 So welcome to the 10 a.m. session of Big Talk from Small Libraries. For those of you just joining us, welcome. We are recording the whole day. If you're unable to join us for every the whole day, you'll be able to watch recordings afterwards. And right now, we are going to go out to play. Learn about library playgrounds and how you can incorporate those into your library. Dana Ratliff-Warren is here from the Tremble County Public Library in Kentucky, Bedford, Kentucky, and their population surf. This is actually one of the, I think you are the one with the highest population surf we have today. I'm just scanning through. Yes. And it's only a whopping 8,800. Is that still correct? Yes. Yeah. So much below our limit of libraries or our presenters being 10,000 FTE or population served. So I'll just hand it over to you to tell us about how we can use library playgrounds at our libraries. Awesome. I just want to thank Krista for putting this together and the Nebraska Library Commission and ARSL. These opportunities to share ideas and help each other is pretty amazing. So thank you for all your hard work. You're welcome. We're happy to have you and everyone here today. Yeah. I'm really excited to share some ideas with you today about a playground project we did a couple of years ago. Just to start off, our library was built in September of 2011. It's a fairly new library, but we've been around for 30 plus years. It's a very small community. About $8,500 community members that we serve. The population, we have two cities in our county, Milton and Bedford. We are in the county seat, which is Bedford. So it's a beautiful community, very warm and welcoming. And our library is, I think it reflects our community. It's just a beautiful library and a beautiful space for people to come and use it and enjoy it. So we're seeing a lot of different trends with libraries. And they're creating flexible community spaces. Some of the things that we're seeing in Kentucky, you guys might be seeing them in your libraries as well. But we're seeing libraries try to help meet other needs other than education and literacy. So seeing libraries put together food and hygiene product pantries. They're serving as warming and cooling shelters. Seeing coffee shops and delis pop up in some of the larger libraries. But also in smaller libraries, maybe coffee corners. Also seeing different partnerships being built with businesses. The Warren County Public Library has partnered with a sports and tennis facility. And they put a small library in their facilities with a few books and some computers. And that's been a very positive partnership for them. Some of the things that we're doing is we have created some digital branches. We put a small computer lab with access to Wi-Fi and some books and things at our Milton City Hall. And at the Trimble County Park, we just finished a project putting some computers and some Wi-Fi access at a tri-action community center building there at the county park. So we're seeing these libraries really meet the challenges of their communities and really being flexible with the services they provide. Where movement in libraries has also been around for quite a while, I think. Because we realize that learning is really important. But our physical bodies are important as well. If we are healthy, then we're more apt to be open to learning. We understand that our children ages three to five, they need to be active throughout the day. And for those of you who are parents of three to five years old, five-year-olds, you're going to be worn out by the end of the day. They are just a lot of fun and very energetic. They need movement. And then for parents who have older children ages six through 17, they're not quite as active. But they still need quite a bit of activity during the day. And then I have three teens in my household right now. I wish that they would be a lot more active at times, especially with cleaning their rooms. But it's important, even throughout our lives. We see that for adults, we need movement. We need to have intense physical activity. And we need to have some strength activity as well. So these are just some fun things that we've done inside our library to encourage kids to come in and move and play and hopscotch rugs and little tiles that have, we call them lava tiles, when you step on them, the composition and color changes. And we also add a lot more toys and gadgets that encourage them to participate in an imaginative play. We're also seeing with adults. We have yoga classes. We have some libraries are offering Tai Chi, line dancing. So movement for adults is also a trend in our libraries. So it kind of makes sense that that would extend to our outside of our libraries as well. And playgrounds are very valuable. They provide opportunities for kids to practice social, emotional, cognitive, and physical skills. On a playground, if you sit and watch children, you're constantly see them making new friends, helping each other, sharing, taking turns, and interacting with one another. And we've seen a different clientele come into the library since we've built the playground. And it's interesting to see that families that don't usually come to the library, they're taking advantage of our pavilion or our playground, and they come inside for a drink and use the bathroom. And then they see our bulletin boards in the foyer, and oh man, the library's doing some really cool program. Let's come and come back and enjoy those. And a lot of times they'll come into the front desk to ask questions, start checking out movies and books and things that help their families. Another thing that it has provided is that it has helped us to increase space for our programs. So when COVID hit, like for most of you, you guys were hit with a lot of restrictions, a lot of shutdowns. Our Kentucky was very conservative and very strict about libraries closing. We had to get very creative. And then when we started opening up our building for access, we