What Path Forward Now for Supervisors After Samuels Submits Flat Funding Budget Proposal?

Is it REALLY all about the budget and hard-to-account-for numbers?!? Or is that just a cover story for a County Board of Supervisors majority’s desire to to gain operational control of what is kept publicly available to read in this community’s long-standing Public-Private Partnership 501-C3 non-profit public library? Many Samuels Library supporters have publicly stated at supervisor meetings that they believe the latter to be the case in the escalating conflict between what appears to be a huge public citizen majority’s support of Samuels Library and its myriad public assistance programs, versus four elected supervisors and a “Silent Minority” handful of citizen critics of Samuels, which incidently is Virginia’s reigning 2024 Library of the Year.

That belief that budgetary matters are a cloak to conceal the true motivation at the root of four supervisors search for bids for another private entity to become its future public library operating partner is supported by several of that elected official majority’s active participation, directly or indirectly, in what appeared at least in part from some self-identifying participants, to be a religiously motivated 2023 effort to totally remove LGBTQ-themed content from the library’s shelves.

It seems as if a distinct minority of county citizens, a minority including 4-of-5 sitting county supervisors, wants to put Samuels Public Library ‘behind bars’ as to what it can or cannot stock on its book shelves. Royal Examiner File Photos Roger Bianchini

After review of the multitude of requests for book removals, library staff and management moved some titles to older youth or adult sections of the library and added some parental controls on youth reading parameters.

However, no titles were totally removed. That is apparently a sore point for “Clean Up Samuels” activists, and possibly as many as four of the five sitting county elected officials, Cheryl Cullers excluded as the lone stated Samuels Library supporter on the county board of supervisors. As previously reported, some Samuels Library supporters have cited some of that LGBTQ content as a potential anti-suicidal lifeline to youth approaching puberty with their own self-generated sexual identity questions, rather than “recruitment” to an alternate sexual identity lifestyle as some library critics contended in 2023.

Samuels submits flat funding budget & new MOA

A hint at truth versus fiction in the county supervisor majority effort to seek more compliant library management, even from for-profit entities, could become more readily apparent in the wake of the Samuels Public Library Board of Trustees recent, March 31st re-submission of a funding proposal and reworked Memorandum Of Agreement (MOA) for Fiscal Year-2026. That proposal eliminates the initial December 2024 request for a 16.7-percent County funding increase to $1.19-million dollars from what was a three-year maintained flat funding level of $1.024-million dollars.

The Library Board of Trustees indicated the difference in the two budget proposals will be approached: “with a commitment to making up any shortfall in operating expenses with State Aid, Library funds and Volunteer services.”

Have Samuels Library’s budget numbers been that hard to access as some supervisors have asserted? Or as others have suggested, is that a tactic to distract from a real motive in seeking a library operational turnover? A lot of budget numbers are apparent in this Library Board meeting file photo.

The largest single increase in that initial, December 2024 proposal was $54,500 for building and grounds maintenance. It must be noted that, that addition to the library budget came after the supervisors, without notice to the Samuels Library Board of Trustees or staff, withdrew County Public Works maintenance of the County-owned library building and grounds that had created a significant savings in those maintenance costs to the library.

Mending Fences

In its cover letter with the reworked, flat-funding proposal and updated MOA of late March, the Samuels Library Board of Trustees expressed hope for the future of the Public/Private Partnership with the County, despite sometimes legally questionable county supervisors moves to attain increased operational and/or budgetary oversight of Samuels Library:

“It is our hope that this divisive and bitter conflict can be resolved before a permanent schism exists in our community and that the Partnership can be mended.  Warren County has so much to offer, and this acrimonious debate only serves to make many shy away from our community. Samuels Public Library staff and the Samuels Library Board of Trustees are here to serve our community, just as you are – let’s work together for a brighter future for all the citizens of Warren County,” the Library Trustees wrote to the county supervisors.

Samuels Board of Trustees is seeking a mutually beneficial path forward in its Public/Private Partnership with Warren County. Will the county supervisor majority go along with the library proposal that includes a reduction to flat funding despite increased costs in FY-2026? Those increases include building and grounds maintenance cost hikes created by the supervisors unilateral decision to withdraw County Public Works maintenance of its library building and grounds occupied by Samuels Public Library.

