Library Board Meeting Minutes: March 19, 2026

Scappoose Public Library Board of Directors
Regular Business Meeting
March 19, 2026
Library Meeting Room also broadcast on Zoom
7 PM

Minutes

Call to Order and Pledge of Allegiance
The meeting was called to order at 7 PM. Attending were President Lisa Lewis, Vice President Johanna Myers, Board Members Liza Gerardo, Jolene Jonas and Elaine Nussbaum. Director Jeff Weiss also attended. Lisa called the meeting to order and led the Pledge of Allegiance.
Public Input
There was no public input. Karen Kessi attended.
Approval of Minutes: February 19, 2026
Jeff asked if there were corrections to the minutes. Hearing none, Lisa asked for a motion to approve. Jolene made the motion, Johanna seconded. Motion passed unanimously.
Consent Agenda
1. Secretary-Treasurer’s Report
  Jeff presented the January financial report. He said Robin did not have February’s done. He said that at the end of February, the library still had slightly more money in the bank and investments than in 2025. Jeff said that most of the event sponsors are returning for this year and the library is selling them combo sponsorships so that one cost gets them sponsorship of all activities.
2. Presentation of Bills
  Lisa asked about the elevator inspection. Jeff said they passed the overweight drop and seismic tests, but the elevator needs upgrades by 2030 to meet new state standards. Jeff noted we also had fire and sprinkler inspections this month and the bill for that are in the payables. Jeff said that a large part of the credit card bill was for the elevator inspection. There is a recurring Overdrive bill each month of about $150 because Jeff is experimenting with a per use model for eBooks and audio that have lengthy holds. He makes titles available for unlimited use at a per use price point and when the overall use hits the $150 cap, that shuts off until the end of the month. He thinks that this could be a way to fill holds without purchasing a copy because of the smallish user base in Scappoose. There also was a petty cash reimbursement for two lost books that got returned and refunded to the customer. Jeff said that he is listed as the miscellaneous vendor for a reimbursement. The reimbursement is for a $23.31 payment to Amazon for an invoice payment that the post office lost and the library was getting threatening notices for. Eventually, the post office returned the uncashed check to us and it and a copy of Jeff’s check are attached to the reimbursement request. Jeff asked for a motion to approve the bills and January financial statements. Jolene made a motion, Elaine seconded. Motion passed unanimously.
Old Business
1. Submitted and Approved Grants Progress
  The Columbia River PUD has sponsored us at the $3,000 level. Columbia NW has sponsored at the $1,000 level. The Port of Columbia County has pledged $1,500. US Bank paid last year’s pledge of $1,500. The City of Scappoose has committed $12,000 for summer events. Lisa asked about Means Nursery. Jeff said they sponsor by donating plants for us to give away at events. Jeff said Hudson’s also donated portapotties as their sponsorship.
2. Discussion of Potential Ballot Measure
  1. Levy Committee presentation to Board
    Jeff presented the levy promotional materials to the board. The FAQ statement and the website were all approved by the Oregon Secretary of State and given safe harbor status which means the public and others cannot challenge the publications as being anything other than statements of fact and in compliance with Oregon law. Jeff is sending off final versions of the postcard to voters and the Facebook post after this meeting. The library proposed a banner for the building, but the Secretary of State denied it, so we are not producing one. The changes the Secretary of State wanted for the banner would render it unreadable. The changes the Secretary of State wanted for the printed materials were minor phrasing changes
    
    Karen Kessi presented the Levy Committee’s report to the board. Her report is attached. There was discussion about the 911 levy that is also on the ballot which is for an extension of their current levy. The two other tax measures in the county are not in our district.
    
    Karen’s report about the committee’s monthly activities are attached. There are arguments in favor which will be filed with the County Elections clerk on Friday. Most of the letters have multiple endorsements. There are also multiple letters to the editor which will be sent to the local paper every week. National Library Week is also the same week as Earth Day.
    
    Elaine asked if the FAQ distributed was the one granted safe harbor. Jeff said it is and contains the safe harbor language in the footer. There was discussion about the school ballot measure. At the town meeting, the school PR representative said they were going to be starting to collect community feedback at meetings after the primary election. The school has not filed for this election.
    
