Dayton Chronicle - Your Hometown News Source

DAYTON–Local resident Dale Walling was chosen from among seven candidates for the open Columbia County Rural Library District Board of Trustees on March 15 by the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC).

The BOCC spent most of the business day interviewing the applicants for the open position, including incumbent Karin Spann who completed a five-year term. Board trustees can serve up to two terms. Other applicants were Thomas Utt, Kaye Eaton, Ken Graham, Peggy James, and Joann Patras.

The interviews were intensive and consisted of 19 questions, so each candidate was given one hour to provide their answers.

In response to the question of why he applied to the Board, Walling answered, "I would like to see reasonable discussion and compromise on the issues the library has been facing." He shared his experience working for a junior taxing district for 29 years as a fire fighter and EMT where he was responsible for submitting the annual budget requests and purchasing and maintaining the radios and pagers.

Many of the questions centered around library content to which Walling's general position is that the content should reflect community standards and the views of constituents. When asked, he said the library should not be "involved in reshaping the culture" and "the library should maintain neutrality. The mission should be to provide materials for education, research, history and reading. I don't believe they should take a position on anything political, social, or cultural.

"The library cannot possibly carry every book in print," Walling said. "Just because we don't carry one does not mean we've banned it. It's still available through the intra library loan program, just like any other book we don't carry."

Walling spoke favorably of the recent Civility Café which allowed the community to engage in a civil discussion about the library and the content. "The Civility Cafe showed that the public wants young children protected from certain materials," he said. "We don't want to ban books, but we need to protect our children."

Walling was asked if he saw the need to dissolve the library district for any reason?

"Absolutely not," Walling said. "I did sign the original petition. Anyone who signed it has been labeled as wanting the library closed. My motivation was to get the Board's attention. I would not have voted to dissolve the district. This should have been an easy problem to resolve. I was hoping that, with signatures on a petition, the board would bend a little and make some changes. There was a flaw in the petition process that left out the city voters. That needed to be fixed and the governor is signing the bill today that fixes it. The petition was a result of refusal to do what has now been started by the new director. There hasn't been an uproar about it. This could have easily been avoided," he added.

Now appointed, Walling would like to work towards moving forward by examining the budget and services, as well as consider putting out a community survey to get feedback. He would also like to see more community discussion like the Civility Cafes.