The cover letter points to the lengthy history of a successful Public/Private Partnership between the entity that became “Samuels” named for a library director who donated his Chester Street building, the current WC Heritage Society site, for library use around the 1950s, and previous county governments:

“It is also clear that the County Supervisors planned for a long-lasting partnership with Samuels Public Library looking to the future as evidenced in the 30-year lease agreement. All data points to the wisdom and success of their plans and their trust as the Library’s patronage and performance measurements continue to climb.”

We have been informed that the existing 30-year Samuels Library lease on the County-owned building and grounds has 14 years left on it, at an annual rate of $1 dollar per year. That might complicate things for the 4-person county board majority should it choose to reject Samuels Library’s effort to mend the relationship in favor of contracting with another entity.

As “Save Samuels” President Samantha Good told the supervisors of their planned Competitive Bid process during Public Comments Part 2 on April 1st, “So, you guys are going to draft an RFP (Request For Proposals) and post it on Friday. Then you’re only going to get seven business days for proposals? And then you’re going to only give the (WC) library board six days to review the proposals?

“Sounds like you guys already have somebody in mind. It sounds really suspicious,”  Good concluded of her bad impression of the board majority’s goal in seeking competitive bids after rejecting Library Systems & Services (LS&S) early, unsolicited bid.

If it wasn’t 100% support for ‘Save Samuels’ President Samantha Good’s pro-existing county library structure and management comments in this 2024 file photo, it was awfully close to that.

As previously reported, while the supervisors rejected the unsolicited bid in favor of competitive bids, there is nothing to prevent LS&S from reapplying during the competitive bid process. And also as previously noted the LS&S proposal from its Vice President of Business Development Mark Kunin addressed to WC Library Board Chairman Eric Belk begins “Dear Eric” and includes a promise that, “The County Library Board and Board of Supervisors will retain full policy and budgetary oversight,” as well as this overview that: “We look forward to the opportunity to collaborate with the County in realizing its vision for the library …” (emphasis added)

With at least one potential applicant, a for-profit one we note, ready to bend over backwards to allow the current supervisor majority the full operational control it is largely perceived to be seeking, what are the odds of a supervisor’s majority accepting the new, Samuels Library reduced budget, flat-funding proposal?

Perhaps better than one might initially anticipate if one of that majority has a flashback on her previous statements about Samuels Library.

A Turn Back to Trust?

As noted above, the Library Trustees Cover Letter on its adjusted FY-2026 budget proposal and MOA update added hope in a reconciliation to the benefit of the entire community. In that regard the Trustees referenced two quotes from then-supervisors Chairman Vicky Cook from about a year and a half ago.

“We can get there again as shown in the following quotes taken from a joint press release from the Warren County Board of Supervisors and the Samuels Library Board of Trustees issued on October 3, 2023,” the Trustees said of their hope for reconciliation to a common good:

“Vicky Cook, Chairperson and Fork District Supervisor commented, ‘I am pleased that Warren County Board of Supervisors and the Samuels Library Board of Trustees have come to an agreement that will continue our partnership of providing an outstanding library service to our community’,” the Samuels Trustees wrote, adding a following day positive quote by Cook from the NVD regarding Samuels operations and financial accountability:

“ ‘I want to acknowledge that the library and the board of trustees do an outstanding job and I do respect the legacy of the library and how much it means to our community. I also believe that the agreement has addressed all of the board of supervisors expectations and accountability of our tax dollars,’ Cook continued.”

Vicky Cook, right foreground, with ‘Jay’ Butler and a masked Cheryl Cullers further back, at a Samuels Board meeting some time ago. Below center, could current BOS Chairman Butler be asking Cook if she recalls what she said about Samuels value to this community and its answers to all budget questions, circa 2023, when she was chairman? Might be time to resurrect that question.

Now if Supervisor Cook can recall her perceptions as board chairman expressed in October 2023, when as chairman she may have been an appointed member of the Samuels Library Board of Trustees, and explain the reasons for her optimism back then to her current colleagues Jamieson, Stanmeyer, and Butler, perhaps this “divisive and bitter conflict” could be resolved positively for the entire community, as opposed to one minority group of extremists that seem, for some reason, to have the ear of four of the five current sitting supervisors.