Burlington’s elected leaders have hurled themselves into the fray over an interjurisdictional advisory board that weighs in on the policies and operations of Alamance County’s libraries.
Burlington’s city council decided to join this public debate over the county’s library committee on Tuesday at the behest of mayor Beth Kennett, who has taken exception to the county’s recent rejection of several municipal nominees for this 10-member body.
Kennett went on to present the council with a letter that she had drafted to the county’s board of commissioners about its apparent disregard for these recommendations.
“We believe municipalities that support library facilities should have a meaningful voice in library governance,” she states in her letter to the commissioners. “We ask, in a spirit of collaboration, to create a clear and shared [appointment] process that will serve the libraries, the library committee, and the people we all serve.”
Kennett’s missive, which the rest of the council readily endorsed, follows several months of public complaints and recriminations about the policy that has allowed the commissioners to exercise this veto over the committee’s municipal representatives.
Under the bylaws for this 10-member board, the library committee is structured to reflect the shared role that the county and its municipalities have in sustaining the county’s library system. This policy allows the cities of Mebane, Burlington, and Graham – which have built and continue to maintain the system’s physical buildings – to nominate candidates for six of the committee’s seats. In the meantime, the board of commissioners, which staffs and operates these facilities, gets to appoint another three members, while one of the commissioners is assigned to round out the group’s 10-person lineup.
The hitch in these pluralistic appointment procedures is that the final say over all of the committee’s appointees rests with the county’s board of commissioners.
Lately, the commissioners have become increasingly willing to use their prerogative to overrule the recommendations of the county’s municipalities. They’ve done this three times this year, substituting their own preferred candidates for two nominees from Mebane and a third contender from Burlington. Two other proposed appointees from Graham were nevertheless accepted by a majority of the commissioners.
In the wake of these appointments, the commissioners have been regularly called out by members of the public, who’ve accused them of stacking the library committee with conservative zealots and otherwise politicizing its membership. Meanwhile, commissioner Pam Thompson, the only independent on the Republican-dominated board of commissioners, has made several unsuccessful attempts to get her colleagues to address these concerns at one of their meetings.
In making her own entry into this figurative minefield, Kennett has focused on the presiding spirit of partnership rather than any political differences between the county and its municipalities.
“We deeply value the shared commitment between the city and the county that keeps our library system strong,” the mayor asserts in her letter to the commissioners. “We remain committed to a constructive, cooperative relationship with the board [of commissioners]. . . and we would welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you.”
Kennett’s letter goes on to ask the county’s governing board to seat municipal nominees “even if in an auxiliary role” should the commissioners select others to fill the committee’s vacant positions. She also urges the commissioners to meet with their counterparts from Burlington, Mebane, and Graham to discuss “how future appointments will be made” and to amend the committee’s bylaws to “state that municipal representatives will be recommended by city council and honored by the board of commissioners.”
On Tuesday, Kennett sought an informal consensus from the rest of the council in favor of dispatching this communique to the commissioners.
“I totally support it,” replied councilmember Dejuana Bigelow.
“I appreciate you putting it in words,” added councilman Ian Baltutis while fellow councilman Jeff Smythe and Bob Ward, the city’s mayor pro temp, nodded along in support.
