Thursday, October 1, 2026
I was disappointed and saddened not to see more public thanks and support for Cheryl Heywood, who resigned last month from Timberland Regional Library.
Most of all, from the Board of Directors she served with distinction as executive director for 13 years, after working up the ranks from a branch library desk. It was the board’s failure to secure adequate funding to meet public needs that ultimately led to Cheryl’s resignation.
I’ve known Cheryl for 27 of her 30 years at Timberland. I’ve watched her drive herself nights and weekends to make it a first-tier library system. She has led its expansion into a broad provider of public services even as reading habits and methods changed dramatically and other community services pulled back. And I know how she connected with community members and leaders across the socio-political spectrum on accessibility, renovations, resource allocation, and new initiatives to meet the times.
In recent years, some of her biggest challenges were fiscal. Without voter approval, the tax revenues that fund Timberland can’t rise more than 1 percent annually, losing ground year after year to inflation and the needs of a growing population. Cheryl worked assiduously to balance the books, but belt-tightening will take you only so far. And the board declined to put a tax levy to the voters, after one failed in 2009.
The levy requirement is a function of Washington state law. So there is nothing unique about the straits Timberland is in. All around, our area’s public agencies are experiencing funding shortfalls for one reason or another that force them to consider or adopt layoffs: school districts, court systems and county governments.
Some agencies have met the growing crisis head on. Seattle’s Mayor just proposed a $480 million library levy to respond to public needs. But Timberland serves five counties and no single elected official could lead that charge. It’s up to the Board of Directors.
The board, though, failed to act for 16 years, and balked at shuttering underused facilities. Eventually, headed into a fourth deficit year, stop-gap measures weren’t enough to avoid layoffs. Affected staff and their supporters were understandably outraged. And some vented in the wrong direction. When they ran a misguided attack campaign blaming Cheryl, the board stood by and let her take the rap. Left unsupported, she resigned.
But that doesn’t solve a thing. Unless the board successfully leads a levy effort, further pain for Timberland is a mathematical certainty. There will be more cuts: to core services, to outlying branches, or — again — to staff. It’s past time for the board to step up, lead a levy campaign, and give Cheryl her richly deserved thanks.
Niel Lawrence is a resident of Olympia.
The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not necessarily those of The JOLT's staff or board of directors. Got something to say about a topic of interest to Thurston County residents? Send it to us and we’ll most likely publish it. Click here to email to us.
10 comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here
TheVirtualOne
She failed badly at the one thing she was supposed to be keeping her eye on as the leader of the organization - fiscal responsibility.
Tuesday, April 21 Report this
kyliemm
Oof, this is depressingly inaccurate. I've wasted hours of my life reading every board meeting transcript from the last 15 years and I cannot even begin to tell you the sheer number of times the board asked about a levy lid lift and Cheryl came back with a list of reasons why one wasn't feasible. An employee did an entire presentation to the board several years ago explaining why a levy lid lift was needed, and Cheryl spent the next board meeting poorly refuting every single one of her points and emphasizing over and over that a levy lift wasn't feasible. She did it twice in the last year—once in the first February board meeting, then again in the March meeting. She lays out every single reason she can think of to not do a levy lift, and that was her line for years.
I'm not one to say we shouldn't blame the board. I can and do. But what I blame them for is rubber stamping every single one of Cheryl's atrocious decisions without attempting to push back. Their spinelessness in the face of Cheryl's poor leadership is what led us here—including their inability to push Cheryl into doing a levy lid that she actively worked against.
Congrats on your personal experience, and you are welcome to praise Cheryl all you want. But her tenure ended in a library system with a $3.8M deficit after she spent years telling the board on the record that the library finances were pristine. She certainly has good personal qualities—most people do—but her leadership was abysmal and I couldn't be more relieved that she's gone so we can finally start to repair the damage she did. It'll take years to undo the mess she made of our system.
Tuesday, April 21 Report this
Grailking
I'm in no position to judge an entire career, especially since I've only been here since 2017, but is seems not good to ask for a 15% raise for the top 3 executives in administration while advocating laying off frontline staff. I'm not certain on the amount, but my understanding is the new salary was over $200K/year and that seems like a lot of money, seeing as the governor of the whole state only makes $204K/year.
