GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – The residents of Jamestown Township in Ottawa County, southwest of Grand Rapids, have voted down millage renewals for the Patmos Library twice, but still the elected leaders running the embattled library are asking voters for a third bite at the apple so that they can keep their doors open.

The millage renewals for the library were shot down in August of 2022 and again in November of the same year. The first time, the millage renewal failed with 62% of the township residents voting no. The second time, in November of 2022, it failed with 55.8% of the township residents voting no.

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Even with those losses, on Tuesday, August 8th, the six-member Patmos Library Board of Trustees unanimously approved a measure asking voters to decide on a three-year millage renewal on November 7th. 

If the millage goes through this time, it will provide a majority of the library’s annual operating income – 84% of their $250K budget. If it doesn’t go through, the library is expected to run out of money in the fall of 2024.

The politically conservative Jamestown Township community, for the most part, has been voting against the millage renewal as a protest after finding out about LGBTQ materials with sexual content that were on the library shelves and available in the young adults section. 

This was a story that that garnered national attention in Michigan as well as the rest of the country. One of the many books the library offered that upset the community is titled “Gender Queer: A Memoir” which contains includes illustrations of sex acts and is a book that many parents have been calling “pornography.” 

The Patmos Library controversy put a spotlight on LGBTQ books that were being offered to children and young adults in school and community libraries across Michigan and the rest of the country and got parents to pay closer attention to what was going on in their own communities.

With the Patmos library defunded twice, those who supported the library set up a fundraiser on GoFundMe and with the help of author Nora Roberts and they raised over $250K which has temporarily helped to keep the library open. But now the library is back again with their hand out looking for taxpayer money to keep things running for three more years.

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Trying to entice the community to vote “yes” this time on the millage renewal, the board also voted to add labels to the inside covers of all their books, giving the readers at the library a brief overview of the genre and subject matter – labels that will either be copied from book descriptions from the Library of Congress or from websites that sell books like Amazon. 

These labels would not be warnings though. Instead, they would provide information to parents about objectionable content in the books. However, the information on the label might not be specific enough for some parents as book-sellers reviews can be subjective.

The labeling will start with the new books that the library orders and then they will get around to labeling the existing books on the shelves for children and young adults. 

It should be pointed out that the library will not be removing any books from the building including “Gender Queer.” However, that book is currently behind the counter and is available to be checked out by patrons on request.

Is the tide turning on the community’s feelings about the library? It’s hard to know. Even though three of the six-person library board who were involved in the 2022 campaign to defeat the millage renewals voted to put the request on the ballot again this November, some community members are still turned off by decisions that the library is making.

Reports say that the library recently had to cancel a family movie night because of complaints from conservative members of the community. The library had planned to screen the Disney movie “Strange World,” the first Disney movie to feature a gay character – a movie didn’t attract much attention at the box office, scoring lower ratings than any Disney animated film in 31 years.

Pushing back against the “book bans” across Michigan is a new campaign by the Michigan Library Association that Michigan News Source reported on recently called “MI Right to Read.” The group says, “Public libraries are being targeted at an alarming rate by individuals and extremist groups to remove books that discuss topics such as racism, sexuality, gender, and history – censoring different perspectives.” They consider the new book banning by parents a form of censorship and violation of the First Amendment.