What Went Wrong and What Comes Next
On March 25, 2026, Executive Director (ED) Cheryl Heywood resigned, effective June 30, relinquishing her duties immediately. At the same meeting, the board discussed launching a levy lid lift campaign — the first serious consideration of new revenue since 2009.
Together, the leadership transition and the fiscal crisis force a choice. Part 1 documented what happened. Part 2 examines why — and what comes next.
Key terms used in this report
At a glance
What Part 1 showed. TRL’s General Fund fell from $13.2M to $5.9M while leadership told the board the district was “in the black.” In March 2026, 61 frontline employees were laid off. Read Part 1.
What this part diagnoses. Not enough revenue coming in, and what does come in increasingly going to administration rather than service. Service Center salary spending doubled from $2.2M to $4.4M (2017–2026) while the rest of the system lost 30 positions — and TRL’s per-person salary growth was the fastest among all peers (Exhibits I & J). The levy rate eroded to less than half the statutory maximum; every comparable peer pursued a levy lid lift, but TRL has not put one on the ballot since a narrow failure in 2009 (Exhibit K). The board received monthly budget data but never a multi-year projection — the tool that would have made the trajectory visible before it became a crisis (Exhibit L).
What the board can do. Ten recommended actions in three phases (Exhibit M), starting with the steps needed to rebuild public trust before asking voters for more revenue.
Where the Money Went
Between 2017 and 2026, salary spending in TRL’s six Service Center departments — the central administrative headquarters that supports all branch libraries — doubled from $2.2M to $4.4M. The growth was not uniform: three departments (Admin, HR, Facilities+Courier) drove most of the increase, while three others (IT, Finance, Creative Services) grew at or near the rate of inflation. For six of those years, total spending grew more slowly than inflation. Then the trajectory reversed. Four years of accelerating cost growth erased six years of savings. This spending trajectory is one side of the district’s fiscal crisis — and the side the board had direct control over.
Service Center Salary Spending, 2017–2026
Red line: Service Center salary spending (six departments; 2017–2024 actual, 2025 year-end estimate, 2026 budgeted). Blue line: What 2017 spending would have been if it simply grew with Seattle-area inflation (CPI), holding staffing constant. The gap between the lines is the annual difference — negative when spending was below CPI, positive when above. Y-axis begins at $1.8M to show meaningful variation in the $2M–$4.5M range; at zero-origin the gap between the lines would appear smaller relative to the chart height. Data: 2017–2024 actuals cross-referenced from successive TRL Final Budget documents (each budget reports prior-year actuals). 2025 year-end estimate and 2026 adopted budget from the 2026 Final Budget. CPI from Bureau of Labor Statistics, Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area. 2026 CPI estimated at 3.5%.
View data table
| Year | Actual Spending | If Grew at CPI | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | $2.17M | $2.17M | $0 |
| 2018 | $2.21M | $2.24M | −$35K |
| 2019 | $2.06M | $2.30M | −$240K |
| 2020 | $2.04M | $2.34M | −$301K |
| 2021 | $1.87M | $2.44M | −$577K |
| 2022 | $2.21M | $2.66M | −$457K |
| 2023 | $2.80M | $2.82M | −$15K |
| 2024 | $3.11M | $2.92M | +$189K |
| 2025 est. | $3.85M | $2.99M | +$855K |
| 2026 | $4.40M | $3.10M | +$1.30M |
A note on the baseline: TRL salaries were below market in 2017 (Exhibit J), so some above-CPI growth was legitimate catch-up. But the peer comparison controls for this: among systems facing identical constraints, TRL’s system-wide per-person salary grew at 1.3× the peer median rate. Within TRL, that growth was concentrated in administrative departments, not frontline staff.
The Rate: Per-Person Cost Growth
The average salary per full-time-equivalent position (FTE) in these six departments grew from $58,592 (2017) to $99,194 (2026) — a 69% increase. Seattle-area inflation over the same period was 43%. No peer library system’s overall salary per FTE grew faster than 27% from 2019 to 2024 (see Exhibit J). Note: the peer comparison in Exhibit J uses system-wide salary per FTE (the only metric available in the state dataset), not administrative departments specifically. TRL’s administrative growth may be steeper than its system-wide average.
