All right.
We're going to go ahead and get our recording started.
I'm really excited to welcome our presenters for today's webinar.
John Chrastka comes to us as the executive director for EveryLibrary.
Lee Hallberg is the executive director at the Mancos Public Library in Colorado, and James Ochsner is at the Sutter County library in California, and I'm going to go ahead and have john get us started.
Welcome to all of you and thank you so much for being here today.
>> Thanks for hosing, and ARSL for letting us be a part of this advocacy conversation.
We want to talk not necessarily about public advocacy necessarily, about inside stakeholder  advocacy, but both, because I'm not exactly sure where you're at coming in as a participant today.
We have some insights here at EveryLibrary from working with a lot of libraries, the problem if you will of being stuck.
Every library is set up for those of you who are familiar with us, bear with me, but we're set up as a political action committee for libraries.
We're the first 501C4, which means we're a super Pac for libraries.
We work on funding issues.
When you talk to voters, you talk to a voter to go out for an election, and my colleague Lee will be talking about how he helped get his library unstuck by moving them forward towards an election, or to do a negotiation with a city council, county government, a town board, a burough, you name it, there's places where stuckness happens externally.
We've worked with 83 libraries when they've taken their measure for funding to the ballot, we've all gone through election day, we've gone through election day together.
We've had about 64 wins, an 80% success rate.
And have helped secure around $265 million in stable tax money for libraries.
That -- if you run it all out, over the course of like 20 years, where there's a bond, say, or a levy or a parcel tax, it's about $1.6 billion in stable funding that we've helped secure for libraries.
And there's another I'd say 50, maybe 55 libraries that we've talked to over the years, a couple of them are on the ballot this November, or into 2019 and 2020, and there's a few that are just stuck.
They're just sitting there.
They're spinning their wheels.
They have left what is the most vital resource of all on the table.
They've left the money on the table because they've gotten themselves to a place emotionally, perhaps politically, but often emotionally where they can't get off the ball.
And that's an important conversation to have as.
>> Lisa: Leaders.
How do we move ourselves down a path to the ballot?
How do we move ourselves down a conversation about our funding future?
How do we move ourselves from just moving buckets around if the roof is leaking to actually getting the thing repaired?
That's tactical, but what about programs, services, collections, and most importantly, staffing that our community truly needs?
I want to ask you in the chat, hopefully you came to this particular session with some  intentioniality, what does it mean to be stuck and to not ask for the funding your particular library needs?
What are you leaving on the table?
It might be an impolite question.
It's almost like asking about politics or asking somebody their age.
But I need to ask you, because the rest of the conversation today, which my colleagues from Lee and James are going to talk about are two particular ways they've got themselves unstuck, I want to give you insight, a little bit of insight into what we've seen externally and internally, and then give you perhaps a good path forward.
For maybe kicking the ball.
Maybe kicking in the butt of those people who are also stuck with you.
External opposition.
That's often the source of being stuck, and there's also quite Frankly a lack of internal engage thament we've seen in working with these, almost 150 libraries on politics, on money, on taxes, on the big ideas that need funding to be put behind them.
I want to give you my laundry list.
External factors.
We often talk about these as opposition, by the way.
We often say somebody is opposed to the library.
I would like to challenge that feeling out there, every single library we walk into we have challenged that, they say mb is opposed to us, are they really?
Or are you just afraid they might be?
Have they said something?
That's really opposition.
Have they come out against you and said something in the media, to your face, behind your back and you heard about it?
That's opposition.
Otherwise, it's supposition.
Well, it's fear of external factors.
Number one, though, honestly, it's elected officials or those powerful people who are in some way, shape, or form opposed.
If you have a political climate in your community that's hard to get unstuck when you're elected officials think all taxes are theft.
Or they run on that platform.
To come back around in our guide, with some better deeper dives into all six of these external factors, and we've got some other way points about how to think through engagement around that.
Another external factor we've seen are zero-sum game.
The local watchdogs, those folks who are like, what are you potion today?
What have you got?
The local watchdogs that you say, we can't do it because so-and-so is on Facebook, so-and-so on the blog, so-and-so over the back fence, so-and-so is going to say something against it.
Yes, that is an external factor, it could be an opposition, or have we actually been properly transparent?
Have we actually been properly consultive?
Have we been truly inclusive in our planning to include those folks who aren't necessarily  watchdogs, but are, well, maybe they just want to talk more than we have been talking with  them.
I mentioned a number one about officials talking about any tax is a bad tax.
Number three, there are groups.
And I gotta tell you, as our 84 lie Briggs and 64 wins in a community we've done more in small  towns, rural America, and traditional red states, we've done better in some of those places because folks who understand what the leverage of taxes can do to move an agenda forward if they're smart taxes.
