayside as you mentioned is in district three. Sure would drive. It also includes a section of the downtown main street like where the Savoy is and all the way over to Hubbard street up to main street. So almost to the middle school district three extends into that downtown area. So it's an interesting district in that you know it is divided by the river. It's the only district that does have that that sort of geographic division within it. But it's also a district I think that's full of a lot of for Montpelier residents that you know may not be you know the people that are always on the front page of the Times Argus but are make up the really backbone of our community. It's been called the forgotten district. I've heard that mentioned before you know it's one of those things because the south side of the river you know it we I think we've talked about this before you know it goes back in some way to the historic origins of Montpelier that a lot of that was Berlin and the city of Montpelier seized it. Seized it when? Seized it in the mid 19th century and it's actually very funny my partner Paul Gillis you know detailed some of this but basically City of Montpelier grabbed it and Berlin didn't vote to release it but the legislature approved it and so we basically took the south side of the Winooski River. Now rumor had it that Berlin wasn't necessarily wanting to hold on to that much land they were looking to develop elsewhere but little did they know they would have them all. I was going to say they lost the best part of themselves and we got we got it and it makes up a a section Montpelier but I think the geography of the river has always been at least mentally for a lot of people you know a dividing line because we think of downtown Montpelier on that north side of the Winooski and actually that's one of the things that I thought about that incurred one motivated me to run in the last year for city council and one of the projects that I feel is ongoing and was sort of put aside because of the pandemic is that you know we really need to invest in that south side of the city and that includes parks and that includes certain business opportunities and I think that really involves building other sort of downtown type areas around the district three where a lot of people really don't have the opportunity to walk into downtown like say someone who lives in district two that might go come down College Street to State Street and and go to the farmer's market on foot they don't have to cross major highways they don't have to cross you know busier traffic roads. Now you want a small victory and most people won't even notice it but the wayfaring sign points to the business district on River Street. It does. Which I think is a small victory for for district three. It is it is a small it is a small victory but you know I see if I think about the greatest potential in a lot of ways for Montpilier it's that it's that business district it's you know starting to take control around like the Pioneer Street bridge area and making that more walkable making that more usable as you mentioned the new construction that Tom Malone is putting up across from the formula Ford. You know all right don't keep us in on pins and needles what is that. Well I actually don't know. I know I know it's a commercial building that he's he's erected and I you know but we've seen a lot of activity in that that area Fred Connor and Connor brothers have put up businesses along the that right of way on 302 the old armory area you know we're seeing a lot of commercial development there and what we're not seeing and I think what the role the city can play is really start to tie that in to some sort of infrastructure so that we have an extension of our walkable downtown to this area as well and I think that's how cities develop is that they often have these growth areas that then get incorporated into the mixed residential and commercial uses. Well let's get another couple of victories off that the distillery. Yes. The walking path. Yes. Those are I mean those are big changes and that's in part I think why that Pioneer Street area is becoming as viable as it is because of the walking path you know now recreation opportunities and traffic foot traffic extends down to you know Gallison Hill Road. So the auditorium are the the Civic Center down there. Yes. That might that's near the bicycle path isn't it. It is and I think you know you actually can end up right there at the at the ice ice rink you know you look at other cities that have well-developed walking bike paths like Burlington there's a lot of opportunities and a lot of real community structures and and infrastructure that can be put in along those paths because you get that foot traffic there so you know imagine for example we already see you know where the bike path ends at Gallison Hill there's a the old shell station has been completely remodeled and there's a convenience store there but if you had other small businesses there or along that way like at the Pioneer Street bridge you know there's lots of opportunities imagine a bike rental place there so somebody could take a rental bike and and go up and down the bike path you know that's what we see in Burlington that's what we see in other cities and the more we can support that as a city I think it really helps take this infrastructure investment that we've made and and boost it up and anybody who lives in that area in District 3 now has that benefit of that you know really wonderful community asset. Taking us back one year when we had this discussion earlier and the other seat was up in District 3 there were two seats in District 3 yes we were talking about a park up there yes and what is there any progress in discussion on that and could you explain what that's about you would know better than I sure so we've actually had a lot of conversations Jay Erickson who's the other city counselor and I have met with Alec Ellsworth who's the head of the park department and we've tried to identify spots