 We have people going to work, some with disabilities. This group of people actually is boarding at RCS and quite frankly without the bus they wouldn't be able to get to work at RCS allowing them to have some independence, have gainful employment rather than being needing further assistance from the community. To summarize a Sheboygan transit carries a wide variety of passengers from students to elderly senior citizens as you can see on the left hand side there. Basically all walks of life in the Sheboygan area ride Sheboygan transit. I'll tell you a little bit about what is the makeup of our passengers. Eighty percent of our passengers are dependent on transit because they do not have a driver's license. They have to ride transit. Ninety-one percent of our passengers live at below eighty percent of the county's median income. Three quarters. Seventy-four percent of the passengers live below half of the median county income. As you see a majority of our customers are low to moderate income individuals typically don't have a driver's license and don't have another option they have to use transit. Sheboygan transit is a basic need for a lot of people in our community. I think transportation and specifically transit is one of the most basic needs that people have. A lot of people in this room get into their car they start it up they expect to go wherever they want to whenever they want to. The people using our buses don't have that luxury they get on the bus when the schedule allows it and to get where they're going. Without transit they can't get to work they can't get to their schools they can't get their medical care they can't get to the grocery store. In essence they don't have independence they're dependent on somebody to take them wherever they need to go if they're able to find somebody to do it. I've heard a couple of comments you know maybe we shouldn't have a transit system. I'm here today to talk to you about that what I think is the impact of something like that and I don't think it's a good scenario. If we don't have transit we have poor school attendance because we have a number of kids that can't get to school without the bus system. As a matter of fact I've had some of the schools calling because they have a truancy problem because some of the parents can't afford to pay the fares we charge for the kids to get to school and some of the parents are making choices not to send their kids to school because they can't afford the transportation. That's a fact. We have an inability to get to work if we take away transit these people are low to moderate income they can't go buy a car. They're usually in entry level positions typically not nine to five their nights their weekends. They need us to get to work. If we take away transit there's an inability to get to medical care there's an inability to obtain proper nutrition. They can't get to the grocery stores they can't eat. If we look at all of those those scenarios and we take those away which end up as a more welfare dependent society. We've been talking about welfare to work for a number of years. Well in welfare to work transit is the two. We can't expect people to come off the welfare rolls and get to work if we can't if they can't have a car. If we don't have transit they don't have a car they can't get to work. Again those are entry level positions those are a lot of the customers we're hauling. We're the two in welfare to work. I want to talk a little bit about the economic benefits of transit. That's something that really never gets talked about. There's been a recent independent study that was just completed that says for every dollar invested locally we receive three dollars in economic benefit. Three dollars in economic benefit for every dollar that's invested. I think that's a pretty good return on our investment. We're getting that because people are able to remain independent they're able to get to work they're able to get to school. Our future generations are being trained to be in the workforce. That's a good investment that's our future three to one return. I didn't do the survey that was independent study by the way. I want to talk a little bit about some council buzzwords. We've heard conversations about shared services we've heard discussions about user fees. Sheboygan Transit's been exercising those philosophies for a number of years. Sheboygan Transit currently operates a mandated federally mandated Americans with Disabilities Act paratransit service. That's provided by Handicare and is done through a contract with the county where we share services with Handicare. We're saving approximately two hundred thousand dollars a year by doing that. I don't think most people realize that this is a shared service that's been going on and it's been working. Those are for the most severely disabled in our community again remaining gainfully employed because we can get them out of their homes. It's a shared service that we operate with the county with the substantial cost savings. Now to talk about user fees, Sheboygan Transit charges a fare for each person that boards the bus. Passengers using the bus that to me that's classified as a user fee. That's not a new concept. It's widely accepted in transit systems all over the world, but it is a user fee transit charges a user fee. What is our user fee compared to others in the state? Well, I'm here to tell you that our user fee is the most expensive in the state with probably the exception of Milwaukee. The