still were very limited to how many people could come in and how many could gather. So having that outdoor library space would have been very, very helpful during COVID. And I wish we had done this project a lot sooner. But going forward, we have this amazing outdoor space with a pavilion and a playground that we can integrate into other programming opportunities. So, and please interrupt me if you guys have questions or comments. I'm free to, I'm flexible with that. So... Yeah, yeah, anybody, yeah. Whenever you all have questions, you don't have to wait till the end of a presenter session. No, go ahead and type in whenever you think of something they don't want you to forget. Yeah. And if it's appropriate, I'll jump in. Please interrupt, Pristit, if there's a comment. So I'll have a slide out of order. Sorry, guys. So that was a movement about adults, movement for adults. But so we have a pretty open-ended library mission and purpose statement. We connect our community with knowledge and experiences inspiring creativity and discovery. That's pretty open-ended, I think. Another thing is, oh, I just lost my screen there. All right, guys. Our purpose statement is that we try to enrich lives and build community and prepare for an ever-changing future. And those, you know, so if somebody ever questions, well, why would you build a playground? That's not what libraries do, you know? We can go to this mission statement and these purpose statements and say, you know, yeah, we do, because this is, we try to enrich lives and build community. And the playground does that. So, you know, with any project that you do, you're gonna have to try to gain support for your project. And we took a really hard look at our community and said, you know, do we really need another playground in our community? And the answer at that time was yes. We only had two playgrounds that were available to the public access and both of those playgrounds at the time were in disrepair. One was subject to flooding annually and the city of Milton had just didn't have the resources to keep up with it. And the other one was at a county park which had, it has lived its life. Let's just say that it was worn out and it needed to be updated and repaired. So that was one of our things we looked at. You know, yes, there is a need. There's a community need for this. We also surveyed our community to gauge the interest and acceptance of this project. So there was lots of that. Not everybody agreed with us. I think we had about 70% of the people that took the survey agreed that yes, this would be a good use of library funds. And the rest, you know, they questioned some things like, you know, I think that it will just be subject to a lot of vandalism. People will take care of it. And yes, that is a valid concern, right? Some of our school playgrounds that are open, they do get vandalized occasionally and that's a concern for any playground. But our attitude was, you know, why, but why would we hold back this resource for 80% of the population? And, you know, we have a minority of 5% of the people who are gonna come in and use the land. So in the playground. So, but we listened to concerns and we tried to resolve them as best as we could. So we talked to community leaders in our partnering organizations to see, you know, what do you think this is a good idea? What do you think about this? And we had a pretty favorable response. And of course we had every board member in favor of this project before moving forward. There was nobody in disagreement that this was a project that we shouldn't pursue. I am always important. Yep. So I know that small libraries, budgeting and funding for projects is huge. It's a huge concern. And fortunately we are well-funded. We had been saving money for the project. So that was not an obstacle that we really had to overcome. But it does, it's helpful to look at the numbers. I don't think that you're gonna be able to put in a playground that's big enough or worth anything. You know, you're gonna start out at about $40,000 for the project. And that was about two years ago. So funding and pricing might've changed since then. We're seeing a price of steel and shipping costs have really drastically increased over the past couple of years. And then your high end, if you really want a decent playground, you're gonna spend over $100,000. But there are funding opportunities out there. There are grants. I didn't have time to look up specific grants, but you can reach out to your local school districts. They have a lot of connections that may help libraries as well with grants. We have a very supportive economic center. We have some businesses and individuals who are very generous. And we had quite a few donations to help out with the project as well. And then you could also look into lowering costs. So you might have some piece of land that might need some leveling or prepared before the project and the playground can be installed. You can reach out to your county highway department to see if they can help out with some of the leveling and the groundwork that needs to be done. You can also, with installation of the playground, you can use volunteers from the community to help install that. And what you would want to ask for then is a certified project manager from the vendor that will lead the project and make sure that it's installed correctly. You can save yourself probably about eight to $10,000 just with having volunteers help out. You can also with the maintenance and inspections afterwards. After you get the playground installed, you can work with your local park authorities or your county officials to see if they can help with some of the maintenance costs or some of the inspections. Our big deal was not really the money part for us. It was just finding somebody who could do these small jobs and repair playground if we needed it to be repaired. So we started out with forming a playground committee. We had four staff members who were really interested in