County approves new automated library services agreement with City of Murrieta

Joe Naiman Writer

Riverside County approved a new agreement with Murrieta for automated library services.

The county Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 Tuesday, July 11, to approve the new agreement. The most recent agreement covers the period from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2028.

The Inland Library Network is a part of the Riverside County Library System and provides automation services to several independent libraries in Riverside County. The services are provided by Library Systems and Services with oversight by the Riverside County Library System.

The original agreement between the county and the city of Murrieta for automated library services at the Murrieta Public Library was approved by the county board of supervisors in June 2011 and took effect July 1, 2011. New agreements to extend the term and amend the payment provisions were approved in 2014, 2016 and 2018.

The automated services include call-in help desk support from 8-10 p.m. weekdays, a mechanism to report and track incidents at any time on a web-based help desk portal, emergency support at any time, interface with common systems and vendors such as Integrated Library System and ISP Provider to resolve issues, routers and switches required to interface with Automation Services servers and training as available from county staff or a contractor. The daily automation services include holds for items customers are ready to pick up, a list for library staff to pull items to send to other libraries for interlibrary loans, a report on fees which have been paid, notices to customers about overdue items and bills to customers for fines or fees owed. The city will also be provided access to the biblioboard, Brainfuse, CloudLibrary, Gale, Kanopy, medici tv, Overdrive, Pronunciator, The Shelf.tv and TumbleBooks databases.

The city will pay the county $172,658 for fiscal year 20232024, $181,291 for 2024-2025, $190,355 in 2025-2026, $199,873 during 2026-2027, and $209,867 in 2027-2028 for a five-year total of $954,044. Joe Naiman can be reached by email at jnaiman@reedermedia. com it seems all of his weapons were purchased legally, and he had many of them in his car on the day of the shooting, Wrigley said. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is looking into whether he got any of the gun components illegally.

Wrigley said Barakat was wearing a vest that was "absolutely stuffed" with magazines and that he "was putting the finishing touches on his shooting skills in the last hours before this assault."

As for the propane tanks, Wrigley said it was "quite dramatic" when the bomb squad detonated them. He suggested the tanks contained something similar to Tannerite, a commercial explosive that can be easily detonated with a shot from a high-powered rifle.

"Obvious motive to kill," Wrigley said. "I mean, driven by hate. Driven by wanting to kill. Not particularized to some group that we can discern at this moment, not particularized to one individual that we can see."

Barakat had worked odd jobs, and briefly trained as an emergency responder at a nearby community college. He had no criminal record or social media presence and had so little contact with other people that the only photo law enforcement could provide was a blurry image of him lifted from a video.

He had, however, been reported to something called the Guardian Threat Tracking System. The FBI routinely opens what it refers to internally as assessments -the lowest level, least intrusive and most elementary stage of a terrorism-related inquiry -when it receives unconfirmed information about potentially suspicious behavior.

That information is catalogued in the Guardian system. During the assessment stage of an investigation, FBI agents are permitted to take certain basic investigative steps such as conducting online research or visual surveillance, but more sophisticated tools such as wiretaps cannot be undertaken without additional evidence of wrongdoing.

Mac Schneider, the U.S. attorney for North Dakota, said the Guardian system is a way for members of the public to engage with local law enforcement about "things of concern." But he provided no additional details.

Whether Barakat had intended to survive the attack was unclear. He wore no body armor but did have a way to monitor what was happening at his apartment from afar, perhaps suggesting he had a plan, Wrigley said.

He added that there was no immediate indication that anyone had helped Barakat.

"There are lone wolves," Wrigley said. "That's a real concept."

Wrigley said Koswick was badly injured and will have a difficult recovery. Zibolski said the wounded officers were briefly able to stand up out of their hospital beds on Thursday.

Meanwhile, a funeral service is planned for Saturday for Wallin, whose body was cremated in his police uniform.

Associated Press reporters Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis and Eric Tucker in Washington in contributed to this report.