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Scappoose Public Library

Library Board Meeting Minutes: April 16, 2026

Scappoose Public Library Board of Directors
Regular Business Meeting
April 16, 2026
Library Meeting Room also broadcast on Zoom
Following Budget Committee Meeting

Minutes

  1. Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance
    Attending were Vice President Johanna Myers, Board Members Jolene Jonas, Elaine Nussbaum, and Liza Gerardo, and Director Jeff Weiss. The meeting was called to order at 7:15 PM. There was no Pledge of Allegiance because the Pledge was said at the Budget Meeting immediately preceding this meeting.
  2. Public Input
    There was no public input.
  3. Approval of Minutes: March 19, 2026
    Johanna asked for a motion to approve the minutes. Elaine made a motion to approve the minutes. Jolene seconded. Minutes were approved unanimously.
  4. Consent Agenda
    1. Secretary-Treasurer’s Report
    2. Presentation of Bills
      Jeff presented the bills and the financial statements for February and March. Liza asked about the bills for Summer Reading. Jeff said that the amount was a combination of the payment to the Reptile Man and the order of shoe charms we give away as rewards for reading. Jeff said the $810 charge on the credit card was for the elevator testing. The library got a 10% discount if we paid immediately rather than sending a check. Johanna asked for a motion to approve the consent agenda. Jolene made a motion to approve the consent agenda. Elaine seconded. Motion carried unanimously.
  5. Old Business
    1. Submitted and Approved Grants Progress
      Jeff has applied for an America 250 grant for Movies in the Park this summer. T Mobile has pledged $1,000 for Earth Day. Port of Columbia County has pledged $1,500. K Designs has pledged $500 for the Outdoor Festival. Wauna has pledged $1,000. The library has currently $20,000 in pledged and actual donations for summer events. Jeff was asked if Inroads has ever given the library a grant. Jeff said they did not.

      Liza asked if the library had ever applied for any of the state grants stemming from the Opioid settlement. Jeff said the library has not. Jeff said he has seen those grants, but he did not think the library has the expertise to conduct that sort of program. Liza said that we could partner with another agency that would have the resources needed. Liza said that the library acts somewhat differently from other libraries and is a community center for Scappoose. Liza was asked how much the grants totaled. She said grants were for $5,000 to $15,000 from a pool of $150,000 and the application deadline is May 29. Liza said she viewed our role as a hosting site for the grant. Jolene asked if any of the survey responses requested the library take a role in drug prevention. Liza said she could not remember. She said there were responses that asked the library to take a role in food distribution and clothing distribution. She said those were the top two services that respondents asked for. Jeff said we do food distribution at least once a week and host the local group that distributes free goods, including clothing, monthly. Jolene said she thought we needed a plan in order to apply for the grant. Board members were asked to think about it for further discussion at the next board meeting. Elaine asked about the Medicine Wheel office. Jeff said that was for substance recovery but was limited to Native American clients only. Elaine said we could maybe partner with them. Liza said she would commit to reviewing the application.
    2. Discussion of Potential Ballot Measure
      1. Levy Committee presentation to Board
        Karen Kessi gave the board her presentation from the Levy Committee (attached). Karen said she would attend the May board meeting which is 2 days after the election to give a postmortem on the campaign.
    3. Strategic Plan Survey Results
      Liza led the discussion about the Strategic Plan. The first order of business was to have a drawing by random number of the winner of the donated $100 Fred Meyer gift card for filling out the survey. 93 surveys were received. #33 won the drawing. Liza wants to use quotes from the surveys for social media posts. Jeff said that Emily could probably select quotes from the survey, but she is concerned that we are bombarding people with social media posts. Liza said that maybe quotes could be used at the staff’s discretion. Jeff said he would email Emily about that. Jeff asked if the board would like Deja to do some statistical analysis on the survey. Liza said if she has the time to do it, she has that background too and would be able to help.
  6. New Business
    1. Librarian’s report
      Jeff presented his report (attached). Viviana is leaving because she got a full-time job at Cedar Mill as Head of Adult Services. The library has hired Bryan Tranel as her replacement. Brian was a good candidate during the last interviews, but we chose Viviana because she has a Master of Library Science. Jeff said he will send out access for the Public Meeting Law training module. Jolene said she thought that was what she had been watching. She was watching the general board member training. The auditors found 3 minor issues with our half-year audit. There was one problem on an I-9. The other problem was that Jeff didn’t approve the January and February financial statements. Jeff said he didn’t approve them because at that time they were done on the new Sage system and he did not know if the transition from QuickBooks had been done correctly, so he did not sign them. Two malware attempts were attempted on our system, but our security software caught and isolated them. Liza asked about Fred Meyer providing support for the Wednesday food giveaway. Jeff said that we have decided to have them support food at library events instead because of Grocery Outlet’s withdrawal of support. Fred Meyer has committed to support the Police Department’s food giveaway at Earth Day and we have a proposal to them for Movies in the Park which they are considering.