Not smart people, but smart taxes.
Engagement is a way to break through these external factors.
Very quickly, but it takes real engagement.
All right, number four, as an external factor, those people don't like us, we don't like them.
There are residents against the staff or the board, and it's personal.
This is the hardest one to unwind.
It is the hardest one to unwind, especially in a small town, especially where everybody knows everybody else.
And it is, well, important to have that sort of moral courage to be able to unwind that external factor, and potentially to get yourself or your board president or director the person who is the lightning rod out of their own way.
We do a lot in communities where there is some sort of personality conflict.
To get an honorary chair of the building committee, to get an honorary chair of the yes committee, to get an honorary chair, to get a legit committee going, because it makes it less about the individual and more about the concept.
And there are places and points where you have to be really honest about burying the hatchet too potentially.
I worry sometimes when we go into a community and there's been a lot of attention on censorship and materials challenges, or nuisance FOIA requests, the freedom of information act requests, where somebody is intervene aing the library for all its records.
You know something is going to come -- I don't mean unnecessary, I don't mean a concerned challenge about materials where you can apply your policy fairly.
I'm talking about nuisance here.
That is -- well, why aren't we going -- why are we going to continue to be stuck?
Why are we going to continue to be stuck?
Because so-and-so is going to be a crusader against us.
Now, well, if you have to apply your policies fairly.
You have to also consult with your community about the development of those policies.
And you have to be willing in a certain respect to face a crusader on something like a FOIA issue, around taxes, for example, on the ideals of what you're trying to do.
Access to information, giving everybody a level playing field.
Providing families with the resources they need to help make the choices for their children, and when the children grow up, have access to whatever they want to read there.
Are plenty of 19 your community who if they hear from you with a full voice, would like to support that.
And then number six, the biggest external factor, we don't have any money without significant  change.
That's what we'll be talking about for the rest of the conversation.
Let me give you a brief insight on how to fix the externals, and I'm going to come back to it after we hear from Lee and James about their particular way of doing it.
But generally speaking, there's a lot more folks in your community who care about the library from a voter perspective fr. a consituent perspective.
Only 27% who would definitely do it.
There's a library party in your community and they might not be part of your friends or foundation.
You might not have seen them for a long time, and I'll tell you why in a minute.
Then there are people who are going to say no, definitely.
And there's this thing in our -- the data we've got from Pugh particularly, it's often looked at a crisis.
And I'd like to challenge us to flip the frame from being a crisis situation to being actually,  well, a well of empathy.
66% of Americans say closing their local public library negatively impacted their local public library, would have a major impact on their community, 33% say closing the library would have a major impact on them personally, on the people they love the most, their families.
We tend to look at this inside library lines, it's a crisis, only 33% of Americans would look at the library, look at saving the library for themselves, we have to fix that.
Folks, I'd like to suggest our starting point is that there's a deep source of compassion revealed by this data that says people actually say, I'll be okay, we'll be fine.
But I'm worried about those people.
I'm worried about my neighbors.
I'm worried about those kids, I'm worried about those seniors, I'm worried about those people  looking for work.
I'm worried about the livable, viable, interesting and thriving community.
And to stand in that space that says, let's get unstuck together, to work on these problems  together, it's not a value proposition that you can make to somebody who says, if we get unstuck we'll solve problems for you that are less concerned about you than they're concerned about, let's -- they're less concerned about Ih I or me than all of us.
I'm going to come back to that again at the end.
A little bit more delving into it.
I want to put a frame around it.
Because I think you're going to hear from Lee and James about how compassion and how empathy and how engagement was at the core of what they were able to do to help move the community forward.
And then there's a whole set of internal issues.
I said external before, internal, this is the part that's hardest.
Because you can't blame anybody else but yourselves.
I can't blame anybody else but me.
And I think we need to start describing what this is from a management efficiency perspective.
Every library's experience on why are we sitting here stuck?
Why does it take two or three years to get unstuck sometimes?
Financial literacy.
People are scared to make a bad decision about money when they're on your board, or on your staff and they're not taking the time to get educated about how to manage money.
And what taxes do and mean.
Political literacy is a low-level literacy amongst a lot of boards and staff that we work with, where they think that no one can advocate ever about nothing.
And that sense of agency they have, it's lacking because they haven't been successful before in moving a conversation forward.
They don't feel like they're agents.
I would like everyone we work with to be an agent provocateur.
There is a lack of trust, let's call it what it is sometimes, among staff for their leadership of their boards, and this goes for even your two-person libraries out there that I'm talking to today.
My apologies.
