EDITORIAL: Library network budget bomb about to go off

Whew!

Now that Community Library Network trustees have doused their 3-alarm fire — banning several seldom-read woke words from the organization’s website — they can settle down to more mundane matters.

You know, like closing libraries on Sundays, cutting staff and reducing material purchases. 

Budget stuff.

Budgets are seldom accused of being exciting. But that’s OK because when the CLN’s governing body is supposed to be making important yet typically boring budget decisions, their attention is bound to be stuck in an ideological elsewhere.

And that is, if nothing else, not boring.

Two libraries might still be limping along after storm damage eight months ago, but your trustees won’t abide “diversity, equity and inclusion” on CLN’s website one more blasted minute. 

And if the trustees’ leader, Rachelle Ottosen, can’t justify killing DEI on religious grounds, she’ll pound the final nail in its coffin with this kind of gusto:

“The academia who invented and pushed DEI, pushed the DEI concept, clearly state it is intended to divide the people against each other and usher in Marxism."

Thank you, Chair Ottosen, for saving us all not just from porn on our kids' library shelves but from the impending Communist invasion of North Idaho. 

Unfortunately for Ottosen and her like-minded colleagues, Tim Plass and Tom Hanley, time is almost up to adopt a budget for the coming fiscal year. Unless an extension is requested and approved — incompetence and warding off commies are not grounds for extension, alas — the budget must be approved by Aug. 27. 

Trustees plan to meet tomorrow in Hayden and might approve a budget then. They will almost certainly ignore the insights of Michelle Lippert, a responsible, respected citizen and longtime local public servant.

In a recent letter to the board, Lippert lamented trustees' blatant disdain for their critics.

"Perhaps you share Trustee Hanley’s disturbing perspective, as expressed at the June 27 meeting, where he suggested that dissenters against the conservative board majority should be 'cast aside' and deemed 'unworthy of consideration,'" she wrote.

Lippert also documented, via public information request, the overwhelming nature of opposition to the trustees’ proposed budget.

“Chair Ottosen mentioned receiving emails both supporting and opposing the budget,” Lippert wrote. “However, my FOIA request revealed that opposition far outweighed support — there were five times as many emails against the proposed budget as there were in favor.”

But Michelle is missing the point, apparently. When you've got woke words on your website and commies busting down the door, who has time to listen to what your patrons want?