I think there's a simlilar dynamic in education where administrators are knocking down 6 figure incomes while the teachers doing the more demanding work of educating in the classroom make far less.
My hope is that this controversy raises awareness about the importance of frontline workers in our libraries to assist people in the community in getting the information they need in this rapidly changing technological world. Maybe people will be more inclined to favor increasing the levy after seeing what we stand to lose by underfunding libraries.
Tuesday, April 21 Report this
ecwilson
Niel Lawrence and I agree on the most important point: a levy lid lift is overdue, and the Board of Trustees has to lead it. Where we differ is in what the record shows about how Timberland got here.
Cheryl's accomplishments are real and worth saying plainly: thirty years of service, a rise from a branch desk to executive director, durable workforce-development partnerships, statewide advocacy for libraries, and the negotiated contract that moved frontline staff — the lowest-paid among peer systems — closer to peer pay. None of that is in dispute.
But two things in the letter need correction.
First, there is nothing unusual about Timberland's situation. Sno-Isle — the closest peer system, operating under the same Washington state law and the same board-of-trustees governance structure — adopted a levy-lid-lift resolution on March 23, 2026, two days before TRL's board put one on its own agenda. Their 2018 levy passed by 0.46 percent; they are trying again rather than cutting frontline staff. Every comparable peer has attempted a lid lift since 2009. TRL has not.
And the record does not support the framing that this was simply a board that "declined." On the public record, in 13 years as executive director, Heywood never formally proposed a levy lid lift to the board, never commissioned a feasibility study, never engaged a consultant, never hired a tax attorney, and never conducted polling. At the February 10, 2026 special meeting — with 200+ community members in the room, five weeks before the layoffs — she told trustees a levy "would not pass." That claim was unsupported by any polling, because no polling had ever been done. KCLS (the King County Library System), by contrast, hired a consulting firm on a 13-month engagement to evaluate public sentiment on exactly this question. TRL did none of it. The board, which holds ultimate authority over revenue strategy, did not direct the executive director to pursue any of these steps either. "Five counties" is a description of why the Board is responsible — not a reason the Board couldn't act.
Second, framing the crisis as revenue-only is incomplete. Between 2017 and 2024, TRL's per-person salary growth was the fastest of any peer library system in Washington — 1.3× the peer median, with every comparable peer facing the same 1% lid. Service Center salary spending doubled from $2.2M to $4.4M (2017–2026) while the rest of the system lost 30 positions. On December 30, 2025, the board approved a $3.8M deficit budget and the executive director's two-year contract with 3% annual raises — at the same meeting. Three executive raises totaling $146K/year were approved alongside that budget cycle. Eleven weeks later, the board announced the 61 layoffs. That is a spending trajectory, not inflation, and the board approved every step of it.
One governance gap runs through both points. TRL staff never produced a multi-year financial forecast — a standard planning tool four of six peer library systems use (5 to 11 years out), and one that would have surfaced TRL's trajectory by 2023 at the latest. Without it, the board could not see the spending curve compounding before it became a crisis — and has no tool now to show voters what a levy would fund or what it would avert. A board that wants to get in front of the next ballot needs that document first.
Whatever tensions surfaced publicly in recent weeks, the underlying decisions people were asking about were real decisions, documented in the district's own budget records. Pointing at that record is not an attack on any person. It is the prerequisite for a levy campaign the public will trust.
For readers who want the full numbers with sourcing, a two-part analysis built from the district's own budget documents and 280+ board recordings is online; a search for "TRL crisis reports" will find it.
— Eric Wilson
Tuesday, April 21 Report this
Olycitymanager
Cheryl is an outstanding leader tasked with a tremendous challenge of inadequate budgets, changing acccess to information and user groups with very high expectations. We were fortunate to have her at the helm .
Tuesday, April 21 Report this
BobJacobs
Three thoughts on this:
1. If I remember correctly, all of the five counties must approve a levy lid lift. Some of these counties are very fiscally conservative. This brings into question whether the current five-county structure is even feasible. Perhaps we should start over.
