Kelsey Balensifer-Following her passion for libraries

Kelsey Balensifer got her degree in journalism and first job in Washington DC.
That's when she met a friend on Twitter who led her to the Pacific Northwest and
eventually became her husband.

She was the event director at the Astoria-Warrenton Chamber of Commerce.
One event was planning the Great Columbia Crossing and all that goes with it including coordinating with ODOT, local hospitality, advertising and weather reports.

Her current passion is with the Friends of the Warrenton Community Library.

Subscribe to the Women of the Northwest podcast for inspiring stories and adventures.
Find me on my website: jan-johnson.com

Transcript

[00:04] Jan: Welcome to Women of the Northwest podcast, where I interview ordinary women leading extraordinary lives. I'm your host, Jan Johnson. In today's episode, we'll hear from Kelsey Balencifer, who started with a degree in journalism, spent a few years in DC, and fortuitously met her husband, who lived in the small town of Warrington through Twitter conversations. She is currently the president of Friends of the Warrenton Community Library in Oregon and formerly was the event director of the Astoria - Warrenton Chamber of Commerce. 

Here's some fun facts. Did you know that books can be so heavy that a building can't support them? Or that the Columbia Crossing was canceled in 2016 due to threats of tornadoes?

[00:58] Kelsey: Then City Manager Kirk Frisch came to us and said, hey, guess what. Your little library building in Hammond is unsafe. We're basically going to condemn it. 

[01:18] Jan: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Women in the Northwest. I'm Jan Johnson, your host. And with me today is Kelsey Balensifer. Welcome, Kelsey.

[01:26] Kelsey: Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

[01:29] Jan: You are presently working with Friends of the Library, correct, in Warrenton, Oregon. What brought you to that?

[01:38] Kelsey: Yeah, so I have been a passionate library user as long as I can remember. As a child, my mom used to take me to the library back in Ramsey County, Minnesota. They have a beautiful library system there. And I used to check out Garfield comic books. That was my favorite thing to get from the library. I don't know why a cat who hates Mondays and loves lasagna resonated with me, but that was what I remember. And I do also remember we had a little library at my church, and so I could check out books there. So I've always been an avid reader, an avid lover of libraries, big believer in that whole sharing culture of being able to access DVDs, books, audiobooks, any sort of resources as a community and not having to have that space individually in your house. When I moved out here to the Pacific Northwest, I initially got involved on the library board and joined that in Gosh, I believe it was 2016, was kind of looking for ways to expand my community involvement. And my husband suggested to me joining a city board or organization because he.

[02:54] Jan: Does a little bit of politics.

[02:55] Kelsey: He does a little bit of politics. But I didn't think that I had the aptitude for being on something like the planning commission or urban renewal or anything like that. But I saw that there was a library board, and I said, that is right up my alley. Yeah, I love libraries. Would love to be part of that. And so I joined the library board in 2016, like I said, and shortly after I joined the board, we didn't have a chair, so I took over his chair almost immediately.

[03:27] Jan: You know what? Isn't it interesting how when something when you definitely know which things you don't want to do and then all of a sudden something pops out and it's like I could see myself doing that and it just feels right.

[03:39] Kelsey: Yes, it was definitely the right fit for me and my community involvement. And yeah, it was shortly after I joined the board that then City Manager Kurt Frisch came to us and said, hey, guess what? Your little library building in Hammond is unsafe. We're basically going to condemn it. It can't hold the weight of the books. It was never designed to hold the weight of books. And the walls were bowing. The floor was having issues. It was great. A beautiful little old building, very nostalgic. It's got a lot of history, but it was not meant to be a library. And so at that point, we had to start a search for a new building.

[04:14] Jan: And who would have thought about the weight of the books?

[04:16] Kelsey: Yeah, really?

[04:18] Jan: That never would have occurred to me.