along in District 3 where recreation opportunities can be had the way I've always tried to describe it to people is if you think of Hubbard Park as our central park for our city the parks along District 3 I think can become our Emerald Necklace wasn't there one rather sizeable piece there is one in the Stonewall Meadows area now where is the Stonewall Meadows area sure it's it's south of it's it's no it's north of Berlin Street and it's south of 302 and it's off behind Sherwood Drive and that neighborhood it's it's really the the remnant of some of that development that occurred I think in the 90s but it's it's sort of forested land right now that the city does have an interest there's also an opportunity I believe so I'm just not certain of their interest from a legal perspective you know there's also the other opportunity which is the area that was formerly owned by Food Works where would that be that would be the two rivers the Confluence which is just across 302 River Street right and and you know there's that's subject to a fairly thorny and convoluted series of legal issues but you know there is going to be probably an opportunity for the city to take some ownership of you know up to 15 acres in that area so you know there's there are these parks that once you start to identify them and if we can link them together we may not have a hundred acres to to dedicate on the south side you've got picnicking areas you have picnicking areas if you can link them together you have what you have in Boston which is a series of parks that are connected so someone can go along the south side of the river through these parks for various recreational activities and I think what we really have to and what we were starting to have conversations with with um Alec was you know what do these recreation opportunities look like are they picnicking you know one thing that I think is needed on the south side is uh you know playgrounds we don't have uh and there are a lot well we don't have schools call it what it is sure district two you have Union Elementary School you have Main Street Middle School correct right um you you know we even have you know in Hubbard Park you have open fields and and such and so you know I think what we're looking at is to create those type of recreational opportunities for district three um and it's going to take some work and it was you know we were starting to get off the ground and then the pandemic there was a pandemic that got in the way so you know that's one of those pieces of unfinished unfinished business that I really hope we as a city can start to take up as we move beyond the pandemic it's just that the pandemic has proven to be a bit more uh resilient to moving on than we would have hoped have we slowed down the hill uh we were that was coming in a year ago the speed limits going up the hill towards the hospital it has that slowed down on Berlin it has you know obviously a lot of the residents that pushed for that wanted it to 25 wanted it much slower but certainly I've noticed and I travel along that road a fairly frequently um it has slowed down um as a result of those speed limits it doesn't travel quite as fast the problem is always going to be sort of twofold with that road one is it's designed as a faster road so it's as you're driving along your experiences you want to go faster and if you're not paying attention your body you know your experience as a driver may lead you to go faster and the other problem is is that you know we have a dilemma of how we commute to Berlin and some of the commercial centers oh so well if you're in Montpelier and you want to go to the gym the mall the hospital um you really only have you have three options you can get on highway you can go up Berlin street to and it becomes four near to get to the hospital exactly well i'll get to that in a second or you can go 302 on the backside right um you know we've had some I think part of what slowed down the traffic this year has frankly been that breakdown of the culvert at the top of the hill there right before you turn off to head to the mall or to the hospital um which has caused people I think to know that they're going to have to take a securities route um but what's interesting is that you know we need a good way for people in Montpelier to commute or people from Berlin to commute between these two downtown areas that are developing um and I think Berlin street a long time ago was imagined as that street and 302 as a result has gotten a lot more commercial development when I was on the development review board it was certainly something we took seriously and and questioned at times you know whether we wanted more commercial development along 302 because that is a state highway and it's actually a federal highway and whether we wanted more traffic delays that would result from commercial development or whether we wanted to make sure that road state somewhat clear so that people but aren't we a minor player in commercial development on 302 I mean Berlin is the major player it is very is a minor player sure but we get the tail end of it but think about how you travel from you know if you say you take a start at the bridge by sarduchies and you want to get to the mall or the hospital you know you're going to have to go one of those two routes you're either gonna have to go up Berlin street or you're gonna have to go around uh the 302 and if 302 becomes so packed commercially because that commercial development extends from Berlin that exists that I agree completely but you know beyond the light coming closer past the wayside where we have the the tractor supply company or Cody Chevrolet you know the more that becomes commercially developed then obviously the the quicker the slow traffic starts when you get on to 302 unless it becomes more unless it becomes a parkway or commuting road and so I think we always will have that problem well when you talk about inadvertent consequence how do the people in sure would feel about being a cut through has there been a