As noted above, TRL was the lowest-paid peer system in 2019, and a 2018–2019 classification and compensation study drove some reclassifications — department managers were retitled as directors and put at uniform salary levels. But the rate exceeded every comparable peer, and the growth was concentrated in administrative departments rather than frontline staff. Frontline workers also received pay adjustments — step increases and cost-of-living increases negotiated through collective bargaining — but those were contractual obligations agreed to by both parties, not discretionary decisions by leadership.
Average salary per Service Center FTE vs. inflation
Per-person salary = department salary total ÷ department FTE. Red line: $/FTE (actual 2017–2024, estimated 2025, budgeted 2026). Blue dashed line: what 2017's $/FTE would be if it grew at CPI only. The lines diverge starting around 2020–2021 as per-person costs accelerate past inflation. Caveat: average $/FTE can rise when the mix of staff changes (e.g., replacing a junior role with a senior one), not just from individual raises.
View data table
| Year | Actual $/FTE | 2017 at CPI |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | $58,592 | $58,592 |
| 2018 | $60,188 | $60,470 |
| 2019 | $57,233 | $62,008 |
| 2020 | $62,527 | $63,059 |
| 2021 | $63,235 | $65,929 |
| 2022 | $71,164 | $71,864 |
| 2023 | $81,443 | $76,030 |
| 2024 | $85,225 | $78,851 |
| 2025 est. | $102,646 | $80,816 |
| 2026 | $99,194 | $83,644 |
| Department | 2017 $/FTE | 2026 $/FTE | Growth | vs. CPI | FTE Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Admin | $65,038 | $148,798 | +129% | 3.0× | 5 → 3 |
| Facilities + Courier | $41,578 | $82,458 | +98% | 2.3× | 12 → 16.75 |
| HR | $71,362 | $122,208 | +71% | 1.7× | 3 → 4.75 |
| Creative Services | $55,435 | $83,867 | +51% | 1.2× | 6.05 → 5.75 |
| IT | $75,692 | $114,033 | +51% | 1.2× | 7 → 8.33 |
| Finance | $66,848 | $96,884 | +45% | 1.0× | 4 → 5.75 |
| Seattle CPI (reference) | +43% | 1.0× | |||
Changes in average salary can reflect individual raises, job-title reclassifications, or shifts in the mix of junior vs. senior staff. Position-level data would clarify which departments reflect reclassifications vs. across-the-board increases. Creative Services was called “Communications” pre-2021.
All six departments outpaced Seattle-area inflation (43%), but the top three stand out. Admin’s 129% growth reflects headcount shrinking from 5 to 3 while the Executive Director’s salary reached $213K — per-person costs more than doubled because fewer people split a growing budget, compounded by a 2019 pay and job-title review. Facilities + Courier (+98%) added 4.75 FTE during the Mountain View library build and reclassified page/courier positions to operations roles. HR (+71%) added the Employee Experience Advisor position ($127K, created August 2024); some growth may also reflect new state compliance mandates (Paid Family & Medical Leave, WA Cares Fund), though all peer systems faced identical mandates. The bottom three — Creative Services, IT, and Finance — grew at 1.0–1.2× CPI, close to what inflation alone would explain.
The Allocation: Who Got the Positions
From 2019 (pre-COVID) to 2026, TRL’s Service Center added 8.4 FTE. Over the same period, the system as a whole lost 19.4 FTE. Non-Service-Center staff — the people who run the libraries — lost 27.7 positions. Service Center’s share of total system FTE rose from 14.4% to 19.2%.
The clearest way to see the allocation shift: track Service Center’s share of total salary spending over time. In 2017, these six departments consumed 18.6% of TRL’s General Fund salary budget. By 2025, it had reached 22.7%. The 2026 figure — 25.7% — reflects the post-layoff budget: when 61 frontline positions are eliminated, the denominator shrinks and the administrative share rises mechanically. But the upward trend was already well established before the layoffs. The share was declining through 2020, then reversed sharply.
Service Center salary as a percentage of total General Fund salary expenditures (red line) and Service Center FTE as a percentage of total system FTE (blue line). The gap between the two lines reflects the fact that Service Center staff are paid more per person than frontline staff ($99K vs $68K in 2026). Both lines accelerate from 2022 onward. For comparison, KCLS (King County Library System) reports 31.5% of its total budget goes to administration — but that figure includes all department costs (IT infrastructure, facilities), not just salary.