[04:20] Kelsey: Yeah, that raised floor up off the ground of that little building really just provided some challenges with having that space be a library. We started hunting for a new space, ended up in this current building in downtown Warrenton, which is a great spot right on the bus line at the heart of downtown with a parking lot with probably two or three times the amount of space the old building had. So it was a very exciting move for us. And just recently, over the last probably two years, we had a steering committee working on starting the Friends group and then trying to get the 501 C Three status. So I've been involved kind of on the library in two different fronts now at this point on the board and then also part of the friends group. Dave's uncle is our chair and he's a wonderful, again, library lover. And so, yeah, trying to bring the library forward and a lot of it feels like two steps forward, one step backward. There's been some hiccups and some challenges along the way, but I look at where we came from and how much we've accomplished since 2016 and it's very exciting. And we hope to continue offering library services and Warrenton to the whole community.

[05:34] Jan: What have been some of the bumps?

[05:36] Kelsey: Yeah, so initially the library was founded in the it operates under a local option levy. So a local tax levy that the voters have to approve, I think for probably 15 years or so. That levy was nine and a half cents per assessed property value. When we moved into this new space in downtown Warrenton, we actually pay rent. The school district owns this building, and so we needed to expand staffing and expand funding to be able to pay for this building. And so we increased the levy at that point to voters went for it, but that was a significant increase to kind of bring the library into the 21st century. We have a great Northwest library cooperative with Astoria and Seaside, so there's a lot of streamlining of systems and processes that went into place to make it easier for people to use all three libraries.

[06:31] Jan: Right.

[06:32] Kelsey: But yeah, definitely. Getting kicked out of our building right after I joined the board was not what I anticipated. And, yeah, we've had some staffing changes. We have one full time staff member and two part time staff members. And part of the reason why last fall, in November of 2022, we were going back to the voters with an increase to the levy was to be able to pay the staff members what they're worth. We know it's a difficult position to be a part time employee and not be making as much as you could make somewhere else. So we had one of our fantastic dynamic staff members leave and take another job. And I totally understood that she's got a family she's got to worry about and more power to her. I hope it's a good fit for her, but we miss her. But we've had some new staff members come in and be really energetic about the library and their role in the community, which has been really exciting. But, yeah, unfortunately, the voters last fall didn't pass the levy increase, so we find ourselves going back to the ballot this May. We decided not to ask for another increase. It will remain constant at the existing levy tax rate just because we know that asking for the increase was a difficult timing coming right off of COVID with the economy the way it is. But we wanted to be able to offer some more hours and additional funding and additional programs for our library. But we have to listen to the voters. We have to be realistic. And they said no. So we, as a board said, all right, let's dial things back and reevaluate. Yes. And so we're hoping that folks will continue supporting the library and continue ensuring that it operates in Warrenton, because that really is the difference. It's its sole source of funding. The library either has a levy and it exists, or it doesn't have a levy and it closes. Yeah.

[08:26] Jan: Which would be so sad. Yes.

[08:28] Kelsey: Agreed.

[08:29] Jan: So, like Astoria, if you're out of district, you have to pay. So you don't have anything like that?

[08:35] Kelsey: Well, we do. Anyone who lives in city limits of Astoria, Warrenton, or Seaside can get a free library card from their local library. If you live outside, if you live in county, there is a fee to get a library card. So a lot of the folks who have, like, a five digit house address, it means they're most likely in county, and so they do have to pay $70 a year to use the library system. Someday it might be kind of fun to talk about getting a library district for the county just across the river in Pacific County. They have a beautiful library district. So, yeah, we'll see where the future takes us. But right now we just have to get the levy passed this May and be able to continue operating the library.

[09:16] Jan: What are the funding sources have you looked at?