other side of that spectrum is the city of Oshkosh. They have a fifty cent cash fare or twelve dollars and fifty cents for an unlimited monthly ride. Sheboygan is a dollar fifty cash fare three times the price of a cash fare or four times the price of a monthly bus pass. We're at forty eight dollars a month. Oshkosh is on the low end. We're on the high end. A couple of others LaCrosse and Wausau are ninety cents and a dollar cash and both twenty six dollars a month. Substantially less than what we're charging our users. In fact, I think we're probably disproportionately charging a user fee to the people that can least afford it. A very substantial portion of their spendable income. Again, seventy four percent of our riders are at less than fifty percent of the county median income. Yet we charge them forty eight dollars a month to use our bus pass. That's a substantial user fee. Transit funding. How is transit funds made up? Typically when the budgets come through, since I've been here, Sheboygan Transit, it's been in June when the budget process, very early in the process, Sheboygan Transit has been granted five hundred and forty five thousand dollars and then the rest of the budget process takes place and we go from there without much ramification of the council. We're required to have public hearings whenever we make a change. Last year's budget cycle we had two public hearings with an excess of a hundred people at each one of our public hearings crying for the service. And we still had to make unfortunate decisions. But our funding levels are made up of a combination of state and federal investment. Many of you probably remember last year when we talked about community development block grant very early in the year for this year. We have a city investment which has been five hundred and forty five thousand dollars. Kohler and Sheboygan Falls pays a share of the service because we operate a few miles within their community and we charge them back for services. And then we have the system generated revenue. Our funding sources break down about sixty percent as combined state and federal investment. About twenty two percent is system generated revenue and about eighteen percent is local investment. Again the city of Sheboygan in two thousand two two thousand three two thousand four has been a five hundred and forty five thousand dollars. And now we're contemplating five hundred and forty five thousand dollars for two thousand and five. What has been the impact of that since two thousand two remaining at the same dollar amount and all of our costs increasing. We've eliminated ten of twenty three trip routes. We've eliminated late night bus service. We've eliminated Sunday bus service. We've reduced the frequency of Saturday service from thirty to sixty minutes service in essence cutting the service in half. We reduced our weekday service where we start a half hour later. Our peak service comes out off the street a half hour earlier and we've gone to less frequency and a couple of routes during the midday. All of that has caused the ridership to plummet about twenty two percent as far as staffing levels. We're down about sixteen union positions and since two thousand two and we're down one third of our supervisory staff since two thousand two. That's the impact today dating back to two thousand two pretty substantial cuts in the last few years. Now there's a council directive to fund transit at five hundred and forty five thousand dollars for two thousand and five again. A fourth year at five hundred and forty five thousand dollars will cause evening bus service to be eliminated along with additional five staff persons. I'll tell you a little bit about how we broke down this budget and you know transit is a small component of the overall city budget. I understand that but I just want to get a feeling of how the transit budget works and where it's made up of to remain have the service remain status quo for two thousand four service level. It takes a total budget of three point four six nine million dollars three million four hundred sixty nine thousand eight hundred forty seven dollars. Making an assumption the city was staying status quo at five hundred and forty five thousand dollars. Then there was a talk of a one percent increase that was a recommendation that came out of finance committee for an additional five thousand four hundred fifty dollars one percent increase five thousand four hundred fifty dollars. And then there was also discussion that came out of the finance committee where it was suggested that the amount of money the forty two thousand dollars that came out of the community development block grant last year should be at least considered for taking out of that and put under the general tax rolls to avoid problems like we've had for this year. So if we shifted that forty two thousand dollars over there it would take an additional request then of eighty six thousand six hundred and twenty four dollars to meet the total six hundred and seventy nine thousand seventy four dollars to keep the service status quo and I'll break that down a little bit better for you. The requested tax levy levy of six seventy nine oh seventy four if we subtract out the five hundred and forty five thousand dollars. That means we have an additional request out there for one hundred and thirty four thousand seventy four dollars. That's to keep the service status quo as it is today. The cost to an average residential assessed