‘It’s got to go’: Commissioners want to remove Jackson libraries from FRL
Jackson County Public Library. File photo
Anyone who thought that two years, dozens of meetings, thousands of dollars and hours of public comment to reach a new interlocal agreement between Jackson, Macon and Swain counties for the Fontana Regional Library would spell the end of the controversy over local libraries thought wrong.
Last week a majority of commissioners in Jackson County expressed their desire to withdraw from the Fontana Regional Library and either establish their own independent county libraries, or, as Commissioner Jenny Lynn Hooper advocated, close the libraries altogether.
“I continue to get hounded by people about the stuff they’re displaying in the libraries,” said Commissioner John Smith, who led the discussion about possible withdrawal. “They’re promoting the same ideology that most people in this county reject.”
At its May 6 meeting, commissioners asked County Manager Kevin King and County Attorney John Kubis what the board’s options were for oversight of the library, as well as its options if it were to move forward with exiting the Fontana Regional Library system.
King told the board that its most direct power over the library was through its appointments to the library boards, its appropriations to the library and its ability to exercise the right of withdrawal as permitted in the FRL interlocal agreement.
“The fourth option would be to close the library,” said Hooper, chortling audibly.
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No other commissioners laughed at the statement and Smith said, “no we wouldn’t want to do that; that’s not an option.”
But simultaneously, King said, “I guess that’s an option.”
Commissioners seem to be upset by some of the displays that are put up in the library, and voiced their disapproval that the nature of the displays have not changed since the new FRL agreement was approved in November. Commissioners also made it clear they were not happy with library leadership.
“The whole library’s being misrun, mishandled,” said Hooper. “We’re putting our people in a bad place and it’s not what the people in the county want and I don’t know why we have to put up with it.”
“It seems like they’re really promoting certain agendas,” said Commissioner Michael Jennings.
Hooper accused library staff of lying about an incident involving an airsoft gun found in the bathroom and a teenager dying their hair in the bathroom. Hooper did not present evidence for her assertions.
“You ought to be able to go to the library and not have to be appalled by anything that’s there, no matter which side you’re on,” said Jennings, apparently referring to political affiliation. Jennings and all his fellow commissioners are Republicans.
“They put their displays right there in the front door when you walk in, nobody gets past it without looking at it,” said Smith.
But some commissioners did express hesitancy about scrapping an agreement after so much work went into arriving at it.
“I had high hopes for the FRL agreement, and I’m still hopeful, because we had Mr. Kubis and [others] working on it for several close to a year, maybe over a year to get to a good agreement,” said Commissioner Todd Bryson.
Kubis and King did not respond by press time Tuesday to requests for information about exactly how much time or money was spent reaching the new agreement.
“We spent a lot of money getting that agreement,” said Smith.
In addition to the money spent to reach the new agreement, Jackson County spends a little over $1 million each year on library operations.
Commission Chairman Mark Letson later told The Smoky Mountain News that he is against Jackson County withdrawing from the Fontana Regional Library System. He expressed the same opinion earlier this year when an email from the husband of FRL Board Member Leah Gaston using her account detailed a covert plan for counties to withdraw from the system.
Jim Gaston has been a vocal advocate for dissolving the Fontana Regional Library since discussions to do so began more than two years ago. He also advocated for cutting ties with the American Library Association.
“Leaving the FRL needs to be discussed by commissioners in Macon and Jackson behind the scenes with a ‘surprise’ decision to leave when the time comes just as Yancey voted unanimously to leave their regional system while the regional library director was conveniently out of town,” his email read. “If this possibility of exiting FRL is being discussed in the open, the lunatic left will mobilize and come out in full force with all their tired lies to create huge controversy. It must be kept behind the scenes until action.”
At the time the email was leaked, commissioners in both Macon and Jackson assured residents there was no secret plan to dismantle FRL, especially so soon after the new agreement was reached.
“Just for the record, I’d like to reiterate that we just signed a 10-year, bipartisan, good faith contract with Fontana Regional Library, and I don’t know where these emails are coming from; I hate to say I really don’t care,” Macon Chairman Josh Young said during a Feb. 11 Macon County Commission meeting. “We signed a 10-year good faith agreement, and I feel like that’s where we’re at with it, so I really don’t even put any merit to that email.”
“We worked really hard for a year to come to an agreement that all parties signed off on,” Letson told The Smoky Mountain News at the time. “For me, it just doesn’t seem to be very responsible to then back out of that agreement… Right now, we’re not looking to leave. I think it’d be a detriment to our citizens if we did.”