    NJ talked about the city’s projected shortfall at the town meeting and adding fees to bills to address the shortfall
3. Strategic Plan Survey
  Liza presented some collected data from the public survey to the board. She wondered if there was a way to use patron comments on social media to support the levy. She asked if the responses could be shared with staff. Jeff said he could do that. Liza will distribute the Google link to staff. Respondents are praising staff and listing new things they want the library to offer
  
  Liza asked for a date to end the survey and recommended that there be another Facebook post to remind people about the survey before it ends. We are on the second week of having the survey live. Liza recommended having it open for a month. Dates were discussed and it was decided to close the survey on Sunday, April 5 and the gift card would be rewarded by random number.
New Business
1. Librarian’s report
  Jeff presented his report which is attached. Jeff noted that the elevator passed all safety checks, but we would need to do a rebuild to bring it up to new code by 2030. This upgrade would cost a minimum of $70,000. Liza asked about the new code that the state Is implementing and the window of compliance closes. Jeff said the window closes in 2030. Jeff said he had concerns about doing the work early because the state could still change the code. Liza said she was concerned about getting the work contracted given the delays we have experienced getting contracted work done. Jeff said that AVS had given us an estimate of $70k to $80K and he had asked Portland Elevator Safety to give us a quote. Jeff aaid that the rebuild would replace the computer and pump unit and the controls and wiring within the elevator.
  
  The public internet went out on Monday, March 16. Jeff called our IT support to come out and they discovered that Comcast had changed our fixed IP address which triggered our security system. Comcast is not to change our IP address without notification. This caused data to get shut off. Liza asked if we had any recourse. Jeff said that he thought we didn’t have any realistically because Comcast has a monopoly here. Jolene asked if there would be a cost. Jeff said he thought there would be for the IT assistance. Liza asked if the library could file a complaint with the BBB. Jeff said they could. Liza said she could help with the complaint. Liza thought it would be good to document the issue in case there are issues in the future.
  
  The library has upgraded it’s website to the most recent software version which is supposed to be more ADA compliant. Jeff said you can tell you are running the new version because the top banner is now a picture of the library and is not just white. If you have the old version cached, the white banner version appears.
2. Designation of Budget Officer
  Jeff said they had to do three things tonight to get the budget process moving forward. Designate a budget officer, approve the citizen budget committee, and approve the budget calendar. Jeff said all last year’s citizen members have agreed to serve again, but the board could consider new officers. The board decided not to add new officers. Jolene nominated Jeff for Budget Officer and made a nomination motion. Elaine seconded. Motion carried unanimously. Liza asked about other people interested in being on the committee. Jeff said last year when there was an opening, the library solicited applications. We received one from a library volunteer and 2 others from patrons. By law, the budget committee has to have the same number of members as the board. Jeff said that Christine was a valuable member in the past because of her Nike experience. Lisa said she thought Sandy asked good questions about the budget last year.
  
  Jeff presented a proposed budget calendar. The first meeting would be before the April board meeting. The second meeting would be in June if needed. The reason it could be needed is because of the levy vote which would require a completely different budget because of the increased revenue. Jeff said that the levy would go into effect in July, so we would need either a supplemental budget or a new budget approved by the committee and board by June 30. Liza asked why we approve the members on an annual basis. Jeff said that the initial commitment is for 3 years, but the committee members have wanted to serve beyond that initial commitment. Lisa will not be here for the April meeting.
  
  Jolene asked if Jeff thought we needed a strategy meeting after the ballots are counted. Jeff said that they could have a meeting anytime after the ballots are certified. Dates and times were discussed. The 30th was decided on from 9 AM to 12 PM.
3. Discussion and Approval of Citizen Budget Committee Applications.
  Jolene made a motion to approve the Citizen Budget Committee. Johanna seconded. Motion carried unanimously.
4. Approval of Budget Calendar.
  Elaine made a motion to approve the Budget Calendar. Liza seconded the motion. Motion carried unanimously.
Other Business
Future Agenda Suggestions
Board Comments
Adjourn

Library Board update – March 19, 2026

Today marks exactly two months from Election Day.

To start, we discovered last week that the gas tax referendum will be on the May ballot. As for any other county or city measures on the ballot, I do see that Columbia County 911 filed Measure 5-310 which looks like a 5-year levy continuing at the same rate. Filing closed today at 5:00, but I will check with the Elections Office tomorrow just to be sure that there aren’t any more measures crowding the ballot. No matter what, we are still going to run the best campaign we can by sticking to our straightforward, nonpartisan approach.

