THOMASVILLE —Monday afternoon, the Thomas County Public Library System held their regular meeting in the Flipper Room in regard to their completed FY2022 audit and decision to extend an offer to a library director candidate.

After the agenda was approved, Interim Director Stephen Whigham began with the financial report.

“Our finance report is real good,” he said. “I always like to thank our staff, Donna Jones, the finances are in very good condition, there’s a $39,226 surplus in the fund balance and that usually shows you’re taking of where your revenue is coming in, you’re taking care of your spending.”

Afterward, he continued on into the library director report, discussing the continued search for the new library director, with interviews being held last Wednesday with the rest of the search team that included Chair Adrian Burns, Vice-Chair Lisa Williams and other members of the Library Board.

“The meeting convened at 8:45 a.m. and went until 1:35 p.m.,” Whigham said. “We interviewed four candidates and we will have someone to offer today.”

Burns said that they interviewed many strong candidates for the position and further asserted that the search committee had come to an unanimous vote to extend an offer.

“We did interviews on last Wednesday and we had some really strong candidates that each possessed different qualities and characteristics,” Burns said. “The search committee unanimously voted to extend an offer and so we’ll talk about that in our executive session, so we’re glad that we have someone is a possible, potential candidate, but we’ll go into that in our executive session.”

In other news, Whigham said that there was no new substantial information in regard to the renovations for the library as they were still waiting for bids for the project.

In regard to the completed audit, Whigham said that there were two recommendations that were given at the conclusion of the audit that were easily solvable and not harmful.

During community input, Lucinda Brown and Rudy Hehn spoke, with Brown stating that she was grateful to the library board for confirming that there would be no banning of books in the library, only the moving of books within the library. Hehn said that he and his wife were concerned about the difficult job involved in reviewing the books being considered for relocation. As regulars of the library, he was interested in this process and who was involved and how the final decision was made.

“Our concern would be that, you know, it’s a difficult job, it’s kind of a nuanced decision that a group of people is making, as far as to where to shelve certain books,” Hehn said. “In general, we respect the professionalism of the library staff to make those decisions on what’s the appropriate reading level, what’s the appropriate content level of the book, but we just don’t know how the decision is being made nor do we know what particular titles have been chosen to be re-shelved from the children section to the young adult section or t he adult section, or from young adult to adult. So our question would be is how are those decisions made and how can we access that information?”

Whigham said that he would explain the process to Hehn, with Burns inviting any member of the community to come and speak with Whigham or a member of the library in regard to any confusion about the process. “Come see me,” Whigham said. “You can come see anybody at the library, anytime you want to have a conversation, but if it’s ok, I’m the point person. You can talk to any staff member at any time, but come talk to me, please.”

Afterward, the library board entered into executive session where they voted to extend an offer to Derek Kolb for the position of library director before adjourning.