View data table
| Year | Salary Share (%) | FTE Share (%) |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 18.6% | 14.6% |
| 2018 | 18.9% | 14.5% |
| 2019 | 17.6% | 14.4% |
| 2020 | 16.3% | 13.0% |
| 2021 | 16.9% | 12.7% |
| 2022 | 17.4% | 13.6% |
| 2023 | 20.3% | 15.2% |
| 2024 | 22.1% | 16.0% |
| 2025 | 22.7% | 16.4% |
| 2026 | 25.7% | 19.2% |
Every budget containing these spending decisions was approved by the Board of Trustees. The allocation pattern documented here reflects both leadership recommendations and board votes. When 61 frontline staff were laid off in March 2026 and zero administrative positions were eliminated — The Daily World reported that “no additional layoffs or pay cuts have been announced for non-represented leadership, administrators, and other behind-the-scenes departments” — the pattern that had been building for years became visible to the public.
Service Center FTE: Full Trajectory, 2017–2026
Service Center FTE includes Admin, Creative Services, Finance, HR, IT, Facilities+Courier. FTE from Position Inventory trend tables in TRL Final Budget documents. FTE counts reflect budgeted positions, not actual filled positions. Dashed line shows 2019 pre-COVID level (36.0 FTE). After COVID cuts bottomed out at 29.5 (2021), Service Center FTE recovered past the pre-COVID level by 2024 and reached 44.3 by 2026 — 23% above pre-COVID, while system-wide FTE remained 8% below.
View data table
| Year | Service Center FTE |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 37.05 |
| 2018 | 36.65 |
| 2019 | 35.95 |
| 2020 | 32.55 |
| 2021 | 29.50 |
| 2022 | 31.00 |
| 2023 | 34.40 |
| 2024 | 36.50 |
| 2025 | 37.50 |
| 2026 | 44.33 |
The Specific Choices
Three categories of decisions drove the acceleration:
Reclassifications and restructuring. In 2019, a classification and compensation study retitled department managers as directors and set uniform director-level salaries. In Administration, the Administrative Assistant and Administrative Support Services Manager roles were reclassified as Administrative Coordinator and Operations Coordinator, contributing to an 18.4% salary increase in that department for 2021 alone.
New positions and reclassifications during declining reserves. The Employee Experience Advisor ($127K, created August 2024 — a staff morale and engagement role described by Heywood as working “to improve staff morale, guide constructive feedback, and develop strategies to support staff engagement and job satisfaction”) and Special Projects Coordinator ($106K, created 2026) were added while the fund balance fell 55% and frontline layoffs were imminent. The existing Public Services Manager role was retitled Patron Experiences Advisor — described in the ED’s January 2026 board report as providing customer service training — and grew from $107K to $131K (+22.6%) in a single year. At the March 25, 2026 board meeting, a member of the public noted the two advisor positions alone cost nearly $325,000. The Facilities+Courier department grew from 12.0 FTE (2017) to 16.75 FTE — partly justified by the Mountain View library build and Expanded Access Hours infrastructure, but representing the single largest FTE increase of any department.
Executive compensation. The executive director’s salary rose from $155K (2022 contract) to $213K (2026 contract) — a 37% increase in three years. A 2-year contract with 3% annual increases was approved December 30, 2025 — eleven weeks before the layoffs. Other senior administrative salaries followed a similar pattern: the HR Administrator rose 45% ($99K to $143K) and the Executive Administrator rose 49% ($90K to $134K) over the same period.
| Position | 2025 | 2026 | Increase |
|---|---|---|---|
| Director, Operations | $167,044 | $198,880 | +19.1% |
| Library Services Director | $166,630 | $198,385 | +19.1% |
| Finance Administrator | $119,778 | $142,607 | +19.1% |
| HR Administrator | $120,077 | $142,963 | +19.1% |
| Patron Experiences Advisor | $106,687 | $130,831 | +22.6% |
| Public Information Officer | $95,733 | $120,918 | +26.3% |
| Executive Administrator | $115,718 | $133,760 | +15.6% |
| Operations Coordinator | $84,640 | $109,568 | +29.5% |
| Total annual increase | $201,605 |
Source: 2026 Final Budget Position Inventory (trl.org, archived copy).
