Income
The library has 4 sources of income: 1. Interest Income; 2. Library Operations; 3. The Friends of the Library; and 4. The Carmel Public Library Foundation.
Interest Income
As of the writing of this, interest rates have slowly started to come down to 4.48% from 4.71% as reported in the 2nd quarter. With the lowering interest rates, staff recommend considering a conservative stance given the uncertainty of the current market and predicted impacts of forthcoming tariffs and have estimated $25,000 in interest income for FY 2025-2026.
Library Operations
Library Operations funds include monies taken in by library staff and include: small donations, printing/copying fees, lost/damaged book replacements, and California Library Services Act (CLSA) disbursements from the State Library through the Pacific Library Partnership. The Library received $2,571 in CLSA funds in FY 2024-2025. Anticipating that CLSA funds will be completely eliminated, staff is estimating $4,000 in library operations income for next fiscal year, a reduction of $3,000 from the current FY.
Friends of the Library (FOL)
The FOL raises funds for the Library through book sales at the Farmers’ Market, Park Branch lobby, and in the bookroom, with additional special book sales in the book room from time to time. All these things have been incredibly successful in FY 2024-2025 the FOL provided the Library with $30,000, $8,000 more than anticipated. Due to their continued and increasing success staff is anticipating $35,000 in income from the FOL for FY 2025-2026.
Carmel Public Library Foundation (CPLF)
The CPLF funds provide for a majority of the operating budget. Funds are disbursed on a quarterly basis. The FY 2024-2025 disbursement was $366,000, an increase of $25,000 over the previous fiscal year to combat increasing costs due to inflation. For the purposes of the preliminary review staff has not proposed any increases at this time.
Expenditures
There are no proposed increases or major changes to expenditures proposed for FY 2025-2026.
Administration, Equipment, and IT
No substantive changes are proposed for Administration, which encompasses Finance, Library Promotions, Supplies, and Organizational Development.
For the Equipment budget, staff are proposing budgeting $14,000 in funds for the replacement of the circulation desk in the Children’s Department with a desk that is ergonomic and allows staff to better interact with children using the department and asking questions.
Programs
The Kids’ Library now has weekly story times and Friday nights at the Library featuring movies, games, Legos, and crafts. The annual author visit was another success and building this program has been a great way to strengthen our relationship with the school district. In addition, staff has an excellent slate of performers lined-up for Summer Reading.
Teen programming continues to build, with the addition of a Dungeons & Dragons club, crochet club, embroidery and other arts and crafts.
The monthly music program at the Harrison Library continues to be popular, as well as the craft and game programs. This year staff also launched a monthly bingo program to much success and are looking forward to continuing to explore additional creative program ideas.
The Local History Oral History program continues collecting interviews, both audio and video format - the video format requiring the assistance of a videographer. The Local History Librarian has also held preservation programs aimed at teaching the public how to preserve family treasures.
Hard Copy Materials
Children’s hard copy circulation continues to be robust, however adult circulation has not yet reached pre-pandemic levels, though it continues to slowly move in that direction. Contributing to this is the continued lack of Saturday hours, an obstacle to access for those who work during the week, which staff is continuing to hope to restore.
Overall, hard copy circulation is 38% of circulation between hard copy and eResources and is proposed to make up 66% of spending for FY 2025-2026. Staff proposes to hold hard copy spending to the same amount as the previous Fiscal Year with some recalibration between line items.
eMaterial
The Northern California Digital Library (OverDrive/Libby App) is a consortium of libraries in the Central Coast and Bay Area, where each library pays an annual subscription to support new licenses for titles and staff curation. Titles are available to all consortium libraries, with the option for libraries to purchase additional licenses for titles for their own cardholders that can also be shared with the consortium. In addition the Library also subscribes to magazines through OverDrive via Newsstand. Staff recommends allocating funds that had been previously put towards Hoopla towards (Hoopla sunsetted at the end of September 2024) ebook purchasing.
The Palace Project integrates OverDrive holdings with public domain publications and other free titles to provide patrons access to 157,400 titles through statewide resource sharing. The project, emphasizing libraries as "Palaces of the People," aims to support equitable digital content access, restore direct library-patron relationships, and reduce ebook licensing costs by leveraging shared resources. Amazon titles for both ebooks and audios are available for license through Palace. At this point it is unclear what impacts the State and Federal cuts will have on Palaces and whether there will be costs associated with participating in this program going forward.
Kanopy is a movie and television streaming service for public libraries and universities which offers streaming on a pay-per-use basis. Kanopy usage is primarily for popular BBC programs, other British television, classic movies, and documentaries that are very popular with Carmel patrons. It becomes increasingly challenging for staff to source physical DVDs, as streaming services in particular delay releasing titles by sometimes years, if they are released at all. Staff recommends continuing to provide the Kanopy service and to increase funding from the Hoopla offset.
Based on discussion at the last Trustees meeting and in consultation with the President and Vice President of the Board staff has included a nominal sum for the NY Times subscription previously provided to for free libraries through State funding. Staff are expecting estimated costs mid-month.
In addition, based on direction at the last month’s Trustees meeting re: local funding for Flipster, and by consensus of participating libraries Flipster will be discontinued after June 30, 2025. As mentioned previously the Library has print subscriptions to all Flipster titles and some of the Flipster titles through Newsstand/OverDrive.
FOR DISCUSSION/DIRECTION
Understanding the challenges facing the greater library and financial landscape, staff are looking to the Trustees for their direction with regards to the FY 2025-2026 budget.