2. The last time TRL tried to pass a levy lid Lift, the board unwisely asked the voters to approve the maximum levy level allowed by law, even though they intended to use only a part of this authority. The measure might have passed if they had asked the voters for the amount they really needed.
3. Former TRL board member from Thurston County Ken Bragg worked long and hard to get these and other problems at TRL fixed, but other board members would not agree. The entire structure of the system needs a thorough analysis.
Bob Jacobs
Tuesday, April 21 Report this
HappyOlympian
To suggest the service center has not seen continual staffing cuts the last several years not accurate and quite misleading. Many of the critical remaining folks - administrators, processors, technical support, etc. do the work of 2 or more people, and when folks retire are not replaced, the work just gets redistributed and trimmed back or dropped entirely. Most of the raises related to COLAs or increased workloads.
Modern libraries just need highly-skilled staff but not in the branches - vast majority of library patrons very sophisticated and do not seek help as they can find what they are after; users place materials on hold and pick them up at branches or access them online. The days of spending the day in the public library doing research while staff dig up information long gone. Programming tends to be very expensive for the audience numbers served, and really should be done by sophisticated volunteers or partnered thru agencies like the SBA - which often rely on materials and the critical meeting rooms found at local libraries.
Libraries and the publicly-owned resources included still critical, but several years ago Timberland greatly expanded the benefits to staff as part time staff used to receive pro-rated benefits; that expansion combined with the 1% cap makes staff reductions inevitable if the real mission of providing the facilities and materials is to survive.
Only solution is to get that levy rate lifted. Everyone involved needs to focus on getting that done if TRL going to survive as a 5-county system. If not, might be time for Thurston County to focus on creating our own first-rate library system utilizing the excellent facilities/libraries in the area to serve our population of 300k and leave the other counties to determine their own fate.
Clearly, new leadership crucial to making this all work. All library-directors retire, and it was time for that change.
Wednesday, April 22 Report this
36098501
The amount of property tax growth is often described by tax funded organizations in Thurston County as being capped at 1%.
Sort of.
If one looks at the total amount of property tax collected in the past, tax revenue has exceeded this cap by maybe 2% to 4% every year. How can that happen with a 1% cap on revenue growth. That is because there isn’t a 1% cap on the growth of the TOTAL amount of property tax collected.
Washington’s property tax system limits property tax growth on EXISTING properties to 1% growth per year, but also collects the additional property tax revenue from any NEW construction in that year.
In a growing county like Thurston, new development has allowed the TOTAL annual property tax amount to increase in the 3–5% range.
While in the past, growth in new construction has helped keep TOTAL property tax revenue growing, it may, or may not, keep up with inflation going forward as construction growth is uncertain.
I am a property tax expert, so I encourage other readers who are to add comments to help confirm, clarify or correct my attempt.
It catches my attention every year because the Total amount of property tax collected in Thurston County has always gone up by multiples of this 1% cap.
Wednesday, April 22 Report this
ejpoleii
The time of brick-and-mortar libraries is over. The age of electronics is here. I am the oldest boomer it is possible to be. I haven't bought a paper book in decades. Public libraries should be replaced with online facilities. I recommend looking at Amazon Prime's Kindle Unlimited. For $12 a month, each person can have access to millions of books, including audiobooks and magazines. It is irresponsibly stupid to continue with the public library system as it is now. A public version, perhaps even through Amazon, could be easily established and covered by the tax money already imposed on over-burdened property owners. Kindle readers are inexpensive and the e-reader app is free to download on PCs. On top of that, there are millions (billions, probably) of sites that have pretty much every old classics and obscure other material for free. Check out Google Books. TRL should be dissolved. Access to a "library" should be handled by individual municipalities, if at all.
Friday, May 1 Report this
jentaft
In response to ejpoleii. I, too enjoy ebooks and audiobooks, but those do not begin to replace all that a library brings to a community. Parking at the Lacey branch can be challenging due to its popularity. Take a look at all it offers patrons from the youngest to the oldest. It goes way beyond reading material. In this age where so many folks have very little contact with other people, the library provides a wonderful place to be with your community.
The Timberland Library System is a jewel that we should support. Unlike monthly subscription services, it is accessible to everyone.
Wednesday, June 3 Report this