working on the project and all of our board members also provided input. So, and we started, we knew nothing about playgrounds at all. So we decided to just start out by researching designs and different services. And we needed to learn more about requirements for inspections and certifications. There's a manual that's produced by the Consumer Product Safety Commissions. It's called the Public Playground Safety Handbook. It's a little bit outdated. It's from 2015, but it does provide a lot of information, anything that you needed to know or really it could answer a lot of questions about you, any questions you have about the project. So I would start there first. There are a lot of certifications or a lot of information about requirements for playgrounds. So that handbook is very helpful. One thing that you wanna look for when you're looking at playgrounds and vendors that you see some of this language that I have on the slide. So you wanna make sure that you see ASTM and that stands for the American Society for Testing Materials. They help set safety and performance standards for equipment and services. So that's important to look for. You're gonna also look for, as this vendor part of IPMA, IPMA stands for International Playground Equipment Manufacturers Association. It's a professional organization that really prides itself on making sure that its members are following these safety guidelines and certifications. When you have your playground inspected, you wanna make sure that that inspector has a license, it's called a CPSI. And that's a special license that they have to get some training for. So we also looked at the American Disabilities Act compliance and see if we could make our playground have open access to all people with different abilities. This is not required, but it is nice. It makes your project a lot more complicated, had a lot more expensive. So we were able to do some small things, but not everything that we wanted to do. I need to get a drink real quick. Yeah, that's okay. Because actually I have a question here that actually relates potentially to what you have here about the certifications and that inspection too. Cause I wanted to know, how did you deal with liability concerns? That is always what comes up when we talk about this kind of thing in our libraries and outdoor spaces. Is that what this inspecting would? So yeah, the inspection does make sure that the equipment is installed properly. So that is a good thing. You want that to happen. Liability is a concern. And that was one of the things that the board members were a little bit concerned about taking on this project. And we reached out to our insurance company, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later, but and talk, what is our liability? Is it going to cost an arm and a leg to ensure the playground? And it increased our insurance costs by about $500 a year. But that included the cost of ensuring the equipment itself, but also that liability coverage. And honestly, we're required, I think to keep one million to two million of liability insurance without the playground. And so yeah, it didn't really infect our insurance. But yes, there's going to be some liability. There always is, whether you're having yoga or you could be just having a story walk outside and somebody trips and then all of a sudden you're liable for them because they're part of your program. So that's a good question. Was there anything else? Not just yet, that will do. Go ahead. So the committee had a lot of decisions to make. What kind of materials do we want this to be made out of? What do we want it to look like? There's lots of options, metal, wood, there's recycled plastic lumber. We looked at lots of different surfacing options. You have the lower end costs, which would be wood chips, which is not just wood mulch that you can get from Lowe's, it's actually an IPA certified quality grade. There's the rubber chips, there's rubber tiles and there's grass turf. All of these are options you'll have to make a decision on. The turf is the most expensive and it can add a lot of money to your project. You're going to look at how large of a structure do we have space for. What features does your play system have? Do you want lots of activity panels on it? How many slides do you want? Those kinds of things. And then there's always the fun extras like the spring riders and the balance beams and stepping stones, you've got spinners and swings. So there's a lot of decisions that go into designing a playground. So we came up with a wish list. We were of the mindset of like, okay, we might not be able to afford this but we're going to go big. We're going to just dream big and this is what we want. We wanted a playground that was fairly large that would accommodate ages five to 12. We wanted to have at least four slides on the structure. One needed to be a twisty slide and we didn't want the tube slides. We felt like that created too many spaces for kids to hide and get into trouble. We wanted at least one climbing wall on our structure and other activity panels. We also wanted some swing sets. We wanted a disc swing set and a swing for other toddlers and we also wanted as many extras as we could fit in that space. So we had a pretty healthy budget to work with so we dreamed big on that. So this is what the land looks like before we started the project. And before we could really do anything we needed to make sure that we have enough space for the system that we wanted. You can't tell from this picture but the land was fairly sloped. So don't let that deter you from a project. It does cost money to get level but if you've got some land and it's kind of not perfectly leveled it can be leveled and it takes some work and money but you'll get there. You see we had to level this area out. This is behind our property. We have a shed here and this our back parking lot. We had to put some drainage pipes so that it would flow out away from the playground. We had to put in two of