Friends or foundations who think they are the white Knight, and I say that in a way that has all my love and my heart for friends and foundations and sometimes there's a crisis that's impending and they think a book sale or bake sale is going to save the day.
And to disabuse them of the idea that they can arrange more money in donations, book sales and bake sales, even black tie galas than you can an election day with new tax money or from your city council or county government, your town board, there's a fear of failure.
I have to tell you.
That leads to overanalysis sometimes.
Let's just keep spinning our wheels talking to ourselves.
And folks, the easiest one to break through is this one, because I can walk into a place and say, you need a poll.
And you need a survey, and your poll or your survey needs to talk to nonusers.
We could break a logjam real fast.
Because to listen to our neighbors is to know what our mission should be.
And then if we -- if that doesn't unstick us, we've got to take a serious look at who is, what the other six things are here.
And the last one is sometimes, well, if we don't have talent, we don't have capacity means we don't have talent, I'm sympathetic.
And there's plenty of good consultants out there who can help come in every EveryLibrary is one of them, to help you move this thing forward.
I've got some real world stories from our colleagues and friends.
I worked with Lee Hallberg on their campaign a couple years ago, James Ochsner and I are just  getting to know each other, but he came highly recommended from the Aspen institute.
I'm looking forward to you hearing from them about how they address some of those external and internal issues.
After they get done, I'll do a brief transition in the middle, inviting you to participate in the chat, like I'm going to do for you right now.
I'll could back and work through a couple of the other emotional political issues that are meta  sized.
And we do want to have a dialogue about it.
Exphepts questions in the chat.
And then --
>> there's a couple I saw come through, I don't know if you want to take a moment now?
>> We could.
Let me pause for a second.
If you don't mind catching me up, I'd appreciate it.
>> One came early, a situation, while we would love to have more funding, we recently conducted a remodel of our front porch and feel that since our community donated very Janae Russly toward that project, that asking for more money right now would be tacky.
>> That's interesting.
I don't share that opinion generally, but I'd like to chat specifically, my contact information is at the end.
That said, communities understand very clearly when educated and engaged, the difference between donor dollars, which are intended to add some sort of capacity like, we fixed the roof, thank goodness, or got the new porch, or we're building a new collection there, we've got a special book shelf or pizza for volunteers, as opposed to taxes, which are intended to sustain and potentially extend library services.
So having that conversation starts with talking to stakeholders to say, all right, folks, we got the front of the place looks really good, in back we're missing collections, programs, staffing, services.
And the only way for us to fix that properly, the only way to address what we need is through some sort of a tax conversation.
I wouldn't sell your community short.
>> Excellent.
And we'll have maybe James and Lee can chime in on that as well when they get through their pieces.
There's another question, you mentioned polls.
Any opinion on how far out you should do a poll?
>> 18 months before election day, 18 months before the day that your city council or your county government has to decide.
18 months before you want to put that thermometer on your front lawn to start doing a donor  campaign, for example, where you fill it up with books.
And then there's other schedules for particular -- for a particular approach.
But once you poll, I don't want you folks to be scared of that idea, because the only difference between a survey and a poll is if you're conducting it scientifically in a poll setting or if you're conducting it at somebody's front door or at the grocery store, the feed store, the doctor's office where you're trying to get a sense of your neighbors.
So I would highly encourage you to take a little longer view for two reasons.
One, you know where you're starting, what do we need to change?
And then over time you know whether they've changed or not.
A poll at 18 months, 12 months and six months, you can watch that trend line move if you're doing anything to affect it.
If you're not planning on anything doing to affect change in your community's perceptions and attitudes, bolster them if it's needed, then dump out of polling to begin with.
>> Excellent.
Well, I encourage you all to keep posting questions.
There's one that -- a good one in here that we'll hear from Lee and James, how they went about doing that, and certainly keep ca your questions coming, and if you have responses to each other's questions, don't hesitate to chime in, chat as well, and we'll welcome Lee.
Thanks, Lee, for being here.
>> Thank you, Jennifer, and thank you, John.
I guess I'd like to start out just by sharing with everybody a little bit about the Mancos Public Library and our community here in Mancos, Colorado.
We're a small rural community in southwest Colorado.
We have about 3300 residents in the library district.
Close to Mesa surrendered, we get a fair amount of visitors in the summertime.
The community was founded in the late 1800s by miners coming to the area seeking their fortune who later started into agriculture as as livelihood.
So we have a long tradition of farming, ranching, mining, and a lot of conservatively minded folks.
And many of those traditional residents hold an  antitax sentiment.
So that was one of the issues that we were really struggling with.
We've also got a recent new influx of really diverse liberally minded transplants, so the face of the community has changed a lot over the course of the last 15 years or so.