Letson also said that if those conversations ever did arise, “they’d be 100% public.”
When The Smoky Mountain News caught up with Letson this week, he said that nothing has changed.
“I still think it’s a horrible idea to withdraw,” said Letson. “When there’s a consensus, there’s really nothing I can do to slow the process, because that’s the will of the board. I can still vote no, which I will, because I don’t think that it’s in our county’s best interest, in our library’s best interest to withdraw.”
“If social media posts or displays or what not hurts your feelings, then you need to reach out to the regional director, you need to reach out to Tracy and talk about that,” Letson continued. “There’s got to be some communication, otherwise it’s pointless to have an agreement.”
Letson said that his fellow commissioners were opposed to some of the LGBTQ items that are in the library and on display.
“They would prefer that there be a more neutral kind of basis,” said Letson. “A lot of our libraries focus on LGBTQ items … I don’t have a problem with that. I view myself as a parent who is going to go into the library with my child, and if there’s a conversation that needs to had, that’s what I have. I don’t think I should be the public’s parent. Everyone has different values. There are lots of different beliefs, not one, lots. And a library is a resource for those beliefs, not a stranglehold for those.”
“The majority of the board wants to pull out of Fontana Regional Library because they can’t find that peace, that there are other people out there,” Letson continued. “I have to kind of stand firm on this, that I’m opposed… there’s this small faction of people that want less LGBTQ+ stuff, well, let’s work to get that for more than eight months or however long it’s been signed, let’s work to direct our library staff to see if they can make those changes that those commissioners want.”
When the discussions about Fontana Regional Library and the merits of the system first began in Macon County in 2023, residents were objecting to certain books with LGBTQ themes and content.
“There’s not an indoctrination plan from what I can tell, like some of our commissioners think,” said Letson. “To me, it’s just a resource for people who maybe have questions or need to learn more.”
During the May 6 meeting, Letson questioned whether withdrawing from the library system would change any of the things that commissioners were concerned about, such as displays in the library or social media posts.
“I don’t care,” was Hooper’s response. “We don’t want to see it, our kids don’t want it, the community don’t, the majority of people in Jackson County do not want to see that crap in there.”
Commissioner Smith said he has already had discussions about withdrawal with commissioners from other counties. According to him, there is one commissioner in Macon who wants to withdraw. Smith said that the unnamed Macon commissioner told him that if one county exited the system, Macon would follow.
“I don’t know if that’s the right answer, but if we can’t change direction then I don’t think they’re leaving us much choice,” said Smith.
Commissioners kept coming back to the issue of neutrality, suggesting that if the library could keep itself politically neutral in the eyes of the commissioners, the county might remain in the FRL system.
“I think they [the library] need to be told straight that’s their options,” said Jennings. “Make it neutral, or we’re out.”
“I hate that it has to come to that; I don’t want to ban any books, everybody’s got the right to read whatever they want to read whenever they want to read it,” said Smith. “Don’t throw everything in everybody’s face. If you’re going to throw this agenda in somebody’s face, you better be throwing the opposite side in their face as well. You got to have neutral or equal representation.”
Smith did not make it clear what sort of agenda he thought the library was throwing into people’s faces, nor what sort of agenda he would prefer the library be throwing in people’s faces in addition to the existing agenda. But he did suggest that he had made his preferences clear to the FRL director at some point.
“They’ve had since December; they knew, we had a whole, several-hour meeting with the other county board and the FRL director and they knew what we wanted,” said Smith. “They continue to go in a different direction. We have tried to coax them in a different direction.”
Also present at the meeting was Deborah Smith, appointed to the Fontana Regional Library Board of Trustees from Jackson County. She chimed in to mention that Macon County will soon be appointing another member to the FRL board.
“If that appointment goes in the direction which the last appointment did, I think that you will see that the board will then have the votes to make some of the changes that I think are going to make a lot of people happier,” Deborah Smith said.
County Attorney John Kubis said that in terms of the Jackson County Commission’s options for withdrawal, “the pathway is there, it’s just a matter of what the will of the board is.”
However, Manager King asked Kubis whether the board could “jump back in” if things changed after the board decided to pull out and gave notice to the FRL of their intent.
“I’d have to go back to the agreement; my recollection is that there’s nothing in the agreement that would prevent us changing our mind within that period,” Kubis told the board. “The whole unwinding process is a little bit messy just because of the different ownership of different things between FRL and individual county libraries and so on and so forth, so there’s lots to do with that. I am not aware of anything off the top of my head that would prevent us from changing our mind.”
