Opening and Thanks
This month’s CNO 2.0 meeting was held at Heavier than Air Brewing Company. Thank you to the team there for providing the space and beverages.
Club Updates
Greg Fay opened the evening by sharing a round of grants the club recently approved:
- The club gave $500 in Amazon gift cards to the Centerville City Schools CORE team, so new teachers can buy supplies for their classrooms.
- A request for $2,000 was approved for John P Kalaman Memorial Golf Outing scholarships for Washington Township and Centerville students.
- The club donated $2,000 to the Centerville High School girls volleyball Summer Night Lights event.
- The club donated $500 to send 20 members of the Centerville High School wrestling team to the AAU Scholastic Duals.
- The club donated $475 to a Scouting America flowerbed Eagle Scout project that benefits students at Driscoll.
Greg also noted that club president Sarah Umbreit was a recent guest on the club’s podcast, where she talked about the many ways members and volunteers can make a difference. Watch for clips and reels on the club’s Facebook page.
Announcements
Americana Festival
Jesse Gaither, chair of the Americana Festival, shared that this year’s festival celebrates the country’s 250th anniversary. The Independence Day 5K race begins at 7:30 a.m. on July 4, 2026, at Centerville High School. The Centerville Noon Optimist Club will have two booths this year, the traditional booth on South Main and a new booth for mental health awareness in Benham’s Grove. Volunteers are needed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. to help load in, set up, and break down. To volunteer, visit americanafestival.org and look for the sign-up under Volunteers.
Semiquincentennial Picnic
Connie Risch invited everyone to the club’s semiquincentennial picnic on July 18, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Oak Grove Optimist shelter. The event is free and open to members’ families, children, grandchildren, and guests. Fried chicken will be provided, and members are asked to bring a side dish, salad, or dessert to share. Activities will include games and water fun, so plan to dress accordingly. The picnic will be held rain or shine under the shelter. Please register in advance so the club knows how many to expect. Please sign up using the Member Calendar.
Updates from the Centerville Library
Liz Fultz, Director of the Washington-Centerville Public Library, shared a round of highlights and a look at the library’s renovation. A 10-year CNO member herself, Liz said she is always glad for the chance to talk about the library.
Torch Award for Ethics
Liz shared that in May 2026, the library won a Torch Award for Ethics from the Better Business Bureau of Dayton and the Miami Valley. The award recognizes organizations committed to high standards of leadership, character, and ethics in how they treat their staff, their community, and their industry. The Washington-Centerville Public Library is the first public library to receive the recognition. The library was anonymously nominated and submitted extensive documentation, including a short video about its work that the library’s digital content creator produced.
2025 Highlights
Liz walked through usage highlights from the library’s 2025 annual report, which Centerville and Washington Township residents received in the mail:
- The Library of Things, the collection of non-traditional items members can borrow such as board games, hotspots, culture passes, and maker kits, saw usage rise nearly 55 percent in 2025.
- The board game collection has grown to more than 1,100 titles, from classics like Monopoly and cribbage to newer games. More than 14,000 games were borrowed in 2025, a 96 percent increase over 2024.
- Culture Passes, the free passes members can borrow for local attractions like the International Peace Museum, Carillon Park, the Dayton Art Institute, the Boonshoft Museum, and the newly added Aullwood Audubon Center, were used 300 percent more than the year before.
- Tonies, the screen-free audio players for young children, are a popular new addition that lets kids hear stories without a screen.
- Free digital access to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, along with Press Reader and its more than 7,000 newspapers and magazines, continued to grow quickly, with some resources up more than 600 percent.
- The library circulated more than 1.5 million items in 2025. Physical items remained the preferred format at 63 percent of circulation, though digital borrowing is catching up fast, with digital audiobooks already surpassing their physical counterparts.
- The library ended 2025 with more than 65,000 cardholders, more than the combined population of Centerville and Washington Township, and it adds about 510 new cardholders each month.
The Renovation: Before and After
Liz then shared before-and-after photos of the Centerville Library. Blue paint added to the skylights now makes them stand out, and windows that were once hidden behind tall stacks of books are visible again, bringing in much more natural light. The old circulation and reference desks have been combined into a single service point, so members have one place to go for help. Shelving throughout the building was reconfigured and lowered with minimal impact on the size of the collection, opening room for seating along the windows. The curved area at the back of the building, once packed with shelving, is now an open space with fireplace seating, an aquarium scene, group study tables, and a variety of comfortable chairs.
Across the hall from the original restrooms, the library added two single-stall, fully accessible restrooms, one with a universal changing table provided by the Montgomery County Board of Developmental Disabilities Services. New meeting rooms, modeled on the popular ones at the Woodbourne Library, are now available, including a room that seats four, a room that seats five, and a conference room that seats up to twelve. A second phase will add two more rooms that seat four and one that seats eight. A new children’s area, built in what used to be administrative offices, is now an open, light-filled space with its own restroom for families.
Still to Come
Thanks to a $50,000 donation from the Centerville Noon Optimist Club, the library will be adding interactive elements for children and new equipment for its makerspace. Two or three interactive panels will go into the outdoor children’s area near the outdoor storytime space, and a custom interactive wall, similar to the one at the Woodbourne Library, will be installed inside the children’s area to support early literacy through sensory and tactile play.
The library’s makerspace, Creativity Commons, will move from RecPlex East to the Centerville Library, expanding from about 780 square feet to roughly 3,400 square feet. Currently the only public makerspace in Montgomery County, it drew more than 18,000 visitors in 2025 and offers 3D printers, a laser engraver, and a large-format printer. The expanded space will add a podcasting booth, funded in part by a $20,000 Library Services and Technology grant and requested by the Miami Valley Communications Council, along with a glass-fusing kiln, a laser welder, and a desktop CNC machine for glass, stone, and metalworking that no other nearby library makerspace offers. The community room is also being refreshed, and a dedicated teen area is set to open in the coming weeks. Creativity Commons is expected to open in August 2026, with grand opening festivities for the full project planned for the end of summer.
Thank You
Thank you, Liz Fultz, for sharing the library’s highlights and the exciting changes coming to the Centerville Library.