Four positions received an identical 19.06% increase — consistent with a uniform administrative adjustment rather than individual market-based determinations. The 2026 budget attributes these to “a formal staffing plan… with commensurate salary changes to reflect the increased workloads.” Frontline workers in the AFSCME bargaining unit received a 2.7% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). The same staffing plan also reclassified library assistant positions with “commensurate salary changes” (2026 Final Budget, p. 13); those positions moved from Grade 43 ($18.91/hr starting, per the 2023–2025 CBA) to Grade 49 ($52,070–$72,077 annually per the 2026–2028 CBA). The reclassification was a contractual obligation: the CBA requires TRL to benchmark up to seven classification groups against the external labor market every two years (Article 23, §6). Of the 44 involuntary layoffs that followed, 37 were library assistants (AFSCME Local 3758).
The point is not whether eight raises close the deficit — they don’t (see callout above) — but the priority they reveal: administrative salaries were increased in the same budget that eliminated 61 positions — 39 part-time, 22 full-time; 60 in the AFSCME bargaining unit and one supervisory role. These were not catch-up adjustments after years of frozen pay: the 2025 Final Budget Position Inventory shows the same positions already received increases of 6–7% from 2024 to 2025 (e.g., HR Administrator: $112,311 → $120,077; Finance Administrator: $112,032 → $119,778) before the additional 19% increase in 2026.
What Leadership Told the Board and Public
At this point, Service Center FTE (37.5) had already recovered past the pre-COVID level (36.0) and past the 2017 level (37.05). Admin cuts during the 2019–2021 hiring freeze were real — but they had been fully reversed. Less than five months later, 61 frontline positions were eliminated with zero concurrent administrative reductions.
Director of Operations Brenda Lane: “We received the same raises as everyone else. Everyone received the same, which was 2.7. That is what was bargained with our union.”
Spivak: “Percent?”
Lane: “Everyone received the same amount, yes.”
In a written response on April 1, 2026, Lane confirmed she was speaking specifically about the union-bargained COLA — not the total compensation changes reflected in the budget. She wrote: “I was only speaking about the recent CBA and COLA’s that were applying to all staff, including Administration.” She also acknowledged that other increases had occurred throughout the prior 12+ months “for various reasons” including “reclassification, reorganization/impact bargaining, or salary scale adjustments,” and that “some administrative employees were in that mix.”
Separately, the 2026 Final Budget — adopted one month earlier — shows eight non-represented administrative positions received 15–30% salary increases (table above). Non-represented positions are not covered by any union contract. The 2.7% COLA was the union-bargained raise; the 15–30% increases were separate administrative adjustments applied to non-represented positions in the same budget.
Spivak’s question referenced “18% raises” for administration — the total compensation changes, not the COLA alone. Lane’s response addressed the component she could speak to directly: the union-bargained COLA that applied to all staff. The broader question about non-represented administrative salary increases was not addressed in the exchange. Heywood was present and did not supplement Lane’s response. Both were offered the opportunity to comment prior to publication (deadline April 2, 2026). Lane responded; Heywood — who had resigned and relinquished her duties on March 25 — did not. TRL’s subsequent public FAQ repeated this framing: “Did library Administration get large raises in 2026? No” — citing only the 2.7% COLA and making no reference to the 15–30% increases documented in the district’s own published budget.
Board President Mittge, two weeks later: “When our deputy director left, instead of rehiring, that work was split among the two remaining directors. They were each reclassified and got a moderate pay bump. But by not refilling that position, TRL did save money.”
Eliminating the deputy director position did produce net savings — roughly $127K in salary alone in 2025 (the $170K salary per the 2025 Final Budget position inventory, offset by approximately $43K in combined reclassification increases to the two remaining directors; savings are higher when benefits are included). The Library Services Director’s salary rose 23.5% in a single year ($135K to $167K) — far exceeding the 6–7% adjustments other administrative positions received that year. The Director of Operations rose 6.9% ($156K to $167K). Mittge described these as a “moderate pay bump.” The following year, both positions received the same 19.1% increase applied to all eight non-represented roles. Combined director compensation rose from $291K (2024) to $397K (2026) — a $106K increase across two budget cycles. Of that $106K, approximately $43K reflected the reclassifications; the remainder came from the 19.1% blanket increase applied to all eight non-represented positions.
At 01:03:11 — Special board meeting, March 18, 2026: “We are a tiny team right now. Look at how many we are.”
At 01:06:45 — Special board meeting, March 18, 2026, Board President Brian Mittge summarized: “It sounds like your answer… is that you’ve been cutting admin since 2019…” Heywood interjected: “Yes, that we can’t get any smaller.”
