Montesano Friends of Library host Q&A

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, June 16, 2026

With the Friends of the Library groups for Hoquiam and McCleary Timberland Regional Libraries having hosted a Q&A with Timberland Regional Library (TRL) board of trustees, it was Montesano Friends of the Library’s turn to host a Q&A with Dustin Loup, the TRL board of trustee representing Grays Harbor County, and Tania Remmers, the East Grays Harbor district manager.

As with earlier discussions, Loup opened with an overview of recent decisions, such as selecting Andrea Heisel as interim director and contracting an executive placement firm for the hiring of the executive director; the request for qualifications will be posted before the next board meeting, which is scheduled on June 24 at the Ocean Park Library.

“When I’ve talked to folks like Sara Jones, the state librarian, it’s been impressed upon us that hiring the permanent executive director will be one of the biggest decisions that we make as a board and that obviously has a huge impact,” Loup said.

A request for qualifications will also be issued for conducting assessments on the workplace environment and a financial assessment.

Loup shared that he is on the levy planning committee, which right now is a small group that will be expanded in the near future.

“We want as much input on that as we can and we’ll also get some projections to understand what the scenario looks like if the levy doesn’t pass and what it looks like if we run it in this upcoming fall cycle during the midterms or what if we run a special election in the spring,” he said.

With Heisel now as interim director, Loup walked the group through a significant change in the decision-making process at TRL; administrators of departments, such as collections, human resources, IT and public services, will now report to the executive director.

“Regardless of who’s in what position, there’s more people in the room to be a voice, and there’s less of an opportunity to kind of direct or throttle that input, and so that is a positive change,” Loup said. “And in that process, it also saves money because the reshuffling of that has changed the classifications in a way that overall saves money for the district and reduces the cost of those administrators.”

Following his remarks, it was opened for questions and the questions coalesced around several topic areas.

Budget and levy lid lift

Tim Cahill, the president of the Elma Friends of Elma Library, questioned whether Heisel is looking at the budget and expenses. Loup said that a finance administrator will be hired in the near future and they are looking at reducing expenses. A pause is in place on non-essential maintenance funding by TRL. The refreshes underway at Aberdeen and Lacy are being funded by external funds.

“I do expect that the board will work closely with the incoming finance administrator and make sure we’re sharing all of the stuff that’s come through, all the ideas that have come through [to cut expenses],” Loup said.

He emphasized that closing libraries is something he has “zero interest in,” adding, “frankly, one of the reasons I joined the board was to prevent closing libraries.”

Another attendee asked if anyone on the board noticed that TRL was going over budget, year after year.

“As a board, we didn’t scrutinize as much as we should have, I’ll own that,” Loup said.

Loup walked the group through what he’s learned about how the budget expenditures are estimated and that a financial planning policy was passed at the last board meeting to aid in forecasting where TRL will be in the future based on the current budget.

“I’ll say I personally, feel like I’m in a much better spot to really scrutinize back and feel much more informed about how the budget’s made and what it actually means and how to track it moving forward,” he said.

Susan Cahill, vice president of the Friends of Elma Library, asked about the 1% portion of assessed property value that TRL receives and why their portion hasn’t increased as real estate values have increased since 2019.

“The overall amount can’t increase by more than one percent … if you look at the chart of how much we are getting per $1,000 of assessed value over time, it actually goes down,” Loup said.

Loup gave an update on the levy lid lift, that a small internal group is now having weekly meetings and more communications around the work will be coming out in the near future.

“I know that there are some reports of board members not supporting [a levy lid lift] but I would support one and plan to work hard to help move that forward,” he said. “In my book, there’s still a decision of when I think we should go for it and I don’t know yet.”

An attendee pointed out that while Friends are not opposed to a levy lid lift, there is concern that if TRL is not transparent about its financial situation and how it ended up with a budget shortfall, that would dampen community support.

“I think that’s totally fair,” Loup said. “I think the calculation that we also need to make is looking at the lines and seeing if we can get through the next April tax infusion without having to make deeper cuts than we’re comfortable with, right?”

He added, “And I will say moving forward, if we have to make cuts, it’s going to be a lot more intentional and a lot more collaborative than it was this time around, but I hope that we don’t have that.”

To a question of how much will it cost for the consultants to do an executive director search. Loup said that they are estimating $25,000 to $35,000, and once they see the proposals, they might rein in the scope if needed.

TRL culture

To the question that Lilly Pomeroy, the president of the Montesano Friends group had, regarding who discouraged Loup and other board members from talking to friends groups, patrons and employees, Loup didn’t name names.

Rather he said, “What I will say is it was not a supportive culture that encouraged, from a leadership level, of engaging with, especially for trustees, engaging with friends of the library, with staff, with patrons. … But I will say that that culture is no longer in place and I will say, both in terms of what we are doing as a board to be here and do the engagements, not only with friends groups, but also with staff.”

Another attendee asked whether future refreshes will consider the local culture of the library, which had not been the case in previous refreshes. [For example, at the McCleary Library a mural was painted over.]

“You’re not alone in that observation, that there are definitely some hard feelings and some of the refreshes have really take away a lot of that local character,” Loup said. “And so again, moving forward, we brought this up in the last facilities committee meeting that we want to reevaluate the process for planning these refreshes.”

Loup added for the upcoming Aberdeen refresh, there will be more local decision making, and for other future library refreshes, they will look to engagement with the friends groups and the community.

“They know their libraries best and they can provide that feedback,” Loup said. “And they can weigh in on a lot of the different decisions and they can listen to that community.”

A follow-up question pivoted to policies, and Loup explained that there is a list of policies that need reviewed, some of which need to be reviewed before their review date while others need reviewed in light of ongoing issues; examples of these policies are the friends policy and whistleblower policy.

Interim director concerns

An attendee expressed concern the Heisel didn’t appear to respect the individual culture of each library. “Is that something that’s going to continue or do you think that she changed her mind about it?”

“If I didn’t believe that these changes are actually coming and putting in new shelving units and restructuring the way that admin make decisions and giving more local authority and empowerment in the refresh process and decision-making processes, I didn’t think that that was going to happen, personally, I would not have supported the decision that we made,” Loup said. “It’s definitely not diminishing that it happened in the past, but I believe I do not think that’s happening moving forward, and we have an expectation for that.”

The public services position, which Heisel was also filling, was posted internally, but no one has been hired.

To the question of what other changes has Heisel made, Loup said that she is “definitely empowering the regional directors and local library staff to take more ownership … just in conversations I’ve had with staff over past week or so, I feel there’s been a lot of positivity and hope. That doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods or that there’s [no] skepticism, but it does seem like there’s been also efforts made to communicate better and be more open and collaborative.”

A follow-up question was whether there will be more checks and balances to avoid a similar situation from occurring again, Loup said that will be the purpose of the assessment and to put in the safeguards that it calls out. And that when evaluating for the future executive director, looking for someone who “prioritizes health environments for checks and balances.”

A need for a full quorum

As has been shared at previous Q&As, Loup brought up that the lack of a full board is affecting the workload and decision making of the trustees because only a few can meet at a time to avoid a quorum situation. Currently, Mason County and Thurston County don’t have representation on the TRL board.

“It makes it so hard to work together and it’s somewhat eased now that we have interim leadership in place because they can work and get our feedback, but you know, that’s part of why things move so slowly,” Loup said.