Some of the fiscal challenges that we were facing when I started in 2011 was declining tax revenue on the heels of a new 7500-square-foot building that was built in 2009.
Coupled with the recent successful request which kind of leads back to the question that was asked earlier for a mill increase from the community to support the new building.
So our property taxes had dropped about 20% after the new building was completed, and the successful request may not sound like a bad thing, but it really made our board hesitant to ask for further funding, particularly those board men's with close ties to the anti-tax community.
So why we were stuck.
Again, as I mentioned, the board was hesitant to talk about the challenges or to ask for increased funding from the taxpayers, particularly those tied to the anti-tax community.
Because they did not believe that there was support out there for it.
We also had some community members who were very critical of the size and the cost of the new  building.
And they were very vocal with their criticism.
And because of the way that they were vocal about it, it really made it seem like it was a bigger movement than it actually was.
And then the final thing was the board was forever hopeful that the situation would turn itself around, and kind of fix itself.
So they were constantly just waiting for that economic recovery to come.
And it -- year after year it did not seem to be forthcoming.
Some of the strengths of the library and ties to the community, the users of the library were of course very pleased with the services, the collections, and the programs of the library.
We had a lot of active and very engaged patrons.
They were truly appreciative of the library's work in the community.
We also had a very few nonactive supporters.
But not as many as I would have liked to have seen when I started.
We had an excellent relationship with the school administration and the teachers in particular.
The Mancos schools, the middle and high school had no library and still have no library of their  own.
So the teachers really valued the resources of the library.
We often had class visits.
The students were often asking for support from staff in finding resources.
We offered research training for them, so they could learn how to do research on their own.
And that was very much appreciated by both the school administration and the teachers.
We also had a really good rapport and a lot of partnerships with other local nonprofits.
Because we had this new, big building, the library seemed a natural community gathering place, so we had a lot of folks using our community meeting room.
And we also had many partnerships with other organizations in town to kind of further our common goals.
And we tried to be as responsive as possible to community needs.
We actively listened to criticism and suggestions from the community.
We attempted to address as much of those as possible, that fit within the library's mission and didn't impact our budget too significantly.
So what finally motivated us to get unstuck?
First of all, when I came along and really looked at the makeup of the board, I started realizing that there was a lot of hesitant folks on the board that weren't interested in really looking towards the future of the library.
So I started slowly building board that was less concerned about the grumblings in the community and more focused on library and community health.
And this board was willing to look at our long-term needs and really take some action.
Part of that was instigated by a strategic planning process, which we completed in 2014.
The process involved the entire community.
And it led to those initial conversations about upcoming financial concerns for the library, and it really highlighted financial sustainability as a goal for the library moving forward.
the strategic planning process also gave the library administration opportunity to really talk up the importance of the library services and overall community health, and it was the beginning of our educating the community about the importance of the library.
How did we get unsnuck the first thing, working with guidances from John at EveryLibrary, we started the process of advocating for more library funding.
And that was about one year prior to the planned ballot measure.
We began by gathering support and really rallying our stakeholders.
We looked closely at our relationships and areas where the library service was vital, in particular the school district, again as I mentioned, the library was acting as the school library for both middle and high school.
The chamber of commerce and the town had mentioned a few times to us that new transplants to the community really saw the library a as a vital part of their decision to move here.
And the visitors from Mesa Verde came into town and brought folks downtown just to visit the library to find a quiet place to relax, to find internet access, and just take a break from their travels.
Also the early literacy and home school crowd, the library was seen by these parents as an essential to their child's growth and success.
So really getting those folks educated about the -- not only their personal success but the overall health of the community and how the library supports that was vital.
We crafted a positive message with emotional appeal.
We focused on community health and taking action.
The message was really centered around all of the great things that the library was doing for the community.
And it was not really a helpless cry for support.
We really tried to focus on all of the positive things that we were doing, and saying that we couldn't continue to do those without their support.
There was less focus on our overall tax revenue.
>>> , the amount of dollars we needed, of course that was a concern for folks, but we focused more on the small individual sacrifices  that people would have to take.
So equating the expense into real life dollars such as the cost of one coffee per month, and what it might mean.
The small sacrifices they might have to make in order to make the library more successful.
Also of course very important was ensuring that our library board was on board.
We ran two lodge-term projections which basically highlighted what would happen, what our budget might look like if we passed, and what our budget might look like if we failed.
And these long-term projections really helped the board to see the urgency of action, and thus the board was more willing to talk about our challenges.
With our new members that were left not tied to any of the past decisions of the library, we could really talk more about, okay, we've got this big new beautiful building, sure.
But here's all of the wonderful things that we're doing.
So regardless of the costs, we're stuck with it now.
