Monday, October 23, 2023

Seattle Parks Is Trying to Tell the Truth. Will I Survive the Shock?

Dear Diary,

I have a notion that being an inveterate liar is kind of like other moral failings, and so although lying has never been an important sin to me, I can figure out what it's like by analogy.  I think there are two ways to try to stop sinning in general, and so lying in particular.  One is the folk wisdom that a sinner has to "hit bottom", get to where confessing and giving up the sin is the only way forward.  But the other is to work on one's personality and one's reality until giving up the sin won't hurt so much.  In this particular case, until lying is no longer needed.  That path, which is if anything harder than hitting bottom and making other people responsible for dealing with it, is the path it seems to me the City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has chosen.

I pointed out a number of ludicrous details in the department's new "dashboard" (a word I kind of wish had died of COVID-19 toward the end of the pandemic, but still, that's what it's called).  It said Cowen Park's restrooms, which had been damaged by early opening in March 2022 and hadn't re-opened since, were open.  It said Ravenna Park's lower pair of restrooms, which have been perennial targets of vandals, and where the men's room hadn't opened at all in 2022, were both open.  And to top this series of obvious whoppers off, it said University Playground's restrooms, which hadn't been opened by parks department employees at any time since before the pandemic started, were both open.

I recently learnt that I wasn't quite as poor as I thought I was, because my bank hadn't charged a fee I'd expected them to charge.  So today I splurged on a newspaper and went hiking, prepared to mock yet another parks department lying map afterward.

I found both of Cowen Park's restrooms open today.

I found all four of Ravenna Park's restrooms open today.

I didn't find either of University Playground's restrooms open today, but a small group of homeless people there told me that was because they'd been locked half an hour earlier.  Considering that it was 5:41 P.M. when I was told this, that's testimony to way too early closing, but still, sadly, believable.  Supporting this preposterous turn of events actually having happened, the restroom doors both had new handles (dear Diary, your readers can, if they wish, compare the handle shown here to those in previous photos via the tags at the bottom of the page, or directly here if reading on cell phones, which didn't offer those tags the last time I looked.)

Notice, dear Diary, that these handles are set into circular supports; the previous handles, which were blocky rather than delicate themselves, weren't set into anything like that.  I think the evidence is good that University Playground's restrooms have finally re-opened.

So the parks department has done the hard work to justify its claims regarding all the restrooms I visited today.  Including those at Burke-Gilman Playground Park.  Now, this is where Google Maps lied to me today; it claims the whole park is temporarily closed.  


 

But actually, well, let's see if I can do this:

(I was trying to just paste a print-screen from OpenStreetMap into the page.  No, I couldn't.  Darn.)  Only part of the park is closed, the northeastern part.  The parks department also tells the truth about this:


And someone carefully removed the sign adjacent to the Burke-Gilman Trail there pointing the way to the restrooms.


 

Yes, dear Diary, they're building new restrooms there.  I hope this time they're winter-proof, but I sure hope, if I become homeless again before winter and there's another pandemic, they finish quickly.


I remembered from long ago that the neatest thing I thought Burke-Gilman Playground Park had to offer was a play fortress thingy sort of at the northwestern corner of the northeastern part of the park.  So I looked in its direction from the street, but couldn't tell whether it'd been protected or not.  (I'm more pessimistic that the actually neater sundial, also mentioned in that page, could've stayed in situ and been safe, so I hope it was moved.)  The building all that landscape destruction is in aid of is still standing, but perhaps so far all they've had time to do is pull the plumbing out.  (In the photo I uploaded to Google Drive, at full size a viewer can see the holes where the water fountain was attached.)

Anyway, my point is, that this morning when I checked the dashboard again hoping they'd have stopped, as I thought, lying and I could do other stuff today, they showed a bunch of restrooms as closed due to "Capital Project"s, and this was one of them.

Their water fountain map is still way too optimistic, I suspect; it's now up to 5 off, 206 on.  I found three off today, but one isn't theirs; it's the one where University Methodist Temple used to be, the stone edifice of the water fountain (not the church) still standing, but with no plumbing left inside.  I've reported the "lower" Ravenna Park fountain using "Find It - Fix It", which is how they say they want updates to those maps.  I haven't reported yet the weird stone water fountain pretty far southwest in Laurelhurst Playfield.  I guess I'll see what happens to the water fountain map tomorrow, when I plan to hide from the rain, having already lost my umbrella this year.

The Seattle Times, whose weather forecaster likes to go to extremes, is currently predicting lows for the weekend of 33º Friday night, 32º Saturday night, and 34º Sunday night.  Usually the parks department has been able to shrug off October freezes, but if the Times's extremism comes true (as it does depressingly often), that may be a too long-lasting example for the same reaction.   No official word yet, but my point, dear Diary, is that as usual, I've left it too late to get every park visited before it all changes.  The questions is whether it matters.  Is the parks department really turning over a new leaf?  Will it, for example, admit what's happening when it closes the majority of its restrooms for the winter?  Or is this just another episode in a longer battle?

One reason I've been paying so much attention to libraries lately, dear Diary, is to have another string to your bow as well as my own.  I think the last thing I expected was to have the parks department remove your raison d'être, but if it happens, it happens.  I will admit, I found myself getting both reminiscent and bored today as I took all these photos; I really didn't want, in particular, to get the only newspaper I can probably afford soon wet by photographing water fountains.  (And Jenny Durkan is no longer in office, so need I really worry about another Durkan Drought?  Well, only if there's another pandemic...)

Anyway, photos other than the above (most of those above are actually not at these links):

Cowen Park

Ravenna Park

Burke-Gilman Trail, 30th Ave fountain

Burke-Gilman Playground Park (including none of the photos above, only the photo that sort of shows where the water fountain was)

Laurelhurst Community Center (restrooms) and Playfield (water fountains)

Burke-Gilman Trail, 47th St fountain

Former University Methodist Church, former street fountain

Christie Park

University Playground (including the photo above)

Time marches on, dear Diary; there's a reason I ditched "months" in the titles of the library pages.  I'm working on three fronts:

For part VI of public library hours, I've finished work on Wahkiakum County and started on revising the actual page and on San Juan County.  Cowlitz County, however, is nearly three times as big a job as those two put together, and Skagit County nearly four times.  So we'll see.

For part II of institutional libraries, I now have my list and just need to get through it; as I said in part I, it's a long list.

And I'm also dipping my toes into part I of academic libraries.

Whatever, though, you should hear from me again reasonably soon, dear Diary.  Happy nights and days until then.


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Friday, October 20, 2023

Institutional Libraries Long Closed to the Public, part I: Institutions for Adults

Dear Diary,

This page is about several classes of libraries that I explicitly put aside in "Library Hours Six Months Later" despite my avowed goal of covering all libraries listed in my sources, and one class on which I spent much effort and some actual writing in that page.

What these libraries have in common is that they are available to people who live in, or spend many of their waking hours in, institutions in which their freedom of movement, their literal "liberty", is often or always restricted.   Because these people, sometimes or always, can't physically go to, for a notable example, public libraries, it's important that they have access to libraries inside the institutions in question.

I separated out academic libraries as a category in "Six Months Later", and handled it differently, because I believed and believe it's essential to academic work to have library access.  The argument this time is different, but more compelling in the context of the issues you're about, dear Diary.  No, it isn't possible for homeless people, any more than most housed ones, to use the restrooms inside these institutions.  But the institutions for adults covered in this part are all well-known as places whose residents often leave them to become homeless.  I have absolutely no evidence, but I believe, nonetheless, that it's obvious that libraries in the institutions should decrease the percentage who actually do become homeless.  Therefore, as with the academic libraries, I'm proceeding not just library by library but more importantly campus by campus.  Or anyway physical location by physical location. The point being that each physical site (except maybe ones very close together) should have its own library.  So this page is really about whether sites have libraries, not what sort of libraries they have.