parcel would equate to an additional fifty one cents per month if the council were to fund that. Fifty one cents a month to keep the service status quo. If the council made a decision that maybe the community development block grant is a good idea and we keep funding the forty two thousand dollars out of the block grant rather than the city's general taxes. That makes the additional request go back down to ninety two thousand seventy four dollars that equates to about thirty seven cents per month to keep the transit service status quo. Again the issue with the block grant that's something that you know it's it needs to be out on the table so we don't get in the same situation we get into last year. You know that is a revenue source that was put into the budget and whether it comes out of the taxes or the block grant. You know councils the policymaker I'm not sure which way you want to go on that. I just want to say you know obviously the the city provides a lot of services out there. We live in the city. We expect a lot of services. We expect police. We expect fire. We expect transit. We expect public works. We expect parks. We expect a library and quite frankly I think all of those services are extremely important. If I've got a problem and if I have a fire in my house by gosh I want to be able to call a fire department have and show up. And if I want to be able to flush my toilet and expect that the sewer is going to work. I want to be able to go to the park if I want to. And I want to be able to get on a bus if I want to. That's part of a service of our city. I can't stress the importance of transportation. When you've looked at Sheboygan being a top rated city. Top rated community. Transportation is a vital component of that evaluation process is specifically calls out transportation in those discussions as such a vital role and such a dependency that really needs to be preserved. A question that I have for the council is does this council envision a transit system in the future? And the reason I pose that question 2002, 2003, 2004, possibly 2005 we're looking at the same level of service. If we go to the 2005 at $545,000 and we eliminate the night service we're going to have dismantled or starting to dismantle our transit system effectively by doing that. We'll have lost over one-third of our service. I don't want you to misunderstand the significance of that. If we go another year and we cut somewhere else and we go another year and cut somewhere else, we only have a couple of years left and we're going to have to shut the doors. We can't keep losing 30% of our ridership over a period of a couple of years or system over a couple of years and expect that there's going to be anything left. At some point we have to make a decision as a city do we want the service or don't we? I think it's a good investment. I think it's a needed service. I think that the majority of our community depends on it and I just I want the council to be aware of the significance of those decisions. I also want you to be aware that 96% of your constituents want transit and they don't mind that it's funded with tax dollars. Bay Lakes Regional Planning Commission conducted a survey, a general opinion telephone survey statistically valid where 96% of the respondents wanted transit service knowing that their city tax dollars are going to fund it. That's huge, 96%. The amazing thing is when I did the general opinion survey because it was random when they called obviously a lot of the people hadn't used the system within the last year but they wanted the transit system because when they wanted to use it they wanted it to be there. They know they're getting older, they know the baby boomers are coming of age, they know our population is aging. As you get older you start to have more problems, you start losing your driver's license, you don't want to be locked in your house. 96% again talking about the economic benefits for every $1 invested we get $3 in return. I can't stress that enough. I also want to mention briefly a little bit more about our funding. We had that pie chart up there that showed the state and federal dollars and the local dollars and the operating revenues. We can't just take away one little slice of the pie and think that we just work with that much less. Everything is intertwined. If we mess with one little slice of the pie it affects the rest of the pie. It's almost a five to one mark. If we cut out $40,000 we have to look close to $200,000 typically to try and make that up. What happens is we take some funding away that means we have to cut service. We cut service that cuts passengers. We cut passengers that cuts operating revenues. We cut that small piece out of the pie. We lose operating revenues. We also lose the federal and state operating investment that goes along with that. It's a vicious cycle. It's almost five to one for every dollar we mess with. It's a significant impact. I wanted you to be aware of it. I know you have an enormous task ahead of you when you start looking forward with a budget. I wanted you to understand transit. Quite frankly, I want you to understand the impact that we've had over the last few years since I've been here. I say dismantling almost a third of our department. Gosh, we can't keep going this direction too much longer. We've got serious problems. If we do get to that point, we're going to need to start calling up the federal government because they own about 80% of the system and we're going to have to start paying back some money that they've invested in it. Part of the idea of getting grant money from them is with an understanding that you're going to continue to operate a system within reasons. So those are issues that will be out there and I want the council to be aware of that as we go through 2005, 2006, 2007. We really need to have a vision of where we want to go with this. What level of service needs to be provided and then the funding to correspond to that. So that's it for my presentation and I'll be glad to answer any questions for you. Alderman Serta. Thank you, Mr. McDonnell. 