discussion of speed bumps there has been you know speed bumps come with certain requirements and uh you know certainly on certain level certain levels of service roads you can't have speed bumps um just it's it goes against the sort of standard uh transportation the transportation standards um but you know I think there that is in part what we're seeing is the is the pressure wow how do we deal with this if you have people that want to go from one point to the other and there's only so many ways to get there you know you can create these speed bumps you can lower the speed limit but it's not going to stop the traffic but it certainly might make it more habitable on that street oh sure particularly if you have children sure and I think that's something we have to continually look at and understand you know and that's part of I think a function of planning is you know if we can create a parkway so that's where my point about 302 comes in which is the more we can keep 302 as a clear option for traffic to flow through the more people are just going to go 302 and they're not going to use that cut through they're just going to go straight around um and you know I think that's something we have to give serious consideration because you know if we don't have a good route to that area in Berlin and and I'll add that commercial district in Berlin then we're going to have people cutting through these neighborhoods you know another option that we may do is is to stop making it a cut through create a you know end it as a as a as a through way I think those are options you can put on to the table but it's a it's a it's a process that you know it's going to require some work and discussion and certainly public works has been you know considerate of of those issues the neighbors still talk about it I imagine yeah I haven't had many you know obviously the pandemic has shifted everyone's focus away from the normal set of problems so I haven't heard much from my constituents on on Sherwood as to issues um you know and but you know it is it remains a problem for that neighborhood of what does its neighborhood identity look like and and it goes back to my sort of first point which is I think the more we can create sort of downtown areas that it can you know that would encourage walking clear walking patterns then we can plan around those walking patterns so that we can make sure traffic doesn't come right through the middle of that there's an old saying that Bruce Springsteen had and they said when this band was playing for $500 a night we had $500 problems now we're playing for $500,000 a night we have $500,000 problems sure in my section of of district two we live in a house that's about 150 years old and we've got 150 year old house problems what's the average house on the other side of the river when was that built so a lot of the housing on this on particularly in the Berlin street neighborhood and northfield street neighborhood those are well there's there's a mixture as there are some older houses the 150 year old houses but there's a lot of pre and post world war two housing and you can you can see it are those starting to have pre and post world war two housing problems sure I mean it's that aging housing stock starts to have issues that are specific to that era of home so for example you know electrical wiring you know if you have a 150 year old home you probably have knob and tube or at least had knob and I was gonna say what updated it exactly and in some ways knob and tube is great you know I have known a old home that has some knob and tube still in it because the electrician has said it's okay you know it's a limited circuit and the knob and tube is in great condition so I can either break through this wall because it's a private residence you're okay to keep your chandelier on this old system but a lot of the aluminum flex tube that was used in the 50s has corroded much faster and so you know they start to have issues or they have lead pipes so a town with a lot of focus on historic preservation is facing a district that that concerns aren't historic preservation but are different in terms of housing and how housing needs to be rehabbed well you know I think we're facing a larger issue about habitability in Vermont and not just in District 3 but you know there's a real question in the post-COVID world of what does ventilation and circulation look like in older buildings and what does you know what does habit ability start to look like as we inhabit these buildings on a far heavier use than we have previously so some of these issues start to come to the forefront and you know it is we're going to need money and resources to deal with this because you know if you own a house the idea of replacing your plumbing is daunting I remember when I was a kid my father replaced a lot of the plumbing in our house and he just happened to be able to to sweat pipe so you know watching him do that but thinking about the costs that went into that not just in materials but then if time and labor had been charged it would have been outside and part of the reason he did it is because we couldn't afford it otherwise so he taught himself how to to plum a house you know those kind of issues are going to continue to crop up for people and we're just going to see that on private residences I think what's what's bigger is we're going to see it in public buildings as well did the zoning overlay it affect District 3 and and or does that need to be revisited by the planning commission to benefit District 3 are there a separate set of issues I know they spent a lot of time talking about zoning overlay of savings pasture I know they spent a lot of time downtown right you know a lot of the zoning overlay you know if you think about zoning it's really the exterior of the building and so that's not as big of a concern I think in District 3 you know because the character of the the neighborhoods may not be quite as the the historic districts maybe that you see in sometimes in District 2 I mean that said you