Even as it sees its own demise over the horizon, the Fontana Regional Library Board of Trustees is moving fast to make its agenda into policy.
The board met June 15 to discuss some of these key items and will meet again on June 22, when trustees are likely to vote on new collection development and circulation policies that are the product of nearly a year of work. The collection development policy, which has drawn wide scrutiny from residents of the system’s member counties, is a drastic change from what is in place now and reads at times more like a statement of ethos than policy, with special attention paid to the ways in which LGBTQ+ content can be restricted.
FRL is made up of six libraries over Macon, Swain and Jackson counties. Each county also provides three members to the board of trustees. Jackson County is withdrawing from the system July 1, meaning its members — Lori Richards, Marva Jennings and Deborah Smith, each of whom have been vocal supporters of the board’s new agenda — will no longer have a say. With that date approaching, trustees are moving quickly to cast some major votes.
However, all these consequential policy changes will likely be short-lived, as Macon County voted June 9 to withdraw from the FRL system. Because Jackson County is just a couple of weeks away from withdrawal, Macon’s expected July 2027 exit will trigger the dissolution of the almost century-old institution.
From last July until this March, the FRL board didn’t have legal representation. Since many of these proposed changes require legal review, that created a queue where items were prioritized based on importance and urgency. Now with a contract from King Law, which has offices across the region, those potential policy changes are moving through the pipeline. However, other expert advice has not always been sought.
The system has also been without an executive director since Tracy Fitzmaurice left her post in February. Since then, in accordance with the bylaws, Board Chair Bill McGaha has stepped in as the interim director while still keeping his position as board chair. With Macon’s withdrawal likely coming in a year, McGaha told The Smoky Mountain News that it may be tough to find a qualified candidate who would want the job for a relatively short period. With the chair also serving as the interim director, it removes a key check on the board and also an expert voice that had for so long been crucial to maintaining a functional, robust system.
The June 15 meeting
The board met at 10 a.m. on June 15 at the Macon County Public Library. Initially on the agenda was an amendment to the library’s circulation policy that would mandate teens and juveniles obtain a special library card that restricts their access to certain materials. However, McGaha said that the proposed amendment is still awaiting the attorney review and wouldn’t be voted on that day.
Likewise, while a vote on the reimbursement of surplus funds discussed in detail at the May FRL meeting in Cashiers was initially scheduled, McGaha said more details needed to be ironed out. Before it was known that the item was tabled, three people provided public comment to plead for the board to hold off on that vote due to lingering questions. Specifically, those individuals asked about the process for the review and preparation, wondering if a CPA was consulted while making the key calculations.
“It appears you are rushing because you don’t want scrutiny,” said Ellen Snodgrass, a former FRL trustee from Swain County.
These questions mirrored issues pointed out by Austin Von Henner, the King Law attorney who contracts with FRL. A document referenced by McGaha during the meeting asks the board to obtain written confirmation to certify amounts listed in the calculations including grant-restricted funds, donor-restricted funds, encumbrances, transition costs and “any funds legally restricted from distribution.” Von Henner also had some specific questions: As of now, how much of the fund balance is restricted? What is the process for obtaining the funds? How soon can it be completed?
According to a written report provided to the board by McGaha, the chair also ran the numbers by “a comptroller, a CPA and others knowledgeable in accounting.” Those individuals noted “errors and duplications.”
“Those were concerning, and we need more time to make sure the other info is accurate,” McGaha told the board.
These questions must be answered and errors must be rectified. Then, the final numbers for reimbursements must be certified by either McGaha, Finance Officer Lisa Kim Fisher or an independent auditor. Trustee Lori Richards, who initially brought the surplus fund reimbursement before the board in May, had reached out to FRL’s auditing firm, Carter, to see if it could review those figures, but Carter responded that it would be a conflict of interest since the firm was contracted to complete the fiscal year 2025-26 audit and declined.
McGaha said he’d originally made an appointment with Fisher to receive the information regarding surplus fund distribution on June 5, but that didn’t happen until June 12, which gave him only two weekend days to answer Von Henner’s questions and bring the item before the board for a vote. That simply wasn’t possible.
“Two weekend days is not quite enough to fully analyze the information we received,” McGaha said.
The public portion of that meeting concluded with a 20-minute conversation about certain expenditures on FRL credit cards. The discussion, brought up by Jennings, quickly turned into something more akin to a congressional hearing, with a few trustees grilling Fisher about specific transactions for several items from food and drink to internet and telephone, ranging from under $100 to thousands of dollars. Some things Kim could answer relatively quickly — items that were used for programming, one improper charge for a personal item accidentally placed on an FRL credit card that was quickly made right. Some she wasn’t able to answer but said she could with a little bit of investigation.
During the line of questioning, Trustee Cynthia Womble, of Swain County, who joined the meeting from out of town via Zoom, questioned whether that was the time to ask such questions instead of during a finance committee meeting and said she wouldn’t expect the finance officer to have answers to all those questions on the spot.
Jennings mentioned that she wants to see the board commission a forensic audit of the system’s finances going back three years.
Then Richards jumped in, further questioning some of the charges at local restaurants. At this point, Trustee Tony Monnat, of Swain County, echoed Womble, saying that these items should be addressed through the finance committee.
