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King County Library staff outline summer programs, meals and seed library at Des Moines branches
Summary
Regional library manager Felicia Wilson and Eric Matthews of KCLS briefed the council on summer reading, meal service at Woodmont Library, multilingual story times and seed‑library programs serving Des Moines and Woodmont branches.
Felicia Wilson, regional library manager for the Soundview region, and Eric Matthews, library and information services manager, briefed the Des Moines City Council on programs at the Des Moines and Woodmont libraries, highlighting summer reading, meal service, multilingual story times and a seed library.
Wilson said staff have boosted programming and outreach at both branches and thanked library personnel for growing participation. "This is a diverse community and the libraries provide great services to all community members," she told council.
Matthews described the systemwide summer reading program (the countywide theme was "Curious Creatures") and said about 20,000 young readers countywide have signed up so far this year. Each registrant receives a welcome kit (bookmark, reading log, stickers, a coupon to Red Robin and a starter book provided by the KCLS Foundation) and finisher prizes and drawings beginning July 1.
Matthews also described a summer meal partnership at the Woodmont Library. "We've also got a summer meal program that's running Monday through Thursday at the Woodmont Library from 01:30 to 02:30. That's a partnership that we've had this year with the FEDJEWAY Public Schools system. They're bringing their FRED bus...and it's open for anybody in the community," he said, clarifying that the Federal Way program serves ages 0–17 and that participants need not be Federal Way School District students.
The libraries run multiple story‑time formats (including Vietnamese, sensory and STEAM story times), teen programming, robotics and STEM activities, garden‑club seed library distributions (KCLS gave away over 2,000 seed packets last year and is on pace to exceed that this year), and adult literacy and program partnerships with Seattle Public Library and Seattle Arts & Lectures.
Wilson and Matthews asked council to continue supporting library partnerships and thanked staff for local work at both branches. No formal council action was required.