those. So this is an aerial shot of what the ground looked like after we did the excavation work. We did use a local excavator. We decided not to use the highway department. We felt like there was just too much work to be done and we wanted to make sure that it was done correctly. So we had to put in this rock kind of a berm area that you shape around the playground. This area, the tip up in this triangle piece up here that is still fairly sloped and so any water runoff comes from that area and then goes around the playground. It's not how we wanted it to look. We wanted everything underground but it was what we could, the excavator could do for us. So, and then we had a, this square area over here is a, it's in preparation for our pavilion, the concrete for the pavilion. So once you know your land and you get the size, how big a play system you can put in, you're gonna wanna start putting those, that wish list in writing. And you're gonna wanna look at your policies for purchasing. Our library had adopted the model for procurement policy from the state of Kentucky. So that required us to do sealed bids for any purchases over 30,000 and this definitely was a project that was gonna be over that amount. So you need to make sure that you're following your purchase guidelines that is set by your library and your state, that's really important. So when we, something that really helped us too is that when we, to get organized for bid requests, we would put together a document and in that document you wanna include several things. So the first thing you wanna talk about is your scope of project. And you're gonna make a brief statement that something like this, like the project consists of the design, procurement and installation of a playground system that meets or exceeds all current federal guidelines and standards. You wanna use that language right off the bat. You're gonna ask for that manufacturer warranty and you want the providers to make sure they provide liability insurance certificates and references for your project. The next section in your document that you're gonna prepare, do you wanna put the design guidelines and play system specifications? So this is where you really wanna have your wish list really solid and all of those decisions made. You're gonna indicate you want, this size of a playground, you want what materials you're gonna use, how many features is this places I'm gonna have, how many slides, your activity panels, what do you want those to look like and include all your extras, all of the extra activities that you want in your park. If you're gonna have any shades, those are pretty costly, but if you want some shade, you can request quotes for that. We also wanted lots of seating in our playground. Our board was pretty out of it. There's never enough benches, right? Every time you go to a playground and it's busy, you can't find a place to sit. So we have about eight benches in our park. And we also, for our pavilion, we requested quotes for eight foot picnic tables. So the next section of your document, you're gonna talk about assembly and installation and what you want from a supplier. So this is the decision you're gonna have to make. Are you gonna use volunteers to help install or do you want them to do the labor? This is where you would talk about that. We went with, we wanted a direct supervision from the manufacturer and we wanted them to be certified and we wanted them to do all the labor as well. At the time, our community, those two other playgrounds that were in disrepair, all of our resources for volunteers were tied up with fixing those other playgrounds. So everybody had the same idea at the same time. So we felt like it would extend our community members too much if we asked them to help with this project. So we were fortunate enough to have the money to pay for it to be done. You also wanna make sure that after the installation is done, you have them to provide an inspection. So make sure that it's properly installed. If they don't have an inspector on site, then you can ask for help locating one and I'm scheduling one for you. And then the last two sections you wanna include in that document for request for bids, you're gonna ask for warranty information that you want that not only the information from your, for the equipment itself, but any installation warranty that the supplier may provide. Yeah, you also, again, it may seem overkill, but you're gonna ask for compliance. You want all of your equipment to meet or exceed all federal CPSC, ASTM, and IPVAC guidelines. And you want them to actually provide that compliance with documentation. So are we doing, do we have any questions, Krista? Well, let's see here, just, we do. Oh, and you already had mentioned this one thing that I was gonna just bring it up now since you're talking about doing the quote and what you were setting up for it. You're doing an outdoor playground. Did you, oh, make sure it was adaptive for children with all abilities. You had talked about the ADA earlier, correct? Yeah, so that, we looked into that we did not have enough land or room to put in the, like a lot of the ramps instead of the stairs. So we didn't, we couldn't do that part. We are trying to increase accessibility to the playground though, right now we're putting in a sidewalk that gradually slopes down. And so it makes it more accessible to strollers and wheelchairs. So it will at least be able to enter the playground but it'll be difficult to play on the playground itself which we regret, we hate that but you can only do what you can do, right? That ADA guidelines, it is great if you can do them but it's not required, especially with a small library. So you're probably gonna have our time meeting those standards, so. Sure, sure, but doing what you can is as much as you can. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, go ahead. All right, so we, our policy was that we had to give about four weeks for bids to come in before we could start evaluating quotes. And we did have to reach out to vendors to get quotes because this is kind of a specialized build, right? No, most, they're not a lot of playground companies around looking at paper, local papers to find bids and jobs. So we did reach out to several and we had one surprise vendor that put in a quote that we were pretty impressed with. So once you get those quotes, you're gonna look at it really closely and did they meet all your needs and your specifications? We had one quote that was so poorly done that we're like, oh, if they're gonna not do the work on the front end, what is the final product going to be? And just from their quote, we just decided not to work with that company. So price is always a big deal. You're gonna look at, did they come in and how much does it cost us? We compared warranty information, not all warranties are the same or created equal. So make sure that you're really understanding that. And certification was a big deal for us. We wanna make sure that we're complying with all safety guidelines. So we also looked at the quality of the product and the longevity of it that was important for us. We didn't wanna have a lot of maintenance. We didn't wanna have to make a lot of repairs. We were concerned a little bit with metal playgrounds that they tend to rust and the joints tend to come loose frequently. So that was a big thing for us. And of course, aesthetics, you want it to look great. Like you want kids to be attracted to your playground and wanna come play. So those were things that we looked at. We ended up going with a vendor named Platopia and we loved that they were in Kentucky. They specialized in recycled plastic playgrounds and this is the system that they quoted for us. There's a different angle. It had a lot of fun activity panels. We'd love the shades on the top. It had, it doesn't show it here on this one but we added some slides to it, a twisty slide. And it met all of our requirements that we wanted. So and aesthetically, the board really liked that the wood look kind of went with the front of our library. It kind of extended that aesthetic quality that we wanted to keep as well. So you're gonna order your playground and during the pandemic, it took us six months to get that built. So I don't know what the timeline is right now on playgrounds where they're at with that but you're gonna have quite a bit of weight. They just don't keep those things in stock. So we had six months to just kind of anticipate the project. But while we were waiting, we got our playground rules together. We talked about, what do we want? Are the types of behaviors we wanna see on the playground and age groups that we wanna serve? Is it gonna be open to the public all the time or is it just going to be open during the library hours? That's a decision that you and your board members can make. Definitely want a state that you want supervision of children under a certain age. I definitely addressed tobacco, alcohol and drug use. If there's any other activities you don't want on your playground such as dogs, skateboards, bicycles. I think that helps to make those statements to encourage people to use the playground safely at their own risk. So. Someone actually has a question that just popped up here that you might be getting into it. How do you enforce these rules? Like I was actually wondering about the whole hours that it's open. Is it fenced in some way or is it? So our actual, we originally thought, we'll just have it open during library hours and we'll lock the gate to the playground afterwards. And we wanted to make sure that it was open on the weekends when we weren't open because we do want this to be part of the community. And we just thought, well, we'll leave it open and we'll watch if we have any misbehavior, we have any vandalism, then we'll start locking things up. And so far, we haven't had that happen. As far as, how do you, you can't. There isn't any public playground that you can keep all of the picture, everybody's complying to all these rules. There isn't. Like you put somebody on duty there to sit there and watch the entire time. Yeah, there's no way. But you do post these rules and you do do diligence, right? And so that, you know, if you are ever in a lawsuit or anything, like these are rules that are posted. You know, this is what they're asked to do. They weren't in compliance with those rules. So we also have security cameras up in that area. I was gonna ask about that, yeah. Yeah, so if there's any, an injury or a report of improper use, we can bring that up and that footage up and look and you know, if, like any other library services, if somebody's abusing the, you know, the library or they have inappropriate behavior, then ask them, you know, you're not able to use this service. So yeah, I mean, that is a liability. You know, not everybody's comfortable with that risk. So you definitely have to be all on board with that for sure. Is there any others? I think we'll go back to this one question that did just come up here because someone wants to know, oh, so you said that you did leave it open. Do you still have this sign that says only open during library hours or did you change that? We didn't. We did change it. We figured that if we ever did have to lock it up, but the signs there, so. But otherwise it's open and people can come in and yeah. But so let's know, how did you learn or know about all of the necessary certifications that you needed that all of that, you sound very knowledgeable in this area? How did you like, I mean, it's not, like you said, this isn't something that library directors necessarily do. Right. Well, it was, we did a lot of research online, but we also, one of the vendors that we talked with was very good about educating us. And you know, whatever vendor you do choose, you want to make sure that these are the things that you're seeing, these certifications are on their quotes because these are important. So that was very helpful right there. All right, go