      Jeff proposed adding a disclaimer to the meeting room rental agreement with wording to the effect that “if you promote your private event as a library event, your reservation will be cancelled.” This change is needed he said because of incidents we have had with private and commercial events being promoted as library sponsored. Because this is a board policy, the board needs to approve the change. Liza asked if there would be language presented at the next meeting. Jeff said he was hoping for approval at this meeting so that the change could be implemented immediately. Johanna suggested requiring the phrase “This event is not sponsored by Scappoose Public Library” be on promotion for private events. Liza asked what constitutes promotion. Liza suggested that the statement be required for public promotion, not private promotion. Liza made a motion to adopt that language to the rental agreement. Jolene seconded. Motion carried unanimously.
    2. Strategic Plan Next Steps
      Analysis of the survey results
  7. Other Business
  8. Future Agenda Suggestions
  9. Board Comments
  10. Adjourn
    Meeting adjourned at 7:15 PM.

Library Board update – April 16, 2026

Four and ½ weeks until Election Day! And we will start seeing Voters’ Pamphlets probably next week. Ballots will be mailed starting on April 29.

We have made significant progress in the last month. We jumped over a lot of hurdles and have been able to execute most of our plan.

I will update you on the Information Only track first.

  • Deja is tracking webpage engagement.
  • Emily is publishing and monitoring social media according to Virginia’s plan. All comments have been positive so far, which is encouraging. Posts are being reshared organically too, which is great.
  • The mailer is ready to be sent. It looks like there are 5,136 voter households in the Library District. A reminder that this mailer was required to have a lot of text on it in order to achieve the SOS safe harbor status. Hopefully, this text-heavy mailer will have a positive impact in terms of informing the public what the levy is about! Several of us worked on this mailer, including Chelsea.
  • Jeff supplied the Spotlight with an April article which mentions how to get more information about the Measure 5-308 among other things. Virginia will be following up with an email to encourage them to write their own article about Measure 5-308. They did cover the levy early on – without interviewing Jeff – so hopefully Virginia’s email will encourage them to write another piece with more facts and the dates & times of our Info Sessions.
  • Informational flyers have been distributed around town – by Jolene and Joel Haugen - to over 40? locations. I am impressed by how many businesses were willing to take a flyer. Again, text-heavy, but it’s out there! No one can accuse us of hiding anything!!
  • We received confirmation this week that our flyer will also appear in the City newsletter that comes home with the water bills this month. This does not reach anyone outside the city limits, but it does reach a lot of our potential voters. We are grateful to the City for the effort they made to verify with the Secretary of State’s office that they could reproduce our flyer in their newsletter.
  • Staff has set up an information table in the Library with voter information and literature about Measure 5-308.
  • Volunteers have been attending the Q & A tables at the Friends’ Book Sales - including Lisa, Liza, and Jolene, and several people are scheduled to attend the Q & A table at Earth Day – Liza, Lisa or Jolene, Tina Miller from the Friends, and Joel Haugen said he’d stop by to help at some point too. Only a small proportion of those attending the last two book sales were from Scappoose, but they were all supportive of the levy.
  • We are also preparing the three Info Sessions that will be taking place soon. It looks like enough people have stepped forward to help Jeff with these including Virginia, Lisa, Jolene, Liza, and Joanne Haley who volunteers with the Friends.

