A group of Ada County residents have filed a petition with the Board of Commissioners requesting the Meridian Library District be completely dissolved. The County Board of Commissioners received the petition Thursday morning and will be reviewing it.
The document accuses the Library District and Trustee Board of allowing children access to “obscene” materials “targeted at sexualizing minors.” The names of the items the group objects to were not released.
Meridian Library Board of Trustees Chair Megan Larsen said the District serves 45,000 patrons and circulates more than a million items each year.
“It is just sad and disturbing that a group of folks would rather take that away from our community, dissolve the library, shut it down altogether than to continue to allow Meridian families to make their own choices about what their families read as they have done for nearly 100 years,” she said.
“We do programs for children, teens and adults. We have hundreds of thousands of visits to the library,” Larsen said, “It's a community gem.”
Larsen added she encourages residents of Meridian to vote for trustees who will support the library in the upcoming May elections.
The board requires signatures from at least 50 electors of the library district to consider a petition. This one was signed by 93 qualified voters.
Commissioners have six weeks to schedule a hearing after which they could ask the clerk to hold an election. If voters side with the Concerned Citizens of Meridian, the library materials would be disposed of and any remaining funds would go to the county’s general expense fund.
The library district serves 117,000 residents at four libraries.
Members of the Concerned Citizens of Meridian group did not return requests for comments by the deadline.
Read the petition below:
Find reporter Julie Luchetta on Twitter @JulieLuchetta.
