NewsletterNewsletter

September 2016

Deborah StinsonMayor

The Mayor was unavailable to write a column this month.

A Note from the Mayor will return in the October edition.

MAKE A DIFFERENCE!Citizen Advisory Board Recruitment

The following committees have vacancies for citizens interested in volunteering: • The Planning Commission provides recommendations to the City Council on land use regulations, Comprehensive Plan amendments and other challenging planning issues. The Commission also conducts public hearings on legislative proposals.

• The Arts Commission promotes and encourages public programs to further the development and public awareness of and interest in the arts, and to act in an advisory capacity to the City government in connection with the artistic and cultural development of the City. Members are selected based on their knowledge and expertise with respect to the performing, visual and literary arts. The many activities sponsored by the Arts Commission include an annual one-act play contest and juried art exhibitions.

• The Library Advisory Board advises the City Manager and City Council concerning the operations of the Port Townsend Library. The board offers advisory opinions concerning the supervision, care and custody of library property; the annual operations budget; purchase of supplies and materials for library patrons; and hours of operation for public use of the library. The board also develops policy for the selection of books, periodicals, maps, materials, and information services for the library's operation. In addition, the board may make recommendations to the City Council regarding long-range planning of facilities and funding-based proposals.

• The Parks, Recreation and Tree Advisory Board advises City Council on issues related to the City's parks, open spaces, trees and recreational opportunities. The board provides review, advice and recommendations on the implementation of the Port Townsend Parks, Recreation and Open Space Functional Plan and other topics that are important to maintaining and expanding the City's commitment to conservation and legislation regarding the City's parks and trees. The board organizes community efforts to maintain and protect the City's recreational assets.

Applications are available in the City Clerk’s Office on the second floor of City Hall, 250 Madison Street. Call 379-5083 with questions and to request an application form or download from www.cityofpt.us/boardscommissions.htm. City residency or employment within the City is a requirement for most positions.

360.379.5047 • citycouncil@cityofpt.us • www.cityofpt.us

Focus at the water treatment facility (WTF) has been on installing air, water and chemical piping as well as electri-cal and control wiring for the process equipment. The equipment supplier is anticipated to be on site in early September to check out and operate the various systems. Then in October the filters, compressed air, air scour, chemical cleaning, neutralization, and control systems will be brought together for start-up. Instrumentation and controls (I&C) are in place on site waiting for an operational check. The WTF plant feed electrical transformer, electrical mains and motor control centers are active. At the reservoir, the contractor has completed encasing the pre-stressing wire wrap outside the tank with a protective shotcrete coating. Polyester fabric baffles placed inside the tank will provide treated water an extended flow channel through the tank for chlorination detention time.A new paved trail along the east side of Rainier Street from Discovery Road to the intersection of Howard Street and 20th Street is open. From 15th Street north, an orange construction fence provides a safety divider to separate site construction traffic from the trail where they coincide.

Capital Projects Update, Water Treatment Facility

360.379.5047 • citycouncil@cityofpt.us • www.cityofpt.us

FAMILY-TO-FAMILY EDUCATION PROGRAM

FREE for family members and partners of individuals with Mental Illnesses and Disorders

• A series of 12 Saturday classes structured to help people understand and support individuals with serious mental illness while maintaining their own well-being.

• This course is taught by a team of trained NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) family-member volunteers who know what it is like to have a loved one struggling with one of these brain disorders. There is no cost to participate in the NAMI Family-to-Family Education Program.

• Classes Start in Port Townsend:Saturday Mornings, 10:am – 12:30 pmSept. 10 to Dec 10 (excludes Oct. 1 and Nov. 26.)

• Register Now. Call: Phone: (360) 390-385-6854

Learn more about the local NAMI Affiliate at:www.namijeffcowa.org

Did you know that both residential and commercial properties in the City of Port Townsend are required to have garbage service? You may read more under PTMC 6.04.040(A) online: http://www.codepublishing.com/WA/PortTownsend/If you don’t have active garbage service for your property, you may establish service by contacting DM Disposal at: (360) 385-6612.

Solid waste collection service is a fundamental municipal function necessary for the preservation of public health. We encourage residents to be pro-active in attaining service and keeping all properties free of trash, yard debris and the accumulation of materials that can become a nuisance under PTMC, Chapter 9.08. 6.04.040(A) Mandatory customer participation.

It is mandatory for the owner of all developed property, all residential (single-family and multifamily) tenant-able or inhabited buildings, and/or all places of business within the city to take a service that is provided by the city’s solid waste contractor. Said charges shall be billed and collected by the garbage collector at his own cost. Every occupant of the property and every owner of the property for which garbage and refuse collection and disposal services are rendered shall be responsible for and shall pay, without delinquency, all charges therefor.