[09:19] Kelsey: Yeah, so I don't really know that. I'm an expert on the funding sources that are out there. I know our city manager, Esther Moberg, who was formerly the library director down in Seaside. She's got a lot of experience with libraries and funding sources. Unfortunately, with Warrenton's tax rate the way that it is, which was set by the state, the state established municipal tax rates for every municipality in Oregon, pretty much. And the city has no ability to increase its own tax rate. And so there isn't money in the general fund to fund a library. It just isn't possible. So the Friends group starting up was part of our hope to be able to offer more revenue for the library. For those who aren't familiar, a Friends group is a nonprofit that's associated with the library and the well being of the library, but has a separate funding mechanism. It does its own fundraising and then basically library staff or the board can come to the friends group and say, hey, we want to fund this program, or we want to add this resource to our library. It's going to cost this much. Will you fund that? And so having the friends group get up and running will allow us to provide some additional funding for the library.

[10:32] Jan: But if it's a nonprofit, as a nonprofit, then you can yeah, it'll be.

[10:37] Kelsey: Tax write off for folks who want to join the friends. And not many people want to make a donation directly to the City of Warrenton. That doesn't usually happen.

[10:46] Jan: Right.

[10:47] Kelsey: I will say, though, they're donating their.

[10:49] Jan: Taxes, that's probably enough.

[10:52] Kelsey: We did have an anonymous community member who donated a couple of months worth of rent to the city directly, which was pretty exciting and very generous. So there's clearly people out there who support the library and are passionate about the resources it offers to the community. But yeah, it's definitely a balance, knowing that the economy is what it is and that people are feeling the pinch in a lot of other areas with their utility bills, with their grocery store bills. So we know that the library offers a lot of resources and benefits, and we hope that people will see that that outweighs the cost.

[11:29] Jan: Your general population that comes in here, what do you have more of? Kids, adults, teenagers?

[11:34] Kelsey: We really see all ages. We've got some great kids programming. The story time is very popular. The Lego Club continues to be popular, where kids get to make their own Lego creation and then they get to display it for a week or so. So, yeah, we've got a lot of great kids programming, so we see a lot of little ones. A lot of families bring in grandparents or parents, aunts and uncles bringing in little ones. We also have some teen activities, so we've got an anime club and the teen advisory board so that young people who want to be more involved in their community can do that at the library. They can have a say in what kind of programs they want to see offered for their age group, what kind of materials they want to see added to the collection. The Friends group also sustains our Library After Dark program, which has been phenomenal. We have once a month, except for we take a little break during the summer, bring in a local author to share about their books, their writing process, their inspiration, lots of good dialogue, lots of questions from the audience members, and usually a passage or two that the author will read from their book. So that's been our kind of primary adult programming that we've started offering.

[12:44] Jan: Fun for the authors as well.

[12:45] Kelsey: Yes, you speak from personal experience, but yeah, I mean, we have a lot. Once I started asking, I realized we have a lot of fantastic authors in the area that were kind of flying under the radar and we love to celebrate all different genres fiction, nonfiction, poetry, whatever people out there are writing about it's a very diverse group of authors as well, and topics. So it's been really exciting and fun to be able to offer that to the community and really celebrate some of the local talent that we have here in Clatsop County.

[13:18] Jan: You know what? What might be fun is an open mic.

[13:21] Kelsey: Yeah. We have talked about what we want to do for future programming. Oftentimes it comes down to time and resources. Wish we could clone ourselves and our wonderful library staff members so that we could be everywhere at all times. But yeah, we've talked about do we want to bring some musicians in so that they can play some music for people? Do we want to do a poetry slam night? So there's a lot of options that are out there that other libraries do that are awesome and well received in their community. We just started a little seed library to be able to have a place where people can drop off some seeds if they have a plant that's growing in their backyard and they want to collect the seeds and bring them in. Friendship Gardens. Exactly. And I believe the Master Gardeners Association is hosting an event here at the library in April to kind of do a little plant giveaway and promote that seed library a little bit more. But yeah, there's so many things happening at the library I think people don't realize these days. It's so much more than books. It really is. And you don't have to be an avid reader to be a dedicated library user.

[14:29] Jan: Yeah, well, and now it's audiobooks, too, and it's a whole different thing.