Staff has also been preparing for National Library Week April 19-25 which comes at a great time for increasing awareness about the Library right before ballots are mailed out. Jeff will probably tell you about what they have planned for National Library Week here at the Library. [They will be hanging a banner over the Library, creating a display in the showcase window in the entry way of the Library, posting on social media, and more. Jeff also mentioned National Library Week in his April Spotlight article. Staff will also be conducting something we are referring to as Sticky/Sticker, which is a fun and doable idea that Virginia suggested – you can put a sticky note on the wall display with what you love about our Library and get an I Love My Library sticker in return.] Around town, a National Library Week message is up on the Ichabod’s reader board and should appear on the reader boards at SHS and SMS too.

On the Advocacy track,

Thirteen letters to the Editor of the Spotlight have already been written. These are being submitted over a four-week span starting this week actually. I think they published six this week! which I was not expecting. So now we are a little ahead of schedule. We have no control over what the Spotlight will choose to print or when, of course. We know that the Spotlight has changed dramatically over the years, but we also know that people who still read it are also likely to vote. Letters to the Editor are still worth the effort in my opinion. Letters have been written by Carolyn King, Rick Stanek, Elaine Nussbaum, Joel Haugen, Pete McHugh, Nancy Ward, Marquetta Mitchell, Gerry Tinkle, Gail Sykes, Carol Herscovitz, Ryan Svenson, Ally Richard, and Andy Maggi.

As I’ve mentioned before, the Friends are supplying two advocacy mailers – one which will be sent to the same 5,136 households as the information only mailer, and the other which is a smaller card and will go to the voters or households who haven’t voted yet as a reminder to return those ballots. These mailers are both done and ready to go to print. Rachel Miller is the graphic designer who volunteered her time on these mailers and other advocacy graphics.

Virginia is managing the Friends’ social media posts too, and the Vote Yes logo is on their webpage.

I sent an email this week to all key communicators that contains templates for reaching out to your own personal contacts – by phone, voicemail, text message, or email. Of course, in-person is the best way. I encourage all of you on this board to explain the facts of the levy to everyone you know in the library district. This personal contact is the most effective of all campaign tools.

Every aspect of this campaign plan involves multiple steps, a flurry of emails, and lots of time by dozens of volunteers. Even a basic campaign like this one takes months of meetings and planning and detail-management. Have we done enough?? It never feels like it, especially in this era when the town has grown so much and yet it’s harder than ever to reach voters. We also have so many restrictions on what we can say and when and where, and there are always unwelcome surprises in CampaignLand including the state gas tax referendum on the same ballot. When this levy passes, I believe the primary reason will be because the Library staff has already convinced the public of the value of our Library with the great job they do here day after day. People have been happy to help and the response we’ve received so far has been positive. Like I said before, we shall see.

Regardless of how it turns out, Virginia and I have been honored by the trust you’ve placed in us and have appreciated the opportunity to serve our community and its much loved “living room”.

Next month, the Board meeting will be two days after Election Day. I plan to attend it and provide you with a brief recap.

Any questions?