I will update you on the Information Only track first.

We have been in a rather lengthy process of attaining “Safe Harbor” status on our documents from the Secretary of State’s office. In states like Oregon, a "Safe Harbor" designation means a document (often about a ballot measure) has been reviewed and approved by the Secretary of State's Elections Division.

Legal Protection: If a document has this status, the Elections Division will not investigate or issue civil penalties for that material even if a complaint is filed.
Compliance: It serves as a guarantee that the material complies with laws (like ORS 260.432) prohibiting public employees from using public funds to advocate for or against a candidate or measure.

This status protects the integrity of our neutral information only campaign and the Library as a whole.

This process is taking longer than we anticipated, but we are very close now. Our webpage and FAQ sheet have both been approved, and our mailer and first Facebook post are in the resubmission phase. So we will be ready to launch the information only campaign to the public soon. I feel that this has served as prevention from getting our campaign launched too soon which can also be as problematic as launching too late.

We will be updating all Key Communicators, including you, with the official safe harbor FAQ sheet and another document about communicating with tax resistant voters, so watch for that soon.

Because of what the Secretary of State’s office seems to require for safe harbor status in documents published about ballot measures, the mailer is text heavy and not what I had originally envisioned. But Chelsea has done a good job on the design anyway. It does communicate all the important information about the levy!

There will be Information Only Q & A tables at the four FOSPL book sales coming up: April 7, April 11, May 5, May 12. We could use another trained person or two at Earth Day! The three info sessions are also on our docket, and we would like another trained person on Saturday, May 2nd , 2:00-3:00. Please let me know if you can help.

We have been working on a number of other features of the Information Only campaign simultaneously and keeping track of it all.

On the Advocacy track,

We have some good news. We have five Arguments in Favor in hand with checks and signed forms ready to be delivered to the County Elections Office tomorrow morning. Five was my target, so I’m very happy about this. I agree with City Councilor Joel Haugen who is also on the Steering Committee that the Voters Pamphlet is one of our most powerful campaign tools. FOSPL graciously supplied two of those Arguments. And the other three – one has been supplied by Liza & her spouse plus two other couples, one by Jeff & Laurie Mapes - a local couple I respect highly, and the third by Virginia & me.

Going back to the Arguments supplied by FOSPL – one of these two Arguments features a list of over 40 names of library district residents who each signed a County Endorsement Form to have their names included this way. All of this paperwork is ready to be delivered to the County Elections Office tomorrow, and I have told them I am headed their way in the morning. The due date is Monday, March 23, so if we have any issues, we will have the weekend to correct them. But let’s hope there are no issues!

We will start working on collecting Letters to the Editor soon. We already have commitments for at least 6.

I met with another graphic designer to prepare a logo for us to use on FOSPL’s website, social media posts, and the two Vote YES mailers. She has already designed a logo and has sent us a mock-up of the first Vote YES mailer, so progress is being made there too. Virginia has generously offered to manage FOSPL’s social media posts and created a schedule for these. We will start in with Advocacy Facebook messaging as soon as the logo is approved by FOSPL and the Information Only campaign has gone live. It came to my attention this morning that the week before ballots come out - April 19-25 - is the American Library Association’s National Library Week. How nice that this week culminates in our Library’s big Earth Day event. We will be discussing National Library Week at the Steering Committee meeting tomorrow morning. I’d just like to say that I am very happy to have a Steering Committee to work with! It is necessary, in fact, and I appreciate the involvement of our Steering Committee members and all the others who care deeply about the future of this Library who are helping with the effort to pass Measure 5-308. I also want to bring attention to Jeff’s efforts, and I hope the Board recognizes what a challenge a levy campaign is for the chief officer in an organization in addition to his many regular responsibilities and all the other surprises he has to deal with in his role.

Any questions?