Heywood appears to have been describing workload consolidation — fewer direct reports managing broader portfolios — rather than total headcount. Her statement that direct reports dropped from nine to three may be literally accurate. But the characterization of the Service Center as a “tiny team” that “can’t get any smaller” is difficult to reconcile with the headcount data: Service Center FTE at the time was 44.33, the highest level in the ten-year dataset, 23% above pre-COVID, and 20% above the 2017 starting point. The rest of the system had lost 30 positions since 2017.
Methodology and data sources
What this exhibit shows: The ten-year trajectory of salary spending in TRL’s six Service Center departments, compared to Seattle-area inflation (CPI). It shows per-person cost growth, staffing levels, and the allocation of positions between Service Center and the rest of the system.
What this exhibit does not show: Whether individual positions or raises were justified. CPI is a benchmark for inflation, not for labor market competitiveness — the baseline caveat above (TRL was the lowest-paid peer system in 2019) applies here. The relevant question is not “did costs grow faster than inflation?” — they did, and partly for defensible reasons — but “did costs grow faster than peers facing identical constraints?” Exhibit J answers that question: yes, system-wide per-person salary grew at 1.3× the peer median rate. Within TRL, that growth was concentrated in administration, not frontline.
Data sources: Department-level salary data cross-referenced from TRL Final Budget documents (2019, 2021, 2023, 2025, 2026 editions); “Actual” column from the earliest subsequent budget for each year. FTE from Position Inventory trend tables. Seattle-area CPI from BLS (Series CUURS49DSA0 for 2017–2020; CUUSA423SA0 for 2021–2026; identical overlap at 295.560). 2026 CPI estimated at 3.5% YoY. All public records.
TRL vs. Peers
How TRL’s salary spending compares to six comparable Washington State library systems. TRL started mid-pack in 2017, dipped to the lowest position during the hiring freeze, then overcorrected.
Salary per FTE: TRL vs. Peers (2017–2024)
Salary per FTE = total salary & wage expenditures ÷ total staff FTE, from Washington Public Library Statistical Report. All systems report to the same state survey using a standardized FTE definition (1.0 FTE = 2,080 annual hours). Excludes benefits. TRL highlighted in red. TRL started mid-pack in 2017, dipped to the lowest position during the 2019 hiring freeze, then climbed steeply. King County Library System (KCLS) data missing for 2021–2022 in the state dataset. North Central Regional omitted due to incomplete data. 2018 anomaly: TRL’s 2018 state-reported FTE (317.0) diverges significantly from its budgeted FTE (252.0)—a reporting error. TRL’s own filed report (obtained via public records request 26-041) shows salary spending was essentially flat year-over-year ($11.68M→$11.68M), ruling out an actual staffing increase. This inflates the denominator and depresses the 2018 per-FTE figure; the sharp dip that year is an artifact, not a real salary decline. The 2017 and 2024 data points used for growth calculations are unaffected.
View data table
| Year | TRL | Sno-Isle | Pierce | Fort Vancouver | Kitsap | Whatcom | KCLS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | $45,747 | $64,227 | $57,767 | $45,206 | $48,262 | $44,872 | $57,045 |
| 2018 | $36,855 | $66,672 | $60,245 | $45,619 | $47,240 | $46,623 | $66,541 |
| 2019 | $40,134 | $69,404 | $59,635 | $47,475 | $53,247 | $48,247 | $70,906 |
| 2020 | $57,040 | $75,974 | $63,290 | $47,109 | $56,873 | $50,577 | $51,611 |
| 2021 | $50,257 | $76,283 | $60,819 | $47,712 | $56,414 | $52,144 | — |
| 2022 | $51,854 | $79,675 | $69,161 | $51,193 | $65,153 | $54,324 | — |
| 2023 | $59,836 | $77,625 | $73,677 | $53,981 | $59,731 | $58,236 | $70,345 |
| 2024 | $64,269 | $82,014 | $75,508 | $58,367 | $62,782 | $59,592 | $77,732 |
Per-Person Salary Growth: 2017 → 2024
Cumulative salary-per-FTE growth from 2017 to 2024 (latest available state data). Dashed line shows peer median (+30%). TRL’s +40% is the highest among all peers.
