St. Marys won't lose its library this year, but the debate may be just beginning

A Kansas town near Topeka will keep its public library for another year after political uproar over the inclusion of an LGBTQ book among the shelves.

Applause broke out when the St. Marys City Commission voted 4-0 on Tuesday to renew the lease with Pottawatomie Wabaunsee Regional Library for another year. Absent from the vote was outgoing vice mayor and current state Rep. Francis Awerkamp, a Republican, who vowed last month that "I will fight that woke ideology until the day I die."

"We are grateful that that the Library will be able to continue to serve the St. Marys Community," library officials wrote in a Facebook post. "We are looking forward to working hard in the New Year to provide the best possible resources and Library services to our patrons. Please Come Visit Soon. We Are Here For You."

While renewing the lease was the culmination of a months-long debate, the discussion is unlikely to be over in the 2,700-person town known for its traditional Catholic sect.

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Gerard Kleinsmith, the town's new vice mayor, said he isn't convinced that the library cares about the people in St. Marys because he didn't see any books by former President Donald Trump on the library shelves while he did find six by Hillary Clinton.

"That's just one example, but those are the things that are concerning to me," he said. "Do they really have the interests and desires of the people of Pottawattamie County right up there in the front when you can't even check out one book by a former president, who won the county by almost a four-to-one margin?"

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The debate stemmed from complaints over a book, "Melissa," by Alex Gino, about a transgender child. The book has since been removed from the library.

But that didn't appease the city commission, which tried to insert a "morals clause" in the library's lease contract. The library refused, meaning it would lose its space by the end of the year if the lease was not renewed.

The clause would have mandated that librarians remove books on socially divisive matters, including LGBTQ and race relations. Commissioners floated the idea of evicting the library, which serves several rural communities and starting a new one that conformed to the new set of standards.

"The city does not own the library, so we don't make decisions about what happens in the library," said Matthew Childs, the town's new mayor. "But we do own the building, and we represent the citizens who are the primary customers and funders of the library."

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas executive director Micah Kubic said the commission had "toed the line of authoritarian censorship."

Childs acknowledged that townsfolk communicated at a November meeting that they wanted to keep their library.

"It was very clear from that meeting that the citizens want the library to remain open," he said. "Everyone agreed on that, so there's really no question about that. The question is, how do we assure the safety of the community and that the community is getting what they want in the library. And that's kind of up to the community, and we're the representatives."

Childs said the city agreed to extend the lease for another year in order to keep the library open, and the library agreed that community input is a good idea.

"As the stewards of trying to represent what the citizens want, I think we've achieved what we wanted to achieve here," he said.

Kleinsmith said the book inspired him to further research the public library system. He took issue with the mostly appointed library board having the ability to levy taxes, equating it to "taxation without representation." He also does not believe St. Marys has enough representation on the board.

"I intend to look into a lot of these matters more deeply through the course of this year and then see where we're at," he said, "see if we can get anything changed."