[14:33] Kelsey: Yes. For anybody who's got an e-reader or who likes listening to audiobooks, the library card here in Warrenton gives you access to the Libby app, which is basically the full catalog of Oregon Digital Library Consortium items, which is amazing. It's amazing. And it's very similar to using a library card on a physical book. You put it on hold, you wait for the next person to be done reading it, and then you get it for a 21-day checkout period. But it saves you so much money. I mean, all of the subscription services out there for e-books and audiobooks, they're expensive. And so it's really cool to be able to use that free resource included with your library card.

[15:12] Jan: It is. Tell me a little bit about how you got to Oregon.

[15:17] Kelsey: Yeah, so I had a very circuitous route to get to the Pacific Northwest. I grew up in Minnesota. I think I alluded to that earlier with the Ramsey County Minnesota Library system. Loved Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes and probably 10,001 mosquitoes. So I decided that going to college was kind of my chance to experience a different part of the country. And so I ended up going to Biola University in Southern California and met some great people down there majored in journalism and really had a wonderful four years, but discovered I was very much not a Southern California person. It was weird to be singing about a white Christmas when it's 80 degrees and there's palm trees very much not the same. So it was a good place to spend four years. I was very active, spent a lot of time outside because the weather is always great.

[16:10] Jan: Right.

[16:10] Kelsey: But I missed having seasons and I did not enjoy the traffic. The urban sprawl in Los Angeles area is very real.

[16:18] Jan: Yes.

[16:19] Kelsey: And so I ended up spending one semester my junior year doing an off campus study program in Washington DC. With my major being in journalism. That was kind of the recommended place to go for a semester with the federal government and everything that's happening there as far as legislation, and just absolutely fell in love with the city. The row houses, the brick sidewalks.

[16:41] Jan: The museum is so different from yeah.

[16:44] Kelsey: The East Coast is very different from the West Coast, but yeah, I was in my early twenty s. The Metro could take you anywhere you wanted to go. So many restaurants, always something new to see or do. And so I moved back there after college because I just enjoyed my semester there so much that I decided that's where I wanted to be and to stay. Interestingly enough, I clearly did not stay there. I was there for a grand total of probably two years, and I ended up meeting my now husband on Twitter, which is not how I expected life to go. Neither of us were really looking for anything, but he ended up following me on Twitter and we started conversing back and forth and sending emails and talking on the phone and became Facebook friends and ended up that we were both kind of mutually interested. And I took my very first visit to Oregon, which, let me tell you, Oregon rolled out the red carpet. He took me down the historic highway 30 and we did all the waterfalls.

[17:47] Jan: And it wasn't stormy.

[17:48] Kelsey: No, it was beautiful summer, very green, just stunning.

[17:55] Jan: And he thought it might always be like this.

[17:57] Kelsey: Well, I figured it seemed like a pretty good place to live. And I had quite a few friends in DC who were not very supportive of my desire to move to the West Coast. They felt like I was throwing my life away, hampering my career, any number of things, and I just was pretty much undeterred. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. And as much as I appreciate good counsel from trustworthy people, there's also a lot of people out there that aren't worth listening to. And I just wasn't going to be dissuaded.

[18:33] Jan: And ended up when you're in DC, where it's your focus, your journalistic focus on politics at that time, it was, yeah. So this was probably not going to be the same once you moved out here.

