Category: Libraries

DSHS Reopens In-Person Services; New Library Director Says Day Centers at Libraries Would Confuse Patrons

1. Proponents of a bill (HB 2075) that would force the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) to offer services in person scored a victory this week, as the agency agreed to reopen almost all its community services offices—key access points, prior to the pandemic, for people seeking services ranging from food stamps to cash assistance.

Since 2020, DSHS has required people seeking services to use an online portal or call a telephone hotline, where waits can be as long as several hours. The department opened the community service office lobbies late last year so that people seeking services could call the department on a land line or use a computer to access its online portal, but only agreed to offer services in person again after months of pressure from advocates for low-income and homeless people.

In a letter to stakeholders last week, DSHS Community Services Division director Babs Roberts wrote, “we have heard clearly from many of you and agree that some elements of our plans will not sufficiently meet the needs of all the people we serve, particularly those experiencing the deepest impacts of poverty and homelessness. Thus, we are making changes.”

However, Roberts added, short-staffing and social distancing requirements may result in “limited waiting space and possibly long wait times in our lobbies. This moment (like so many before) will require flexibility and patience.”

As PubliCola reported in January, the closure of in-person services made it essentially impossible for many of the state’s most vulnerable residents, including unsheltered people, to access critical services to which they are entitled, including food stamps, cash assistance, and housing subsidies.

Advocates are still pushing for the bill, which would direct DSHS to “strive to ensure” telephone wait times of no more than 30 minutes and would bar DSHS from restricting the kind of services clients can access in person. Friday is the cutoff date for the bill, which is currently in the senate rules committee, to pass out of the senate.

2. After a surprisingly contentious process, the Seattle Public Library Board unanimously appointed interim library director Tom Fay as the city’s Chief Librarian yesterday, rejecting another candidate, former Hennepin County (Minnesota) Library director Chad Helton, who resigned from his previous job amid criticism over his decision to work remotely from Los Angeles.

The vote, coming after a process that was mostly invisible to the public, shed little light on why the board chose Fay over Helton. (The two men were the only candidates that made it to the public stage of the vetting process.) During his one public interview, Helton defended his decision to run the Minnesota library system from California, saying he was just one of many people who started working from home during the pandemic. “The staff wasn’t really aware” that he lived elsewhere, Helton told the board, adding, “I didn’t think it was something that was necessary.” Fay lives in Pierce County.

As the (Minneapolis) Star-Tribune reported last week, Helton resigned from his position on February 1, after the Hennepin County Board of Supervisors passed a law, effective January 1, requiring the heads of public-facing departments like the library to live inside the state. Helton received $60,000 for “emotional damages,” plus $15,000 in attorneys’ fees, as part of a settlement.

Even if the city decided that library buildings would only open as day centers, without offering library services, Fay said, “if people were going in and out, that would be problematic for us, [because patrons] would have expectations of library services that would not be able to be offered.”

3. Hours after the vote, Fay gave a presentation on library operations to the Seattle City Council’s public assets and homelessness committee. Although the presentation was mostly a high-level look at how the library spends its money, Councilmember Lisa Herbold used the opportunity to ask Fay whether the library would consider allowing social-service providers to open and operate library branches as day centers during rare weather emergencies like last year’s Christmas snowstorm, when most library branches were closed.

“Does your plan [for emergency weather operations] consider the possibility of opening as a [day] shelter only, not using your staff, but using staff who are able to serve folks staying in a shelter, like we do [when] we open up City Hall as a shelter?” Herbold asked. Continue reading “DSHS Reopens In-Person Services; New Library Director Says Day Centers at Libraries Would Confuse Patrons”

Library Finalists Discuss Security, Vaccine Requirements, TERFs, and More

Library director finalists Chad Helton (l) and Tom Fay (r)
Library director finalists Chad Helton (l) and Tom Fay (r).

By Erica C. Barnett

In public interviews last week, the two candidates for Seattle’s Chief Librarian position outlined their priorities for the library system, described how they would manage controversies over intellectual freedom, and responded to questions about what it means to serve the local community—and whether it’s possible to do so from thousands of miles away.