And we'd really like to continue to grow and help the community and we need your support in order to continue to do that.
We also rallied an election committee of passionate library supporters who understood the importance of the library to the health of the community.
And I can't stress how important this group of people was to our cause.
They were people who really, again, understood how libraries can change lives.
They were very vocal about that, and they were willing to get out there and really share that message with the rest of the community.
We were prepared for pushback from the anti-tax community, but we didn't invite it.
We didn't go out and try to change their minds.
But rather focused on educating those in the community who were on the fence.
Those who were unsure and just needed more information about the library and how we helped support the community in order to make a decision.
Again, all of those stakeholders that we had identified early in the process, we made sure they were well educated on the importance of the passage of our ballot measure.
And prepared to advocate at all times.
And they were some of the best advocates that we had out there in the community, because the passage of the library ballot not only meant success for the library, but it meant success for them as well.
And of course we were prepared to fail.
Again, having a group of passionate folks that were out there advocating for us meant that they weren't willing to give up after the first try.
Fortunately for us we did pass with a 65% margin on the first go-round, so we didn't have to go back and try again.
So what's different now for us since we've passed our mill levy?
The library is seen as vital part of the community health and it's readily supported.
I now have much more community members approaching me and asking how is the library doing?
Do you need any help?
How can I support you?
Many of those ready to write a check if need be.
We have a lot deeper ties with the school, a lot more collaboration, the school has gone to a  four-day week, and so we work to provide programming per their request on Fridays that the students are out of school, so there's still educational opportunities where those groups of kids who would like to pursue those, and we do get quite a bit of attendance during those days.
And the biggest change I would say is that we are now more outward focused.
Which is a big sigh of relief for me, because now we can look at how we are better -- can better serve the community rather than constantly focusing on how we're going to keep the doors open.
That's the story of the Mancos Public Library.
Thank you for allowing me to share that with you today.
And I hope our story was helpful to you.
>> Lee, that was fantastic.
I really appreciate you taking us through the steps.
There are some uncomfortable things you brought up, and that takes, you know, some courage to do on an open forum like this.
And it's something really edifying in hearing it first person singular from you about how long it took, first off, but how it got you there.
I want to highlight two things.
There was conversation in the chat, let me show it here so questions and comments can go back into the chat.
The two budgets, you prepared two budgets.
Plan A, and plan B, if it fails.
There's something about that which really puts a pin in it for two key groups.
The believers in your community want to hear about plan A.
And that 27% I mentioned before about the voters, they really love plan A, but if it's just the library people who want it, if it's just the library people who want it, then it's not big enough anymore.
Plan B answers questions that voters have that are legitimate.
The question about where's my money going to go, and what does it matter if it's there or not?
And I think did you a good job with that kind of plan A, plan B kind of approach.
You said it turned your board around.
>> Yes.
It really highlighted for them, you know, in addition to them really realizing their role in the library and the importance of their responsibility, it highlighted which of them, the real urgency in looking forward and how quickly things were changing for us.
And if we didn't take action, how it would impact what we're doing in the community.
And again, kind of going to a personal level, how it would look on their personal record to be involved in a board that did nothing and just sat on its hands.
>> Yeah.
And then your group of stakeholders got bigger than just the insiders, as I remember.
The first conversation we had together we went around by phone, I've got to get out there to visit you.
But the first conversation we had by phone, I went around the virtual room and said, who are you, how long have you been involved with the library, I can't remember how many people said I've been involved with the library for five years or 10 years.
It was more like I love the library and I just moved to town, or I love the library and I haven't been there in a long time but I know Lee needs me.
>> Right.
And I think all of those folks, like I said, they were just passionate about libraries in general, and they really realized the importance, whether they moved here recently or not, the importance of a healthy library for a healthy community.
>> Sure.
I know Jennifer has two questions for you that came in off the chat.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
If you -- you can address them now or in chat.
There was a question towards the beginning when you talked about the criticisms and suggestions that you were able to implement changes related to.
What were some of those suggestions and criticisms?
>> Oh, you know, just as a part of community service, trying to be open and listening to the community, so honestly I can't remember specifically what those criticisms may have been.
But the past management of the library had been really focused on what they were doing, and their own personal vision.
And I really wanted to when I started to open up the library to the community and get the community to understand that we were willing to listen, and I did want to sit down and hear from folks about what criticisms they may have about the library.
Some of those being things we couldn't address.
Again, one of the biggest ones being that vocal group of people who were upset about the cost of the new building.
Fortunately for me coming in new, being in a situation where I could say, I had nothing to do with that, and so here's what I'd like to do moving forward.
And how can we help make this community successful?
>> Excellent.
 we can continue on, I think with James, so let's move on over to James.
