When Timberland Regional Library recently announced a budget shortfall of $3.8 million, library fans posted on Facebook the need to rally around the five-county district that plans to lay off 61 frontline employees by May 15.
I shook my head. While I love libraries, and always have, I don’t see the point of throwing more money at a library district overseen by an executive director who is paid $206,788 a year, especially when the district has clearly mismanaged its funding.
Everyone needs to balance their budgets — homeowners, businesses, governments. When we spend more than we earn, it’s a recipe for disaster. (The federal government could learn that lesson instead of mortgaging the futures of our children and grandchildren with an accumulated national debt of more than $39 trillion.)
That said, I give huge thanks to Chehalis resident Brian Mittge, chair of the Timberland board, and member Hal Blanton of Packwood for meeting with library supporters on Saturday morning at the Centralia Timberland Library, knowing full well they could face criticism for laying off 38 percent of the TRL district’s frontline staff.
And they did.
But Hallie Ralls, president of the Friends of the Centralia Timberland Library, reminded everyone that we all share the same goal of keeping public libraries operating. The meeting was designed to strengthen communication, enhance transparency and foster trust among board members, staff and patrons. Nearly three dozen people packed the meeting room to hear what the two trustees had to say about the pending layoffs of frontline workers. Many arrived from Hoodsport, Montesano, Tenino, Packwood, Lacey and other parts of the five-county district.
Cheryl Heywood, who has run the 29-library district since 2013 as executive director, resigned effective March 25, as she should have done long ago. She hasn’t been the best at transparency or communicating with the public, as seen by the public outcry over the Capital Facilities Plan in 2018 that would have closed a third of the district’s libraries. She will continue receiving her $17,232 a month salary until June 30. Why? Good question. When someone asked why, Mittge said it’s a personnel-type issue that he’d like to address but can’t.
The board has already received more than 20 applications for the position of interim executive director, to serve six to 12 months, a position that would pay between $13,333 to $17,500 a month. Top contenders will be interviewed on Saturday.
Susanne Weil, a retired Centralia College instructor from Onalaska, questioned the proposed salary for the interim director, “which sounds exorbitant to me while we’re laying off the frontline workers who help people who come into the libraries.” These are the people who help seniors apply for Social Security or jobseekers search for employment.
“If we don’t have frontline workers in the libraries doing those things, then the libraries are crippled,” she said. “So I would just like to understand why such an exorbitant salary was approved for the interim director while people were laid off.”
Mittge, who has served only three years on the board, said they based the interim salary off what they paid their executive director who oversaw a $29 million budget.
“There’s nothing that says we have to hire someone at the top of the range,” he said. “We can hire them at the bottom, but yeah, it’s a lot of money.”
Mittge said he hopes the interim director can earn that salary by turning the ship away from the cliff or waterfall and steer it onto more placid waters.
“And I want us to take a look at our budget from the beginning, start at zero,” he said.
My question is why lay off the frontline workers who interact with the public while keeping higher paid (perhaps overly paid) central office administrators whose decisions helped create the budget shortfall. Bureaucratic jobs can be consolidated to make administrators earn the money they’re paid. Frontline workers who are paid less but interact with the public keep libraries open.
I’m not the only one questioning this decision. Eight former TRL Board of Trustees wrote a letter asking for investigation into the district’s finances and urging board members to reevaluate priorities. And a man from Packwood said a petition is circulating asking for an audit of library finances.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3758-B asked the board to hold off on layoffs, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Some people have called for cutting top administrators, Mittge said. Others have suggested replacing the entire board of trustees.
“Laying off 61 people right now is not what anybody wants to do,” Mittge said. “We’re saying we need to make sure that we can still write checks that clear in six months or eight months, and we’ve got to cut something.”
While the board and staff are negotiating with the union, he said, he can’t share specific details.
“We’re looking at all sorts of things,” he said. “I think we’re trying to look at everything.”
Ultimately, responsibility for balancing the budget rests with the Board of Trustees. Rather than rubber-stamping budget proposals presented by administrative staff, they should examine all expenses and ask whether it’s necessary for running the library. They approved a $32 million budget with only $29 million anticipated in revenues. Where are the millions once held in reserves? Why have those been spent instead of kept as a cushion for troubled times?