The first finalist, Tom Fay, has been interim chief librarian since the last permanent library director, Marcellus Turner, left the city in March 2021. The second, Chad Helton, is currently on leave from his job as director of the Hennepin (MN) County Library system. Last year, Helton came under fire for moving from Minnesota to Los Angeles, where he lived before taking the job, and running the library system remotely from his home there. Outcry over Helton’s move eventually prompted the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners to pass a law requiring directors of all departments that directly interact with the public to live in the state.

“As a public good, we have the responsibility for unfettered access, whether we agree with the people that are coming in or we don’t.”—Chief Librarian candidate Chad Helton, referring to SPL’s decision to host a group that advocates against the civil rights of transgender people

Asked about his decision to run the Minnesota library system via video conference, Helton said he was hardly the only county employee who chose to work from home. “It wasn’t this thing that I just woke up one day and decided to move to California,” he told the SPL board. “People just found out about it [after the fact]. The staff wasn’t really aware. That wasn’t communicated greatly. But … I didn’t think it was something that was necessary. And I worked off site the entire time that I was there, so it wasn’t really much of an issue for me.”

Asked why he was drawn to Seattle, in particular, Helton returned to a theme he cited several times in his 90-minute interview: Intellectual freedom, particularly when it comes to allowing unpopular voices to speak. “One of the big things that happened here was [when] there was a feminist group that booked the study room, and, you know, they booked it within their rights,” Helton said, referring to the library’s controversial decision to rent its main auditorium to an group that advocates against the civil rights of transgender people in 2019.

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As we reported at the time, the group’s legal work included efforts to ban trans women from restrooms on the grounds that they would sexually assault “real” women.

“The way that the library handled that really made the want to be a part of this organization. Yes, the group that came in, I’m sure it hurt,” he continued. “But understanding that as a public good, we have the responsibility for unfettered access, whether we agree with the people that are coming in or we don’t.”

“If a hate comes through that particularly hates African-Americans, and they follow the process, it is my responsibility to support that group with their First Amendment rights. And that’s what I’ve always wanted to do in this work. That’s the vision that I had for [Hennepin] County, and that’s the vision that I have for SPL.” Continue reading “Library Finalists Discuss Security, Vaccine Requirements, TERFs, and More”

Parking Officer Falsified Tickets, Canceled Homeless Count Un-Canceled, City Pays to Clean Up Mess at Police Firing Range, and More

1. Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability (OPA) released its first investigation into misconduct by a parking enforcement officer since the city’s parking enforcement unit moved from the Seattle Police Department to the Seattle Department of Transportation last year. OPA investigators found that the officer had falsified more than 100 parking citations and warnings to appear more productive.

The officer’s supervisor complained to the OPA after a review of the officer’s work turned up more than a dozen warnings and citations issued to the same car in a short time span—supervisors later learned that the car belonged to the mother of the officer’s children. Looking deeper into the officer’s work log, supervisors discovered that his GPS location often didn’t match the location of cars he cited. The officer later confessed to the OPA that he pretended to be productive by creating warnings or citations for nearby vehicles and listing an inaccurate location for the non-existent parking violation. The OPA determined that the officer had committed perjury and fraud, leaving SDOT leadership to decide how to discipline him.

The OPA’s investigation began while the parking enforcement unit was still housed within SPD, but it concluded after the unit moved to SDOT in the summer of 2021. The OPA is still technically a part of SPD, but the city’s ongoing efforts to move some law enforcement functions out of the police department has expanded the OPA’s footprint; the parking enforcement officer’s case, the first OPA has referred to SDOT for discipline, is a prime example. The OPA also has jurisdiction over the city’s 911 dispatchers, who moved out of SPD last year into the newly created Community Safety and Communications Center.

2. In a reversal of a decision announced late last year, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority will perform an in-person manual count of the region’s homeless population in March. According to agency spokeswoman Anne Martens, the March count will serve as the official Point In Time (PIT) Count for King County. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires homelessness agencies, including the KCRHA, to physically count the unsheltered homeless population in the area they oversee every two years, although King County has historically done an annual count.

The last scheduled count, in 2021, was scuttled by COVID. In announcing their initial decision to skip this year’s count, the agency argued that because the count is only required in odd-numbered years, “2022 is not a required year.” HUD disagreed and said that KCRHA could be penalized in future requests for federal funding, but Martens told PubliCola in December that HUD had agreed to waive the requirement after the agency announced a new tally based on data obtained from homeless service providers, among other sources.