Both this argument and my history with these libraries dictate my methods.  Because this is my first time dealing with most of these libraries, I don't consider myself free to e-mail or telephone anyone.  (Separately, all the people I'd be e-mailing or telephoning are people governments sometimes authorise to use force on other people, and I'd be nervous about bothering them.)  And not only am I not going to physically visit each site, I'm not allowed to physically visit each site.  So all I can do is take these places' word for it that libraries exist, if they say so.  In the body of this part, I go into how much justification I think I actually have for taking each place's word.  Moreover, since libraries' existence is my main concern, and not their hours, or their conduct or borrowing rules, the rest of this part is terser than this introduction.

Contents of this part:

Dear Diary, some of your readers may object to the idea that military bases are anything like mental hospitals, let alone prisons.  The military, after all, is just another job!  I can sympathise with such objections.  In fact, in "Six Months Later", I listed the military base libraries properly according to my criteria, but dismissed the prison libraries and mental hospital library much more casually as beyond my purview, even though, at that time, my main concern was public restrooms and none of these offer any, so I should've treated them all the same.  The difference was precisely:  It could be argued that the military is simply a job.  Whereas the other two categories required me to look into very bleak "There but for the grace of God go I" situations.  Even now, I'm organising the three parts of the body of this part not by the distance of the closest member as I usually would, but by a more or less moral scale, best to worst.

While the military is indeed significantly different from mental hospitals and prisons by virtue of the fact that the adults in the military chose to be there (which hasn't always been the case in American history), in fact, members of the military who physically move off the base without formally granted permission not only can be forced to return but can be put into prison for leaving.  (As best I understand it, they usually aren't, but they can be.)  Whereas at most jobs, employees are physically free to leave at any time, albeit they may have trouble getting another job after doing so.  In fact, when someone at a private employer isn't physically free to leave, we call it "slavery".  Well, I don't expect slave-owners to permit their slaves to go to libraries.  (I do expect slave-owners to die miserably, but that's another matter.)

But if the military is an ordinary job, and yet soldiers (sailors, airmen, Marines, etc.) can't go to the public library in their free time without explicit permission, then there ought to be libraries on military bases, I'm glad there are, and I'm now going to show how the military, in western Washington, in fact takes better care to provide library service to its volunteer charges than mental hospitals and prisons do to provide them to their conscripted ones.

Previous parts of pages relevant to this part:

Throughout this part, given that the populations in question are heavily male, I'm less politically correct in certain locutions; mainly "his (her)" instead of "his or her", let alone "her or his", which I think both convey a misleading impression of parity.

Military bases

Because I never registered for the draft, I'm ineligible to work for the US government, so for thirty years now, it's been extremely unlikely for me to end up on any military bases.

I consider the existence of the libraries and other forms of library service described in this section extremely probable.  The vast Web presence of the US military is unlikely to be purely a performance for spectators like me.  So I think many members of the military read pages relevant to themselves, and if the military promised libraries that don't exist, there would probably be lots of complaints.  Also, most of the libraries are presented not on strictly military sites but on .com ones meant to give military people warm fuzzy feelings; I don't see how it would benefit morale at all to lie on such pages.

Military bases whose websites say they have libraries

I gave distances to these in part XI of "Six Months Later", according to the distance calculator I used to use. In that part, I also mentioned other libraries not intended for the populations of the bases at large, such as medical libraries, which I'm ignoring this time.

  • Naval Base Kitsap.  English Wikipedia says it has 15,601 active duty personnel, without a reference.  It used to be two separate parts, which no longer have their own websites, and are geographically disjunct.
    • Naval Station Bremerton. Its Bremerton Recreation Center offers "Library services".  Naval Hospital Bremerton, some distance from the recreation center, used to make known that it had a library for its patients, but no longer appears to make that known.  (I have no idea whether it still has the library.)
    • Naval Submarine Base Bangor  Its Liberty Center, Bangor offers "Lending Library & Board Games".
  • Naval Station Everett. English Wikipedia says it has about 350 sailors and civilians assigned to the station, but also hosts naval commands totalling about 6,000 people, without a reference. Its Resource Center offers "a free paperback exchange program and hardback book checkouts".
  • Joint Base Lewis-McChord. English Wikipedia says it has about 210,000 active population, referring to a website titled "The 5 Largest Military Bases in the World". It used to be two separate parts, which no longer have their own websites, and are geographically conjunct.
    • McChord Air Force Base. It includes McChord Library. This library is to close for re-carpeting for January and February.
    • Fort Lewis. It includes Grandstaff Library. Within that library is a smaller one that also has its own website, Book Patch Children's Library. (Remember, dear Diary, I'm writing about institutions for adults, not necessarily libraries for adults.) These libraries are to close for re-carpeting for November and December.
  • Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. English Wikipedia says the 2010 census found 1,541 people there. I looked at the wrong location here last time. Its Liberty Northwest Center offers a "Trade-a-Book Program".

Military base whose website doesn't say it has a library

  • Naval Magazine Indian Island.  English Wikipedia says the 2000 census found 44 people there, on the island just east of Port Hadlock, all of which the Navy controls.  It's 32.07 miles from my house by the distance calculator I'm currently using (which is also the source of all distances further on in this page). That distance would put it between Naval Station Everett and Joint Base Lewis-McChord if it were in the above list.  Both the magazine's own site and most sites found by searching for it on Google focus heavily on the place's ecological aspects.

Military base without a public website

  • Camp Murray.  It's owned by the state of Washington, not the US government, and is used by the Washington Air National Guard and Washington Army National Guard (which can be taken over by the US government) as well as the Washington State Guard (which can't).  I'm also ineligible to join these bodies.  I have no idea whether anyone lives there month-round, let alone year-round; I strongly doubt it's a residential military base of the kind this section is mainly about.  It's 40.58 miles from my house by the current distance calculator, which would put it between McChord and Grandstaff libraries in the above list; it's between Steilacoom and DuPont, which means I've walked past its fences.

My conclusion:  The extent of library service the US military offers to the people it stations in western Washington is pretty carefully calibrated to the number of such people in each place.  Library service is obviously taken seriously.  However, an isolated city of 210,000 should probably have more than two libraries, as the example of Tacoma, with about that population, suggests, and as the upcoming re-carpeting crisis will probably vividly demonstrate.

Mental hospitals

Currently, as I understand it, there are at least four ways a person in Washington can be involuntarily committed, which is what it takes to end up in the kind of mental hospital I mean in this part.   First, the person can be found, without the involvement of criminal law, to be a danger to himself (herself) or others, either via violence of some kind or via incapacity to function.  This is "civil commitment".  Second, the person can be charged with something, but there's serious doubt of his (or her) competence to stand trial.  This leads to "competency evaluation" and other mental health activities that aren't optional.  Third, the person can be found not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity.  Both of these are "forensic commitment".  Fourth, the person can have served out a sentence for a crime, but is still being detained for mental health-related reasons.  Washington's Department of Social and Health Services calls this "special commitment" (but also considers it a form of civil commitment, which strikes me as bizarre).  Anyway, although I've now for about fifty years experienced occasionally severe mental illness (depression), I don't think I've come all that close to qualifying for these places.

The state of Washington is under court pressure to do better by the people who do qualify, so this area of Washington's mental health infrastructure has been growing rapidly, and I'm cheating a bit by dinging a location that hasn't quite opened yet.  I'd have been pretty lost if not for a 28-page PDF ("Washington State Legal System Guide to Forensic Mental Health Services", dated 2016) and the link list on the left sides of pages under DSHS's Behavioral Health Administration.  I still don't believe that this section is anywhere near complete.