According to the agreement’s provisions for withdrawal, a participating local government proposing to withdraw from the Fontana Regional Library has to give written notice on or before July 1 to the FRL Board of Trustees, the other counties Boards of Commissioners and the State Library of North Carolina. The withdrawal would then be effective on June 30 of the following year.
If the participating local government unit fully withdraws, all furniture and fixtures purchased by Friends of the Library in the withdrawing county will remain with their respective library; books and audiovisual materials will also remain with each library. Assets purchased by the Fontana Regional Library with FRL funds and intended for FRL regional support services will remain assets of FRL.
If two of the three participating local governments withdraw and the FRL is dissolved, FRL assets will be divided equally among the counties.
According to Tracy Fitzmaurice, Jackson County librarian and Fontana Regional Library director, she has not received any word from the commissioners or the county manager with regard to Jackson County withdrawing from the Fontana Regional Library system.
“The staff are all very anxious about the prospect of this happening, but we are continuing to operate normally,” Fitzmaurice said. “There is a June 30 deadline for the notification of the intent to withdraw.”
FLR’s history
Fontana Regional Library formed in 1944 when the Tennessee Valley Authority sponsored a regional bookmobile to visit the most remote areas of Jackson, Macon and Swain counties.
Today, the system offers full library services to rural counties that might not otherwise be able to fund them. By combining cataloging, human resources, finance departments and information technology services for libraries in the three counties, it is cheaper for each county than if they were to provide for each of those departments individually. The regional agreement is renewed every 10 years and can be dissolved or withdrawn from at any time.
In November 2023, Macon County Commissioners released a set of recommended changes to the FRL agreement.
Almost a year later, in August 2024, the Jackson County Commission approved a new version of the FRL interlocal agreement that contained some significant changes to the revision previously put forth by Macon County. Swain County approved the same version as Jackson.
In the FRL’s purpose statement, Macon County had proposed that the statement end with, “To this end, the FRL shall operate the county libraries and branches of the participating local government units in a socially and politically neutral manner.” This proved to be a sticking point for commissioners and attorneys.
“There’s been some discussion with the board and in public comment as to what this means,” Kubis told Jackson commissioners in January of 2024. “Certainly, whatever it does mean, it means that commissioners are now going to be in a position to determine whether or not libraries are acting in accordance with the socially and politically neutral manner language.”
The document approved by Jackson and Swain ends the purpose statement with, “To this end, the FRL shall operate the county libraries and branches of the participating local government units in accordance with governing statutory authority, North Carolina law and this Agreement.”
The new agreement kept intact the change Macon Commissioners made last year to put the authority to appoint members to the Fontana Regional Library Board in the hands of county commissioners. The document does say that county commissioners “may” select from recommendations made by their respective County Library Board, though it is not required. This change was originally recommended by county managers in August 2023.
However, the new document did not contain a rule proposed by Macon County that said, “any time that a majority of the commissioners determine that a library trustee from their county has failed to abide by the library’s by-laws and policies, they may be removed by the commissioners from that county.”
While the new document did stipulate that the library board would hold 30-minute public comment sessions during its meeting with three minutes allowed per speaker, and more time permitted by the board’s discretion, it did not include the statement Macon County had proposed that said “the public shall be permitted to ask questions for clarification directly through the chair, who shall attempt to answer to the best of his or her ability.”
That had been an important point for multiple Jackson commissioners at the time.
“In all my meetings and boards I’ve ever been on, that’s never happened,” said Jackson County Commissioner Mark Jones. “You can always go after a meeting and speak to a person one on one, the chair and any other member of any issue.”
“I don’t think any of the commissioners that showed up wanted to have response from the chairman,” said Smith. “Any time the board, especially the chairman responds to public comment, you’re likely to inflame and cause more problems and we spoke about that when we were there.”
The new agreement reinstates FRL as a party in resolving disagreements related to the document, alongside commissioners from each county. The Macon proposal had called for commissioners and their attorneys to address any issues without FRL.
While the Macon proposal stipulated that if a county were to withdraw from the FRL system, it would keep all the assets in the county library, the new proposal stipulates that “furniture and fixtures purchased by the Friends of the Library within the withdrawing county will remain with their respective library, and books and audiovisual materials will also remain with each library.”
However, “assets located in the local library facility that were purchased by Fontana Regional Library with Fontana Regional Library funds and intended for Fontana Regional Library regional support services will remain assets of Fontana Regional Library.”