know mid-century post-World War 2 does fit is coming into the category of historic preservation it's 75 years when we talk about historic preservation of of buildings you were speaking of post 1950s and pre-war being historic now well they're coming into cusp if if something was built in 1950 it's about five years from qualifying as a potentially historic building because it's 75 years it's the marker you know and so that that's simply to say that a lot of the post-war construction that we see in District 3 it's not that far from actually qualifying for some of the historic preservation but you know I it feels less like I think and I think a lot of people would would agree with this that the idea that historic preservation is a is a key concern or component maybe less so than the questions of habitability and functionality you know one of the big changes that I think really improved District 3 was when in 2018 when they changed the zoning code to change the setbacks because when I was on the zoning board District 3 was continuously homeowners were coming continuously before a zoning board to get waivers or you know variances for decks because everybody wanted a deck and and you know decks have become integral to how we use our homes now but a lot of these lots that were designed before zoning was implemented were too shallow or too narrow and so they had all these problems where they'd have to seek these variances and we'd tie ourselves in knots to grant these decks so by simply changing that zoning to reflect how the character of this neighborhood was we we got rid of a lot of problems for people in the district as well as the city to have to you know wrestle with a non-issue. Is District 3 the last affordable housing in this town? I think that's an argument that can certainly be made it's certainly the area where there's the most potential for affordable housing in the sense that I think you know there's if any housing is affordable in this town exactly exactly you know I mean I think that's the real you know one of the real challenges we have as a city is finding places where people can build or buy homes that they can move into on you know an early salary in their career as opposed to you know these big mansions that you know are beyond most people's salary no matter how far they get in their career to have homes where you can as a 30 or four you know 35 year old move into with your family you know that's the type of housing we really want to encourage for a city. Again staying on District 3 you've got to get your kids to school the new economic model for our transportation our new transit system where you can call them up on the app or whatever and set an appointment has that had any impact on folks who aren't in that core and can't walk downtown from the meadows or walk downtown? Well I think the my ride program that you're referring to you know is still sort of in its trial phase and you know I've heard some people say great things about it I mean the mayor for example takes it to work every day and she she has great things to say about it I've heard other people who have had success with it but I've also heard criticism of it from from other corners you know that's been much more about a question of of access where people don't have the smartphone or smartphone app but assuming you've had access to it assuming that you do I think it's a really well it's a smart way to allocate transportation so rather than having a bus route that runs no matter who comes or doesn't come you have this on-demand system and it does make it more flexible you know I have I have two children and my daughter used to ride the bus regularly she teaches gymnastics up on the hill and so you know the bus for her was an essential part of how she got from Montpelier if I was at work and my wife was at school to to get to her gymnastics practice or now she coaches and those you know those services on demand make it more flexible and easier because she can pick her destination and she can pick her time as opposed to having to work with some sort of fixed schedule. Got a question downtown yes we talked about this a year we talked about this I've been doing this for five six years every year we sit and talk about downtown with everyone sure what are the changes you see well I mean other than the fact that retail is frozen right now in amber it is you know I think a lot of the things that we did as a city council that have we've tried to help have been have been interesting you know for example we loosened up the park lit ordinance and we did it as a trial last year but we were just discussing at last night city council that we're going to probably extend it this year because a lot of the retail businesses are saying particularly the restaurants as soon as the snow plows are put away we want to get tables back on the street to serve people because in a lot of ways that's how they stayed alive and it was very successful in part because the parking issue had been relaxed people weren't there weren't as many people coming downtown with the state workers so it sort of took it made a blessing out of what could have been a curse and so being responsive and being able to handle that I think was a real triumph and was you know help these businesses stay alive and also change the character of the downtown having all these cafe like settings out on the street was I think you know generally seen as by a lot of people is positive you know I think the future of Montpelier downtown we have two well we have one challenge and I think we have one really important quality that's going to push us through the challenges with this pandemic I don't think once it's over we're going to see a return to what was in 2019 or the beginning of 2020 you know state workers aren't necessarily going to come back in the same numbers as much as we want them to and that's going to change the character of Montpelier because we have had a long time reliance on people coming to the city every day not just visitors but regular