Mental hospital whose website says it has a library

  • Western State Hospital.  Has a capacity of over 800 beds.  It's the first institution in this part of this page to have a branch of the Washington State Library, and unlike most such institutions, it gives that library its very own Web page, such as the military libraries have.  It serves patients both by "campus mail" and an "on-site library open Monday-Friday".  It's in Lakewood on the way to Steilacoom, 35.98 miles from my house, and yes, dear Diary, I've walked past it too.

Mental hospitals whose websites don't say they have libraries

  • Olympic Heritage Behavioral Health.  Has a capacity for 137 beds; the first were filled on October 2, 2023, but they're opening gradually, so it won't reach its full capacity until spring.  That said, this used to be a private mental hospital, Cascade Behavioral Health, so it's not a new thing, and there should already have been a place in it where books could be found, ideally also read or discussed.  Maybe there is, but DSHS doesn't think it's worth mentioning online; but then, maybe there used to be, but DSHS found what it thinks a better use for the space.  The residents are civilly committed people, meant to make more room at Western (and Eastern) State Hospitals for forensically committed people.  Since civil commitment is often started by family members, there would seem to be an incentive for DSHS to throw those family members some bones by describing a few better aspects of life there.  The existing page is focused on reassuring neighbours that the residents won't escape.  The place is in northwest Tukwila, on the Burien border, 13.07 miles from my house.
  • Maple Lane.  According to the 2016 book listed above (page 17, numbered 13), this 30-bed cottage northwest of Centralia, 69.54 miles, was being used for competency evaluations.  According to DSHS today, it's about to start being used to house people found not guilty by reason of insanity, specifically to prepare them for release.  For so few people presumably staying only temporarily, anything more than a standing bookshelf or three (or a single shelf in each room) is probably overkill; but then, for all I know, competency evaluations are still going on in some nearby cottage, in which case the population is about to double.

Mental hospitals without public websites

  • In Washington, the state allows itself to hold "sexually violent predators" after their sentences end until it's satisfied that they no longer have whatever impulses drove them to their crimes.  The courts appear to doubt that Washington has this authority, so DSHS is trying to thread the needle partly by changing venues - that is, not changing court venues, but rather, not keeping all the hundreds of men being kept on McNeil Island stuck in that one place forever.  For obvious reasons, neither McNeil Island nor whatever other places DSHS has opened have websites Google could find.

I have no idea how well calibrated library service at mental hospitals in western Washington is to the number of people held in them, because I'm not convinced I've found all the mental hospitals.  (And I'm not just referring here to places holding "sexually violent predators".)  But also because I don't trust that the ones I have found would all have mentioned any libraries.  Hold that thought, dear Diary, or you'll completely misunderstand the next section.

Prisons

I have no experience of prison (or jail) either.  I was homeless for eight and a half years, and it's pretty obvious that many elected officials in King County desperately want to re-criminalise homelessness.  Also, the only occasions on which police have treated me as a suspect were both for trespassing.  But one was hand-cuffing, but not arrest, at a building that had been a tax office I'd worked at, and where I had permission to be; and the other was detention, but not arrest, at an office that was still a tax office, and where I thought I had permission to be.  More importantly, both were while I was still housed.

Anyway, you'll remember, dear Diary, that in western Washington, five levels of government have libraries - municipal, tribal, county, state, and federal.  Unlike the military bases, which are mostly or entirely federal, and the mental hospitals, which (as far as I know) are all state, all five levels have prisons here.  An important distinction here:  Crimes in Washington are classified into two main categories, felonies and misdemeanors.  Misdemeanors in general can be punished by up to one year in prison; felonies in general can be punished by more than a year in prison.  In Washington, convicted felons usually go to state prisons, occasionally to federal ones.  Convicted misdemeanants usually go to county or municipal "jail"s.  (I won't profess to know anything about how tribes' laws work, so am not sure where in this framework tribal jails fall.)  Jails also hold people awaiting trial, who may not have been convicted of anything yet.  But because people are thought of as spending relatively shorter times in jails, we as a society tend to allow worse conditions there than in prisons.  The digression below offers a fairly spectacular example of this.

The websites of western Washington prisons are highly imitative.  Obviously this is true of the state prisons, which all belong to the same state agency, but it's also true of the jails.  Here are some rules that many jails' websites explicitly lay down:

Prisoners may not enter their incarceration with books.  They can be given, or if they have money buy, books "directly from their publishers" (which some jails admit usually actually means from Amazon; the point is, the books have to be new, not used).  However, prisoners are limited to only a few books in their cells at a time, the numbers very comparable to typical limits on homeless people's library cards at the libraries that impose such limits, usually 3 to 5.  Also, they may not own or have access to any hard-cover books.  The limits don't count "religious books"; I infer, but don't know, that by this is meant not random inspirational books, but Bibles, or at the more broad-minded prisons maybe also Torahs, Korans...  Those may also be limited to 1 or 2, but don't count against the limit on other books; they do also have to be soft-covered.

The state's (9-page PDF) restrictions on publications are much less onerous than the jails'.  Regular publications kept in an inmate's cell are limited to a space 18" x 12" x 10".  (I pulled the top five mass market paperbacks off a stack in my house and found them 7" x 5" x 5".  So this is clearly a better deal.)  There's a separate, smaller, space allotment for religious items, including but not limited to books.  Also, I was unable to find any exclusion of hardcover books (despite looking in a bunch of places both directly and through site-specific Google searches), and non-profits approved by the state can send used books.  Because prisoners normally arrive at state prisons from local jails, what to bring on arrival isn't as much of a focus.

Prisons are legally required to provide certain inmates - apparently, ones acting as their own lawyers - with legal references.  A few jails still page books from the county law libraries when necessary, but nowadays the vast majority instead offer terminals equipped with legal references.  These terminals are referred to as the jail's "law library", but I didn't take them as evidence of a more general library.  Near as I can tell, state prisons still use books, the larger ones having their own physical law libraries.

Prisons whose websites say they have libraries

Libraries at prisons have more things in common.  Seven of the eleven county or municipal jails whose websites say that they have libraries, also the one federal prison that says so, say it in one specific place.  This is in PDF versions of "inmate manual"s (the title varies, but below, I call them all inmate manuals), books inmates are expected to read and live by, and are penalised for damaging.

The state prisons famously have "branches" of the Washington State Library, and do mention those.  Except the ones that don't have them, which, it turns out, are about half of those in western Washington.  People in minimum security prisons are restricted to getting books by inter-library loan through the Washington State Library's catalogue.  I link to the available-online federal and local inmate manuals below, so here's a link to the state inmate manual, 81-page PDF, library reference on page 47.  It's much more lawyerly- and much less practically-oriented than the jail manuals; for a notable example, it doesn't include any of the state's actual restrictions on books.

Most references to prison or jail libraries don't go into detail about how they work, but two do, and it's radically different from what most of us understand by "library".  The Federal Detention Center SeaTac and the Island County Jail both explain that what they really have are book carts that are wheeled by staff from cell to cell.  Not a place outside the cells where even minimum security inmates can sit and read, let alone discuss, books.  Because prisons appear to me to be so imitative, I find it entirely plausible that this is how it works at every one of these prisons, but because the Washington State Library's Institutional Library Services home page emphasises the word "place" a lot, the Washington State Library branches are where I'd look for exceptions first.

Finally, a few of the libraries mentioned below do come up in random parts of the websites.  This suggests to me that "inmate library" or "jail library" is a common term, and (again because of imitation) probably most or all of the prisons listed further below whose websites don't happen to mention libraries actually do have them anyway, for whatever those carts are worth.