96% of public supports transit. That's a pretty substantial percentage. Correct me if I'm wrong but you said you only hold a public hearing after the service has been cut? No. We have to hold a public hearing prior to any service changes. Okay. So is it like a public forum where we as older persons, how can we be more effective in hearing the voice of the community? I'm glad you've asked that question. Typically what's happened in the past is around June the council, I don't know arbitrarily or whatever reason decides how much money they're going to give transit or allocate transit. Then the commission has the unenviable job of trying to decide what type of service to put on the street. Before we make changes we are required by the federal government to conduct public hearings. We have to do that to get public input prior to making those changes. Effectively we've had to make the changes anyhow because we didn't have the financial capacity to do what they asked us to do. But as an example, I said we had two public hearings last year and there was over 100 persons in each one of those public hearings. Those have typically been held off-site. Since I've been here they've been in the Roker room and there's been very few council members that have been able to make those. I know the mayor's been in attendance at each one of them. The transit commission members have been in attendance. We get bombarded. We see people with severe disabilities saying they can't go anywhere. We see senior citizens. It's a difficult process. What I would suggest is if we move along in this budget process and we're looking at making some significant route changes again this year, I would suggest and intend on having a public hearing as part of a council meeting or a special council meeting so that the members making the decision have the opportunity to hear from the constituents who are being affected by it. There are no more. Here we go. Thank you. Could you describe the hand in care system and how that works with the county as a cooperative venture? Sure. As I said, we provide unfunded mandated service as part of the Americans with Disabilities Act. We have to provide a service for people with severe disabilities who because of that disability cannot use our regular bus system. We contracted with the county to provide that service. The county also provides an elderly transportation service. So we take both of those services and let out a contract which Handicare has been getting each year to provide that service on behalf of Sheboygan Transit and Sheboygan County. And we pay basically offset their costs and it's been very cost effective. When I say $200,000 savings each year, that's probably a low estimate. Does that answer the question? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You cited a $48 a month pass on $1.50 per use. That is a reaction to decrease in registered. Was that a reaction to that or was that something? How did that come about? Pretty high as you indicated. The fare is very high, exactly. That came about prior to my being here. However, it was because of fiscal constraints. The council set an allocation for transit and the transit commission then had to make a decision as to do we cut service? Do we raise fares? In essence, what's been happening over the past decade or so is that there's been financial constraints put on transit. So transit would cut some service. Well, then the ridership would go down a little bit so they'd raise the fares. Well, if you close your business for a few hours, you have less customers coming in the door. You have less money coming in the cash register. Well, that downward spiral then said, well, okay, we cut service. Now let's raise fare to get it back up. Well, you raise the fare and now we lose some more passengers so we end up coming back and cutting some services. And that spiral has been going on for the last decade at least. And we're finally to the point now where we pretty much have to pay the piper. That spiral has been going and going and going. At the last transit commission meeting was a very vocal meeting just for that reason. The fares were limited. We can't go any higher because people can't afford it. But that's how it came about. Seeing there are no other... Alderman Warner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ronald, I guess I would like to know how many passengers actually get on the transit system in a given year on the average. And also in August we had reduced fares on the monthly pass. Any results on that? We did have a special in August for our monthly pass. Quite frankly, that's our slowest month of the year. We sold a few more, not a substantial number. Quite frankly, if we're going to do something like that, we need to do it on a long-term basis. Quite frankly, we've been making changes where we almost challenged people to ride the bus over