ahead. All right, I'm trying to think here where we left off. I think we covered everything here. And also another thing while you can do while you're wait, are you going to want a fence for that property? If so, you know, start talking about fences, what kind and how high do you want it and what's the purpose it's going to serve? You want to keep people out or in or what kind of materials you need to use and color. And that's a whole other topic right there, right? You know, how to build a fence for your library playground. You can also, again, talk to your insurance company, get them prepared for the project, let them know, you know, this is the quote we received, this is the projected cost and make sure that, you know, you have those documents right prepared so that when you do get to the project is finally done, your insurance is ready to go. It's just, it's going so. And then the big day comes, you know, you've been preparing for this for months and really getting excited about it and that big day comes, you get the call from the vendor and they're ready to install, that's a fun day and you want to make sure that you can be present for your installations. I know that that is sometimes hard because contractors don't always show up when they're supposed to. We've had that happen a couple of times where they got pulled into different projects or it ended up raining and, you know, and then trying to schedule around staff vacations it was kind of hectic. But you want to, when you start installing you want to make sure that you're reviewing those specifications with your installers because they're not in on the project from day one. They basically are helping get your equipment transported to your site and they get basically a map. You know, this is what it's going to look like. So they're not privy to those conversations that you're having with sales people. So it's really important that you, you know, you're there and you can talk about placement of the library playground. Is it going to be positioned correctly on the land that you have? Where is it going to be facing? We ran into an issue where they positioned the playground too close to the pavilion area which caused some issues with our fence gates opening. We had to actually change the direction of our fence gates, how they opened because the playground was positioned too closely to a little slope that we have on our playground. So those are some things that I wish I would have done looking back. So definitely try to be there if you can. And then after your installation make sure that, again, like make sure that you have that inspection done and they provide you with the paperwork because I could see, you know, installers getting in a hurry to finish up the job and then not providing that and just leaving. And make sure that you keep all those certifications on file for your insurance company just for your reference. And then ask for the warranty, not only for the equipment itself but for any installation that warranty information that they offered, that's, it's good to have that on hand. And then you're gonna call your insurance company and said, you're ready to go and insert that insurance right away. So, so I guess we're, you know, this is our completed project. This is our pavilion. We went with just a metal building. It cost around $18,000. The wood, a wood structure we would have loved to have but it was $10,000 more. So this is the back when it was first finished, the grass didn't have time to get to grow up. So it's a little ratty look in there but this is the final, what it looks like. You notice we did put in a black fence that was more ornamental than anything but our board was really wanting to keep kids from just running into that rock area and down the hill and they wanted to make sure that they were safe as possible. This is just, this last fall, this is another side view of it. You notice our, the structure has quite a few play panels that are, invite kids to play and climb and it was just a lot of fun. A lot of fun things to do. We did include some shades and a lot of seating area for our parents, our grandparents who bring their kids to the park. We included some little spring riders that are a lot of fun. They really enjoy those, the kids do. These two pieces I probably wouldn't do again. I wouldn't recommend the balance beam for the money and the cost is not really big enough. And the little sit spinner is, it's really not that big either but it's funny the amount of adults that want to sit their hind end in that little spinner and spin. They still manage to do it. So I probably wouldn't have, I would have gone with different activities than these two probably. And then we did get our disc swing installed. We didn't have enough room to have a second swing bay there. So, but this is a really popular item. The kids really love this. So, so you can see we also chose to do the wood mulch and we originally wanted the rubber mulch and the Platopia, our vendor who supplied this system to us, they talked us into it and they said that number one the kids will throw the rubber mulch and they do, you'll be clean up, yeah. And for some reason they will not. They won't throw the wood chips as much as they would do the rubber. And we haven't, we haven't had any problem with the kids throwing it outside of the play area. They said that it, you know you have to replace wood and rubber mulch at the same rate. So there's not a huge cost saving there and it was just more environmentally friendly. So they also suggested we put, I don't know if you can see the black mats underneath the disc swing there. Those, you know how it's, playgrounds like there's area of use that gets really just kind of pitted and these black mats are supposed to help keep the mulch in place. So you're not getting those divots in your land, lettuce limes and everything. So, so here's the breakdown of all of the costs on our project. Excavation was about 10,000 by ground was 100,000. That was more