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The Fairhope City Council met Monday night just days after the Alabama Public Library Service voted to suspend state funding to the Fairhope Public Library due to the inclusion of certain books in its young adult section.
The Fairhope council does not control the library, but is its primary funding source, contributing $1.2 million in all to the library last year including a $300,000 capital campaign.
Supporters of the library anticipated individuals who railed against the library at the APLS meeting to show up Monday night and similarly call for the council to withhold funding to the library, although no such people ultimately spoke out at the meeting.
Instead, all four present members of the council made it clear that they have no interest in withholding funds from the library.
“I want to make a couple of strong statements because I don’t want APLS to think that it’s OK,” said Council President Jack Burrell. “I take exception to being called the worst library in the state, I think we’re the best library in the state. I’m sorry for what the board and the staff is going through … I also don’t want them to think that it’s OK—I take exception—I don’t believe that we were given due process.”
APLS Board Member Ron Snider, who represents Fairhope’s district, had urged the board to give the library an opportunity to comply before halting state funding, calling the immediate termination of funds “highly inappropriate.” Snider is the only member of the board who voted against the measure.
APLS Board Chair John Wahl, who also chairs the Alabama GOP, called Fairhope Mayor Sherry Sullivan on Friday. Sullivan shared the basis of that conversation with the council Monday night.
“Mr. Wahl said that he does think we can find a resolution to this issue. I think there are some things he and I talked about about some miscommunication, about some definition—clarification of what’s “obscene” and what’s ‘sexually explicit.'”
Although the APLS board did not specify in its motion which books would need to be moved in order to receive state aid, books targeted in the public comment section include “Grown” by Tiffany Jackson, “Sold” by Patricia McCormick and “Tricks” by Ellen Hopkins. All three books deal with teen girls being sex trafficked or sexually abused.
Although Wahl and other board members have deemed these books to be “sexually explicit,” there is no clear definition of that term in the relevant code, and other similar definitions found in state code sat that sexually explicit books “appeal to the prurient interest of minors,” which basically means that the books inspire a shameful or morbid interest in sex.
Burrell said he is concerned about efforts to suppress the freedom to read.
“The freedom of speech, the freedom to read, that’s what’s dear to everyone in here; we can not lose that—and I am in fear of losing that right now,” Burrell said. “We have got to stand strong in the face of that and I think that we can all agree to that.”
While there may have been some individuals in the audience who disagreed with the library, they did not make it known at the podium. Every public speaker Monday night defended the library.
“The board chose to ignore its own rules in favor of political theatre,” said Cheryl Corvo, who had supported the library at the APLS meeting last week.
“There is no need to move any books, and Chairman Wahl’s recent insinuations in the press that all of this will just go away if we just move the books is tantamount to extortion,” said Elizabeth Williams, chair of the Baldwin County chapter of Read Freely Alabama.
The group launched a fundraiser Thursday following the APLS vote and in just four days has raised $36,790 of their $40,000 goal to offset any shortfall in state funds. Mayor Sullivan revealed Monday that the library had already received half of its annual allocation—approximately $21,000—so the funds raised so far could actually replace about 18 months of state funding.
Several council members noted that they expect to resolve the issue and continue receiving state aid, although that would mean the library board or staff deciding to move books that it has already found are suitable for those sections.
Speakers urged the council not to push for moving those books. The Fairhope Library Board is not scheduled to meet again until April 21.
