The six candidates vying for three seats on the library board in Collinsville and Fairmont City in the Metro East have noticed a marked increase in animosity and controversy at board meetings over the past two years.
Prior to municipal elections in 2023, only a handful of people regularly attended board of trustees meetings for the Mississippi Valley Library District, which serves about 34,000 people. Now, most meetings draw crowds — a sign of changed political attitudes.
In this nonpartisan election, the winners on Tuesday will steer what was once seen as an innocuous board that’s been under a conservative majority for the past two years. Lately, board members have argued over tax levies, disagreed about maintaining aging infrastructure and debated efforts to form a staff union.
These seven nonpartisan members can be grouped into two ideological categories: one more conservative and one more liberal. And the upcoming election reflects that divide. But the candidates share a number of similarities — a passion for the library and the importance of community access to information and resources.
Three seats are up for grabs. One is to serve a four-year term. Two are for six-year terms.
Two-year term candidates
Kathy Murphy is the only incumbent running for reelection. She was a member of the conservative majority that won control of the board in the last election. Murphy said she might have been naïve, not realizing how much opposition she and fellow conservatives would face on the board.
“Some people coming to the board meetings accuse us, accuse me, of being bigoted and intolerant of things,” she said. “But yet their tone of voice and their accusations belie their motives.”
As a preschool teacher, Murphy has long used the library to support her professional work, joking she’s probably read more children’s books than just about anyone else. She served a two-year term in 2023 and ran for another two-year term when fellow conservative Lisa McCormick resigned in November. That position has been filled for a couple of months by Uta Robinson, who’s not seeking reelection.
Murphy believes the current board has improved finances, moving some cash into interest-bearing accounts. That offset this year's need to raise the district's tax levy or the portion of taxes it uses to fund the budget.
Her goal over the next two years is to build off that model.
In the meantime, she said she hopes the community can acknowledge the different viewpoints and still be respectful.
“It makes me very sad that this is going on in the library because the library is an educational gate in the city. It's a media gate,” Murphy said. “For it to lean and promote one side over the other, I think, isn't in the best interest of this community.”
Shannon Lawton-O’Boyle will face Murphy for the two-year term. She's running for the board because the library has been a great resource for her family. She said she began attending meetings over the past year and quickly observed the tension between the public and the board.
“There wasn't a lot of engagement to diffuse that or to sort of bring things together,” said Lawton-O’Boyle, a relationship therapist.
In her view, the board of trustees should spend less time focused on ideological disagreements and more time on fixing the problems at hand.
“I'm not myself looking to make some kind of big political shift,” Lawton-O’Boyle said. “I think the shift should be back toward community and systems work — and not sort of put into an ideological pocket.”
Lawton-O’Boyle said she’s met many people while campaigning who don’t realize the kind of resources are available at the library. That's a problem, she said. It’s especially relevant when discussing the annual tax levy.
It’s easy for candidates to say they’d never vote to raise taxes because of the current economy, she said. There may need to be an effort to reach a middle ground in order to pay for rising minimum wages and repair the aging library, Lawton-O’Boyle said.
“We have to work within that range with a whole bunch of different opinions: from being really conservative about asking for more money and asking for the very minimum to having projections of niceness,” she said.
O’Boyle’s more liberal allies in the race are Benjamin Wells and Ian Ashcraft, who are running for the two other seats with a six-year term. They said that all three may not agree 100% on the issues, but they do have common values. They describe themselves as “independent, nonpartisan candidates,” but they may caucus with the current board’s more liberal members.
Six-year term candidates
Benjamin Wells is currently an Amazon employee and said his candidacy for a six-year term reflects a family legacy of supporting community service. His father previously served on the board, and his aunt worked there, too.
The main focus of his campaign is "finding ways to interact with non-patrons in the district (and) to ensure that people are more and more involved,” he said.
The current board’s failure to act quickly on fixing the elevator serves as a good example of its lack of preparedness, Wells said. It had been well known the elevator was on its last legs. When it broke last fall and a contract to repair it wasn’t approved right away, that showed the board’s inability to govern, he said.