than we wanted to spend but with the costs of everything rising we didn't really have a choice in that. And we really didn't want to back down on the project and not install everything that we wanted because we knew that it was a lot of work and we just wanted to get it done all at once. Our pavilion, like I said, was about 18 to 20. The fence that we put in was 8,000 and our sidewalk is going to cost about four grand. So it's about a $140,000 project. So it's not cheap at all for sure. And it took us about two years to do it from the time of planning to, you know purchasing and get it installed. It's not a very quick project. I was thinking it would take six to nine months Nope. So and then once you get your project done you want to party because it's a big deal. It's a lot of work, a lot of fun. I learned a lot, but a lot of work. And we had an open house and we invited our board members. We had, you know city mayors there the fiscal court judge magistrates. We had invited, you know special families that make sure we had kids there for photos. We were afraid that people wouldn't show up for it. Right afterwards we had our summer reading open house as well. So that kind of helped as well to get people there. And we just had a lot of fun. One thing that we did do is we created a plaque that thanked all of the board members who were involved in the project. Because it took so long we had some board members that moved off the board. We also, we lost a board member unfortunately during the process to COVID. And it was kind of just a great way to honor them and him for the work that he did on the project as well. So, but that was it. That was the end of my presentation. If you guys have any more questions I'll be happy to stick around. Yeah, we definitely do. Yeah. So go ahead and leave that slide up there while we go through the questions we have here. Yeah, thank you so much. This was another great presentation of course. Like, you know, seeing this being done and through this in the library's point of view. I know there's been playgrounds near libraries but not necessarily done by the library just maybe coincidence of where it is. So yes, we do have some questions that came in. If anyone does have any other questions go ahead and get them entered type into the question section and I'll grab them from here. So one big question, I think I'll start with this one. Like, how did you find the time to do all of this? All the prep work you're talking about and everything that needed to be done and how much help did you have with the research like work and everything? This person says most of their work they do it themselves the minimal help from board members. So curious how you were able to do this. Did your board help with some of the, or other staff? I had four other staff members help with the research work. Yeah, so yes, but it is a lot of work as a director. It's almost like you're doing a building project or a renovation project and I've done both. So it is extra work. And so, you know, you're having to do all of your, you know, bill paying and all your report writing and managing supervising employees. So yes, I would say we had a very supportive board member, Dudley Lush, he helps out a lot with building projects and he has a background in history in that. So he was a great resource to bounce ideas off and help make decisions as far as, especially with the excavation part of the process. He had a real handle on what needed to be done. So yeah, our board, although, you know, we did bring a lot of the ideas to our board. The board was very instrumental in making final decisions, which was helpful, you know, so. Great, okay. And you mentioned grants. Did you apply for grants for this particular project? We did not. We thought about it and we felt like we had enough saved to do the project. And could justify the expenditure, you know, with how frugal we had been through the years. We also felt like if we had applied for grant, it would have set the project back a year or two because, you know, grant processes are pretty timely. So. So we did not. Okay, great, let's see. In, oh, here's a good question. In what ways did you survey your community? You said you reached out to see what the community, how did you do that, gather that information? So we surveyed our internally in the library. We had a laptop at the front desk where we invited people to fill out a survey on what types of things, you know, how we'd use the space, what kinds of projects that they would be interested in. And the playground was on that list of, hey, you know, would you be interested in the library building and playground? We also reached out, we did a survey online through social media and advertised that link for the survey. And we tried to encourage people to fill out the survey by offering a gift card, you know, like a drawing for those, you know, if you were to fill out the survey, you're entered into a drawing for a 25-year-old card. So yeah, getting feedback from the public outside of the library is sometimes hard and challenging. I think one thing that I really try to do though, is I try to be part of other community groups like Rotary, Trimble Care, other organizations where I'm with other leaders quite a bit. So I have these just natural opportunities that come up to have these conversations. So that's helpful as well. Always be doing your elevator pitch everywhere you go. Ever though, I'm in bed of the library, yeah. Someone does want to know if you could go back and show us the pictures of the playground and it's finished stage again. Just want to see if that looks again, yeah. So there's our disc swing. I don't know if I'm going too fast. This is just a little spinner, a set spinner and a balance beam. Not my favorite, but you live in there, right? Yeah. Spring riders, these are a lot of fun to kids like that. Yeah, some adults like them as well, but should not. We have the sitting area. We have six other benches around the parameter as well. So