View data table
| System | Growth 2017–2024 |
|---|---|
| TRL | +40% |
| KCLS | +36% |
| Whatcom | +33% |
| Pierce | +31% |
| Kitsap | +30% |
| Ft Vancouver | +29% |
| Sno-Isle | +28% |
In 2017, TRL’s salary per FTE ($45,747) was comparable to Fort Vancouver ($45,206) and Whatcom ($44,872). During the hiring freeze, TRL dipped to the lowest position ($40,134 in 2019). By 2024, TRL had recovered to $64,269 — back near Kitsap ($62,782) and Whatcom ($59,592). The destination was reasonable. The problem was the path: the fastest growth rate among all peers (+40% vs. peer median +30%), concentrated in administrative departments rather than frontline staff, during a period when reserves were collapsing and leadership was telling the board “we are in the black.”
A note on what this comparison can and cannot show: The peer data in this exhibit is system-wide salary per FTE — the only metric available from the state dataset. It shows that TRL’s total salary growth outpaced every peer. Exhibit I uses internal TRL budget data to show that administrative departments drove that growth, but equivalent department-level breakdowns are not available from peer systems through the state data. Public records requests for administrative expense breakdowns were sent to Sno-Isle, Fort Vancouver, Kitsap, Pierce County, and Whatcom County on March 27, 2026. If the responses confirm that TRL’s administrative cost growth outpaces peers at the department level, the evidence chain closes. If they do not, the finding will be revised.
Full Comparison Table
| System | Pop. (2024) | $/FTE 2017 | $/FTE 2024 | Growth | Salary/Resident | Total FTE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timberland Regional | 547,900 | $45,747 | $64,269 | +40% | $26.08 | 222.3 |
| Fort Vancouver Regional | 552,118 | $45,206 | $58,367 | +29% | $23.73 | 224.5 |
| Whatcom County | 140,730 | $44,872 | $59,592 | +33% | $42.14 | 99.5 |
| Kitsap Regional | 286,100 | $48,262 | $62,782 | +30% | $35.09 | 159.9 |
| Pierce County | 665,760 | $57,767 | $75,508 | +31% | $34.40 | 303.3 |
| Sno-Isle | 819,554 | $64,227 | $82,014 | +28% | $39.43 | 394.0 |
| King County (KCLS) | 1,607,650 | $57,045 | $77,732 | +36% | $39.04 | 807.5 |
| Peer median (excl. TRL) | $48,262 | $62,782 | +30% | $35.09 |
Salary/Resident = total salary expenditures ÷ population served. All data from WA Public Library Statistical Report (2017 and 2024 survey years). Peer median calculated from five non-TRL systems (KCLS excluded due to incomplete intermediate data for 2021–2022; its 2017 and 2024 endpoints are complete and included in the comparison table).
The Efficiency Picture
| System | Cost/Resident | Cost/Circ | Circ/Resident |
|---|---|---|---|
| Timberland Regional | $51 | $5.35 | 9.6 |
| Fort Vancouver Regional | $50 | $5.23 | 9.5 |
| Kitsap Regional | $61 | $6.66 | 9.2 |
| Pierce County | $65 | $7.99 | 8.2 |
| Sno-Isle | $75 | $5.61 | 13.3 |
| Whatcom County | $77 | $5.43 | 14.2 |
| King County (KCLS) | $90 | $6.46 | 14.0 |
2024 data from Washington Public Library Statistical Report. Cost/Resident = total operating expenditures ÷ population served. Cost/Circ = total operating expenditures ÷ total circulation. Circ/Resident = total circulation ÷ population served. TRL’s low cost per circulation reflects efficiency with limited resources, not adequate funding — better-funded systems deliver 40–50% more circulations per resident because they have more staff, longer hours, and more branches open.
Sno-Isle: The Closest Peer Made Different Choices
Sno-Isle’s per-person salary growth was +28% from 2017 to 2024 — compared to TRL’s +40%. Their 2025 cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) was 3.8% plus a 4.6% catch-up increase from the prior union contract. Transparent, negotiated, system-wide.
When Sno-Isle faced the same structural revenue constraint, their board adopted a resolution on March 23, 2026 to place a levy lid lift on the August 2026 ballot — asking voters to restore their rate to $0.47 per $1,000 of assessed value. Their 2018 levy passed by just 0.46% (50.46% yes). Snohomish County voted 52% against; Island County’s 62% yes carried it. They’re trying again rather than cutting frontline staff.
TRL’s levy rate ($0.224) is less than half of Sno-Isle’s target rate ($0.47) and less than half the statutory maximum ($0.50). TRL has not attempted a levy lid lift since 2009.
