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Home My WebLink About03-15-2021-BLT-PUBLIC COMMENTSMarch 15, 2021, BLT Agenda Comments These comments on Newport Beach Board of Library Trustees (BLT) agenda items are submitted by: Jim Mosher (jimmosher@yahoo.com ), 2210 Private Road, Newport Beach 92660 (949-548-6229) Item 1. Minutes of the February 16, 2021 Board of Library Trustees Meeting Suggested corrections: The passages shown in italics below are from the draft minutes with a suggested correction indicated in strikeout underline format. Page 4 (page 14 of agenda packet), Item 8, paragraph 1, sentence 2: “The primary programs are the jury juried Art Show in June, the Sculpture Exhibition, which is installed in May and opens in June, …” Page 4 (page 14 of agenda packet), last sentence: “Board Member Ray was pleased with the City Arts Commission work and the $30,000 in grants.” Page 5 (page 15 of agenda packet), paragraph 2: “Newport Beach Resident Jim Mosher stated he believed that some of the arts and culture activities in the Friends Room was are initiated by Library staff independent of the City Arts Commission.” Page 5 (page 15 of agenda packet), Item 9, paragraph 1, last sentence: “The Committee was formed in 2019 and Board Member Ray is please pleased with its progress.” Page 8 (page 18 of agenda packet), Item IX: “ADJOURNMENT – 5:59 P.M.” Comment: I noticed the Chair again achieved his goal of keeping the meeting to under one hour. Item 6. Review of the NBPL Use Policy (NBPL 1) 1. It would seem to me that the new sentence proposed to be added to the opening paragraph would read more smoothly if it were inserted one sentence earlier, so as to be followed by the two sentences beginning “Patrons …” rather than interjected between them. Those two sentences sound like they were intended to be read one after the other, without pause. 2. The documents provided in the agenda packet are also unusual in that the numbering of the policy clauses continues without break through the lettered sections – including in Attachment A, which claims to be the current version. The version posted on the library website, with the clause numbering starting over in each section, seems more conventional to me. That version also appears to be what was adopted when this policy was last revised on March 18, 2019. I assume, therefore, that the continuous numbering is a formatting error in the current agenda packet, and not what is actually being proposed. 3. As I did in 2019, I continue to believe that in the second line of the opening paragraph, the “del” in “Corona Del Mar” should be written in lower case rather than capitalized, although even the library website is not consistent about how that branch name is written. The original tract map is not helpful, either, since the name is in all caps; but the lower case “del” seems a bit more common nowadays, including in the City’s General Plan. March 15, 2021, Library Trustees agenda comments from Jim Mosher Page 2 of 3 Item VII. PUBLIC COMMENTS ON NON-AGENDA ITEMS I cannot recall if the Trustees reviewed this, but at its March 9 meeting,1 based on a recent fee study, the City Council changed the cost of patron printing at libraries2 from the current 15¢ per page black and white and 75¢ color to 35¢ black and white and 45¢ color effective July 1, 2021. These may be compared to the charges in all other City departments for printing documents requested by members of the public, which are 3¢ black and white and 10¢ color. While the reduction in the cost of color copies is welcome, the increase in the black and white printing fee is not. The current $0.15 per side printing charge has always seemed high to me compared to the $0.03 cost of printing a page in other Newport Beach city departments, yet it is a common fee based on the following sampling of fees charged by other public institutions. Name B&W Color Notes CA 2020 Star Libraries Berkeley 0.15 1.50 Burlingame 0.15 0.45 $0.45/day free City of Commerce 0.10 0.35 $1.00/day free Harrison (Carmel) 0.15 0.35 Marin County 0.15 1.00 25 pages BW/5 pages color free NBPL 0.15 0.75 changing to $0.35/$0.45 Palo Alto ? ? San Francisco 0.10 0.40 Santa Clara County 0.15 0.20 Other Libraries Anaheim 0.15 0.50 Cerritos 0.10 0.45 Huntington Beach 0.15 0.50 Orange (City) 0.15 0.35 Orange (County) ? ? Placentia 0.15 0.50 Santa Monica 0.15 0.50 LA Public Library ? ? 10 pages free Boston Public Library 0.15 0.75 New York Pubic Library 0.20 1.25 1 This was part of Item 13. 2 Although likely intended only for self-service printing and copies, as they currently are, these charges are listed under “LIBRARY DEPARTMENT - Library Services” and will presumably be interpreted as an exception to the lower “ALL DEPARTMENTS” charge listed on the first page of the Master Fee Schedule. So, they could well be charged not just for self-service printing, but by reference librarians or administrative staff providing a document to a patron (I don’t know if library staff currently charges the citywide 3¢ per page or the library-specific 15¢ per page for such services). March 15, 2021, Library Trustees agenda comments from Jim Mosher Page 3 of 3 Name B&W Color Notes Local Colleges Chapman College 0.10 0.50 BW is per sheet if double-sided Golden West College 0.10 ? Orange Coast College 0.05 0.50 Photocopies $0.10/$0.50 Saddleback College 0.10 0.59 Double-sided $0.15/$1.00 Santa Ana College 0.08 0.50 Santiago Canyon College 0.10 0.30 UCI 0.12 0.50 The new $0.35 per side charge at NBPL will be the highest of any institution I could find, and will likely unfairly burden and inconvenience those least able to pay it. The problem with Newport Beach’s fee study producing this anomalous result is that it attempts to apportion the full cost of providing a service to those using it. In this case, the full annual cost of owning and maintaining the library printers and their pay-per-page software is presumably being divided by the number of pages printed by the public per year. But each increase in cost discourages use of the service, and the resulting smaller number of pages printed by the public will result in an even higher cost in the next fee study. Followed to its logical conclusion, the per page fee will eventually rise so high that a single user will print a single page and be expected to pay the full cost of the printer for doing so. This would be OK if NBPL’s mission were to encourage the world to go paperless. It is not OK if it is trying to provide the public with services at a reasonable cost. If it’s not possible for the City to work this out, a possible solution would be to apply the new fee structure only to the self-service photocopiers, and invite the public to send their other print jobs (from public and private computers) to standard City printers at the reference desks, where one assumes they could be printed out at the same $0.03 per page cost that prevails in other City departments.