Commissioners have recently overridden two nominees from Mebane, one from Burlington
A number of area residents have thrown the proverbial book at the county’s elected leaders over their alleged poli-ticization of the advisory board that weighs in on Alamance County’s library system.
Several of these concerned library patrons approached the county’s board of commissioners on Tuesday to register their collective dismay over some recent appointments to the library committee.
These four individuals took advantage of a designated public comment period that morning to blast the commissioners for allegedly flouting the wishes of local municipalities in their appointments. They also accused the Republican-dominated board of favoring appointees who reflect their own conservative views rather than the values of the communities they theoretically represent on the committee.
“The Alamance County commissioners are steamrolling procedures to fulfill an agenda. The commission has skirted protocol to choose people who are all on the same page of demonizing access to information and disrespecting library professionals.”
– Beth Lehman
“The Alamance County commissioners are steamrolling procedures to fulfill an agenda,” lamented Beth Lehman, who was first one to the microphone during Tuesday’s comment period. “The commission has skirted protocol to choose people who are all on the same page of demonizing access to information and disrespecting library professionals.”
These complaints which Lehman and others articulated on Tuesday weren’t entirely new to the county’s governing board.
Over the past several months, the commissioners have heard scattered objections to their choices for the library committee – including some rather pointed critiques from commissioner Pam Thompson, the only non-Republican who presently serves on the board. In each case, these remonstrations have concerned members of the library committee who represent one of three local municipalities under an idiosyncratic scheme that governs the composition of this citizen advisory board.
Since time immemorial, Alamance County’s libraries have been a collaboration between the cities of Burlington, Mebane and Graham – which build and maintain the actual libraries – and the county, which staffs these facilities and stocks them with lending materials.
In recognition of this joint effort, the county has set up an a 10-person library committee that includes two representatives from each of the three cities, three from the county at large, and a county commissioner to serve as a liaison with the county’s governing board.
Under a decades-old policy that governs the committee’s membership, the commissioners have complete freedom of choice over the liaison and the county’s three other at-large representatives. They also have the final say over six city representatives, who are nominated by their respective municipal leaders.
Although the commissioners have generally rubberstamped the municipal nominees, the past year and a half has seen them buck several of these recommendations.
In the summer of 2025, for example, the commissioners rejected Burlington’s suggestion of Sarah Blanton for one of its seats in preference for current committee member Timothy Check. Then, earlier this year, they overruled the city’s leaders again when they reappointed Debbie Johnson, whom the council had nominated alongside Blanton in 2025, in lieu of James Shrover – the council’s preference to take over Johnson’s position.
The commissioners have also used their prerogative to reject Mebane’s two most recent nominees for the committee. Thus, in June of this year, they installed Steven Squires and Carolyn Burns over Melissa Teets and Kayla Schilke, who had been the favorites of Mebane’s city council.
The rejection of Mebane’s two nominees has previously drawn a stern rebuke from councilman Sean Ewing, who is also currently a Democratic contender for a seat on the board of commissioners. Ewing, who had made the initial motions to recommend both Schilke and Teets, went on to take the board’s current lineup to task for their unanimous appointment of two other candidates.
The hopeful county commissioner reiterated his concerns during Tuesday morning’s comment period, which was monopolized by remarks about the library committee.
“I admit that the county commissioners do have the final approval. But historically, that approval has respected the recommendations of the municipalities. . . And what do those recommendations mean if the county commissioners simply choose someone else?”
– Mebane city councilman and county commissioner candidate Sean Ewing
“I admit that the county commissioners do have the final approval,” Ewing conceded when he got his turn at the microphone. “But historically, that approval has respected the recommendations of the municipalities…And what do those recommendations mean if the county commissioners simply choose someone else?”
Some of Ewing’s fellow speakers were more vocal about the apparent right-leaning views of those who have obtained a nod from the board of commissioners. Lehman even took issue with the appointment of commissioner Ed Priola as the board’s liaison to the library committee due to his “antagonistic” attitude to the library system.