  • Federal Detention Center SeaTac, in southern SeaTac south of the airport, 17.55 miles from my house.  Inmate manual, 71-page PDF, see page 42.  This prison holds primarily inmates involved in trials in Seattle, 787 as of evening, October 19.
  • Monroe Correctional Complex (state), in southwestern Monroe, 19.52 miles.  Washington State Library branches in the Twin Rivers Unit, with 800 capacity (per English Wikipedia), and the Washington State Reformatory, with 720.  Inter-library loan for the Minimum Security Unit, with 470.  These numbers and two more below add up to more than the prison's stated total capacity of 2400.  At that capacity, MCC would be the third biggest prison in Washington; at the total of its units' Wikipedia sizes, 2590, it would be the biggest.
  • Snohomish County Jail, in downtown Everett, 21.63 miles.  Comforts future inmates reading that they mayn't bring books by saying "inmates may use the inmate library."  Did not report its average daily population for 2022 to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, whose 2022 data (link is directly to a spreadsheet) I'm using below.  (I also used that spreadsheet to identify the municipal and tribal jails, about which I hadn't previously heard.)
  • Washington Corrections Center for Women, just west of Gig Harbor, 26.56 miles.  Washington State Library branch.  738 capacity.
  • Marysville Municipal Jail, southwest Marysville, 27.03 miles.  Inmate manual, not a PDF, mentions "Jail Library".  Average daily population, 2022, was 22.
  • Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women (state), a few miles northwest of unincorporated Belfair, Mason County, 28.13 miles.  Minimum security prison with inter-library loan available from Washington State Library.  321 capacity.
  • Pierce County Jail, downtown Tacoma, 29.65 miles.  A 2016 Request For Proposals, 232-page PDF, contains a 2015 organisation chart for the jail in Appendix D, unnumbered page 216, which identifies someone as responsible for the "Inmate Library".  That person isn't findable through Pierce County's website now, but their title, "Program Coordinator", is still in charge of other programs, so maybe also still the inmate library.  Average daily population, 2022, was 748.
  • Jefferson County Jail, unincorporated Port Hadlock, 31.51 miles.  Jail policy manual, 584-page PDF; library discussed pp. 547-548.  Average daily population, 2022, was 22.
  • Island County Jail, Coupeville, 40.86 miles.  Inmate manual, 31-page PDF; library described p. 13.  Average daily population, 2022, was 42.
  • Mason County Jail, downtown Shelton, 48.29 miles.  Inmate manual, 19-page PDF; library mentioned p. 11.  Average daily population, 2022, was 81.
  • Washington Corrections Center, northwest of Shelton, 50.01 miles.  Branch of Washington State Library.  Capacity 1,268.
  • Clallam County Corrections Facility, downtown Port Angeles, 59.62 miles.  Inmate manual, 49-page PDF; see pp. 21-22.  Average daily population, 2022, was 94.
  • Cedar Creek Corrections Center (state), unincorporated Littlerock, Thurston County, 66.77 miles.  Minimum security prison with inter-library loan available from Washington State Library.  Capacity 480.
  • Whatcom County Jail, downtown Bellingham, 74.79 miles.  2020 Request For Proposals, 19-page PDF; see p. 11.  Average daily population, 2022, was 302.
  • Olympic Corrections Center (state), quite a few miles east of unincorporated Oil City, Jefferson County, 84.24 miles.  Minimum security prison with inter-library loan available from Washington State Library.  Capacity 272.
  • Stafford Creek Corrections Center (state), south across Grays Harbor from Hoquiam, 90.85 miles.  Branch of the Washington State Library.  Capacity 1,936.
  • Clallam Bay Corrections Center (state), unincorporated Clallam Bay, Clallam County, 97.88 miles.  Branch of the Washington State Library.  Capacity 858.
  • Skamania County Jail, Stevenson, 138.43 miles.  Inmate manual, 42-page PDF, see p. 27.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Clark County Jail, downtown Vancouver, 142.23 miles.  Inmate manual, 52-page PDF, p. 37 (numbered 28) mentions the library.  Average daily population, 2022, was 440.

Two places you might have thought to see listed there, dear Diary, are no longer operating as prisons:  Olympia Municipal Jail and Larch Corrections Center.

Prisons whose websites don't say they have libraries

  • King County Correctional Facility, downtown Seattle, 4.97 miles from my house.  Average daily population, 2022, was 1,491, but that probably includes both this location and another listed further below.
  • Kirkland City Jail, near Totem Lake, 6.91 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 16.
  • Lynnwood Jail (municipal), downtown Lynnwood, 10.34 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Issaquah City Jail, downtown Issaquah, 16.89 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 46.
  • Kitsap County Jail, near the coast of Port Orchard, 17.40 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 313.
  • South Correctional Entity (the contiguous cities of Burien, Des Moines, SeaTac and Tukwila, plus Auburn and Renton), about a mile north of downtown Des Moines, 19.33 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Monroe Correctional Complex (state), in southwestern Monroe, 19.52 miles.   Special Offender Unit, capacity 400, and Intensive Management Unit, capacity over 200.
  • Maleng Regional Justice Center (King County), downtown Kent, 20.45 miles.  Average daily population for 2022 probably included with the other King County Jail listed above.
  • City of Kent Jail, southeast Kent, 21.67 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 67.
  • Northwest Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center (federal, rented private prison), east of downtown Tacoma, 29.74 miles.  Washington's attorney general says its capacity is 1,575.
  • Puyallup City Jail, downtown Puyallup, 33.51 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 32.
  • Enumclaw City Jail, downtown Enumclaw, 36.12 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 14.
  • Skagit County Jail, southern Mount Vernon, 49.68 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 247.
  • Thurston County Corrections Facility, half a mile southeast of the Capitol Mall, 52.44 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 244.
  • Nisqually Corrections Center (tribal), a mile south of the Nisqually village, 53.12 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • San Juan County holding facility, Friday Harbor, about 67 miles.  It sends all the inmates it knows will be longer term to the SCORE (South Correctional Entity) jail listed above.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Chehalis Tribal Corrections Department, Chehalis village, 71.47 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Lewis County Jail, downtown Chehalis (the city, this time), 76.33 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 168.
  • Grays Harbor County Jail, central Montesano, 76.57 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Aberdeen City Jail, central Aberdeen, 84.92 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Hoquiam City Jail, central Hoquiam (the G.M. Johnson map of Grays Harbor County lacks the symbols that other G.M. Johnson maps use to indicate things like city halls and libraries), 87.37 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 15.
  • Forks Correctional Facility (municipal), central Forks (yep, same map), 97.13 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Pacific County Jail, South Bend, 98.78 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Cowlitz County Jail, Longview near the bridges to Kelso, 109.44 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 186.
  • Wahkiakum County Jail, Cathlamet, 113.35 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 5.

Digression:  Visiting prisoners in autumn 2023, according to prisons' websites

Because I was looking at all the prisons' home pages, I saw a lot of visiting rules.  And then I was also looking for prisons' addresses, to work out how far away they are, and saw some visiting-specific pages due to that.  And let me tell you, dear Diary.  The prisons of western Washington have made great strides toward more perfect ways of visiting prisoners than hitherto, thanks to the wonderful gifts of technology.

(I should clarify.  Many prisons distinguish between "family" or "social" visits, which is what I'm talking about here, and "professional" visits, which are ones they're more or less legally required to allow:  with lawyers, doctors, and clergy, the kinds of people many parents want their children to marry.  Some have thrown hoops in the way of professional visits that strike me as inspired by COVID-19, and I think some have made no reference online to in-person professional visits, but anyway, those aren't my topic here.)

You see, dear Diary, during the COVID-19 pandemic into which you were born, it was important to keep people distanced, to reduce our human bodies' vulnerability to the virus.  Well, distance is precisely what in-person visitors to prisons don't want, so in-person visits weren't allowed, and in their wisdom most western Washington prisons implemented video visiting instead.  They didn't get into the streaming video industry themselves, oh no; rather they hired a panoply of amazing private companies that have only people's best interests at heart.

Now that the pandemic is officially over, there are five ways western Washington prisons are offering visits.  First are the fence-sitters, who've chosen video vendors and set up the systems, but have also re-opened their in-person visiting rooms.  As we know from the Bible, such pusillanimous behaviour will get its reward.