Keep your questions coming.
>> Lee, if you don't mind, grab a couple of those questions for you in the chat box there.
Very happy to transition over to James Ochsner.
Like I said, Amy at the Aspen institute recommended that we bring James in for a chat here about how you get unstuck.
I haven't been part of this project, I've looked over your shoulder at your slides.
I got as much to learn as everybody else.
Are you ready to go, man?
>> Yeah, I'm here.
Thanks.
So I've about halfway through my eighth year as director at Sutter County library.
I started kind of right when the recession was -- the great recession was really taking hold.
Kind of a scary time.
But I'm still here, and that's a really great thing.
So a little bit about this area.
We're located about 100 miles northeast of San Francisco, 35 miles north of Sacramento, in fact our library, our county library system is a partner with the the Sacramento Public Library.
So we do a lot of resource sharing with them.
We have only two incorporated cities in the whole county, which is about basically 608 square miles of mostly farmland.
So the two -- there's two towns, Yuba City and Live Oak, and we have an unincorporated town, Sutter and a few others.
But we have three branches, one in Yuba City, one in Live Oak, and one in Sutter.
And basically as you can patriotically guess -- probably guess, the local economy is an Ag economy, and you may have heard of sun sweet.
I guess we're considered the prune capital, which people are quite proud of here.
Anyway, the little bit about the history of the early settlers in Sutter county were from Mexico, Europe, and then quite a large number of people from the Punjab area in India.
And most recently we have large numbers of people from Afghanistan who are resettling here due to the war, and we've also recently seen a large number of people moving in from Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area just because the price of houses is a lot better here.
So it is also a conservative community.
Really deep religious roots.
People say oh, which religion?
I say well, you name one, and we have a large group here.
We have large Roman Catholic community here, three Zeke temples A. Hindu temple, a mosque, many -- all the different proper test stand churches.
They're all somehow connected to one of these religious organizations.
Some of the fiscal challenges.
And before I go any further, I guess I should just mention, the headings for my slides are the same as Lee's, so we are taking the same approach.
Some of this, oh, wait, didn't we already see this slide?
It's because, yes, the headings are all exactly the same.
So some of the fiscal challenges that we faced, we're a county general fund library, which means that every year when we do our budget it's going to depend on if the board of supervisors believes we have enough money in the general fund to fund the library, which fortunately they have, and it hasn't usually seen too many drastic cuts, but it did take some really big cuts during the recession.
During that time we lost about 45% of our budget, and we've spent really the last five, six years playing catch-up.
When I say "catch-up" I don't mean we're trying to get back to where we are, because I don't strive to go backwards.
What we are doing is in this catch-up is just kind of redirecting our energy towards a more solid place in the community, and one where the community support is much more visible.
It's always been there, but we'd like to make that a much more visible thing to everyone.
So one of the other things that we've seen too is that tax revenues have taken a really big hit, and now they've just have been remaining flat.
We just have to keep doing a status quo budget every year.
There's also a lot of pressure recently for all county departments to find offsetting revenue, which as many of you may know, it's really difficult to -- if you want to do a program to find  offsetting revenue to support that.
Because we are not a business that works that way.
So sometimes the business model doesn't always translate that well into the library.
But we do our best to try to contribute as best we can to the county.
One of the other challenges was that I basically went to the friends when we were having really deep cuts, and I told the friends rather than have them try to make up for that, I wanted them to actually kind of cut us as well.
Part of my thinking was I did not want the friends to assume a burden that I believe is a burden that the county should be handling.
So sometimes the friends group, I've heard of this, people will say their friends want to pay for another employee, or an extra help.
And it's just like, to me it's the wrong direction to go, because then you're not ever going to get that back.
You're going to get into this cycle where your leadership says, oh, just let a nonprofit group take care of everything for you.
So I asked them to not give us what they were planning to give us that year and just to save it.
And what really was interesting, they generally had around $5,000 in the bank, and they -- I just said don't give us any gifts, they gave us some, but not what they normally were spending.
I said just keep saving it.
And they now have about $50,000 they're going to put toward an innovation center we're planning.
So they're all excited.
It kind of made them excited about watching their money grow, and it's been fun to work with them in that way.
So -- sorry.
Why we're stuck.
Why we were stuck.
We have a high turnover rate in the county and our leadership positions.
I'm in my eighth year, I've already had four CAOs I've worked under.
My budget analyst has changed at least five or six times, and we've gone most of those years without an HR director.
So we've got their other positions, department head positions that are difficult to fill often times it's because our salaries are not competitive.
We live too close to the Bay Area and to other cities to compete with the kinds of salaries they can offer people.
So we often see a really high turnover rate, or we see people come in, they get the training they need and they leave.
