The meeting was originally scheduled to take place in late January but was pushed back to this date of February 21, 2023 due to a supposed lack of quorum.
Commissioner Don Harris was not able to attend, so there were only liberal members of the advisory board present today.
Many citizens on both sides of the issue showed up at the meeting. Due to the city’s new metal detector policy, there supposedly wasn’t enough room for overflow seating in the city hall lobby. A large group had to stand outside and wait for their name to be called and give testimony.
The charge from City Council to the advisory board to review their book collection policy was not on this meeting’s agenda. When asked during the meeting about this apparent ignoring of the city council’s charge, the advisory board chair stated that they wanted to allow the new advisory board members a chance to listen to all of the public comments before taking up the council’s charge.
The librarian, Danielle Brigati, gave an update about all library activities since the last quarterly board meeting, including “Banned Books week.”
The librarian stated that Butt Holdsworth Library will display photocopies of “Banned Books” next September, instead of the full copies (the books will remain on the kids’ section shelves.)
About fifty people signed up to make comments before the board. Roughly half of these citizens spoke in defense of child innocence. Some of the testimony defending the smut in the library came from Tivy High School students.
The Board allowed the librarian to stand up at any time between public comments and refute anything she disagreed with.
The next Library Advisory Board meeting will take place on April 18. We can only assume that the city council’s charge to review the policies will be taken up then.

NEXT STEPS

Continue to pray for God to change hearts and minds!

Reach out to families of students and encourage them in what our stance actually is: NOT book banning, but removing access to this material by minors.

Let those in leadership know how you feel on this issue. (contact info is below)

The Library Advisory Board meets quarterly.

The next meeting is scheduled to be on Tuesday, April 18, 2023. The city council’s charge remains for the Advisory Board to review their book collection policy.

Remember, the county commissioners voted to let their inter-local agreement with the city regarding the library expire if the city didn’t remove the smut from the kids’ section of the library. That agreement will expire in March. We need to ask the commissioners to end the agreement as planned.

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