Timberland Regional Library maintains a kiosk at Centralia College East in Morton.
Lewis County commissioners will meet Monday with the leadership of Timberland Regional Library, a meeting that comes a month after commissioner Edna Fund called for the ouster of Library Director Cheryl Heywood.
Heywood will be attending the meeting, Fund said.
“I’m looking forward to Monday,” said Fund, a former TRL board member who has crusaded against the now-abandoned Capital Facilities Proposal that would have closed a third of Timberland’s 27 libraries, including all three in East Lewis County.
“I’m hoping to have a dialogue in terms of the needs of our county, how they’re being served and how we can help with plans for the future,” she said. “It’s really important that we have other folks that are coming, that they’re able to say what they’re looking for in the county. … Our constituents have a voice.”
The meeting will also be attended by Lewis County’s representatives on the Timberland board, Brian Zylstra and Hal Blanton. Fund said other members of the Timberland administration have been invited, but she’s not sure who will be attending.
“They need to make some changes in the administration and director position,” Fund said in November, following reporting by The Chronicle that Timberland leaders had planned the closure of the Mountain View Library in Randle for months and silenced staff who tried to warn the public. “I am appalled at the director and the folks in the administrative services part of Timberland.”
Heywood has since apologized for the lack of transparency in creating the closure proposal and recommended to the board at its last meeting that the plan be abandoned for good. Whether or not that change in approach will restore trust in TRL’s leadership remains to be seen, she said.
“I think the proof in the pudding is what happens in the future to our libraries and our service delivery to our very rural areas,” she said.
A meeting agenda provided by commissioners included points on the TRL’s budget and individual library funding, as well as usage statistics for Lewis County libraries. Other points include staffing levels at the Service Center over the past decade, the cost of the Service Center’s renovation, the status of a manager for the Winlock library and hours of operation for each library.
Rumors have begun circulating that Winlock will be closed an additional day each week, following the board’s decision to install Open+ at the library, which allows patrons to access the facility with a keycard during hours the building is not staffed.
“I heard that there were plans to cut the open hours by a day, and then going to that keycard system,” Fund said. “I’m thinking, ‘So how does that help our kids in the Winlock School District to use that library if (staff) are not available?’”