Second, many prisons remain stuck in the past, offering only in-person visits, as if anyone could tolerate not using the latest technology for such an important event as meeting with their nearest and dearest:

I bet people in those places still get married in person, too.

So none of the state or federal prisons have fully embraced the cutting edge of future prison technology, but a solid majority of the local jails have.

Now I have to explain some things about the video visiting business.  The way most of the jails have set it up, video visiting has two modalities.  One is visiting from the comfort of one's own home.  This has a number of genuine advantages.  While it doesn't get rid of the huge sets of rules that surround visits to prisoners (many of which, seems to me, amount to demanding middle-class behaviour of both prisoners and visitors), it does pretty much eliminate the competition for scarce physical space in the visiting room.  So in principle, prisoners could spend much of their time on visits, except that most jails wisely limit them to a certain number of visits per week or month.  It also eliminates the need to travel to the jail (albeit many jails are pretty close to home).

But what about people who actually prefer making a travel event out of their visits?  Or, hypothetically of course, are too poor to pay the costs - $7.50 for 30 minutes, $9 for 20, whatever.  (Of course no real people are that poor.  For example, dear Diary, I, right now, must be imaginary.)  Or lack video-capable Internet access?  Or just want to imagine being in the same building as their loved ones?  In their munificence, many jails have installed video visiting kiosks in their own lobbies; this is the other modality, the alternative to visiting from home.  Some of these kiosks also charge, but most offer free connections.  Of course, they're even scarcer than in-person visit windows, and really have to have limits again, but all these backward emotional needs, for novelty, money, or proximity, show that visitors who express them are behind the times and don't deserve any better.

So I have to make two lists of video-visit-only prisons. One shows prisons that do have working free terminals, and the other, the more heroically avant-garde prisons that don't.  First, those who still harbour doubts in their hearts:

Now, the ones that have fully committed to the new wave in prison technology:

  • Snohomish County Jail - Free terminal "temporarily closed until further notice".  That note was put up before September 24, 2022.
  • South Correctional Entity - "LOBBY VISITS SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE".  That note was put up before June 4, 2023.
  • Thurston County Jail - "The public visitation stations at the Thurston County Corrections Facility have been closed until further notice."  They've been that way since the Internet Archive's first capture of the page, on St Patrick's Day of this year.  To be fair, however, the quoted paragraph continues:  "[Company] has provided 60 minutes of free remote (from home) visitation per inmate, per week."  Which works fine for those who can do that, which is surely everyone contemporary enough to bother with.
  • Grays Harbor County Jail doesn't report that its free stations are closed, it doesn't mention any at all; it specifically indicates that payment is part of setting a visit up.  On its home page, it still claims COVID-19 prevents in-person visiting.
  • Hoquiam City Jail also doesn't mention any free stations.  However, it's the only prison in western Washington to have chosen the video company it did, despite that company's prominence in many non-prisoners' lives during COVID-19.  Since, unlike Grays Harbor County, it doesn't talk about money, perhaps it's paying the bills itself.

One prison remains, that has done better than any of these.  We know from Buddhism that perfection lies in nullity.  Well, according to the Pierce County Jail, no visiting, be it video or in-person, is allowed.  Because of COVID-19, which is apparently much fiercer these days in Pierce, Grays Harbor and Pacific counties than in the rest of the area, Pierce County Jail has evidently barred all visits since April 17, 2020.  So surely, with all visits to prisoners banned for three and a half years, Pierce County has fully attained nirvana, don't you think, dear Diary?

Prisons without public websites

  • Puyallup Tribal Jail, Tacoma near the Emerald Queen Casino, 30.56 miles.  (I got all these prisons' addresses from Google.)  Average daily population, 2022, was 32.
  • Northwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, Fort Lewis near DuPont, 34.26 miles.  This is where soldiers, airmen, sailors, etc. who went absent without leave might be sent.  A dubious site claims its capacity is 219.
  • Neah Bay Public Safety Detention Center (Makah Tribe), west around Neah Bay from the museum, 116.52 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.

I think it's very probable that inmate libraries are widespread.  The only reason I can think of for the posting of inmate manuals online is deterrent.  They aren't fun to read at all.  So mentioning libraries in them would defeat the rhetorical purpose, unless those libraries actually existed.  And basically, I found libraries in every single inmate manual I found online (even the weird state of Washington one), so I'm very skeptical indeed that the jails that haven't put their manuals online are any different.

I trust, dear Diary, that you're immensely comforted by the fact that we have a lot more military people in western Washington than psychiatrists, and a lot more prisons than mental hospitals.  Doesn't that encourage you to sleep well at night?

Anyway, until people come up with a whole new category of institution that limits physical movement, I think I'm about done.  Saying that, I thought "Hmm, better check", and found the English Wikipedia category "Total institutions".  I considered at the last minute adding monasteries, but too many of the monasteries in Washington seem to encourage visitors, and I'm not convinced any use force to return errant residents.  That said, none of my sources list any monastic libraries, and there turn out to be too many monasteries here for that to be right, so I'll look again when I get to private libraries.  More concretely but more distantly, if I do this again, I certainly hope to have a better grasp of mental hospitals by then.

In the meantime, part II of this page, this year, will focus on institutions for "minors", which are those people aged 17 or fewer years who aren't yet "adults".  It's a lot more work than this part has been, so I won't complete part II, and with it this page, for a while yet, and I'll probably finish something else first.  Happy days and nights until I write in you again, dear Diary!


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Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Public Library Hours, Autumn 2023, part V: South of Seattle

Dear Diary,

This part of this page concerns eight public libraries in five counties - Clark, Cowlitz, Grays Harbor, Skamania and Wahkiakum.  These libraries have twenty buildings in western Washington.  Timberland Regional Library has eight branches in Grays Harbor County, but these are all of the public libraries in the other four counties.  I've previously covered fully only one library in this part, with one building, in Clark County, but have also come very close to fully covering the only library in Grays Harbor County that this part deals with.

Contents of this part:

Obviously, the library I've previously covered is Camas Public Library, and the one I came close with is Ocean Shores Public Library.

Most of these libraries make it pretty clear that they won't lend anything to Seattle residents except through inter-library loan, and the single-location libraries also won't lend to most residents of counties near Seattle, either.  Considering they're all at least 100 miles from my house, I can hardly blame them.

Previous parts of pages relevant to this part, for the six libraries not previously fully covered:

Additional previous page and parts of page relevant to this part, for the two libraries previously fully or almost fully covered:

All the single-location libraries in this part keep their hours on their front pages.  Several are poorly documented at the Internet Archive, with the result that I had to go back to early 2019 for the pre-pandemic hours or to early 2023 for the autumn 2022 hours I wanted.  Three single-location libraries - Cathlamet, Kalama and Camas - have been at their full pre-pandemic schedules, to the extent that I could check, both in early and late 2022 and at present.  Elsewhere, Kelso has changed its hours in the past year, in order to trade evening for morning ones, FVRL has made two minor changes, and Castle Rock, Ocean Shores and Longview haven't changed anything.

Castle Rock Public Library

The Castle Rock Public Library was, in January 2019, open 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and 10 A.M. to 3 P.M. Wednesdays and Saturdays, for a total of 38 hours per week.  On January 20, 2022 its website said it was still closed due to COVID-19; it had re-opened according to the website of  May 28, 2022, but there was no schedule on the page.  Given the Internet Archive's infrequent captures, the first re-opened schedule available is from January 20, 2023.  Unsurprisingly, that's the same schedule as today:  It's open 1 P.M. to 5 P.M. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, for a total of 16 hours per week.  So it's open 8 morning hours (versus 21 back then), 6 evening (versus 9), and 2 weekend (versus 8).