To contact the City’s Code Compliance Officer:Katie Quesada/360-379-5094/kquesada@cityofpt.us

Edible Mushrooms of the Pacific NorthwestPort Townsend Library – Carnegie Reading room

Wednesday, Sept. 21, 7-8 pm

Code Compliance

To kick off the fall season, please join us for an evening of mushroom hunting adventures focused on finding edible mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest. Daniel Winkler has been in love with mushrooms since an early age. He has managed to blend a career as an ecologist and geographer, researching mushrooms and rural income in Tibet, the Himalayas and China.

He is fascinated by ethno-mycology or the role mushrooms play in different cultures, especially as a source of food and medicine. Daniel writes and speaks extensively, authoring the field guides to Edible Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest and California and A field Guide to Amazon Mushrooms with Larry Evans. For more information on his work please visit www.mushroaming.com. The event is sponsored by Friends of the Port Townsend Library.

360.379.5047 • citycouncil@cityofpt.us • www.cityofpt.us

Collection development is the name for librarians taking care of the books and other materials in the library. The three main steps are: (a) weeding old materials, (b) purchasing new materials, (c) managing the materials while they are in the library.Anybody remember Paul Emil Erdman? His book The Billion-Dollar Sure Thing was a New York Times bestseller in 1973. 1966 was a big year: Robert Ruark’s book Honey Badger, Shelley Mydans’ book Thomas and Adela Rogers St. Johns’ book Tell No Man were all top 10 bestsellers.

If you aren’t canceling your hold on All the Light We Cannot See so you can read Honey Badger, you recognize one of the principles of weeding – even very popular books may turn out to be “books for their time” and not “books for all time.” For every Catcher in the Rye or The Color Purple with timeless appeal, there are many more books that speak to us at a certain time and place and don’t do so again. It makes sense to discard these books so that we can feature both classic older books and newer popular ones.What about wear and tear on books? Publisher Harper Collins made news by announcing that their ebooks that are purchased by libraries will “self-destruct” after they have checked out 26 times. Then the library will have to buy a new copy of the ebook. This is meant to reflect the fact that if ebooks were paper books, they would wear out and need to be replaced. While many librarians said the limit of 26 checkouts was too low, it’s definitely true that library books wear out. Paper oxidizes, bindings crack, and covers wear down from being pulled on and off the shelf. Eventually books get smelly and stained. Someone who comes into the library wanting to read a specific book – even a really great specific book - might change their mind when they see that the library copy has yellow, stained pages and smells a bit weird.

Many people think that when libraries buy books, they only buy newly-released titles. They think that if a librarian discards the library’s worn-out copy of Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh will be gone forever. In fact, a good collection developer replaces worn-out books with new copies of the same book, as long as the material remains popular. This means that the collection stays clean and appealing.

Purchasing new materials includes buying brand-new titles, buying additional copies of materials that lots of people are waiting for, and buying replacements for materials that are worn out or lost. All three are important, and budget dollars are allocated carefully to all three areas so the library will continue to have a collection that people want to use.

Public library purchasing is driven by use. There are archives and other special libraries whose purpose is to preserve historically significant materials. These valuable materials stay in climate-controlled rooms and can’t be taken out of the library. Anyone turning the pages of a book wears cotton gloves so the oil from their fingers won’t degrade the paper. This is a very different atmosphere from a public library, and that’s OK. Because these special libraries exist to preserve pristine copies of valuable materials, we are free to make our copies available for people to take home, share with their families, and occasionally have an accident with a coffee cup or a torn page. When our copies of items wear out or are no longer popular, we can discard them, because preservation is taken care of by other kinds of libraries.

Because our goal is for people to use our materials, we want our collection to be made up of things people want to use. When we make the decision to purchase an item, one of our criteria is how many people we estimate will want to check it out. When we make the decision to discard an item, one of our criteria is whether anyone has checked it out recently. We can measure how well we are doing at meeting our goal of a collection that people want to use. One way is by calculating the percentage of the collection that is checked out at any given time. Another way is to see which items in the collection have checked out within the past year, two years, or another time period. We are doing well at maintaining a useful collection if 33% or more of the collection is checked out almost all of the time. We are also doing well if almost all of our collection has checked out at least once in the past year.

A public library collection is meant to change over time. The books and other materials we had in the library 30 years ago should mostly not be the same ones we have today, because the books people wanted and needed in 1980 are mostly not the books they want and need now. New copies of classic books, new books, and new formats will always keep public library collections changing.

Collection Development 101 at the Library – Why and What?