the years because of the fiscal constraints. And people have made decisions, they changed their patterns. If we push them off the bus, they find rides elsewhere. They buy beater cars, perhaps. So if we're going to make changes, we have to be able to get through a year to really let people, again, get used to riding the system. The problem has been in my two years here, I say we've dismantled almost a third of our system trying to react to the financial constraints. We haven't had the ability to let things settle down to try and build things back up. So the August thing wasn't real successful, but again, it's the slowest month of the year. And it's really too short to be indicative of what changes there would be. As far as the number of passengers in 2004, we're probably going to end up with about a half a million passengers. We're down 22% in the last year and a half to two years just because of the changes that we've made. Again, because these changes have been going on over the last decade, we've gone from 1.5 million passengers down to a half a million. Each time you make cuts, our efficiencies start going through the floor. We're trying to do work with less and less, and it's a difficult process. You raise fares, you lose passengers, you cut service, you lose passengers, and the downward spiral has been going on and on and on. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Ron. Our next presenter tonight, young lady will come up, Sharon Winkle from the library. I'll officially thank Ron. He's sharing his equipment with me this evening. I'll also thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you. It's probably going to be one of several opportunities that will be needed to straighten out the future of library services for the community. Before we start, I would like to cover just a couple things that Ron's presentation reminded me of. Sometimes I assume people know these things, but you wouldn't have the opportunity. You don't work with it regularly about user fees. The state of Wisconsin has declared that libraries are a matter of statewide concern and has also declared in statutes that the services for the most part must be free to the residents of the community using them. And there are other agreements that are in place, for example, system membership agreements that preclude the charging of fees for almost any basic library service. So that's not going to be a big opportunity for library revenue. In terms of revenue, the city of Shmueggen Common Council appropriation to the library fund constitutes 75 to 80% of the funding for the library. There is really no role to speak of for state and federal funding for public library service in Wisconsin. We've also made cuts at the library. And recently in 2003, the staff hours and compensation were reduced by over 7%. And since 1991, there's been a 25% reduction in staff, including a 30% reduction in management staff. So I'll start the presentation here. We've had direction over the years from Common Council and its finance committee to the library board. And in recent years, it's been talk budget numbers don't come and justify the service. And I think that is interesting because today I'm standing before you justifying the service for the community. The funding has been relatively stable from the city and has just not kept paced with expenses. Another direction has been to spend the unreserved fund balance, which constitutes the contingency fund of the library for operations. We've included a table that follows the presentation outline, so that you can see that the Common Council appropriation to the library fund is roughly equal to the personal services expenditures at the library. And the last time that the increase in the Common Council appropriation was roughly equal to the increase in salaries was, as I recall, 1998, maybe even earlier, let me look here real quick. Oh, 1996. So again, we're heading into about 10 years of budgetary shortfalls. The library board is responsible as a governing board for service level decisions, but it does desire to work in the framework of Common Council's plans for service for community residents. And we'll talk about that a little bit later on. 35,374 Sheboygan residents are registered to use Mead Public Library. That's about 71% of the population. That's an increase in recent years up from about two thirds of the population. So library registration is increasing and it is entirely voluntary, of course. 3.5 out of every five residents is registered. That's 11.36 of every 16 residents. So if you're not registered to use the library, you're in the minority, in the community. And any Sheboygan group of fewer than 71% of its members registered to use the library is not typical and might want to keep that in mind when it's planning for community services. Attendance at the library, 351,000 plus a year, that's about 123 an hour. These are 2,003 figures unless otherwise specified. Approaching 800,000 checkouts a year or 269 an hour and over one million resources uses during the year including checkouts and that's 379 an hour on average. There was a huge shift when we needed to reduce the hours of public service at the library effective for fall 2003. In 2003, the hourly checkouts at mid-year 250.1 and you can see an increase 2004 at mid-year was 302, that's a 21% increase. So use shifted. Total use did decline. Not everyone was able to shift the time when they could come to the library and continue using the library as they