Important Board of Supervisors Meeting Coming Up

That's this Fri, 29 Jul at 9a. Think you can get off work and make the meeting? Oh, sorry. Wish the meeting was in the evening so you could come.

Well, I understand that one of the items on the agenda is a request by the Regional Library for funding for the upcoming year. Don't know what the request will be for but typically the funding has run between $300,000 and $350,000.

I do want the Supervisors to include the Library funding in the upcoming budget. I also want them to take control of our investment by creating and appointing an Advisory Board of Trustees for the R. C. Irwin Library. This would be the ideal.

This is the story...have written about this before...this subject needs repeating.

Last fall, I, and a few others on the Transparency Committee went to the Board of Supervisors with the intention of asking them to appoint an African American to the Board of Directors of our local library.

Boy, did we open a can of worms! First, the Board of Supervisors discovered they hadn't appointed a Board of Directors for the R. C. Irwin Library.

So, we did a little research and found that when our local library went into the Regional Library System, we could no longer have a Board of Directors. Under the Regional Library System there is a Board of Trustees. Each county appoints one person to the Board of Trustees and our Board of Supervisors had already done that. The Board of Trustees is on the Regional Level.

Now on the local level, our Board of Supervisors can choose to create an Advisory Board of Trustees. And the Board of Supervisors hasn't chosen to do this yet.

So what's the problem? There is a group of people in Tunica who think they are the Board of Directors of the R. C. Irwin Library and apparently they have been passing these memberships on this Board of Directors down through their family and friends.

When I realized this, I was shocked. I never in a million years thought people did things like this anymore. This kind of thing was done back in the day but not anymore.

At this point, I don't care if the Board of Supervisors chooses to create this Advisory Board of Trustees or not. I don't even care if they create an Advisory Board of Trustees and appoint the same people who think they are the Board of Directors of the R. C. Irwin Library now. Although, I would hope that under this scenario each Supervisor would be allowed to appoint one of his constituents to the Advisory Board of Trustees. But that's dreaming.

This is what I do care about. I care about the truth.

You see several months ago, there was a program at the library...a reception and meeting with the author of "The Fall of the House of Zeus". It was really a nice event. During the refreshment set-up there were some ladies talking about me in the hallway. You see, I was teaching my Needle Arts Class in the room right next to where they were standing and I could hear every word they were saying. The discussion was centered around why I thought an African American should be appointed to the "Board of Directors" of the library. One lady said: "Oh, she's just saying that because it's an election year."

No, I'm not. I'm saying it because it is the right thing to do. And that's the truth.