Scappoose Public Library Librarian’s Report 3-17-26

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 Escape Room, Seed to Supper classes start, Adult Craft Night: Plant Pot Party.
  Viviana held her first public program with a program for creating a personal journal and a vision board for pre-teens.
  The March adult book club title is Remarkably Bright Creatures by Robin Sloan.
  The March 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.
Statistics: We circulated 6,660 items in February, 5 less than last January. eBook circulation increased from 1,227 to 1,337. St Helens circulated 4,657 items in February.
Budget: At the end of February 2026, we had $432,064 in our treasury account and $25,152 in our Inroads accounts. At the end of February 2025, we had $426,570 in our treasury account and $25,343 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.
Ballot Measure: Karen Kessi will be presenting a full report on last month’s progress at the board meeting. We have submitted 5 documents (website, FAQ, Social Media post, banner, and mailer) to the Secretary of State for safe harbor status, meaning that the documents comply with informational campaigns for levy laws. The website has been approved by the Secretary of State for safe harbor status. We will have information in the April City Newsletter about the levy. 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. 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.
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.
Strategic Plan: The customer survey test has been launched, and we have about a dozen filled out. Few have commented on the format.
Tax Issues: Dyno Noble is still in court. Cascade Paper has filed another remonstrance and $300,000 is being held back countywide until that decision runs through the courts.
Grants: We have received payment from the Oregon State Library for Viviana’s Strong Libraries grant and are ordering books from that grant. US Bank paid their sponsorship from 2025. Columbia River PUD paid $3,000 for their Earth Day sponsorship.
Audit: Half year audit in process this week.
Food Drive: This has pretty much ended. We get perhaps a grocery bag donated each week from the public, but not enough to maintain a program. 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.
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.
Entry Doors: No problems since last month.
Elevator: We had the drop test and the seismic resilience test performed yesterday. The elevator passed with no issues. The state is updating elevator code and will have new standards which our elevator does not comply with (due to its age) so we will need to replace the computer that runs it, the pump and well, and internal wiring and controls. This is essentially the $70,000 to $80,000 rebuild we have been saving money for. We will have until 2030 to comply with the updated code. The state is not going to allow grandfathering in old equipment. I have asked PDX Elevator, who did the inspection, for a current estimate for replacement. The work would put the elevator out of use for several days. On a positive note, we got the safety testing done for $2,110. A savings of nearly $3,000 over the next lowest estimate. If we had not gotten the testing, the state elevator inspector could have locked the elevator out during his next inspection.
Sprinkler and Fire Alarm Inspection: Every March we must get the sprinkler and fire alarm system inspected. We did that yesterday too and everything passed with no repairs. We had to swap out one fire extinguisher that had expired. I have not gotten a bill yet. United sends compliance reports directly to the city and fire district.
Comcast Issues: We pay Comcast for a fixed IP address because we have network security software that uses that address for verification that the request is coming from our network. Unknown to us and in violation of our contract, Comcast switched our IP address to a different one in our range of possible IP addresses. This caused our public internet and WIFI to go out. I had to call in a tech from System Alternatives to diagnose the problem which took at least a couple of hours. Unfortunately, Comcast has no effective competition out here.
Website Software: We upgraded our website software to the newest version which is supposed to be more ADA compliant. You can tell if you are looking at the new version because of the partial building photo at the top of the page. If you don’t see that, clear cookies from your device and reload.

Proposed Scappoose Public Library Budget Timeline For Fiscal Year 2026-27

Notifications and Actions

By February 17 — Contact Budget Committee Members for confirmed meeting dates –Dates listed below.
By March 19 — Budget Committee Member names presented to Library Board for confirmation. Select Budget Officer.
By March 23 — Submit Legal Notice of Budget Committee Meeting notice to newspaper for publication on April 3rd.
If Needed, by May 25 — Submit Legal Notice of Budget Committee Meeting to newspaper for publication May 29th
By May 26th — Submit legal notice of Budget Hearing and summary to newspaper to be published on June 5th.

Meeting Dates

April 16th, Thursday, 6:30pm - First Budget Committee Meeting - Library Meeting Room
June 11th Thursday 6:30 pm Second Scheduled Budget Committee Meeting - Library Meeting Room (if needed following May ballot)
June 18th - Thursday, 6:30pm - Budget Hearing Meeting for formal adoption - Regular Board Meeting at 7:00 pm

Scappoose Public Library District Budget Committee Members For 2026-27 Fiscal Year

(Five Positions)

Current Members

(Term expiration date in parenthesis)

Sandra Wiggs (2026)
Lisa Miyamoto (2026)
Linda Gittings (2026)
Marsha Holbrook (2027)
Karen Kessi (2027)

Library Board Members

Elizabeth Gerardo
Jolene Jonas
Lisa Lewis (President)
Elaine Nussbaum
Johanna Myers (Vice President)