had in the past but there was this shift in use which I think shows that the service is important to people. But how important? I'll give you an example. On Monday, June 21, 2004 we had a pretty big day, the biggest day in recent years. There were 5,865 checkouts that day, 4,730 check-ins. You can see the total there of circulation transactions. There was an attendance of 2,150 people at the library that day and the primary volume driver is of course interest in families, children, young adults in registering for the summer reading program and checking out materials to read, to improve and to retain their reading skills over the summer months. Public comments about reduced public service schedule. Through June, we received 153 written comments. This is what they look like. These are all on the hours and they are reviewed by the management staff as well as the library board and we're thinking that it would probably be helpful if we found a way to get them to Common Council regularly. We did send a tabulated report to Common Council that indicated the number received and the type of comment and I guess I would say in response to people who might think that's not a lot, well how much is a lot? Rhetorical question but I think it's a good one. Current issues at the library. The maintenance of effort funding is not the most that the city can invest in Mead Public Library. There's a statement about that in the Sheboygan Press article about the budget situation which the reporter corrected at our request. The maintenance of effort level for those of you who are not familiar with it is the minimum amount that the city can expend on its library service in order to be able, be allowed to participate in Eastern Shore's library system. It's by no means any sort of adequate amount or appropriate amount. It may be but that's not what the state is saying when it sets the maintenance of effort. It's simply the average of the last three years of funding and the state has that requirement that you don't have communities who join a library service system, reduce their funding and therefore their service and ride on the services of other communities because library service systems like Eastern Shore's library system is the way that libraries cooperate throughout the state. Non-general fund status as far as I know does not indicate service dispensability. I don't think that the Common Council decided that the departments that are not part of the general fund are dispensable. It was an accounting change. The library department used to be a part of the general fund and then became its own separate fund for a variety of reasons long before I came to the library. Private sector contributions while important in libraries cannot supplant public funding and I have included an article from a Wisconsin library director, library system director that appeared recently in a national professional journal. He speaks to that as well as to fees, et cetera. The internet has not made need public library services unnecessary and we'll talk a little bit about internet service. We do have public internet access at need public library. It's one service of the library. It's a very needed service, particularly by lower income people in the community. There were 35,400 plus uses in 2003. We did do a December 2003 survey for the CDBG application which was not funded. In that week we had 269 unique adult and young adult users. 83.1% of the survey respondents are from low to moderate income households and that compares with the average 49% of Sheboygan residents being from households with that income capacity. Internet access is a very important part, a critical component of full participation in U.S. social structure, getting a job, going to school, et cetera. I think you know that. It's not a luxury. People have to be able to use the internet. The library is one of the main ways that lower income people do that. The library has to be open for people to be able to do that. The strategic fiscal planning committee has recommended no increase and no decrease in library fund appropriation for 2005. That would meet the maintenance of effort requirement and a few thousand dollars extra. A return to the standard schedule of public service hours would require an additional 429,000 plus in funding. And that's about $8.60 per capita. The full funding for the current or reduced schedule results in a shortfall of about 238,000. And that would be $4.76 per capita for the year in order to fund that fully. The library board as a governing authority, as I mentioned earlier, must address the anticipated funding shortfall. However, we know that Common Council is the funding authority, so I think we're going to be calling for requesting a little more guidance from council than we've needed to do in the past. The standard operating procedure for the library board has been continual improvement of meet public library services in a cost effective manner. But in recent years, again, paralleling Ron's presentation, we're not in that environment anymore. We're in the downward spiral of needing to continually reduce, reduce, reduce, reduce services. So that really no longer applies and we need some input from Common Council in addition to hearing from members of the public. We have a planning system in place. We have the mission, roles, strategic directions, annual initiatives. We need to know if those are congruent with those of the Common Council. For example, is the Common Council satisfied