Scappoose Public Library Librarian’s Report 4-10-26

  1. Staff Activities:
    We are now on a fall schedule of programs
    • Weekly:
      • Tuesday night: RPG games
      • Tuesday AM: Music and Movement
      • Tuesday night: Fiber Friends
      • Wednesday morning: Food Bank Produce Distribution
      • Wednesday afternoon: Lego
      • Thursday AM: Ukulele club
      • Thursday night: Family board games
      • Friday: Storytime
    • Monthly groups:
      • Adult Book Club (fourth Thursdays)
      • Crafts for adults (first Monday)
      • Romance Book Club (second Monday)
      • Genre Book Club (fourth Monday)
      • Writers group (third Sunday)
      • Teen Art (first Tuesday)
      • Tween Art (third Tuesday)
      • Barbie Club (first Saturday)
      • Pokémon Club (first Thursday)
      • Homeschool Meetup (second Thursday)
    • Special events:
      March: Homeschool Book Bingo, Seed to Supper continues, Adult Craft Night: Glue Party.
      Viviana held her first public program with a program for creating a personal journal and a vision board for pre-teens.
      The April adult book club title is 10th of December by George Saunders. The April Romance book is The Duke and I by Julia Quinn. The True Crime book club is The Wager by David Grann. For the Genre book club, people choose their own book and January’s theme is Literary fiction.
  2. Statistics: We circulated 6,660 items in March, 10% less than last March. eBook circulation increased from 1,490 to 1,527. Nearly all of the loss was in children’s materials, and the end of the month (with Spring Break) was slower than usual maybe because of the summertime like weather? St Helens circulated 5210 items in March.
  3. Budget: At the end of March 2026, we had $410,466 in our treasury account and $29,742 in our Inroads accounts. At the end of March 2025, we had $402,150 in our treasury account and $28,761 in our Inroads accounts. We seem to be holding our own with income vs spending, but we are not accumulating money like we have in past years.
  4. Ballot Measure: Karen Kessi will be presenting a full report on last month’s progress at the board meeting. We have 4 documents (website, FAQ, Social Media post, and mailer) approved by the Secretary of State for safe harbor status, meaning that the documents comply with informational campaigns for levy laws. We don’t know if the city will allow us to place anything about the levy in the city newsletter although we have submitted the text from the mailer We have 5 independent groups that have written letters of support for the Voter’s Pamphlet and many more endorsers signed to endorse our levy. We have printed all the mailings and flyers and are concentrating on public appearances. Liza will have an information table at the Saturday book sale. Lisa had a table at the Tuesday book sale. We will have a tent on Earth Day. Informational sessions in the library April 27 and 29 at 7PM and May 2 at 2 PM. The state gas tax will be on the May ballot too, so voting will be higher than normal for a May election. The committee volunteers should be commended for the excellent work they have done so far.
  5. SDAO Conference: I have not set up access to the board training we discussed lase month. Their training platform is Vector and is not very user friendly. I think I have Lisa set up as a user and will send her the access instructions.
  6. Strategic Plan: The customer survey concluded. Liza will be presenting a report on the survey results at our meeting.
  7. Tax Issues: Dyno Noble is still in court. Cascade Paper has filed another remonstrance and $300,000 is being held back countywide from Dyno Nobel until that decision runs through the courts.
  8. Grants: Columbia Northwest paid $1,000 to sponsor Earth Day. T-Mobile has pledged $1,000. Hudson rentals is supplying free portapotties. Fred Meyer is supplying the Police Department with food to cook. Brian Rosenthal and Johanna Wagner each donated $750 for the Outdoor Festival.
  9. Audit: Half year audit is complete. Three minor issues were found. Two relate to me refusing to sign 2 bank reconciliations because they had a reconciliation mistake on them (December PERS payment was debted in December and January). The other was that I did not record Chelsea’s Social Security number as her Social Security card ID number.
  10. Food Drive: We are still getting weekly produce deliveries from the Columbia Pacific Food Bank and bread from the Senior Center Bread Store. We often get a Friday delivery of bread in addition to the Tuesday bread pickup.
  11. Janitor: We had another crew change, and the new crew is not keeping to the punch list. It doesn’t look like they vacuumed upstairs last night. I have contacted the local supervisor about this.
  12. Entry Doors: No problems since last month.
  13. Elevator: No vendor has submitted a formal estimate for the rebuild
  14. Comcast Issues: No issues since last month
  15. IT: We have had our security software identify malware on two computers this month which required having System Alternatives clean both computers. The way the security software works is If it senses something bad on a computer, it isolates the unit from the network and the internet. They also upgraded the software to the most current version.
  16. Staff: Viviana was hired by Cedar Mill as their new Head of Adult Services. Her last day is April 11. We hired Bryan Tranel as her replacement this past week and he has started training. Bryan was our runner up during the interviews where we hired Viviana.
  17. Meeting Room Rental Agreement: I want to add a disclaimer to our agreement that states no one can promote or imply their private event is a library event and if they do, they are immediately cancelled. We have had a few businesses and groups rent the room for a program and advertise it as a library program which puts us in a bad light. I would have made the change already, but Deja pointed out that the policy has a board approval statement on it. I’ll send the two versions of the policy to the board before the board meeting.