in the shades, you do not have to remove them during the wind. We haven't had any problems with it. They're pretty sturdy. I was concerned about that, but... And they are under warranty and also covered by insurance if they ever do get damaged. So these are some of the activity panels. There's quite a few other activity panels like the produce stand. There's one panel that's on the picture of it where one child stands on one end and it can yell and talk through the tube and another person on the other side. You can hear them. And then here's another view. That's nice. You have a picture of everything together. Nice. Yeah. All right. So while we have this one, someone was questioning about that. You talked about the liability and the sign and the fencing and everything. And you mentioned that the sign says only open during library hours, but you decided to leave it quote unquote open anytime just to be more open to community and we'll see how it goes. And you want to know if that would have any issues with liability. You have a sign that says only open to library hours, but you leave the gate open. Looking at this fence, they could just climb over it anyways. So I wonder if that's even... You've got the insurance and if someone comes in there and something happens, you've got that insurance coverage, correct? I mean, nine cents and somebody climbing over the fence or walking through the gate at an off hour. That's what the insurance is for. So you know that manual that I talked about, the federal agency that produced it, they cover a lot of the safety and liability and issues. That would be good resource for you to answer a lot of your questions because I'm not an expert and I really don't want to tell you something that's not accurate. You know, we understood that the fence, our purpose for the fence was to keep littles in. We didn't want to keep your... Yeah, yeah. If we wanted to keep everybody out, we would have built an eight to 10 foot fence. You know, and the cost of the project would have been twice as much. And so, you know, the board just decided that, yeah, this is what we want. You know, we just need to keep people, our littles in so that they're safe. You know, if somebody really wants to get in there, like you said, they're going to get in there. They're going to climb. Yeah. Yeah. We have a reading guard that has a 10 to 12 foot brick wall and, you know, kids still are able to climb over that wall and get in the reading garden after hours. You know, you do what you can on your part and make sure that you're insurance as well is good. And honestly, that's all you can do. Counties or, you know, county parks, they have the same liability with our parks. Many of them, them aren't fenced. Many of them closed off. So. Absolutely. I'm going to have to, I think, do this the last few questions here so we can get into our next session, but there's one I did want to ask about this. So if anyone does want to reach out to me, you can reach out to her at her library. If you have other questions, anything you want to discuss with her about it. Actually, one thing you're just saying, they wonder if you had any problems with parks and rec. You said your parks and rec department worked with you on this. Correct. They were supportive of it. Honestly. No, I made that suggestion. Like you could work with your parks and rec. Did you have anything to say about you, the library doing this then? Or at the time the, the park and rec board wasn't established. They were. Well, they, they were trying to get members to, to, you know, get the committee going again. So no, they did not have any. Any input on there, but I do know another library who had. In the town. In the state of Kentucky. We kind of had that situation where, you know, you know, you know, in the state of Kentucky who kind of had that situation where the park and recs built a playground right next to their property. And they worked together to maintain that. And they actually library pays to maintain it. And then the park and rec committee, they provide the late, you know, the person to, to actually do the labor. Okay. Definitely work together if you have one. So let's do this last question. Do you ever use the playground for potential library activities? Like doing story hour there. Some are reading anything like that, or do you just library use it for any kind of programming related? We do. So we have that. We have programs out there and it's great. It's just like a natural progression from, okay, I'm done with my arts and crafts. And while you're waiting for something to dry, you know, they go out and play. You know, there's so many fun things you can do out on the playground. You can use it like a Nerf war area. You already have obstacles and things our kids have to, you know, hide behind and jump behind. Definitely you can do a lot of like games with like tag. You know, all the fun stuff that we did in the 80s, you freeze tag and all these, you know, still the flag and all these fun little things. Definitely. You can use that area. You know, it's great it's fenced, right? So you're not going to lose anybody down, you know, in the road or the parking lot. Yeah. Yeah, we have. We have a pretty large homeschool group that comes. We host some of their, their events. And, you know, it's just kind of a natural progression too. They come in, they play video games inside and socialize and do some library activities inside. And then on the great days and when it's nice, they, you know, it's just an extension of the library and they go out and they fly before they go home. So you have kids that are families that are there for like two hours, just playing it and taking care, you know, advantage of services. So it's been really, it's really been great. Awesome. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for the presentation. This is great. And I was saying, yeah, congratulations to you on your community. This is a great service for them all. Thank you. So thank you so much.