Bill Shaw, who has recently become something of a regular at the board’s comment periods, accused the commissioners of stacking the library committee with opponents of LGBTQ rights and the left-leaning values like diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a case in point, he alluded to the committee’s current vice chairman Cheryl Sandford, who he recalled had been elevated to the group after she criticized an LGBTQ-themed display at Burlington’s May Memorial Library.
“The issue is whether the public appointing power is being used to amplify one segment of the population while diminishing the representation of others.”
– Bill Shaw
“This raises a fundamental question of representation,” Shaw added. “The issue is whether the public appointing power is being used to amplify one segment of the population while diminishing the representation of others.”
Shaw went on to take umbrage with a book labeling policy that Sanford has championed in order to warn parents of potentially mature content in much the same way as the rating systems for TV and films. The library committee ultimately gave this policy a unanimous endorsement before it was adopted by the commissioners in the spring of 2025.
Meanwhile, Katie DeVries read a public comment into the record from Hannah Keys, a self-identified survivor of sexual abuse. Keys faulted Lindsay McKinney, another member of the library committee, for using the labeling system to flag a book about sexual consent that she said would’ve benefited her as she came of age in a household where “shame and blame” was the typical lot of a rape victim.
“This is why public libraries were founded,” Keys summed up through DeVries, “because knowledge is power.”
The commissioners also heard a three-minute rebuttal from Sanford, who bemoaned the ways she has been pilloried by critics of her tenure on the library committee.
“Since my appointment…my life is under increased scrutiny,” she declared. “I have been filmed by members of the public and posted on social media. Entire Facebook groups have sprung up in opposition to our new book labeling policy. Friends send me screenshots of the anger and vitriol that I personally receive as a result.”
Sandford went on to infer that this backlash has been a politically motivated response to her own well-meaning advice as a concerned parent and library patron.
“[I]t is quite hypocritical to wail about partisanship when it is Democratic Party operatives that plan and execute the constant complaining.”
– Library committee member Cheryl Sandford
“It is not ‘hate speech,’” she added in reference to her support of the aforementioned labeling policy; “It is just speech you hate…and it is quite hypocritical to wail about partisanship when it is Democratic Party operatives that plan and execute the constant complaining.”
In addition to Ewing, who is running for office as a Democrat, voter registration records confirm Lehman and Shaw’s Democrat affiliations as well as Sanford’s own status as a member of the GOP. DeVries can’t be definitively identified in the state’s voter rolls based on the information she shared with the commissioners.
As for party identification of applicants to the library committee, the state’s voter registration records reveal that Squires and Burns, whom the commissioners appointed to represent Mebane, are both Republicans, while the council’s preferred candidates – Schilke and Teets – are, respectively, unaffiliated and a registered Democrat. The commissioners also favored the Republican Cheek over the Democrat Blanton when they apportioned Burlington’s representation in 2025. The voter registration records aren’t much help in ferreting out the affiliation of James Shrover, the council’s choice for this year’s appointment, while they show Debbie Johnson to be unaffiliated.
The commissioners were, by and large, rather laconic in their replies to these public speakers. Priola, for one, acknowledged that his views on the library system’s “dysfunctional administration” are “pretty well-known,” while Steve Carter, the vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, insisted that he and his colleagues have simply tried to abide by the public’s will in their appointments.
“We have the obligation to our constituents to appoint people who we believe will serve the community the way that the people who voted wanted them to.”
– County commissioner vice chairman Steve Carter
“We have the obligation to our constituents,” he added, “to appoint people who we believe will serve the community the way that the people who voted wanted them to.”
The only protracted response came from commissioner Pam Thompson, a one-time Republican who is now the board’s lone unaffiliated member.
Thompson recalled that she had previously sought to have the board of commissioners revisit the two-decade-old policy that gives them a veto over municipal representatives on the library committee. She expressed her disappointment that this item wasn’t on Tuesday’s agenda and only came up at the instigation of public speakers.
“I think that the worst thing that can happen with leadership is if we only talk to each other through public comments,” she said. “I just don’t want politics to get involved and committees and boards get stacked one way or another.”
