Beloveds, come protest Cheryl Heywood and 60 unnecessary TRL layoffs with me

DID YOU KNOW! That the governor of Washington makes ~$234K per year, but Cheryl Heywood, TRL director who is laying of 60 of our frontline TRL staff this weekend (out of ~200) makes $206K and gave herself a $20K raise in December?

DID YOU KNOW! She’s on the verge of retirement and is well on her way to absconding with her taxpayer-funded retirement after leaving the library system in absolute shambles?

DID YOU KNOW! That the library administration is almost certainly not following its own legal strictures with the layoffs and is about to embroil the library in a legal battle that—and this will SHOCK you—will likely cost the library a ridiculous amount of money? Money that apparently they don’t have to retain staff but are happy to use to fight them with 🤔

DID YOU KNOW! That the Board of Trustees, not TRL admin, has the ultimate financial responsibility for the library, including a directive to correctly forecast library finances and accurately report it to the legislature, a thing they almost certainly have not done, thus violating their own bylaws?

DID YOU KNOW! That TRL is operated almost entirely based on property taxes and wasn’t impacted by federal cuts? That the mismanaged money was entirely yours? That you’re about to lose your entire library system while three administrators make around $1M total for themselves while paying minimal wages to the staff they’re laying off?

AND DID YOU KNOW? That this shit ain’t over til it’s over? YOU CAN STILL:

-Tell everyone you know that there’s no budget crisis, there’s a mismanagement crisis, and this library administration is to blame

-Come to the next board meeting on 3/25 to tell your board members exactly what you think of their cowardice and dereliction of duty?

-Demand that your county commissioners immediately hold a public hearing to remove the current Board of Trustees?

-Write to the ALA, WLA, and other library associations asking for help?

-Email your board members and tell them to kindly fuck off?

-Ask librarians how you can help them?

-Come to a patron-led protest outside the library this weekend, next week, and the weeks following?

-Join the Patron Coalition for Local Libraries and sign our petition to censure the Board, remove admin, and ensure our tax dollars stop being mismanaged by buffoons with exactly zero financial experience between the eight of them?

On a long enough timeframe, we will win this battle for our libraries, and these eight nightmare people from hell will lose. There are eight people responsible for this manufactured crisis—eight! All unelected officials, all removed from the public eye and making decisions behind closed doors while telling the public these decisions are really hard :( and they’re listening :( and we don’t know what happened to your tax dollars but we trust that Cheryl will spend them appropriately fighting 60 unwinnable court cases :( — and they are ruining the public library system that YOU deserve.

Come say hi if you see me protesting and join us in stopping this absolutely obscene display of cruelty and incompetence.