This is ostensibly a municipal library, and Castle Rock is small, 2,446 people as of the last census.  I went into some detail about the library's travails in part III of "Six Months Later", and got something important wrong.  Since then Eric Johnson of KOMO has written another pæan to the volunteer librarian, Vicki Selander.  This is especially helpful because the pæan I linked to in April 2022 is now definitely paywalled.

Here's the thing.  Public libraries' boards of trustees are appointed, not elected, at least in Cowlitz, King and Skagit counties, and probably everywhere in Washington.  So there aren't all that many library-related elections in the average county in the average year.  However, I've gone through all the archived elections at the Cowlitz County auditor's site, from 1998 through the present, and there have been 28 library-related elections in Cowlitz County in that time.  Of those, 25 concerned Castle Rock Public Library.

I said in part I of this page that public libraries in Washington either are municipal, funded through a municipality's general fund, or are district, funded by a property tax district of their own.  Seattle Public Library is currently both.  Castle Rock Public Library has since 2002 been neither.  It's been a municipal library of a really small municipality, but its funding has been increasingly reliant on its own special-purpose one-time property tax levy on that municipality.  Which Castle Rock voters consistently passed, year after year - 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 when they switched from general to primary elections, 2010 - and then in 2011 for the first time they didn't pass it, not by voting it down but by not voting it up enough, given Washington's supermajority vote requirement for such levies.  So in a special election in 2012 the library tried again and it passed, after which it passed again in the primaries of 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017.  Then, near as I can tell, someone got greedy, putting another special-purpose one-time property tax levy onto the general election ballot.  It passed, and after that, the levy passed in the primary of 2018, but then failed (again by not getting 60%) four consecutive times:  primary 2019, general 2019, primary 2020, general 2020.  Near as I can tell, after that last vote is when the librarian "retired" and became a volunteer.  In the primary of 2021, a vote for a reduced levy, 60% of the previous amount, passed.  But they came back again in the 2021 general, and not only did that fail but so did both votes in 2022.

So, I mean, yes, it's impressive that this one woman has been heroically keeping the library going all this time, but isn't it obvious that public libraries shouldn't be in this position in the first place?  Here's where I made a crucial mistake in April 2022.  I said they'd tried to turn the library from a municipal to a district library and lost (by getting 57% of the vote, of course).  Well, I now know what both a failed and a successful attempt to set up a rural partial county library district looks like in the Cowlitz County auditor's records, and those are the only two such things in the record from 1998 to 2023.  I was wrong, they hadn't tried to do that, but I don't have a clue why I was wrong; the obvious thing to do is to turn Castle Rock into a district library.  The goal should be to cut the levy, the cents per $1000 of property value, on Castle Rock proper, and an entire rural district too, down to a level that could actually pass, while still bringing in enough money to fund a significantly better library with a small but actually paid staff.  Oh, and not gamble the library's continued existence on voters' moods each year.  Oh, and reduce the un-libraried population of Cowlitz County.

Unsurprisingly, this existing library's website doesn't document its policies about library card eligibility or about patron conduct. I've found no libraries listing it as a reciprocal borrowing partner.

Ocean Shores Public Library

This library (which is much further west of Seattle than it is south of Seattle, but still is south) wasn't in the old library directory kept by the Washington State Library when I started in April 2022, but is in the current one.  Hence I didn't find out about it until I started consulting other sources besides that directory, and I first told you about it, dear Diary, in September 2022, four days before a visit from the Internet Archive.  Just for fun, I treated it more or less fully then.

On February 25, 2020, the Ocean Shores Public Library opened at 11 A.M. Tuesdays through Saturdays, and closed at 6 P.M. Tuesdays through Thursdays and at 5 P.M. Fridays and Saturdays, for a total of 33 hours per week.  On April 16, 2022, September 26, 2022, and today, it's been open 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesdays through Saturdays, and noon to 4 P.M. Sundays, for a total of 34 hours per week.  More precisely, it's had 16 morning hours both before and after, has gone from 9 to 6 evening hours, and from 8 to 12 weekend hours.  This pattern - trading evening for weekend hours without increasing morning hours - is still unique among western Washington public libraries.

OSPL did a general revision of their policies in 2021.  As to library cards, they remain a go-it-alone library, with no reciprocal borrowing agreements mentioned at the site (here, here, or here, this last a 3-page PDF) or by any other library in Washington I've looked at.  They appear to do neither any one card system nor unilateral card issuance.  They require proof of residence for a resident (free) card, but accept driver licenses and government issued photo ID, so the issue for homeless people is what address the Grays Harbor office of the Department of Licensing would put on their cards.  On the ID I got while homeless in King County, the clerk put a shelter's address even though I'd pointed out that I had no dealings with that shelter, and had provided the address at which I actually slept at the time.  There's a long list of shelters in Grays Harbor County at a dubious site, and they're all in Aberdeen.  So I think it's unlikely that a homeless person could get a free library card in Ocean Shores.

OSPL's Patron Code of Conduct, supposedly last modified 2021, now includes a bunch of rules I didn't see in September 2022; that may have to do with the weird computer format with which they were then presented.  They're distributed among three lists, only one of which I saw then, and that "Illegal Behavior" list still doesn't include any of the rules I track.  However, "Unsafe or Disruptive Behavior" includes "Bodily hygiene so offensive as to interfere with others’ use and enjoyment of the library".  And "Inappropriate Use" includes "Use of library facilities for purposes inconsistent with library use, such as sleeping, bathing, shaving, washing hair or clothing" and "Leaving personal belongings unattended or with library staff".

Kelso Public Library

Kelso is the smaller, eastern, of two cities on the Cowlitz River just north of its junction with the Columbia River.  It's been the Cowlitz County seat for just over a century.   On January 10, 2019 its public library had the longest hours in Cowlitz County:  it was open 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. Mondays through Fridays, and 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Saturdays, for a total of 58 hours per week.  I doubt it's had the longest hours since re-opening began, and certainly not as of May 24, 2022, when it was open 27 hours per week (10 A.M. to 4 P.M. Wednesdays, noon to 7 P.M. Thursdays through Saturdays), nor October 7, 2022, when it was open 35 hours per week (10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, noon to 7 P.M. Thursdays through Saturdays).  Or now, when the hours are 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesdays through Saturdays except Thursdays noon to 7 P.M, again for a total of 35 hours per week.  Comparing now to January 2019, it's keeping 18 morning hours (versus 25 then), 8 evening hours (versus 20), and 9 weekend hours (versus 13).

Kelso Public Library's how to get a library card page now lists both of the library's reciprocal borrowing agreements, whereas in April 2022 it listed the one with Longview Public Library across the river but not the one with Fort Vancouver Regional Library somewhat further away.  It says "Mail" is adequate proof of residency, but the Library Card and Circulation Policy (3-page PDF signed March 2023) says "a piece of officially printed mail", whatever that means.  (Most of my more "official" mail comes in window envelopes.  Is it different in Kelso?)  Voter's registration cards are also accepted, and since the Cowlitz County auditor's office is half a mile from the library, registering to vote shouldn't be too hard.  I think a local homeless person who's willing and able to deal with bureaucracy, and can afford ID, shouldn't have much trouble getting a Kelso Public Library card, at least in theory.  But it's probably pretty difficult for residents of Seattle or neighbouring counties, homeless or housed.

Kelso Public Library's Library Use Policy (4-page PDF last modified this past March) surprises me.  Its first list, as in Ocean Shores, is dominated by illegal behaviours, but also includes "Leaving personal property unattended.  Items left unattended will be removed."  Imagine if leaving one's property unattended were made illegal.  Nobody could ever leave their house without breaking the law.  All farmers would have to be arrested.  Huh.  Anyway, lists of lesser offenses include "Sleeping" (with an exception for attended children) and "Personal hygiene, odor, excessive perfumes, or scent that constitutes a nuisance to others or poses a health risk."  And a really unusual one that some people like to associate with the homeless, although it's actually a pretty housed-specific problem:  "Introducing bed bugs or other pests via returned materials or personal belongings."