So that makes it very difficult to kind of -- you're constantly having to build a new relationship with a new person and it makes it really difficult to get any traction.
We have mixed messages on spending of fees, we have a library impact fee that the county collects.
City of Yuba City also collects an impact fee.
They both disagree on how those fees are supposed to be spent.
And so it can often turn into a pretty heated discussion.
There's also a history of disagreement on other matters between the county and the city of Yuba  City, and we've -- and I've tried to work between the two and keep it kind of the library out of the middle of those discussions, but it is kind of a deep history that is hard to overcome.
Also a hesitancy of the board to discuss tax increases, as I'm sure many people see that in a lot of places.
So -- there's no clear objectives.
We don't see our -- our county doesn't have a strategic plan.
I've -- I was working toward that, but hoping that I could have a strategic plan that kind of reflected the county's plan, but with this turnover we're kind of always restarting the same thing over and over.
So these were really hard things that made it difficult to know where to go.
Some of our community strengths, the library and community strengths would be that we do have still a high level of support.
People are very kind, they're very willing to jump in and help us out.
Sometimes there's not money there, but it's just that support of believing that we're doing a good job in the community.
We have strong work force development in the library, we work with our one-stop in trying to help people with job searching, which is tied to our literacy program as well.
Our literacy program offers English language acquisition as well as citizenship classes, and we do a lot of outreach with immigrants in our community and go into public schools and kind of teach the parents as they're bringing their kids to school in the morning, we'll hold a class there at the school and try and spend a couple hours there teaching parents English while their kids are in school.
Different programs like that that really kind of gain the respect of our community.
I have a lot of partnerships that have expanded the library's reach into other departments, we work a lot with health and human services, we work with even the Ag department, just trying to help other departments get their message out, because as a library, I believe that's what we're here to do, we're going to share information.
So I'm always offering that to other departments.
And we have, as I mentioned before, just a very supportive friends group.
So what finally motivated us to get unstuck?
So, I was looking beyond the county, I was looking at strategic plans, trying to figure out what to do, waiting for the county leadership to kind of form itself again.
And in that process I found the Aspen institute rising to the challenge.
If you haven't read that, please take note of that.
It's a document that got me really energized, and I was talking to staff at the library about it, and then I was talking to anybody who would listen to me.
And I made contact with the Aspen institute, and we went through the action guide for reenvisioning libraries, which was a pilot program, and so I worked with Aspen in trying to get a little bit of a better grasp, really, of what was needed in the community.
And we did that through doing some community engagement.
We had public dialogue we held with four different groups, all of this was supported by Aspen.
We had library staff we talked to in one meeting, we had another meeting where we talked to the friends group, we talked to the deep roots, or people who had lived in the area forever, and one with teens and 20s, and then another one with just diverse group.
And in all of these we had facilitators we borrowed from the Sacramento Public Library to help pull some information out of the public, and I tried no keep myself kind of out of the way, I would go, observe from a distance, but I didn't want it to be something where I would influence what people had to say.
So I often would step out and let people speak freely.
And this led to convening a leadership round table, which brought all the leaders of the community together we had people from the state library as well as from Yuba City, city manager, we had board of supervisors, county officials, and librarians from other systems there.
And it was a day and a half event of just pulling together ideas and also informing the leadership of what had come out of the public dialogues  that we had with our public.
And after that was completed we had a report.
So we had some place to go.
We had recommendations.
And these recommendations in this report came straight from these same leaders.
And so that was really valuable document to have.
And it also allowed us to kind of begin to engage our leaders and to bring conversations along that didn't have to deal with a lot of the disagreements  that were going on in the community.
We wanted to talk about how to build community and how to build conversation in our community.
And so we also really encouraged staff to examine efficiency and make sure that we are actually giving taxpayers a really good return on investment.
So we don't ever have that people coming forward and saying, you know, you don't do anything!
Why should we give you any money?
So we worked really hard I think to get that reputation kind of built up and now I think we see a difference.
The difference now is that we have leaders who are wondering what's going on in the library, they want to know what's happening, they want to use our statistics, they want to use our stories when they talk about what's going on in the county.
The -- I was not just me, but now the library has a seat at the county administrator's executive team, so we have weekly meetings where I know what's going on in all the other county departments, I know kind of the scandals that are going to erupt soon, and -- there's all these things that are happening all the time, and now I'm not left in the dark.
And it also helps me plan what I'm doing here knowing kind of the direction the county is going at the moment.
And when is a good time and when is not a good time to bring something up?
And so leaders actually come and ask for support now from the library.
And we use those recommendations that we did get from the Aspen round table kind of as a planning document.
Kind of as my strategic plan for right now.
