The new policy states the room would be limited to library and county government uses only. The move is a part of the larger effort by Jackson County officials to establish new policies for the county’s two public libraries since its official exit from the Fontana Regional Library system that went into effect July 1....The large community room was touted as one of the new JCPL Complex highlights during the capital campaign for the project between 2007 and 2009. Friends of the JCPL volunteer and retired school librarian Antoinette MacWatt said the room restrictions sting particularly hard given how integral the community was in fundraising for it. In total, community members raised over $1.8 million for the JCPL Complex project, while the county provided the remaining $7 million needed to renovate the historic 1914 courthouse.“That’s something that’s been, really, a point of pride for this community that we were able to raise that much money,” MacWatt said. “It feels a little bit like a slap in the face.”
Since the other $7MM was also provided by the community, in the form of taxes, you can see why people might be a little annoyed at being told that they can't use a room that was built for the express purpose of providing a community room.
Note that this does not apply to all libraries in the county, however. Just the one in the problematic blue city of Sylva. In the upscale vacation-and-second-home town of Cashiers, there will be no restrictions. The Smoky Mountain News has the good grace to call this 'puzzling.'
Part of what is so puzzling about the new restrictions proposed at the JCPL is that no such restrictions are proposed in the draft policy for the community room at the Albert Carlton Cashiers Community Library that was also presented to commissioners at last week’s meeting.
In the proposed Carlton Cashiers library policy, there are no restrictions on who can rent out the community room for any permitted uses, including meetings, private celebrations, art shows and “other similar and appropriate uses approved by the county manager,” though library and county government employees would be prioritized over other groups.
No one is really puzzled about this. As I've mentioned, the library has been the #1 issue locally for years and multiple election cycles now. The Republicans who have taken over the county commission view the Sylva library as dangerous to the moral health of the people of the county, likening the regulation they think it needs to the alcohol board's control of the sale of strong spirits. Part of what drove the current commissioners to seek office was a desire to destroy the library as a source of what they see as moral rot.
The Cashiers library, by contrast, is in a very rich part of the county surrounded by golf courses and gardens. They are so comfortable there that this is where the Republican party held its debates during the primaries, even without the threatened ID checks and pepper spray for errant Democrats who might try to attend.
These feuds are getting to the point that they're destroying the goods the institutions were set up to create or preserve. However, so far people seem to prefer to blame the other side and concentrate on winning than to figure out how to restore the goods.
7 comments:
"...and concentrate on winning than to figure out how to restore the goods. ..."
So it's a Government.
Sadly.
If they can't control it, destroy it?
Reminds me of a recent post on an antique arms forum, where a museum with a historically important ,but politically incorrect arms collection, (1800's, colonial, white) decided unilaterally to destroy it. Only after a lot of intervening protest did they decide to auction the collection off, rather than put it all in the dumpster. It's tough being a stalwart guardian of the past....
So was the library a source of moral rot, or wasn't it? Kind of a key point in the whole debate, don't you think?
Indeed. And that’s what they’re not really talking about. SMN is pretending to be puzzled; the commission meetings are turning on vague concepts like ‘neutrality of viewpoints’ and ‘protected expression.’ Neither side is framing the argument on the issue, because both actual positions are indefensible.
"Neither side is framing the argument on the issue, because both actual positions are indefensible.
Or because they will have to use words and ideas that Must Not Be Spoken?
There are a lot of things these days that have to be tip-toed around lest someone be offended.
I think both sides actually want to do things that are strictly illegal. So they can't really say what they intend to do if they get their way.
The one side intends to turn the moral question into an establishment of a sort of county religion governing what is allowed at the library. There's no way their actual intended standard could survive court review.
The other side wants to use the space to pursue things that probably count as erotic sex shows under North Carolina's (questionably constitutional) blue laws. You couldn't set up a business on main street to run Drag shows, although you can set up a theater that allows them to be performed occasionally as an incidental rather than core feature of the business. That's a weird place to draw the line, but since the community room is not a business, they could hire it out for drag shows. That's where a lot of this fight started: LGBTQ books in the children's section, drag shows in the community room.
Meanwhile, the actual function of the library seems not to matter to either of the feuding parties seeking their illegal goods. A fairly simple compromise arising from an honest discussion about this could preserve that, but instead it's endless meetings about 'neutrality of standards' and 'freedom of expression.'
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