The enforcement policy distinguishes between "less egregious" misbehaviour such as noise and "more egregious" misbehaviour such as fighting; that makes the classification of unattended property as a criminal offense more worrisome.  There's a long, separate "reinstatement" policy, which I think is probably actually a good thing, but it includes a whole paragraph devoted specifically to the pest infestation rule.

Longview Public Library

Longview is, of course, as suggested above, the city on the western side of the Cowlitz River from Kelso.  It's three times as populous as Kelso, it's the biggest city in the county, and most of the reciprocal borrowing agreements in southwest Washington that aren't with Fort Vancouver Regional Library are instead with the Longview Public Library.

On February 21, 2020, LPL was open 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. Mondays through Wednesdays, and 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Thursdays through Saturdays, for a total of 51 hours per week.  On April 7, 2022, it was open 40 hours per week (10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, noon to 4 P.M. Fridays and Saturdays).  On October 12, 2022, and today, it's opened at 9 A.M. Mondays through Saturdays, and closed at 7 P.M. Mondays and Tuesdays, 6 P.M. Wednesdays and Thursdays, and 5 P.M. Fridays and Saturdays, for a total of 54 hours per week.  In more detail, it's open 30 morning hours now (versus 25 pre-pandemic), 14 evening (versus 17), and 10 weekend (versus 9).

LPL's Library Card page continues to ignore reciprocal borrowing agreements except Kelso's.  But its Circulation Policy, 4-page PDF last modified earlier this year, lists its agreements with Fort Vancouver Regional Library and Timberland Regional Library as well.  Neither page lists the agreement Cathlamet Public Library asserts, and library director Jacob Cole assures me by e-mail that LPL doesn't currently have any agreement with Cathlamet.  Its version of mail as proof of residency is significantly tighter than usual:  "official mail postmarked within the last month".  Also, although it says the list of proofs of residency given isn't complete, it doesn't currently include voter registration cards.  It may, perhaps, be harder for a homeless person to get a library card in Longview than in Kelso, but I wrote to ask, and Jacob Cole answered that without address verification, a homeless person (or, I suspect, any person) is limited to checking out five physical items, but with that piece of recent official mail, they can move up to full privileges.

LPL's Patron Code of Conduct, which is a PHP page so has no last-modified date, begins with a table showing four categories of offense.  The first may result in a day's expulsion; it includes "Unattended items", "Sleeping (or the appearance of) that impedes others from using Library spaces or resources", "Body odor or lack of hygiene that unreasonably interferes with others' ability to use the Library and staff's ability to serve", and "Using the restrooms or other library facilities for bathing, shampooing or laundry".  The fourth may result in up to two years' expulsion; it includes "Trespassing by being in public spaces of the Library outside of Library operating hours", which I interpret as including a camping ban, although that may not be the intent.  (There definitely isn't a more explicit camping ban.)  There's no separate enforcement section, just the one built into the categories. Cowlitz County reported 328 homeless people in 2020, and I'd bet more than half of them were in Longview and/or Kelso.

Cathlamet Public Library

The Cathlamet Public Library, the only public library in Wahkiakum County, which is the least populous county in western Washington, has been open just fifteen hours per week, Tuesdays through Saturdays, 2 P.M. to 5 P.M. Those were their hours on January 17, 2019, on March 16, 2022, on January 20, 2023, and on October 14, 2023.

Cathlamet Public Library only offers free cards to town residents, but the annual fee for paid cards is cheap enough, $15 per year for adults, that a hypothetical homeless person who lived in the county but not in Cathlamet might well be able to pay it.  The card page lists three "Reciprocal Borrowing Agreements", but one isn't much like the other two.  The one with Longview Public Library (not confirmed by the latter, as noted above) involves "Borrower slips" but is open to all "Cathlamet Library customers", while the ones with Timberland Regional Library (also not confirmed) and Fort Vancouver Regional Library (confirmed) don't need slips but are open only to residents of the town.  I suspect this paragraph, two-thirds outdated or worse, is kept because it reminds the library director of happier days, not because it's useful to anyone.  The circulation policy is only about actual circulation, not card eligibility, so I don't know what hoops that hypothetical homeless applicant might have to jump through.

As this might suggest, Wahkiakum County reported 10 or fewer homeless people in 2020. In keeping with which, Cathlamet Public Library's Behavior Rules include only four specific offenses, none of which are on my list.

Fort Vancouver Regional Library

Fort Vancouver Regional Library is the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room of southwestern Washington libraries.  It has the only libraries open Sundays in the region.  It's the only reciprocal borrowing partner of several of the smaller libraries in the region, and the only one that's made agreements with more distant libraries.  It's also, of course, the only one with multiple branches.  So I was worried about how I'd present its hours before the pandemic, at two points in 2022, and at present.  I needn't have been.

FVRL has a location that doesn't offer public restrooms.  North Bonneville Community Library is in the lobby of North Bonneville City Hall; the library room is usually only accessible with a library card, but is irrelevant to restroom availability in that public building.  Not counting that, and not counting the two libraries in Klickitat County, on February 24, 2020 FVRL had eleven branches with restrooms in western Washington, but made do with only nine schedules for them.  In further schedule economy, it went down to just four schedules early in 2022, and today has eight.  It's massively expanded the hours of one of its branches, and has opened another to the general public for the first time, so it now has twelve branches with restrooms in western Washington.  (For the complexities of the lowest-hours branches I had to ask the help of FVRL's PR person, Tak Kendrick, who got back to me today.)

FVRL is a non-BiblioCommons library that keeps a single page collecting its locations' hours.  However, during 2022, that page omitted the hours (examples from 2/21 and 7/2).  Fortunately, the Internet Archive kept three complete sets of branch pages with hours, at 1/21, 2/21 and 7/2, as well as an incomplete set at 9/26 made up on 12/4.  Each branch name below is linked to the Internet Archive's 2022 page for the branch's home page so your readers, dear Diary, can check for themselves (and to simplify the link structure).

It's probably simplest to go branch by branch rather than schedule by schedule or date by date.  Let's start, dear Diary!

