Board of Usurpervisors

Rather than arbitrate business, property, and tax disputes, our board of supervisors has chosen to start a cultural conflagration within our community. It is all quite clear they did this for cheap political gain. You don’t have to be savvy or experienced to see it.

Witness these excellent letters to the editor which outline the hypocrisy and mismanagement on display:

“Facts, Accounting, and Homework, Oh My!! A Library Supporter Digs Into the Finances”
Published August 23, 2023, by Sonja Carlborg of Front Royal.

Or, these excellent pieces of lay reporting,

“Investigating the Reasons for the Book Ban Campaign”
Published August 27, 2023, by Bridget Randolph of Brooklyn, NYC, formerly of Warren County, VA.

“Fact-Checking the BOS/Library MOA Negotiation”
Published September 10, 2023, by Bridget Randolph, of Brooklyn, NYC, formerly of Warren County, VA.

I was misled, personally on the phone, in the week prior to the first June 6, 2023 board meeting, by board member Jerome “Jay” Butler himself.

He assured me this would be a simple “reshuffling of some books”, yet we have since learned it was that and so much more. We have since learned this hateful harassment campaign started in January of this year and later even involved an outdoor beer party or two, complete with prizes. I have no words to express my contempt for those on the board willing to deceive me and other citizens about a topic so dear, yet with only a week or two of foreknowledge of their duplicity.

I went to school with someone who suffered violence and spoke of being gay during the AIDS crisis in the early 1990s. And, Mr. Jay Butler, I carefully witnessed the facial expressions and the false piety on display in the front row that night on June 6, 2023, at the Warren County Board of Supervisors meeting.

I sat through the whole 4-5 hours and stood and shook your hand later, feeling sure we would quickly reach a reasonable solution. I lack polite or appropriate words for you, nor board member Delores Oates, who clearly ‘hates the queers’ enough to blow $20,000 on the topic. My God, Jesus would slap you both.

The current members of the Board of Supervisors that have voted for withholding Samuels funding are complicit in the harassment and physical endangerment of Samuels staff. They have hounded Samuels out of a caring, thoughtful, and apolitical library director, Michelle Ross. In a time of such heightened tensions as this, a time when falsehoods multiply like cultivated seeds, it is beyond reckless to encourage such things.

The current board of supervisors, minus Cheryl Cullers, who voted against this nonsense, owes the following:

1.) A private apology to Michelle Ross.

2.) A private apology to each of the library staff whom they’ve harassed and placed in increased physical danger (witness D.C. Pizzagate). This includes *everyone* on the staff.

3.) A private apology to each of the families who have suffered the suicide of a family member yet bravely came before you to testify to your wrong-headedness and plead for empathy.

4.) A public apology for being so simple-minded and politically focused that you could not see the right path from the wrong and took a bigoted, hateful, and deceitful approach to political life. More than one of our Board of Supervisors has gone against their campaign promises and mandates. Witness Jay Butler’s promise to “keep government out of our personal lives.” Yeah, right!

Should these or funding for our wonderful Samuels Public Library not be forthcoming, I can only pray for our county and republic.

Daniel Silsby
Warren County, VA

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