As a reporter covering government, I used to peruse city and county budgets at home at night so I could question expenditures that made no sense. Trustees should do the same.
When questioned about the board’s budgetary oversight, Blanton, who has served more than a dozen years as a trustee, noted that they give signatory approval to administrators to spend up to $1,000.
“That becomes pretty unwieldy because — I mean, $1,000 is still $1,000, but it ain’t what it used to be,” he said. “So we give the authority to the executive to make decisions that don’t have to come through us. When it gets to a certain level, it has to have more approval.”
Clearly, that policy hasn’t worked well or the district wouldn’t be facing a $3.8 million deficit. It’s probably time for healthy skepticism when reviewing monetary requests.
“There’s budgetary signatory authority that we’ve given, and rightly or wrongly, that’s what we’ve done,” Blanton said. “And we trust those people in those positions.”
I’d say that trust seems to have been misplaced, and quite honestly, the buck stops at the top — in this case, with the board of trustees. Blanton noted that library expenses have increased with the need for WiFi, ebooks, and other digital options.
“If we’re going to become a board where we have to approve every $500 purchase, that’s probably not going to happen,” he said. “Overall, it’s been a good library system. We have a hiccup right now.”
I doubt the 61 people losing their jobs would consider it a hiccup.
In July 2025, the board approved a budget and described everything as fine, a woman from Olympia said, “and here we are.” She said the board has lost the trust of the community.
Patty Binion, a past Friends of the Library vice president, said she showed up at the Hoodsport library to find it closed without any notice.
Part of the problem may be that only five of the seven board positions are filled as Thurston and Mason county commissioners are engaged in a childish tit-for-tat refusing to approve each other’s candidates, leaving Mason without any representatives on the board and Thurston County with only one instead of two. (Another example of tax dollars at work paying for county commissioners in a staring contest who refuse to blink, thereby leaving the Board of Trustees with less representation.)
“It seems when the trustees approve the budget, you are, in fact, approving these salary raises for other administrative folk,” said Margaret Colvin, who volunteers with the Tenino Friends of the Library. “I know that you deal directly with the executive director, but approving the budget, you’re approving other raises or salaries. But my question is, would an interim director have the authority to dismiss employees or to reassign employees?”
Mittge said that would be his intention.
“When you folks as trustees look at hiring the interim individual, please, please, please make sure that you are strategizing clearly and communicating clearly if that individual has the authority to dismiss individuals or to hire or to create programs,” said Regina King, a former TRL trustee.
Trustees have some ideas for curbing expenses — reducing collections, freezing new hires, and holding off on purchases. But they’re also looking at eliminating 61 frontline staff members.
The board has considered asking taxpayers to approve lifting the levy amount so they can collect more tax money. Library districts can levy up to 50 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, but they can only increase the levy rate by 1 percent a year without voter approval. It’s at about 23 cents per $1,000 now, Mittge explained. They could ask as early as November or perhaps during the next presidential election in 2028, when the cost would be lower.
However, a request to raise the levy is unlikely to prove successful until trustees prove they’re diligently reviewed all expenses and curtailed excess spending, including administrators’ salaries.
Just as Mittge and Blanton did, all of the library trustees should hold meetings in their counties to hear from patrons.
I’m writing this column as a TRL library patron who has funded the district for more than three decades without a local library. In recent years, we’ve had a volunteer-run library in Toledo, thanks to the generosity of Bill and Pat Caldwell and the people who donate time to staff it. TRL has a kiosk inside it.
Libraries are a great equalizer, giving everyone equal access to education and learning. I love the Libby app, which enables patrons to borrow ebooks, and I use Newspaperarchive.com, an online resource. We also hold our nonprofit Southwest Washington Writers Conference planning meetings at the Chehalis Timberland Library.
But until trustees prove they’re diligent enough to curb spending, willing to cut administrators at the top rather than the frontline workers at the bottom, they don’t deserve an extra dime.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