workers who come to the restaurants and the stores and you know purchase things and pay our parking fees and that's part of what we've had as challenges of budget and I think we have a challenge now how do we revitalize that or how do we start to explore new options and I think one of the real benefits to Montpelier downtown are businesses like yours or the businesses on Langdon Street or a lot of the ones that have opened up this year that really focus on a unique retail experience you know you go to the store not because they're sell you and bulk the lowest price possible they're not Amazon on a main street but what they offer is an incredible experience and a really unique one and a personal level of relationship that I think a lot of people post pandemic are going to be craving because they're not going to want to sit and click on Amazon they're going to want to interact with people anyone who has any extroverted tendencies has been sitting on their hands for a year now waiting to get back out and I think you know if we can encourage retail that's unique we're going to get a lot of people to come to Montpelier and that's going to help support the downtown businesses when people can come visit Vermont again when they can and it will but I mean that's really a bright hope we should be encouraging you know businesses like the corky pet or book spoiler records that you know one that's there's a great example of a business you know that could have really suffered but what they did was they started going online they started creating curated record lists you know so you go in there and you don't just get a shelf of records you get an interaction with people that are knowledgeable that are friendly that have a relationship that you build with them and in some cases they they've even created curated packets so they say if you want music let us know we'll send you sort of a package of what we think you might like and that's that's something you won't get on an online retailer that's a value added service or you know take the get-up or J. Langdon or you know Rome or any of these businesses Minneken or Bailey Road these are really person-to-person businesses that create this experience create these relationships that are really powerful and if we can promote that and get people to come either online or in person you know we have a real shot at keeping our retail strong downtown so I imagine that you support Dan Groberg and his efforts at Montpelier live yeah I think so I think that's he's an important part of the solution because I think he he gives a voice to this and gives some some unity to these businesses you know as we try and reach out beyond our the four corners of the business what about the economic development corporation that seemed to have fallen to the wayside well you know that's had a series of unfortunate events happen to it you know they've struggled within getting executive directors they've tried to reinvent themselves you know we zeroed them out for the budget this year but in part you know I think they have a role to play you know they've done a lot of behind-the-scenes foundational work in getting businesses to come such as the Caledonia spirits that we talk about you know they've done a lot of important hand you know helping to have these become a reality and there's probably a role for them to play I think they're going to have to spend this year figuring out what that role is going to look like because we do need more businesses to come to Montpelier and we do need more economic opportunities as the state may contract or that can help us you know in public-private partnerships you know they have they were created in part to give us that private public flexibility so that they could act as a private entity in in furtherance of the public good the school board said no to the school resource officer yes half of it belongs to the city half of it belongs to the schools you now have that half back you know again you've got the the full officer back is there any discussion as to how the police will use that halftime position no one of the things we did with this year's budget was to basically we gave the instruction to to the city staff was to you know we want level funded we want to keep we don't want to put a tax burden on the taxpayers this is not the year for people to have to because they're going to be struggling with other things in the second year of the pandemic let's level funded so one of the things that happened was the police position was kept open so the SRO position has really it isn't as if we now have a position back that we've kept one position that's going to be purposely unfilled the officer who was providing student resource officer staffing is now gone by basically back to the full-time police department but is fulfilling a full-time role there and you know I think we're going to be looking down the road there's there's two things you know I think the school board they they chose not to fund the student resource officer but they have the challenge in front of them of now really sort of identifying well what services did the SRO provide to the school district and beyond being the point person for school shooters exactly because I think that wasn't just there I mean in some ways that was probably the the the most discreet part of their job the bigger parts of their job were much more being involved in the student community being a liaison being a sort of person that could head off incidents before they they arose because they were in the community and aware of these things so for example if you know there was a party planned or something for underage drinking they might be able to intervene beforehand you know and I think part of what the school district has to do is to look and identify those type of roles either formal or informal that they're playing and and come to a decision as to how they want to staff that and that may involve some type of modified SRO or it might involve you know a social worker or something else but you know