“Trying to find ways to solve our maintenance issues, be prepared for issues that would come about, or finding ways to properly finance those capital projects in the future (are) definitely a focus of mine,” Wells said.
He said the board should explore grants and other fundraising efforts. Wells feels that ignoring any possible raises to the tax levy is just silly and not financially feasible.
He attended board meetings 10 years ago and observed the laid-back nature of previous board meetings when he presented his Eagle Scout project.
“Aside from the audience size, the vibes, the tone of how people respond to the current board is just completely different,” Wells said.
Ian Ashcraft decided to run after observing the board over the past two years. He and his family grew up using the library, which has been an essential part of their academic endeavors.
Ashcraft works as a grant administrator and feels strongly about supporting the library financially. He said that the current library staff has done well but that finding more grants and holding more fundraisers are always welcome.
“I don't think there are questions about the financial sustainability, but we, obviously, want to make sure that it is funded the best that we can without costing taxpayers any extra money.”
In his eyes, tax levy increases, when needed, should be moderately applied.
Like Wells, Ashcraft said he was not shocked by the lack of urgency from the current board to fix the elevator. He also would like to set money aside to repair or replace aging infrastructure, like the building’s roof, the fountain in front and new carpet inside.
One of the issues of contention has been the selection of books on the library’s shelves. A fairly recent Illinois law bars banning books by making all libraries in the state adopt American Library Association rules that do not allow books to be removed on partisan grounds without losing funding. MVLD’s executive director Kyla Waltermire said no books have been banned in the library district. But there has been discussion at meetings.
"I'm not here to control what other people want to check out from the library. The library is for everyone, and I want the residents and other people who are in the district to be able to have their parental rights and freedom to say, ‘No, you can't check that out.’ I'm not their parent," Ashcraft said.
“We want to see you at the library, and we want you to see yourself at the library, right? So that also means being reflected in the library,” Ashcraft said. “Strong libraries build strong communities, and that's what we want.”
On the more conservative side of the ticket is Kelly Balaco-Reeder, a photographer and substitute teacher. She’s also been a lifelong library user. She said in her teenage years, it was a place to hang out with her friends or do research for class projects. Now, it’s a place to take her kids.
She said modernizing the library would create a more welcoming environment.
Running for an open seat on the board is a great way to get involved, she said. She's noticed the tension at recent meetings of board members.
“They’re under attack a lot, and I think that it takes away from them being able to do their job well,” Balaco-Reeder said.
Financially, the board’s investments are in a better position than they had been, she said. She too would like to explore more fundraising opportunities to avoid raising taxes.
She views her candidacy as being “middle-grounded,” and she’s hoping to bring more balance to the board. To do that, she said, she's hoping to listen more and talk less.
“If we look at it as we’re here to serve one another, instead of pushing any agendas, we can accomplish more,” she said.
Balaco-Reeder is also opposed to banning books.
“I believe that books give us insight into other people's minds, and that's the best way to form empathy,” she said. “And the more empathy that we have out there, the less arguing and bickering, and we treat others the way we want to be treated.”
Kenneth Norsworthy is now retired from a career in maintenance at Fisher-Price. He said his additional experience operating a business would be an asset to the board, especially with the looming preventative maintenance and ongoing repairs.
He moved to Collinsville five years ago to be closer to grandchildren. Norsworthy also ran a homeowners association in Kentucky and said they also struggled with “finger pointing.”
He said, however, that he was able to get a new boat dock replaced without borrowing any money. “You can make things happen if you're willing to work with people,” he said.
To make that happen on this library board will mean agreeing to disagree — but finding solutions because the board works for the taxpayers, he said.
Raising taxes is something Norsworthy sees as a last resort, he said.
“I think, if we manage the money, we can make it work without raising taxes,” he said. “I'm totally against putting any more on the taxpayers at this point in time.”
He’s also not supportive of censorship, but, if elected, he’d like to ensure books are in age-appropriate sections of the library.
“Anything that's not child appropriate at least needs to be on the top shelf where mom has to hand it down to junior,” Norsworthy said.
Early voting started March 17. Polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. on Tuesday.
