Immediately after Jackson County Public Schools Associate Superintendent Jake Buchanan and Southwestern Community College President Don Tomas proposed their respective departmental appropriations for fiscal year 2026-27, Jackson County Manager Kevin King presented commissioners with a May 19 draft county budget that left both requests unfulfilled.  

The Fontana Regional Library System board voted last week to return over a million dollars of taxpayer money currently sitting in its general fund to its member counties. 

The motion was brought during a meeting at Cashiers’ Albert Carlton Library by Trustee Lori Richards, of Jackson County, who clearly spent a good deal of time crunching the numbers to arrive at her final conclusion.

For months, Jackson County commissioners have been making material decisions to advance a costly and widely criticized plan to pull its two libraries from the Fontana Regional Library system.

Nonetheless, in 2025, the Jackson board proposed three amendments which, contingent on passage by fellow FRL-member counties Macon and Swain, might convince commissioners to change their course. 

When Grace Powell walks into the Jackson County Public Library on June 1 as its new full-time director, she will inherit more than a building full of books — she will inherit a community still divided. 

Powell, a lifelong Sylva resident, earned her elementary education degree at Western Carolina University, taught third grade at Scotts Creek elementary school for a year and a half before earning a master’s degree in library science from East Carolina University.

To the Editor:

I want to address the financial issues involved with the decision by the Jackson County commissioners to leave the Fontana Regional Library System. 

This past June citizens of Jackson County experienced a significant tax increase. The commissioners made a show at the June meeting of “lowering” the tax rate.

To the Editor:

I’m sorry to read that Tracy Fitzmaurice resigned as head of the Fontana Regional Library System, and I want to say something clearly in defense of Tracy.

Tracy has given decades of steady, public-minded service to the Fontana Regional Library community — she’s been with the system since 1991 and stepped into the director role in January 2023. That kind of institutional knowledge and calm competence isn’t replaceable on a 30-day timeline. 

Amid growing financial concerns, Jackson County’s four Republican commissioners have spent the last few years fighting a culture war. On March 3, Primary Election voters will weigh in on their priorities. 

Over the past four budget cycles, Jackson County commissioners have overseen a steady expansion of county government, with the general fund growing from $71.7 million in fiscal year 2021-22 to $106.9 million in 2025-26, an increase of roughly 49% over five years.

The seeds of chaos sown into the fertile soil of the embattled Fontana Regional Library system over the last few years have sprouted. 

The FRL Board of Trustees has struggled to function over the last year, but things have come to a head the last couple of weeks as trustees, local media and a former librarian all received anonymous emails riddled with misinformation and threats. All the while, the board is still without an attorney, and now, that lack of representation is holding up crucial decisions.

We never thought that Micromanager of the Year would become a repeat award, but here we are.

This year’s micromanagers of the year are the members of the Fontana Regional Library Board of Trustees.

As the board continues to handle complex big-picture issues without the guidance of an attorney, some members are also finding time to dictate how staff members conduct day-to-day business.

While some originally hoped — and continue to hope — that a series of amendments to the Fontana Regional Library System proposed by Jackson County commissioners might ameliorate enough of their concerns to allow them to remain in the decades-long partnership with the FRL system, a questionable pamphlet and an academically dubious “list of inappropriate books” being circulated by FRL opponents suggests otherwise, even as FRL supporters report troubling visions of Christmas future if commissioners don’t turn back soon.