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We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different: We’re funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

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At a meeting of the Seattle City Council’s homelessness committee earlier this month, authority CEO Marc Dones characterized the March head count as “a rough count” and noted that the authority is basing its planning on the data-based estimate of 45,000 people experiencing homelessness in King County in 2019. That number dropped to around 40,000 in 2020, largely because fewer people were accessing the homeless services on which that estimate is based.

Martens said the March head count “will be deemed a PIT Count for HUD purposes.” The agency will also be doing qualitative research to determine “the ‘why’ and the context around homelessness… to help us build our system in a way that centers people with lived experience,” Martens said.

3. The city of Seattle has paid more than $140,000 to clean up a wetland in Tukwila after the Seattle Police Athletic Association (SPAA), a 70-year-old nonprofit that runs a clubhouse and firing range for Seattle police officers, dumped truckloads of dirt, tires, concrete and other debris onto the marshy banks of the Duwamish River last year.

SPAA is currently not paying for any part of the restoration effort; instead, that burden falls to Seattle’s Department of Finance and Administrative Services (FAS), which owns part of property occupied by the gun range. FAS spokesperson Melissa Mixon told PubliCola that her department can’t comment on whether SPAA will contribute to the restoration costs because of pending litigation.

As PubliCola reported last year, the association used the dirt and debris, which came from an unknown construction site in the Seattle area, to build a backstop for the association’s firing range. Tukwila’s code enforcement office issued a stop-work order in May. According to Mixon, the city is still working to restore the site and is “staying on target with deadlines discussed with Tukwila.”

4. Seattle Public Library employees who staffed library branches during the recent winter weather emergency will receive retroactive payments of $150 for every shift they worked between December 24 and January 3. Former mayor Jenny Durkan issued an executive order providing incentive pay to all “frontline” executive-branch employees on December 24, but because the library is not an executive department, the offer did not extend to library staffers. According to an SPL spokeswoman, the payments will go out to all eligible employees, including library associates, librarians, security officers, and custodial workers, once it’s approved by the library union.

—Paul Kiefer, Erica C. Barnett

 

Seattle Library Finalist at Center of Remote-Work Controversy

Seattle Public Library finalist Chad Helton. Image via Hennapin County
Seattle Public Library finalist Chad Helton. Image via Hennapin County

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Public Library announced two finalists for its chief librarian position on Wednesday: Current interim chief librarian Tom Fay, and Hennepin County, MN library director Chad Helton. Fay has headed up the library on an interim basis since former chief librarian Marcellus Turner left to head up the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library system last March.

The Hennepin County library hired Helton in May 2020, apparently believing he would relocate to Minnesota. Helton did live in the state for about a year, but last summer, according to the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, he informed employees via email that from then on, he would do his $183,855-a-year job remotely from his home in Los Angeles, where he has lived ever since.

Helton’s decision to run the 42-branch system from 2,000 miles away made national news, prompted at least one scathing editorial, and prompted a new county policy last month requiring county supervisors whose employees interact with the public, including the library director, to live in the state unless they receive special dispensation from the county administrator.

Last summer, Helton informed employees via email that he would do his $183,855-a-year job remotely from his home in Los Angeles, where he has lived ever since.

Seattle library board chair Carmen Bendixen told PubliCola that while she couldn’t “share anything that Mr. Helton shared with us in his first-round interview… it is important to me that a successful candidate shows a commitment to the Library’s community focus in the final round of interviews with the Board.”

The job description the library used during its national search, Bendixen added, was “intentionally community-focused, making it important that the successful candidate be able to conduct community-centered work, including staying connected to our physical facilities and interacting in-person with Library patrons, partners, staff and other stakeholders.” When Helton was first hired in Hennepin County, he said he had an “inexplicable love for Minnesota,” according to the Star Tribune.

Helton told PubliCola, “I am in compliance with the directive of Hennepin County Administration in regards to its Future Ready Hennepin plan,” which outlined standards for county employees to work remotely or on hybrid in person/remote schedules. “Should I be hired as the next Chief Librarian, I will be in compliance with all directives set forth by the SPL Board,” Helton added.

The library board will hold one public forum on each of the finalists in February; information about the forums is available on the library’s website.