we're certainly as a city there to partner with them and and support and work with them there are those in the community who speak of defunding the place and speak of of a different model for for brian brian peter a place chief sir how does that play on console well you know I think the first of all you know we've had a lot of people come and speak and anytime you have anyone come speak at council I give them a lot of credit because it's public speaking and for some it comes naturally for some it's a challenge and you can see you know this is a passionate issue for these individuals who come and speak you know I think by and large there's no one on council that is unsympathetic to the idea of the or the question can we do things better absolutely but I think at least for I'll speak for myself you know my concern has always been and not rushing into something simply because it has the the momentum of the zeitgeist and that really what we need to be especially with when we talk about public safety is thoughtful and so you know we created this police review committee in part to answer some of these questions because all of the topics that when you talk about defund the police none of them are new none of them are unique to Montpelier or to Vermont all of them are shared across communities and all of them arose you know over decades and just take for example the example I like to give is is is mental health you know at some point in time in the 70s a lot of state run or regional run mental health facilities started to shut down for good reason these involved horror stories of mistreatment and and abuse and so it was a really good thing that these these institutions shut down but they didn't shut down and then have an alternate they shut down and and people were just simply put on their own people who needed help or assistance and so in those situations you know what evolved over time was that police started to be the first respond as first responders the people who dealt with these populations once they hit crisis and so you know what we're really talking about when we talk about defund the police in this respect and I don't think you'd have anyone disagree is starting to rebuild and refund uh some of the mental health but wasn't that something that an initiative that Tony had Tony Fakos our former police chief hadn't he tackled that years ago well what he he tack what he did was he brought in a greater sensitivity to that issue but you know when we talk about and and in some ways this is these are the different threads that you start to unravel when you take on these questions you know if you know if you look at Montpelier if you look at our statistics alone we have a really good um you know the data really does show that we do it differently in Montpelier differently in what sense well if you look at our um from a racial uh bias point of view you know our statistics show that we don't pull over or ticket um more people of of color or minorities um than the then bill will say that we do ticket more men than women that may be true um but I mean if you look at those statistics I mean it does show now that Montpelier and that there may be many reasons for that um and Tony when he was chief and I think Brian has continued it you know have brought in a sensitivity in a training to um mental health case responses and we do a a much better job uh of dealing with it but you know if the core issue of of defund the police is the police shouldn't be the ones on the mental health frontline I think the police would agree with that well they have a card that they carry with them uh laminated card that has the numbers for social services and they're like no and and they have training about how to recognize and how to identify and you know we have funded a social worker for the police department that's embedded you know that's intended to be that that type of alternative uh liaison to you know bringing bringing individuals in need to social services um you know but the problem is is you know and if if if we give credit to the defund the police arguments it's that you know at the end of the day the police are a particular tool they are first responders they are public safety officers they have certain duties to the public that they that they owe under Vermont law and you know they can't be social workers and they shouldn't be um and so if we think about you know how do we envision the responses that the police department feels um and is there a better way to to segregate out some of these away from you know the police to other avenues you know I think that's worth studying but it's not something that's going to be easily answered and there's no easy solution to it and it's thoughtful I mean you know what we've seen in cities like Burlington or or Minneapolis where there's been sort of a quick reaction to these these calls for you know defund the police is a lot of them had had to be walked back or they create an adversarial situation um where you know you stop listening to you know uh the the various stakeholders which include the police to a certain extent and you know in Montpelier we've been lucky in that you know both with both Tony's leadership and Brian's you know they're there saying yes we'd love to have more social workers so we'd love to have you know better training or more diversion and that's exactly what we want we want those stakeholders to want to want to be part of it and so bringing them along and bringing the people that are concerned about you know these issues of behind defund the police you know is a is a difficult conversation but it's it's a good one to have well we talked about level funding in the place this is another issue that comes year every year that I've done this I've talked about our crummy streets and John Holler was mayor when I first started these and John would sit and say in the early years I'm going to put a fund aside so that we can level fund these streets and so that we can keep our streets up so that they don't fall to disrepair and become