With only two months remaining until Yancey County officially exits its regional library system, local opponents to the change are urging elected officials to reconsider their decision in the wake of economic challenges incurred by Tropical Storm Helene.
Up to this point, they haven’t been convinced.
Carolina Public Press previously reported on Yancey’s “surprise” exit, which was made official in a June 2024 special meeting called by the commissioners when the regional library director was out of town for a conference. Preceding that was a months-long political fight stemming from controversy over a LGTBQ+ Pride month display featured in the Yancey County Public Library during 2023.
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The county insists that the decision to leave the AMY Regional Library system, which they shared with neighboring Avery and Mitchell counties for more than 60 years, is solely based on a desire to operate with more financial and administrative independence.
On July 1, following a year of transition planning, the change will go into effect.
County Manager Lynn Austin told CPP that the move is no different from past decisions to exit regional transportation and public health departments.
“It’s kind of nice to focus our efforts and our taxpayer dollars on our citizens,” Austin said. “The library falls in the same boat.”
Membership has its privileges
However, the county’s decision to leave the library system came before the devastation wrought upon Western North Carolina by Helene.
Yancey was among North Carolina’s hardest-hit areas, recording the state’s strongest wind gusts and highest rainfall totals during the storm. Helene killed 11 people in the county, according to the state.
Nicole Rogers, a Mitchell County-based activist who organized protests and community meetings in support of keeping AMY Regional together, said that Yancey’s insistence on leaving was irresponsible in the wake of the recovery process.
“When there’s instability in this region, having pulled resources to work from together is just a protective factor — period,” she said. “And you also have the expertise of all the staff across four different library branches plus a regional staff that can share their knowledge base.”
Rogers leads regular meetings at the library in Burnsville that she calls “Keep AMY Together” sessions.
Dozens of residents opposed to the change have shown up at the county’s public meetings. They’re skeptical of the county’s claim that they will be able to maintain all of the services and collections at the library without a major hit to its budget. Many, including Rogers, believe any extra county funds that might be spent on its newly independent library should instead go towards disaster recovery.
The first of Yancey County’s budget work sessions for the upcoming fiscal year started Monday.
“It doesn’t make sense financially and it doesn’t seem to me to be responsible governing choices to have any time or attention devoted to changing a functional library when not everyone has running water or heat or homes,” Rogers said.
Turning the page on regional library system
After making the decision to exit the regional library system last summer, the Yancey County commissioners didn’t return to the issue publicly until their regular meeting on April 14.
Austin delivered updates on the financials of the transition, which included announcements that the county would retain access to all the materials in the Burnsville library as well as the bookmobile operated by AMY Regional.
The state funding for the library would be about $98,000. The county expects to contribute an additional $150,000 for maintenance.
Austin told CPP that in years past Yancey County allocated a similar amount to AMY Regional through its annual budget, meaning that the county wouldn’t be taking on a bigger financial burden to maintain its own library.
“It’s really not taken away from any Helene (funding) unless we were going to cut the AMY (contribution) to zero anyway,” she said. “And we would never have done that.”
As far as funding for disaster recovery is concerned, Austin said the county is lucky in that the state and federal government continues to reimburse nearly all of the costs for debris removal, infrastructure repair and other expenses related to the storm.
County Commissioner Jeff Whitson addressed the library situation in a video posted to the county’s Facebook page on April 15.
“To put everything to rest, all the rumors and all the things that have been spread in a negative way, it’s going to be a great thing,” Whitson said. “Just to be honest, if all the hoopla and the circus wasn’t going on, the vast, vast majority of the public wouldn’t even know that anything had transpired with the library.”
Taking a cue from Yancey County
As much as Yancey County has attempted to smooth over the controversy regarding its library transition, it’s undeniable that public libraries have become a political battleground all across the country.
Western North Carolina is no different.
At its annual convention on Monday, the Mitchell County Democratic Party passed a resolution in support of AMY Regional while denouncing Yancey County’s handling of its exit.
Meanwhile, similar turmoil has surfaced in Macon County involving its own potential departure from their regional library system, according to several local media reports.
A leaked email originating from the address of a member of Macon’s local library board referred to Yancey County’s actions as a potential blueprint for Macon to stage its own exit from the Fontana Regional Library, which also serves Jackson and Swain counties.
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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