As former Timberland Regional Library (TRL) trustees, we are alarmed and disappointed with the recent news that TRL’s administration wants to move the Amanda Park library building from that community and transport it 150 miles to Randle and use that structure as the new home for the library district’s Mountain View branch.
According to a recent story by The Olympian, Timberland administrative staff want to replace the Amanda Park building with mobile library service. This concerns us for a couple of reasons. First, a large amount of money (including $250,000 allocated by Grays Harbor County commissioners) has been invested in the Amanda Park library building. It would be upsetting for many people — not only residents in the Amanda Park area — to see this library building taken away from this community after so much money has been spent on it over the years. Second, there is a strong belief by some TRL administrative staffers that TRL mobile library service could replace the Amanda Park building and offer sufficient service for that community. The problem is, Timberland’s mobile library service is very new and unproven. Importantly, this new version of a “bookmobile” likely will appear in the Amanda Park area only a couple of times a week. It will not provide the reliable daily service that a library building provides.
We think mobile library service is a great way to supplement existing service and reach underserved areas in the TRL district, but it should not be used to replace existing library buildings.
It’s important to remember that Amanda Park-area residents pay property taxes, part of which goes toward funding Timberland. These residents have every reason to be upset that their local library building, which their tax dollars helped fund, might be taken away from them.
We also oppose moving the Amanda Park library to Randle because Randle-area residents have been led to believe, for over a year, that they soon will have a new library building to replace the existing Mountain View branch, which is located in leased space. A couple of years ago, TRL trustees approved setting aside $1 million from Timberland’s building fund for a new Mountain View branch building. In recent months, Timberland Executive Director Cheryl Heywood told trustees that it is very possible that TRL can secure federal funds that would cover the remaining costs for a new building in Randle. So why is TRL administration suddenly doing an about-face and pushing current trustees to give Randle-area citizens what is essentially a hand-me-down library building while taking away that building from Amanda Park residents, who want their library to stay put?
The recent actions by Timberland’s administration remind us of 2018, when the administration tried to persuade TRL trustees to approve a Capital Facilities Plan (CFP) that called for closing nine TRL branches — one-third of the 27 branches that existed then. Even before many people in these affected communities asked us and the other four trustees to not close any TRL branches, the 2018 trustees disliked the idea of closing branches. We rejected the CFP, thus keeping open all of the Timberland branches, though later on we did approve some positive elements in the CFP, such as mobile library service.
From our vantage point as former trustees, we think that TRL’s administration is “jamming” the current trustees and forcing them to make a quick — and rash — decision that would greatly impact the Amanda Park and Randle communities.
We encourage the current Timberland trustees to reject the administration’s Amanda Park-to-Randle scheme and instead keep the Amanda Park building in that community and move forward with the original plan to build a brand-new branch in Randle.
The people in both communities deserve it.
Sincerely,
Bob Hall, former Pacific County trustee
Corby Varness, former Grays Harbor County trustee
Brian Zylstra, former Lewis County trustee