[18:45] Kelsey: I knew moving out here was probably going to change the trajectory of my career. I thought about possibly applying at one of the radio stations or newspapers locally, but really ended up just freelancing for a bit. I was doing some social media management for some clients and then ended up getting a job at the Chamber of Commerce, which I highly recommend for anyone moving to a new area. You meet so many people right off the bat. Yeah. Going into event production and the previous event production extraordinaire, Alana Quila, she also had a background in journalism, so that was a click. Yeah. She was a friend early on after I moved to the area, and she said, hey, I'm taking a different job. You should apply for this job at the Chamber. It's event production. You'll enjoy it. It's fast paced, it'll keep you entertained. And really the only yeah, very entertained. Really the only experience I had had prior with event production was planning my own wedding. And that's so small scale compared to the events. The Chamber does 14,000 people at the Crab Festival, 200 some vendors. But Alana was right. Yeah. Bridge run. Yeah, that's another big one. It was a fast paced and exciting job and really threw me into the deep end in the community. I got to know so many people. Like I said, great job. Great group of people left that job in 2020. But I'm still really passionate about the work that the chamber does and the value to the community. So I ended up joining the board this year. So really a good group of employees.

[20:27] Jan: And another honor that you felt like you could do.

[20:31] Kelsey: Yeah, another board or community involvement that fit with my skill set. So, yeah, it's a really good organization. It really amplifies a lot of what's happening in the business community and it's something I'm happy to be involved with now as a board member and was definitely proud to be involved with as an employee for almost six years.

[20:54] Jan: Yeah, now it is such a vibrant group and especially it just brings together the whole community. It's just networking and promoting things.

[21:06] Kelsey: The event side of things that specifically fell under my purview. They specifically do their events during the shoulder season or the off season. You know, we get a lot of folks who visit during the summer and so that's not really a challenge for hotels to fill up rooms, restaurants to be busy and whatnot. So it ended up being that April is Crab Festival. October is the Great Columbia Crossing. And people would always ask about the Great Columbia Crossing, the bridge run. They'd be like, well, why is this in October weather's dicey. It's like, well, first off, ODOT has to sign off on the day that we can use the bridge.

[21:42] Jan: Right.

[21:43] Kelsey: But secondly, the purpose of the event is, yes, to produce a fantastic high quality running event, but also to bring people to town during kind of a drearier season of the year.

[21:55] Jan: October is not always.

[21:56] Kelsey: Not always. We've had some really phenomenal days for the bridge run, but we've also had some pretty terrible days. 2016 was the first time that that event was ever canceled, which was when I was at the chamber and there was the remnants of two typhoons that were moving in off the water. Not conducive for yeah, not conducive for running. And that was the, I think it was Friday before Sunday, which is race day. I think that was the Friday that manzanita had the tornado come through. And I mean, it was dramatic weather wise, and especially as a girl who grew up in Minnesota, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, we don't have a basement. Like, where do I go in a tornado? We had probably twelve volunteers in the building and we were not under an active tornado warning, but across the river in Pacific County and south of us were. And so I was like, all right, here's my game plan. There's this little tiny closet that I am sure we can all fit in if there's a tornado warning because it has no exterior walls, no windows, it's the best I could do. But that was where my head was at prior to that event. And so we ended up in concert with our local law enforcement professionals who helped produce that event, just deciding that if Saturday's storm was going to be as bad as they thought it was, no one was going to be available to help with the event on Sunday. They were going to be responding, set.

[23:14] Jan: Up tents to do it.

[23:15] Kelsey: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Trying to negotiate porta potty delivery and can we put sandbags in them so they don't blow into the river?

[23:21] Jan: We have to worry about that. Maybe not.

[23:24] Kelsey: It was a very stressful experience, but it taught me a lot about our community, a lot about resiliency, a lot about the generosity and thoughtfulness of a lot of folks in the running community who really empathized with what we were going through as event producers in a terrible worst case scenario situation.

[23:42] Jan: Right.

[23:43] Kelsey: So, yeah, something that I can look back in life and go, well, I hope I never have to do that again. But I sure I'm glad I learned a lot from it.

[23:50] Jan: Well, you'd learn about emergency planning and.

[23:55] Kelsey: There was a lot of kind of scenarios that we hadn't really considered prior to that cancellation. How do you let 3000 people know that your event isn't happening anymore? So thankfully, we had email addresses for most of the people, but there were some folks that didn't have email, so all they provided was a phone number. And so we were manning the phones with our volunteers and staff, letting people know, and posting on Facebook, letting the newspaper know, just the media blitz that we had to do to let people know, hey, it's not happening anymore, and credit where it's due. We didn't have a single person show up on race morning. And of course, Murphy's Law race morning ended up being pretty much fine. And Saturday's storm wasn't anywhere near as bad as they thought it was going to be.