more expensive and John kept this word and we set up a fund and then the pandemic came yep what happened to the fund well the fund's still there um you know we're just uh and and we're we're by and large on on track this year's budget is the exception in that um and you know I was very clear in asking Bill about this you know and he was very clear in answering this is not a sustainable budget we can't keep the budget that we put for fiscal year 2022 that the voters are going to be voting on why is this not a sustainable budget because it involves putting off certain pieces of capital improvement whether it be personnel equipment some of the maintenance and some of the street projects that we've tried to you know we've we've delayed where there's hopefully the most minimal impact but it's intended to be a level funded budget in part because we wanted to make sure that the taxpayers didn't have this burden on them and recognizing too that you know this was a year where revenue was going to be down so it wasn't the year to take on new big projects it was the year just to see if we can get on the other side now the way the project the way the budget is built if we get state money or federal money we can backfill backfill bring back some projects in and so you know what we tried to do was keep the services that we have provided as a city and that residents have come to rely upon and add as close to an even level as possible um and some of that has meant you know so we might pave one less street this year than we had previously planned it's not that we've depleted the these budgets for road maintenance it's just that with the other costs associated with it you know we need to keep that level down so that we can then keep the same level of dpw workers um and you know maybe but maybe not hire the additional one that we need last year we spent a lot of time on these shows talking about the downtown plan sure that was then under discussion having all kinds of hearings around is has that been relegated to a fantasy status or has that been pushed off no i you know we approved the downtown plan um early on in the year but you know you know to to a large extent this year's council has been a reactive council in the sense that we've had new challenges come up on an almost weekly basis you know uh for example like i said with the parklet thing where we had businesses that were you know really pleading to to have that opportunity um and so we're trying to react in real time or retail businesses that were struggling and working with the economic development corporation and others to see if there was any form of rent relief that we could um you know midwife into into reality which we did um you know these type of you know mask mandates suddenly became an issue we we never thought we'd have to you know um create a rule about people wearing masks but the pandemic has made that a reality and how how do we deal with that and so you know to a certain extent the planning has has taken a backseat but i don't think it's disappeared but i also think this is an opportunity you know where we need to check back in once we start to get on the other side of this pandemic because as i indicated before you know we're headed into new territory the world is going to look very different in 2022 and 2023 than it did in 2019 so we might revisit that plan that had us widening the sidewalks a massive plan big plans like that might be revisited would that include the recreation center um i would i would assume that i would put that on the table um you know because i think we have a big question with the recreation center and what function does it use that we didn't have a year ago because you know one thing that we have to think about with the recreation center is ventilation and spacing you know before we could gather all we wanted we could have a spring steam concert in there um and it wouldn't we wouldn't have had the same type of public health concerns that we do today i mean just imagining even a small folk concert in there probably is cause for concern in this covid world one more question i'll let you go are you zoomed out some days it's definitely that's one thing that i have really uh has been difficult and i was talking with someone about this the other day i missed the city council meetings where we could be there live because to interact with people to have someone stand up at the microphone and and you know bring their concern forward or tell their story was really powerful that you just don't get that translated to on um a flat screen and you know i think every now and then about the ridiculousness of my situation sitting in a room um you know talking into a box um as if that was real connection um but at the same time you know zoom has been great in allowing greater distribution of access you know if you're homebound you no longer have the issue of can i attend the city council meeting in a meaningful way as long as you can get on to a computer you can be a participant um and so in that ways it's been really democratizing and i think that's been a really good thing on democratizing that brings us to the end of this one but do do pay attention to town meeting and and make sure you get out and vote and make sure you vote intelligently watch all of these shows they're really good we have a great slate of candidates as we always do and bill sex bill's particular presentation on the city budget is good uh jim on the school budget is well taken and one is extremely good on on the city and her view from the mayor's seat and again we've got the schools we've got the city council people even have a person running for a five-year term on the park commission you can see the shows on or comedia's youtube channel you can watch them on cable television but do get out and vote i it it's even easier cast an absentee ballot you don't even have to go there on town meeting day but do make sure that your vote and your voice are heard thank you very much


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