  • Before the pandemic, the Vancouver branch was open 68 hours per week, 9 A.M. to 8 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Fridays through Sundays.  On February 21, 2022, it was open 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. every day, for a total of 56 hours per week.  On July 2, 2022 and today, it's open 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Fridays through Mondays, and 9 A.M. to 7 P.M. Tuesdays through Thursdays, for a total of 62 hours per week.
  • The Cascade Park branch was open in early 2020 9 A.M. to 8 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays and 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. Fridays and Saturdays, for a total of 62 hours per week. On February 21, 2022, it was open 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays through Saturdays, for a total of 48 hours per week. On July 2, 2022 and today, it's back to its pre-pandemic hours.
  • The Battle Ground and Three Creeks branches were both, before the pandemic, open 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays and 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Fridays and Saturdays, for a total of 56 hours per week. On February 21, 2022, they were open the same schedule as Cascade Park. On July 2, 2022 and today, they're open 9 A.M. to 7 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays and 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Fridays and Saturdays, again for a total of 56 hours per week.
  • The Vancouver Mall branch was open in February 2020 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Thursdays and Fridays, and 1 P.M. to 6 P.M. Sundays, for a total of 57 hours per week. On February 21 and July 2, 2022, it was open 11 A.M. to 7 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. Fridays and Sundays, and 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Saturdays, adding up to 54 hours per week. Today, it opens at 11 A.M. every day, closing at 7 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays and 6 P.M. Fridays through Sundays, for a total of 53 hours per week.
  • The Ridgefield branch, before the pandemic, was open 42 hours per week, 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. Tuesdays and to 6 P.M. Wednesdays through Saturdays. On February 21, 2022 it had the same schedule as Cascade Park. On July 2, 2022 and today it opens at 10 A.M. Mondays through Saturdays, closing at 6 P.M. except Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7 P.M, for a total of 50 hours per week.
  • The Washougal branch was open the same schedule as the Ridgefield one (42 hours per week) in February 2020. On February 21, 2022 it had the same schedule as Cascade Park, and it has kept that schedule since (or at least on July 2, 2022 and today), 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays through Saturdays, totalling 48 hours per week.
  • The La Center branch had a different version of the Ridgefield / Washougal schedule before the pandemic, but with the same total of 42 hours per week; it was closed Saturdays and Sundays and open until 8 P.M. Thursdays. It too has kept the February 21, 2022 schedule, 10 to 6 M-Sat, 48 hours, since then.
  • The Woodland branch had the same schedule as La Center except that its late day was Wednesdays. Again, it's kept the 48-hour schedule since at least February 21, 2022.
  • The Stevenson branch used to have a longer schedule than Ridgefield or these others, opening at 9 A.M. Mondays through Saturdays, closing at 5 P.M. most of those days but at 8 P.M. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, for a total of 54 hours per week. However, since at least February 21, 2022, it's had the Monday through Saturday 48-hour 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. schedule.
  • The Yacolt branch was open only with an FVRL card before the pandemic, and also on February 21, 2022.  But on July 2, 2022 it was open, that is, staffed, so people without cards can enter, 25 hours per week, and it remains so:  9 A.M. to 1 P.M. Mondays, 1:30 to 5:30 P.M. Tuesdays, and 9 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. Thursdays and Fridays.
  • Yale Valley branch was the subject of at least two of the Cowlitz County library elections mentioned above that weren't about the Castle Rock Public Library. The branch is the physical result of a rural library district that contracts with FVRL. That district may have been the district that was defeated in 2000, was certainly the district that passed in 2002, and it was soundly defeated - getting just 48% of the vote - on a property tax levy in 2010. I'm sure that has nothing at all to do with the branch having the shortest staffed hours in the FVRL system.  (To be fair, it's been open generous hours with a library card as a pass all along.)  It was open 1 1/2 hours per week, Wednesdays 2:30 to 4 P.M., in February 2020 (and no, that wasn't a fluke; the hours were the same in June 2017).  However, on February 21, 2022, it was open 9 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. Tuesdays and Saturdays, and 9 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. Thursdays. On July 2, 2022, and today, it's open Mondays 2 to 5:30 P.M., Tuesdays 9 A.M. to 12:30 P.M., and Thursdays 9:30 A.M. to 6 P.M. Both of these more recent schedules total 15 1/2 hours.
  • The North Bonneville branch, for what it's worth, was open (in the sense of staffed) from 1 P.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesdays through Thursdays before the pandemic.  (This library too has a setup by which library cards can open things.)  On February 21 and July 2 of 2022, it was open from 2 P.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesdays and Thursdays.  But sometime around the end of 2022, the schedule changed to 2 P.M. to 5 P.M. Wednesdays and Fridays.  As noted above, this branch's hours control no restrooms' hours, so I'm not including it in the totals below.

So in total, FVRL has pulled ahead of its pre-pandemic hours, and has done so without sacrificing very many evening hours.  Its total weekly hours have risen from 522.5 pre-pandemic to 571.5 now.  Its morning hours, from 254.5 to 288.5; evening, from 161 to 155.5; and weekend, 107 to 127.5.

In April 2022, as you, dear Diary, know, I wrote:  "I'm pretty sure FVRL has encountered homeless people, and it looks like it offers them full service cards."  I wrote that based on the get an account page and that page's proof of address appendage.  But then, while writing this page, I finally checked FVRL's Library Privileges policy, which emphasises "current physical address".  Here too Tak Kendrick came to my rescue, telling me to believe the pages, not the (non-PDF) policy.

Clark County found 916 people homeless in its 2020 point-in-time count, Skamania County 43.  FVRL's Rules of Conduct, last modified 2018, reflects those numbers. It begins with a list of things to do or not do "When using the library".  This includes:  "All belongings/bags brought into the library must be carried in a single trip, kept contained, out of the way of others and within your reach at all times. Do not leave belongings unattended. The library is not responsible for items that are lost, stolen or damaged in the library or on library grounds." as well as "Maintain order and safe entry/exit by not loitering in high traffic areas, doorways, aisles and stairways, and keep personal items from interfering with others' access to the library."

Following that comes a numbered list, "The following behaviors are prohibited at the library".  These include "14. Discomforting others due to offensive body odor, per RCW 27.12.290."; "15. Improper use of library grounds (camping, skateboarding, overnight parking, etc.); or library restrooms (bathing, shaving, loitering, washing clothes, etc.)."; and "16. Monopolizing library spaces (sleeping, excessive belongings, congregating, etc.) or otherwise interfering with others' access to the library."  Those numbers are high enough that violators get "up to two warnings" before being "excluded for up to one year".  (Violators of rules 1 to 4 can be expelled immediately and can be excluded for up to life.  However, rule 4 is "Refusing to comply with the direction of a library staff member." so nobody is entirely off the hook.)

Kalama Public Library

Kalama is on the Columbia, a few miles south of Longview and Kelso.  It isn't much bigger than Castle Rock considerably further north, but its budget seems to be in much better shape, given that it doesn't rely on special library levies.

The Kalama Public Library has kept the same hours each time I've looked - May 4, 2019; May 19, 2022; October 1, 2022; or today. Noon to 5 P.M. Mondays through Fridays and 9 A.M. to 2 P.M. Saturdays, for a total of 30 hours per week.

The Get a Library Card page still doesn't mention the reciprocal borrowing agreement Fort Vancouver Regional Library says it has.  It calls for "official mail with street address" as well as photo ID, so I'd bet against cards for local homeless people.  The library doesn't appear to have a more detailed eligibility policy online.

The Patron Code of Conduct is brief and includes none of the rules I track.

Camas Public Library

Camas is a suburb adjacent to Vancouver; its population is about two-thirds the size of Longview's.  When I fully covered the Camas Public Library in April 2022, I noted that homeless people were known to Camas.  The library is currently celebrating its centenary.

Camas Public Library had returned to its full pre-pandemic schedule by April 2022, and that schedule hasn't changed:  10 A.M. to 8 P.M. Mondays through Wednesdays, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Thursdays through Saturdays, for a total of 54 hours per week.

The reason I fully covered Camas Public Library in April 2022 (and in October 2022) is this paragraph from its Reciprocal Borrowing and Nonresident Use policy (1-page PDF):  "The Camas Public Library will provide library services free of charge to any person who lives within the boundaries of a political jurisdiction that provides tax-supported public library services."  Notice that this library across a river from Oregon doesn't limit this policy to Washington residents.  Its get a library card page doesn't mention this, but the online application it directs people to didn't blink when I gave it my actual Seattle ZIP code.  So Camas Public Library offers cards unilaterally; while it doesn't scorn reciprocal borrowing agreements, it doesn't list its own, either.  In Washington only Fort Vancouver Regional Library mentions an agreement with it; but, like FVRL, it's part of something called the Metropolitan Interlibrary Exchange, which appears not to have a home page, but includes libraries of Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas and Hood River counties in Oregon.

I quoted Camas Public Library's Rules of Conduct (1-page PDF) in full back then, and it has a last-modified date of 2018, so I'm not surprised that it still doesn't include any of the rules I list.

Well, that's it, dear Diary.  I've now fully covered all the public libraries in western Washington in your pages.

That said, I've reluctantly realised that I can't write the conclusion to this page until I do the heaps of work necessary to get correct library coverage numbers.  So it'll be a while.  In the meantime, though, I've been working on a new, shorter, set of libraries, so expect to hear from me no later than next week with those, if nothing else.  Happy days and nights until then, dear Diary.

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