that the hours are below standard for basic public library service in the state of Wisconsin? We need to know our shortfalls temporary or long term. Should the library board direct the staff to construct and then reconstruct the library minus some major service components? Is robust full service important to the Common Council for the community? Or with some sort of abbreviated library service? Be fine. Here's some things that the library board is looking at for the 2005 shortfall. Spend down the unreserved fund balance to zero. And in fact, I did meet with the library board finance committee at four o'clock this afternoon and I selected that as one of its recommendations to the full library board. That would be in the range of $100,000 and then the contingency fund of the library would be depleted. So will the Common Council commit to funding unanticipated expenses after that? That's an important question for you to think about. What if there's a major mold infestation? What if there's liability that the city has due to an accident, or that the library has due to an accident to the library property, et cetera? We can reduce personal services expenses and we're looking at a variety of ways to do that. We can also reduce purchases of books, databases, et cetera. I can tell you that the recommendations from the finance committee of the library board will be spend down the fund balance, reduce purchases of books and other library service materials by approximately $111,000. Reduce or I should say eliminate funding of the Automation Replacement Account, which yields about $27.5, and then call for members of the staff who would like to volunteer to reduce their hours of work. So that's going to be the recommendation at this point from the library board finance committee to the library board. Now we're talking about how do we address the long-term shortfall. Well, we can reduce labor requirements through automated materials handling. We have a quote from a company. We could automate check-in, sorting, et cetera, for around $400,000 to $500,000 capital investment. That would allow us to reduce some staff. We can increase public access to the installation of 24-hour locker service that allows pickup of requested items 24 by 7. That's a capital investment. We can reduce or eliminate major service components. We'd like to talk with counsel and see what you might suggest based on your knowledge of community needs. And we need to review and revise the mission and roles of Meade Public Library in the Shambuikin community. Again, in concert with the council. We'd like to know what are the common council's plans for resident services, including library services. So what are decisions about both sides of the funding service equation? We hear a lot about the funding side and your decisions on that. How do you feel about the resulting service capacity? We'd like to know that. What does the common council want Meade Public Library services to be like five or 10 years from now? We would like guidance for the development of the Meade Public Library Strategic Directions Development. We have strategic directions that will end their life in 2005. So in 2005, the library board and staff will work to develop strategic directions for 2006-2010. We'd like input from you because the funding you provide is going to be a major driver of what the library can do for the community. And what is the common council vision for Shambuikin's future? Interpreting the needs and aspirations of the community as a whole into service operating offerings. And I know I need to hurry up here. Here's some options. Take a look at these when you get home tonight or whenever you have time to review your documents. You can eliminate public library service. You're not required by state statute to have a public library. And that would mean that residents would pay the county library levy and use whatever libraries are out there. You can withdraw from Eastern Shores library system and that would allow you to charge nonresidents for library service. But then you're not going to be sharing with other libraries. Residents wouldn't have access to EasyCat. You could offer a public library service that doesn't meet the Wisconsin definition of public library. And that means that both resident and nonresident fees could supplement the common council appropriation. You could work for passage of district public library enabling legislation. And then residents would directly establish through referendum the level investment they want to make in their library. You could get maximum funding and then have an advisory referendum. You could say, hey, we're never going to fund the library for more than the maintenance of effort. And you can ask residents if they want to add funding to that, to add to their services. Those are just some examples of the kinds of things you might want to be thinking about with the library board. So that is the end of my presentation. I appreciate your time. And I realize that there's not time for questions. But please do contact me if you have any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon. Now the next presenter will be Rich Gephardt. Mr. Gephardt is going to be distributing some information for the council. And we will be discussing that under the council meeting. So as of right now, the committee to hold, I look for a motion to adjourn. Motion has been made and seconded for the committee to hold to adjourn. All in favor? Contrary. We adjourn.