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The Garfield County commissioners unanimously voted this week to appoint Myrna Fletchall of Rifle to the Garfield County Public Library District’s (GCPLD) board of trustees. The board is the library district’s governing body. Its members make decisions about the budget, building maintenance, raising funds, hiring and firing the library district director, and uphold the library’s policies, especially those surrounding the First Amendment and the free access to information for all.
The board appointment process looked a little different than it has in years past.
Usually, the board, along with library staff, advertises that they have an open seat and then they interview candidates and approve a recommendation. Finally, the BOCC would approve the appointment.
This time, commissioners took over the process from start to finish, interviewing all ten candidates themselves before selecting Fletchall. Their decision to do so drew criticism from county residents.
During the May 6 BOCC meeting, Commissioner Tom Jankovsky said he liked Fletchall’s answers during the interview — and referenced the controversy over restricting children’s access to books and her experience in finance.
“Should you look at a policy for books, and the answer there was ‘yes,’ and that was a deciding factor for me,” he said. “And then your resume and your financial background, being able to work with budgets and so forth, you understand the numbers side of that and I think that’s very important.”
The other commissioners agreed with Jankovsky’s assessment, and said they thought all of the candidates gave thoughtful answers.
Board president Adrian Rippy-Sheehy was allowed to ask questions with the commissioners during the interviews, which took place on April 30th. Afterwards, she and the other trustees agreed on three candidates to recommend to the BOCC: Fletchall, Kirsten Clancy, and Hanna Arauza.
Arauza applied previously to be on the board, with unanimous approval from current trustees last fall, but had her appointment rejected by commissioners.
During the BOCC meeting, Rippy-Sheehy expressed her disappointment with the commissioners’ decision to conduct interviews. She said she agreed to ask questions during the interviews with the commissioners because she felt the library didn’t have a voice.
“We do not agree with you taking over the appointment of the trustees,” she said. “Personally, that is kind of a slap to our current board, and I don’t like that… You guys, I think, are making this very, very political.”
Fletchall wants to “bring a fresh perspective.”
Myrna Fletchall and her family moved to Rifle about 15 years ago from Colorado Springs, and she runs a revenue cycle management company called the Billing Doc.
In an interview with Aspen Public Radio, Fletchall, who’s originally from Chihuahua, Mexico, spoke about how much libraries meant to her as a young person, and how that love continued into her adult life — including taking ESL classes at her local libraries.
“When I came here, to the United States, I remember going to get books to learn English and for my kids, movies and books and cartoons and all the programs that they have,” she said. “So that's one of the reasons that I applied for the library (board). I just love all the resources that they give to the community.”
Fletchall said she’s very familiar with the Rifle branch, as that’s the location that’s in her community, and the one she goes to most frequently.
“I think my goal right now is to learn from the other libraries, to learn the dynamic, how they're doing things, and then try to help as much as I can, and bring a fresh perspective,” she said.
She also said that she’s gotten advice from her husband, Britton Fletchall, who’s president of the Garfield Re-2 School District’s Board of Education. The main one being, do your reading.
“When you get involved in this, (you think) it’s like, ‘oh, you have a meeting on Wednesday nights, and that's all you have to do,’” she said. “We figured out that it's not really only that, you know, it's days of planning. Days of reading, days of getting information from here, from there, from all different perspectives. So you have to be informed about what's going on. That's his tip.”
In regards to the community controversy over kids’ access to books, Fletchall said she wanted to have honest conversations.
She emphasized that she still has a lot to learn about the library’s bylaws and policies. For example, she mentioned that during the last library board meeting, the trustees and GCPLD Director Jamie LaRue had discussed the idea of a library card that is more restrictive in what it allows its holder to check out.
The library currently has a card that blocks access to DVDs, video games, and other media, and children aren’t allowed to use the library’s laptop checkout program. LaRue recommended against the idea of creating a new card that prevents kids from checking out “adult only” or “mature audiences only” content. His reasoning was that it would be costly and time intensive for staff, who would have to manually go through materials and determine what constituted material that would be blocked by the card. It also wouldn’t prevent kids from reading books in the library building itself. LaRue also said it could violate the library’s First Amendment policies, which guarantee patrons access to information, regardless of age.
“It is not the library's job to enforce individual parents' limitations on their children's reading,” he wrote in his recommendation to the library board. “As I have communicated to patrons several times, it is far simpler, more direct, and certainly cheaper for parents simply to talk to their children. This requires no governmental action or overreach. Parents have rights. They also have obligations.”
But still, it was an idea that Fletchall hadn’t heard before, and she said she’d be open to learning more, and exploring other ideas that might address some patron’s concerns.
“I think it is our duty as adults to protect the children,” she said. “I'm not a fan of banning books. I don't want to ban books. But at the same time, I think that we have protections for children everywhere, right, with alcohol, with cigarettes and stuff like that. So, I think we can do something.”
Overall, she wants the community to keep being involved in their libraries, so she and the rest of the board can continue having conversations about the goals of the library.
“I think the more that we talk to each other, the better that we will be,” she said. “Instead of just not talking and being like, ‘well, you think that way. And I think this way.’ That’s separated. I don't think that's what we need. I think we need to talk, we need to unite, and we need to do what's the best for the community.”
