07241989 Regular Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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report to council page 2 ADULT TUTORING SERVICES: One of the most exciting and significant new services which we have developed in recent years is our adult tutoring program. This year we will provide adults with over 8,000 hours of free literacy, GED, and English as a second language tutoring. This tutoring is helping under-educated adults to enter the workforce, improve their career opportunities and increase their productivity. It clearly complements the city's interest in economic development. Our tutoring program has been funded by a federal grant for the last two years. However, despite a remarkably high evaluation, the library was recently notified that it would not receive a third year of federal funding for the program. If.this vitally important service is to be continued, the city must provide or elicit local funding for the program during the coming year. LIBRARY HOURS: The library is currently open only two evenings a week. Our hours have not changed since 1980 when we added our popular Sunday afternoon hours. As library use continues to grow the city may want to consider opening the library two more evenings per week. This will not only improve citizen access to library resources, but may also help alleviate some of the crQwding which occurs on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. LIBRARY STAFF AND VOLUNTEERS: The library staff consists of 11 full-time equivalents (FTE). Growth of the library staff has not kept pace with growth in use of the library. In fact, this year the library will be used 21,000 times per FTE staff member as compared to 13,000 per FTE in 1979. This is a 61% increase in workload over a ten year period. The city will need to consider adding additional hours to the library staff if use of the library continues to grow at its current pace. One reason that the library has continued to function as well as it has on existing staffing levels is that volunteers are playing an increasingly important role in the library operation. This year, volunteers will work 6,000 hours on behalf of the library. If our volunteers were paid $5.00 per hour for their work at the library this would be the equivalent of a $30,000 contribution to the city.