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Commission questions gate counts, cardholder purge and Belle Haven room use
Summary
Commissioners pressed staff on a February spike in gate counts, an apparent drop in resident cardholders due to system purges, and low reservation rates for Belle Haven facilities; staff said sensor fixes, account-expiration rules and reporting gaps explain much of the discrepancy and will provide follow-up data.
Commissioners on the Menlo Park Library Commission raised multiple data and reporting questions at the March 16 meeting after staff presented quarterly department statistics.
Staff said the main-library February gate count that rose to roughly 26,966 appeared to reflect a reporting error tied to gate sensors failing to communicate with the portal that aggregates counts; once the portal link was fixed, counts jumped because earlier months had been undercounted. Assistant Library and Community Services Director Nick Schengen told the Commission that the gates “weren’t talking with the portal that keeps the stats,” and staff will review counts to confirm whether a double-count or backlog occurred.
Commissioners also asked about a drop in recorded resident cardholders (from about 24–25,000 to roughly 15,000). Staff said the integrated library system periodically expires and purges inactive accounts after a multiyear period; the exact expiration and purge schedule will be provided on follow-up so commissioners can reconcile the change in totals.
On use of space at the Belle Haven Community Campus, staff described the conference room as reserved primarily for hyper-local nonprofit organizations and city uses, while larger programs typically use the flex classroom. The teen room at Belle Haven is heavily used after school (staff estimated peak attendance around 10–20 teens) but is not captured as a separately reservable room in the current reservation statistics; staff said hourly head counts and clearer reporting could be added to capture that usage.
Commissioners requested time-series charts in future reports to make trend comparisons easier; staff said the underlying data is part of the ELS integrated system but that shareable report extracts can be provided for visualization.