“There’s no need to keep going,” he said.
The board agreed to discuss the item further during a closed session, which was already planned for other items anyway.
That closed session lasted over two hours, and when trustees returned, they voted on just one item they’d apparently discussed, opting to restrict use of the terminal through which they communicate with King Law to the board chair, vice chair and director or interim director. That measure passed 6-1, with Monnat providing the lone dissension. Womble didn’t vote since she had already logged out of the meeting at that point.
A new collection development policy
The June 22 meeting, initially called for the primary purpose of voting on the system’s budget before July and the beginning of the new fiscal year, will also address the draft collection development policy. That policy, if approved, will bring about a large shift in the way the library allows for access to and procurement of certain materials.
Through a public records request, SMN was provided not only the draft CDP that will be presented June 22 but also previous drafts of the document, as well as a list of research materials used in its crafting. One item referenced is a “Mature Content Collection Policy” passed by the Idaho state legislature that led to an “adults only” area in the state’s libraries. This policy has been challenged in court and was most recently determined to be “constitutionally deficient,” with judges opining that it is “overbroad on its face” and “threatens to regulate a substantial amount of expressive activity” in violation of the First Amendment.
In an interview with SMN following the June 15 meeting, Collection Development Committee Chair Kathy Smith, of Macon County, said that the committee didn’t keep minutes but that the drafts are a reflection of the work put in during those two-hour meetings. Smith noted that due to scheduling conflicts, Fitzmaurice, an ex-officio member of the committee until her departure, was unable to attend any meetings.
“Going back to October, we were trying to set times up where we could get her in,” Smith said.
Both Smith and McGaha told SMN that Von Henner had changes he recommended to the document, but neither would specify as to the nature of those changes.
When asked how Smith responds to the criticism leveled by many in the community about filtering certain content based on ideology, Smith largely restated what’s in the introduction of the CDP.
“The library should be available to all to represent all of our citizens and provide a reasonable balance to the best ability for different ideological viewpoints, and at the same time, while remaining neutral, we cannot appear to promote or advocate a political ideological position,” she said.
The policy lays out a number of definitions near the beginning. Some of these definitions, such as “obscene,” rely on state law. The definition of “banned book” is provided without citation.
“‘Banned Book’ means a book that is currently illegal to buy, sell, own or distribute by current law in any county served by the FRL or in any other location in this country,” the policy reads. Under the new policy, if adopted, the traditionally popular “banned book” displays must state the year a book was banned (under the definition provided in the policy), and the country where it was banned.
Sarah Lamdan, Executive Director for the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said that the definition used in FRL’s draft CDP is “completely fabricated.” However, there is no legal definition for the term as established by a court. The common definition of a book ban, according to Lamdan, is the removal of materials from a library because someone considers it harmful or dangerous.
The draft CDP calls for materials to be judged by the three-pronged Miller Test, which asks if a work meets all three of the following criteria:
• Does the work, as judged by “the average person, applying contemporary community standards,” taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient (inappropriately sexual) interest?
• Does the work depict or describe, in an explicit, “patently offensive way,” sexual conduct or excretory functions as defined by state laws?
• Does the work, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value?
According to the draft CDP, when purchasing new materials for the library, there will be three age groups considered: Juveniles up to age 11, teens ages 12-17 and adults.
“Librarians are encouraged to consult RatedBooks.org as a resource to determine which age group is best suited for specific books or materials,” the draft CDP reads. “Librarians are not required to follow any publisher’s recommended age for shelving.”
“To serve a diverse community, the library may include books for individuals aged 0-17 that some consider harmful to minors or otherwise inappropriate,” it notes. “If such materials are found to contain content that is ‘harmful for minors, obscene, or unlawful,’ or if directed by the Board, within the limits of NC statute, librarians shall move such materials from the Juvenile and Teen collections to the Adult section. Adults may check out such materials for their minor dependents.”
A footnote in the draft CDP discusses “viewpoint bias” by talking specifically about the subject of “underage gender transition.”
“On the polarizing subject of underage gender transition, our trusted review sources and publishers have failed to provide neutrality and a reasonable balance of information, to provide one example,” that footnote reads. “They have overwhelmingly recommended materials with uncritical support for underage gender transition with no mention of transition regret or medical damage, when data was collected from the NC Cardinal Library (library.nc.gov) card catalog on February 20, 2026. This has resulted in a grave imbalance of viewpoints on our library on the shelves for ages 0-17 in the FRL.”
A report sent to Swain County Head Librarian Jeff Delfield and Macon County Head Librarian Abby Hardison outlined this claim in more detail, noting there were 112 books in FRL libraries for ages 0-17 when the phrase “gender identity” was entered into the bar for the NC Cardinal Library Card catalog search, while there were zero each for “gender transition regret,” “gender detransition,” “puberty blocker damage” and “gender transition damage.”
“They’re cherry-picking activities that they don’t like or don’t want to see in the world,” Lamdan said, adding that at some point they verge into dangerous territory tantamount to “content and viewpoint discrimination.”
“If you’re not building a library collection in a way that’s ‘content-neutral’ that doesn’t discriminate based on viewpoints, ideology, that is unconstitutional,” she said.
Von Henner did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding potential First Amendment issues on the draft CDP.