Timberland Regional Library layoffs underscore dysfunction
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, March 18, 2026
DEAR READER: When the other shoe dropped with a sickening thud — on a Sunday, no less — the cold-hearted incompetence of the Timberland Regional Library’s administration was transparent.
Monday morning added insult to injury. The next-to-last paragraph of a tone-deaf TRL press release affirmed that 61 frontline library employees are to be terminated as of May 15.
This is the thrust of management’s plan to deal with the $3.8 million budget shortfall its ineptitude helped produce.
Absent from the press release was any mention of the fact that the layoffs are exclusively among frontline employees. Nor are Executive Director Cheryl Heywood ($212,991 per year) or her equally well-paid top subordinates having their recent raises rescinded or even trimmed.
“Our goal throughout this process has been to find a sustainable path forward while maintaining our commitment to the communities we serve,” Heywood is quoted as saying. “Some things may look different in the months ahead, but we know how important it is for patrons to see familiar staff and continue accessing services they rely on, and this plan was developed with that in mind.”
“Some things may look different” is the latter-day equivalent of “Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
Unless the firestorm of indignation that’s growing among library patrons across Southwest Washington can change the course we’re on, be prepared to see a lot fewer familiar faces at your local library. That’s assuming you see any faces at all. What the press release did not mention is that some small, nevertheless vital, branches — reportedly McCleary, Amanda Park and Hoodsport — are slated for what Timberland euphemistically calls “EAH.” That’s short for Expanded Access Hours. In other words, an unstaffed branch would be accessible to patrons via key card, with staff only occasionally on hand. Some branches, notably Oakville and Westport, are already lightly staffed. The Naselle branch is already “EAH.”
THE DAMAGE to Timberland’s credibility will take years to repair. And history will keep repeating itself if Heywood and her apologists remain in control.
For the here and now, with our democracy’s 250th anniversary tarnished by the deepest polarization since the Civil War, libraries have never been more important. They are the bulwarks of the First Amendment; our community centers for civil discourse and civic fraternity; our source for truthful information beyond the rumormongering and hate-speech of social media.
TRL’S administration clearly learned nothing from the outcry over the ham-handed Capital Facilities Plan it rolled out in 2018 without full board involvement. The plan proposed closing the Hoquiam Library, a National Historic Site. The Montesano branch, a cultural cornerstone of the county seat, was also tentatively on the chopping block, together with Amanda Park and Oakville. To make amends, the administration organized “listening” forums around the five-county TRL network, promising to promote transparency.
I attended several of those sessions and came away convinced that absent a change in administration we’d be back in a pickle someday.
Corby Varness, Grays Harbor’s formidable 2018 representative on the TRL Board of Trustees, is also experiencing déjà vu all over again. In a Feb. 23, 2026, letter to the board, she shared how flabbergasting it was to hear Heywood’s deputy dismiss as “inaccurate” and “inflammatory” factual excerpts from the executive director’s performance review over the 2018 fiasco. The duplicity confirmed Corby’s suspicion that TRL administrators still think “that disastrous plan — closing one third of our rural branches — would have been great if only the board and thousands of our very vocal distressed patrons had stepped aside.”
There will be no stepping aside this time either.
LIBRARY “FRIENDS” groups — weary of being treated like enemies — are mobilizing, together with county commissioners, employee unions, a patron coalition and thousands of other very vocal distressed library users. Whether the layoffs can be mitigated remains a tall order. At the very least, there’s going to be accountability and shared pain at the top.
TRL’s administration overspent for years while assuring the trustees the agency was on sound footing. Last October, the board praised its managers for overseeing “one of the few government institutions that is operating within its budget.” And as recently as January, new employees were hired, “only to be let go two weeks later” when the administration finally grasped the mess it had created.
The administration circled its wagons as credible complaints about misplaced priorities, including dubious remodeling projects, exorbitant administrative raises and lack of fiscal expertise, rained down on the board at its last meeting. Speaker after speaker testified that proactive measures to boost revenues had fallen on deaf ears. Some of the most clear-headed, public-spirited people I have ever met expressed their frustration and indignation that it has come to this.
Friends groups are writing letters expressing no confidence in TRL’s administration; Vickie Raines of Grays Harbor and Lisa Olsen of Pacific County are among the county commissioners demanding an administrative performance audit, and “in the interim and most urgently … a hold on any layoffs.” Moreover, they say “the administrators who have ineptly spent their way into this dire situation must be held accountable by the TRL Board of Trustees.”
I’m hopeful that Dustin Loup, our Grays Harbor County trustee and president-elect of the TRL board, will emerge as the common-sense consensus-builder this vital institution desperately needs.
The situation is fluid right now as the blowback gains momentum. This column will appear in print the day after a special meeting of the TRL trustees. The agenda calls for a closed-door executive session “to review the performance of a public employee.”
This might be a long-delayed day of reckoning, and the beginning of a fresh start for the Timberland Regional Library.
Above all, we should temper our anger with civility. And say a prayer for the 61 frontline library employees whose livelihoods hang in the balance.
John C. Hughes was chief historian for the Office of the Secretary of State for 17 years after retiring as editor and publisher of The Daily World in 2008.
