The Fontana Regional Library Board chair and vice chair have both resigned from their leadership positions ahead of the regularly scheduled Sept. 9 meeting.
Former Board Chair Cynthia Womble said that she sent an email to fellow board members on Sunday, Sept. 7, informing them of her decision, and former Vice Chair Tony Monnat sent his resignation email on Monday, Sept. 8. Both Womble and Monnat, who were appointed by Swain County commissioners, will remain on the board as regular voting members. It is likely that Secretary Bill McGaha of Macon County will gavel in the Sept. 9 meeting.
Womble and Monnat had served as chair and vice chair on an acting basis since December and in July were elected by board members to continue in those roles until the end of the scheduled terms in June 2026.
Womble told The Smoky Mountain News that she took her job seriously, and that job was to neutrally conduct meetings. She no longer feels that’s possible.
“I tried to be collaborative and congenial and professional in running meetings and setting up agendas and committees, and I was pretty much thwarted at every turn when I tried to rein board members in,” she said.
The board typically conducted business in an uneventful matter until just a couple of years ago, when a movement swept the nation in which conservative cultural influencers and pundits began calling for people to scrutinize local libraries over the inclusion of LGBTQ content on their shelves and events on their calendars.
Since then, a faction that espouses that ideology has gained a majority on the FRL board, and Jackson County Commissioners voted to pull out of the library system, which both costs county taxpayers more money and weakens the overall FRL system that still includes Swain and Macon counties.
Womble mentioned a few reasons why she’d wanted to resign, but the final straw landed when the board tapped her “close friend” Lisa Kim Fisher to become the system’s new financial officer following the abrupt resignation of former finance officer Lynn Cody. Womble said that once she found out Fisher applied for the job, she recused herself from that hiring process. When Fisher was chosen by the board, Womble said other board members began questioning a conflict that could be caused by their friendship.
“That’s a distraction we don’t need to have in the Fontana Regional Library,” she said.
Womble ultimately didn’t believe she had the trust of her fellow board members, which precludes her from even beginning to do the work she’d set out to do when she joined the board.
“I can be of more use being able to defend and advocate for library staff and headquarters staff and for freedoms and rights I believe in by not being constrained by being the chair anymore,” she said.