TRL’s Frontline Staff Are Not Overpaid
From 2017 to 2026, per-person costs in the six Service Center departments grew 69% ($58,592 to $99,194) while per-person costs for the rest of the system grew 55% ($44,023 to $68,288). But the sharper disparity is in headcount: the Service Center added 7.3 FTE (37.05 to 44.33) while the rest of the system lost 30.3 positions (216.4 to 186.1). The 2026 single-year gap between what the adopted budget allocates to Service Center departments and what they would cost if spending had simply kept pace with inflation — $1.3 million — could fund roughly 14 fully loaded frontline positions (salary plus benefits at average system-wide cost), or about 19 at salary alone. In March 2026, 61 positions were eliminated — 39 part-time, 22 full-time; 60 in the AFSCME bargaining unit and one supervisory role. Of the 44 involuntary layoffs, 29 were part-time and 15 full-time; 37 were library assistants (AFSCME Local 3758).
The findings of Exhibit I apply to six specific administrative departments, not to the system as a whole. TRL’s frontline workers were likely underpaid relative to peers before the layoffs. Any board action on salaries should increase frontline compensation toward peer levels, not reduce it.
State survey vs. budget FTE: The state survey counts all paid staff including substitutes and temporary workers (hours ÷ 52 ÷ 40), while TRL’s Position Inventory counts authorized budgeted positions. This produces a normal gap of a few FTE. TRL’s 2018 state-reported FTE (317.0) diverges significantly from its budgeted FTE (252.0) and is likely a reporting anomaly; it does not affect the 2017→2024 growth calculations used in this exhibit (2017 and 2024 data points are unaffected). A public records request has been submitted to resolve the discrepancy.
Peer selection: Systems were selected for structural comparability: intercounty or multi-branch rural/suburban library districts in western Washington, funded primarily by property taxes, subject to the 1% levy growth cap. KCLS is included for scale reference despite being substantially larger. North Central Regional Library was excluded due to incomplete data in the state survey for 2020–2024.
Prepared March 2026.
The Revenue TRL Left on the Table
Seventeen years, zero levy attempts — while every comparable peer acted. Between 2009 and 2026, at least 15 Washington library systems passed levy lid lifts. TRL’s levy rate eroded from $0.416 to $0.224 — less than half the statutory maximum. The available remedy was never pursued. A levy lid lift in TRL’s five-county district is genuinely harder than in the single-county systems that dominate the peer comparison. The 2009 attempt failed district-wide at 45.1% yes, with Lewis County voting 71% no. Five counties means five sets of competing taxing districts, a politically heterogeneous electorate ranging from progressive Thurston County to conservative Lewis County, and a campaign cost ($300K–$500K from reserves) that carries real risk if the measure fails. COVID disrupted the levy discussion that was gaining traction in December 2019. These are legitimate constraints, not excuses. But they are constraints that explain caution — not seventeen years of perpetual deferral. The levy was never put to a poll. No campaign consultant was engaged. No ballot language was drafted. The question was raised, analyzed, praised, and deferred — repeatedly — but never pursued. The levy was not the only tool left unused. A state matching-grant program for library buildings — requiring no ballot measure, just a staff-level application — went largely untapped while TRL spent millions from reserves on capital projects. This exhibit documents both gaps: who raised the levy, who deflected it, what peer systems did instead, and what happened when a second opportunity carried no political risk at all.
How the 1% Cap Erodes Library Funding
In 2001, Washington voters passed Initiative 747, capping annual property tax levy growth at 1% plus new construction (meaning the district also gets tax revenue from newly built properties, but not from rising values on existing ones). Before I-747, the annual growth limit was significantly higher. The cap applies to dollars collected, not the tax rate. As assessed property values rise faster than 1%, the rate must fall to stay within the dollar cap. The result is a ratchet: the rate can only go down unless voters intervene.