[24:44] Jan: Yeah, but you have to yeah, I mean, you may hadn't and it was bad then what?

[24:50] Kelsey: Yeah, you make the best decision you can with the information that you have. And we had been following the NOAA webinars with all these emergency managers and law enforcement folks and we're all on this call together and going through the slide deck of here's what we think the weather is going to look like. So yeah, Friday afternoon, it's like, I think we have to call it. I don't think we have any other options. And that was the first time it had ever been canceled. Of course, during COVID everything got thrown out the window. As far as event production, well, way.

[25:21] Jan: Back in the early 90s when the race began, it was Cindy Heister at Knappa High that organized everything and did the book work. And all of them, the students were making phone calls and writing letters and doing all of that when it was we a wee thing.

[25:41] Kelsey: Yeah. And the race has changed a lot over the years. You know, it's currently a ten k 6.2 miles and it was an eight mile course at one point. It came through the tunnel over by Fort Columbia at one point. So it has changed a lot. It's changed hands. It wasn't always the Chambers event as you alluded to Port of Astoria was involved in producing it. I want to say there was a year that Nike was involved with it, so it's definitely taken a long time to get to its current iteration. But I think it'll probably stay with the ten K length. Though I will say it was always interesting. We would have folks ask if there was a shorter course option. We're like, well, the bridge is 4.2 miles long, so there's not really an early exit. You can't run a five K.

[26:26] Jan: You need to pick a different race. Different race, yeah. So what other visions do you have about going forward here?

[26:35] Kelsey: Yeah, I mean, I ended up moving to the Pacific Northwest in 2014 and absolutely love it. It is my favorite place that I have lived. I end up in the small but dedicated camp of people who love the rain. Even as a child, I loved the rain. But Minnesota gets a lot more thunderstorms than we do out here. But I would sit in my bedroom window and just watch the rain come down in big sheets and the lightning, and I just found it fascinating. So moving out here, I was the right target market, if you will, for this type of weather. And I love the community here. Everybody is so passionate about where they live and being involved and invested. It does sometimes make going to the grocery store a little difficult when you run into seven people, you know?

[27:22] Jan: Yeah.

[27:23] Kelsey: Only there for five items and it takes me an hour. But that is a small price to pay for being in a place where people genuinely but that's the beauty of.

[27:32] Jan: It as well, is that you have community and relationships.

[27:37] Kelsey: Yeah. And you spend a couple of years in this community, and you start to realize that you're seeing the same people over and over again. If they're involved in one thing, they're probably involved in four other things.

[27:47] Jan: People who do.

[27:48] Kelsey: Yeah. And so those are the people that I respect and admire in the community and the people that I aspire to be like is just that kind of selfless loving, hopeful, community centered mindset that you see so often here in the Pacific Northwest. So, yeah, this is hopefully forever home, but we'll see where life takes me. I will say it's taken me on a circuitous route so far, so I just continue to trust God in everything and can look back on my life and see his fingerprints on everything and things that I didn't realize at the time would be so monumental or so life changing. And he's been guiding it the whole way. So I just have to trust that he's going to continue moving forward.

[28:34] Jan: One step at a time. One step at a time. Well, that's good. All right, well, thank you, Kelsey. This is fun and I'm enjoyable. Thank you for sharing your life and experiences and talents with us.

[28:48] Kelsey: Yeah, I appreciate you having me and looking forward to continuing to be involved in Clatsop County and whatever that looks like.

[28:55] Jan: Thank you.

[29:01] Jan: Thanks again for listening. You can find transcripts and links to the library and chamber of commerce in the show notes. Have a terrific week and will see you next time.