And that's been a really helpful thing to always be able to go back to that.
And even tell the leaders, these are the recommendations  that came out of your round table.
Also we've established some open communication with city governments to move projects forward.
We've remodeled our Live Oak branch, and I'm currently meeting with county and city bringing them together to work on a larger project.
So that is -- I'm going to leave it there, because I see the clock is ticking away.
>> James, don't worry about the clock.
We're in good shape.
I wanted to thank you for bringing up this very much real world example.
The big part of it, the particulars are particularly every community.
Family.
You're peculiar in a peculiar way.
Bring in the outside third party validator.
Aspen institute, it's got a quite a brand name and it's a good program.
To bring that in and then to use it both in the short-term tactical as well as long-term strategic plan, thank you for sharing that.
I want to ask if you can keep an eye on the comments, the chat box for other things, and I am going to press on for just a minute here, okay?
>> Okay.
>> Cool.
Thank you.
Inner resolve, outside help.
Let me give you a brief bit of coaching about what inner resolve can look like.
Out side help, maybe we're here to do that in terms of the political process.
We certainly are here, we certainly are -- our colleagues with a lot of different organizations, consultants that starts at your state library, too, folks, you gotta talk to your consultants at your state library to help you get unstuck.
That gap between the 66% of people who believe closing the Public Library would have an impact in the community, and a 33% who say it would harm me or my child, the empathy well, there's a lot more people who care, both of these guys found in their little towns, in their little counties, there's a lot more people who care.
Getting outside of your normal building, how do you tap that?
Let me give you two more bits of insight.
This hopefully goes to some of the conversation we've been having in the chat box as well.
56% of people in your community likely to vote yes for the library.
That's a nice little majority unless you're in California where you can get 66% to pass something.
To move the community conversation forward is -- it's residents in the community.
Folks wouldn't actually like to move the conversation forward.
And their user status on this slide, there's nothing in the OCLC, ALA, funding study, 2018 sample, or in the 2008 OCLC version of it, that says user status matters.
You got to look outside of your normal crew to find folks who can help bolster this conversation, and to find out that more than just the library people want it is a great motivator for becoming unstuck.
The party doesn't matter, the red state/blue state divide exists at the top of the ticket, certainly at the top of the ticket these days, but doesn't really trickle down where we are in terms of library issues, and the demographics of the people that were described in both Mancos and Sutter County and hopefully in your hometown too.
Each ethnicity, gender, household income, educational attainment, people who believe in the library come from all ages and stages and all kinds of means.
That drives our conversations around coalition building, again, outside of the usual suspects.
The biggest thing that gets you unstuck in my opinion is when you know somebody else decides, well, your aunt Mildred wants it too.
And in the data, James, can you mute it for me, please?
And in the data, the perception of the library is coequally important with the perception of the librarian in somebody's interest in spending new money to new library services.
Which means that you got to be the one to have that conversation, or at least you got to be willing to tell stories not just about patrons, but stories that include the phrase "I need this" "and "we need that."
The passionate librarian, folks, it's a whole other seminar.
I'm going to jump ahead here.
The biggest thing to remember is that people who would like to help support you and have helped bring out new support for our colleagues who you heard from today is that they didn't mark you to them about coming in and using the library.
They talked about the belief system that underpins librarians.
They talked about it authentically with their neighbors.
We're here to help long-term, peer-to-peer from Lee and James, certainly here at EveryLibrary.
There are some thorny questions  that came up in the chat box.
And Jennifer, I'd like to see if we got another moment to answer any of them.
Some of those thorny questions  that came up are only one on one answerable.
If you are feeling stuck out there right now, we would sincerely like to help.
Oh, real quick, action.everyLibrary.org, also if you go to action.everyLibrary.org and click on events you can see a spot to RSVP for a party we're throwing at ARSL in Springfield on September 13th.
I'll be presenting on the 14th as well, if you want to meet in person, and have a cup of coffee.
Thank you, folks, for this opportunity.
Jennifer, what are we up to?
>> Well, we're at the top of the hour, so we need to wrap it up.
But definitely connect with these folks, they are as John said, available for some individual conversations, and I encourage you if you have not connected with your state library agencies as well, there are folks that can help you at your state library agency thanks to some of these barriers as well to get un-- for you to get unstuck.
So I encourage you all to keep trying and as you can see from the examples that Lee and James  shared, there's definitely hope out there, and our communities are constantly changing, and we can help them change their mind-set about libraries as well.
So thank you all to our presenters, and our captioner for being here today, and thank you all for joining us.
And, yes, hopefully we'll see some of you in Springfield in a very short couple of weeks here.
So thank you again.
Bye bye.
>> Cheers.