Moderating a book club meeting

It seems there is a problem between moderating a book club meeting in the library and County Commissioners opinions as to what it means.

Commissioner Henslee said, "I'm interested in how do we protect the constitutional rights of the patrons and I know we're saying all the same thing, so I don't understand why it has to be an employee that moderates the conversation. Protecting people's rights are of utmost importance to me. I also don't believe in government overreach or government stepping into what I perceive to be government influencing people's speech or expression."

Commissioner Henslee asks, "could I have a book club at the library and moderate it myself?" Ms. Taysom said, not the way we have it setup right now." Ms. Taysom further explains it was setup that way to avoid liability, the idea was library staff need to be more in control of the space.

Commissioner DeGroot said, "there's a difference between controlling the space and controlling the conversation. We receive advice from the library advisory board, we receive those things and then we make decisions on policy and then it is the library staff's responsibility to carry out those programs within that policy framework."

"The letter that came from the State Board was already in the hands of the media before it came to the Board and you felt, in your email, that is was your responsibility to get it out to the media because of the people you represent. You don't represent anyone, we do, we appoint you to a position to advise us. I want to be clear about that, those are the particular roles."

Book clubs have first amendment rights, regardless of the book being discussed. Book clubs are not public meetings as some people may think and are not government sponsored as some claim, they are by being in a public space at a county library.

Mr. Wells explains, "there's a particular characteristic of the library systems that requires a certain discipline, the librarian is responsible for training their staff to stay within certain parameters and the staff understands there is a check and balance, and this has to be funded for the total experience that libraries provide."

Commissioner Minty said, "as I've observed the different perspectives, there is a lot of what I would call non-listening on each side, I hope we could put everything that was said up until now aside and say now we are all going to listen and roll model how we can have civil discourse. What I heard the librarian say in the past, is in that particular book club there was one person sometimes five that would show up. What I would like to offer, is the library do programing that gets the enthusiasm and passion to get people to come together in a constructive way, putting all this energy,organizing and staffing and that only has one person show up, is not a good use of resources. How can we get more topics that more people are passionate about?"

Commissioner DeGroot said, "well said and thank you for really trying to be positive in a not very positive discussion."

Commissioner Henslee said, "thank you for all your hard work at the library. I love all the programming, have it all, but I can’t get behind a government employee, while on duty, getting paid moderating a discussion. I think there is a clear path forward for the library to continue all the services in a slightly different way."

Mr. Wells said, "we will have to work those out."

Commissioner DeGroot said, "I can get on board with that. The last thing I want to do is micromanage the library. What I want is to be able to say it’s running fine, and I can have faith, trust and confidence in the people I’ve appointed and/or hired to run those programs. What bothers me is when something comes up and I have to make a corrective action and the reaction I get makes me lose the faith, trust and confidence that I should have in those people. I’d like to be able to regain the faith and confidence. I believe the structure we have is correct as long as we’re treating each other a little bit better."

The Board was in agreement to work with library staff and the advisory committee to take what was discussed today and put it into practice.Mr. Wells said, "there's a complaint process and we can also do the administration of keeping the system going."

Hypothical: If I allowed someone to have a meeting at my house. Would I not want someone to be in charge in case the discussion got out of hand and had the power to ask disrupters to leave in order for it to be a safe place for everyone to meet in a peaceful safe manner?