For TRL, the effect has been dramatic. In 2014, TRL’s levy rate peaked at $0.416 per $1,000 of assessed value — within reach of the $0.50 statutory maximum. By 2026, it had eroded to $0.224 — a 46% decline. During that same period, costs rose roughly 55%. The levy lid lift — a simple-majority ballot measure that resets the rate higher — is the only legal tool available to reverse this erosion. Every other comparable library system in Washington has used it.
| Year | TRL Levy Rate | Gap to Maximum | Foregone Revenue (theoretical max.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | $0.383 | $0.117 | ~$6M |
| 2013 | $0.415 | $0.085 | ~$4M |
| 2014 | $0.416 | $0.084 | ~$4M |
| 2015 | $0.411 | $0.089 | ~$4M |
| 2016 | $0.409 | $0.091 | ~$5M |
| 2017 | $0.399 | $0.101 | ~$5M |
| 2018 | $0.382 | $0.118 | ~$6M |
| 2019 | $0.362 | $0.138 | ~$8M |
| 2020 | $0.340 | $0.160 | ~$10M |
| 2021 | $0.324 | $0.176 | ~$12M |
| 2022 | $0.288 | $0.212 | ~$17M |
| 2023 | $0.236 | $0.264 | ~$27M |
| 2024 | $0.234 | $0.266 | ~$28M |
| 2025 | $0.229 | $0.271 | ~$30M |
| 2026 | $0.224 | $0.276 | ~$32M |
Levy rates and assessed valuations from WA Dept. of Revenue Property Tax Statistics (Table 30, Junior Taxing District Levy Detail, 2012–2025); 2026 from board levy resolution (Res. 25-004). Foregone revenue = rate gap × assessed valuation. Actual recoverable revenue depends on ballot measure design and competing levies from other local taxing districts (fire, parks, etc.) that share a combined statutory cap. Four of seven comparable peers currently levy at the $0.50 maximum. Even at the lowest peer rate ($0.304, Sno-Isle), TRL would recover ~$10M per year. Statewide levy success rates (28 of 34 documented since 2005; 13 of 15 since 2017) compiled from Washington Secretary of State certified election results, EveryLibrary tracking data, and individual library district records (compiled dataset).
What Every Comparable Peer Did
While TRL’s rate eroded unchecked, at least 15 Washington library systems successfully passed levy lid lifts. Three peers — Fort Vancouver, Whatcom, and Kitsap — all passed in August 2025 alone. Sno-Isle is on the August 2026 ballot. KCLS hired a consultant and is evaluating a 2026 ballot. North Olympic and Stevens County are on the April 2026 ballot.
| Library System | Population | Levy Activity Since 2009 | Most Recent Rate | % Yes Vote |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timberland Regional | 550,000 | None. Failed 2009. | $0.224 | — |
| Sno-Isle | 800,000 | Passed 2018. On ballot Aug 2026. | $0.304 | 50.46% |
| Fort Vancouver Regional | 558,000 | Passed Aug 2025. | $0.500 | 54.2% |
| Kitsap Regional | 274,000 | Failed ’07, failed ’10, passed ’17, passed ’25. | $0.390 | 61.9% |
| King County (KCLS) | 1,600,000 | Passed 2010. Exploring 2026. | $0.500 | 52.1% |
| Whatcom County | 142,000 | Passed Aug 2025. | $0.420 | 56.7% |
| Pierce County | 940,000 | Passed 2018. Created Levy Sustainability Fund. | $0.500 | — |
| Spokane County | 559,000 | Passed ’06, ’10, ’19. | $0.500 | ~55% |
| North Olympic (NOLS) | 78,000 | Passed 2010. On ballot Apr 2026. | $0.280 | — |
| Stevens County | 49,000 | Passed 2014. On ballot Apr 2026. | $0.270 | — |
Sources: Individual library websites, EveryLibrary 2025 results, Lynnwood Times, HeraldNet, Kitsap Daily News, Columbian, Spokane Spokesman-Review, Peninsula Daily News, WA Secretary of State election results. Populations rounded. Rates are most recently available. % Yes is for the most recent successful vote. This table extends beyond the six salary-comparison peers in Exhibit J to include Spokane (population-comparable), NOLS, and Stevens County — smaller rural systems included because both have active April 2026 ballot measures, directly relevant to TRL’s five-county rural electorate. TRL is the only intercounty library district in this group that has not passed a levy lid lift since I-747 took effect in 2002.
The Chronological Record: Warnings, Requests, and Silence
| Budget Year | Acknowledges 1% Cap? | Acknowledges Revenue Gap? | Proposes Levy Lid Lift? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 † | No | No | No |
| 2013 † | Implicitly — revenue “limited” | Yes — “not a long-term strategy” | No |
| 2014 | Implicitly | Yes — “structural problems persist” | No |
| 2015 * | Implicitly | Yes — “long-term problems persist” | No |
| 2016 * | No ED message in final budget | ||
| 2017 * | No | No — boilerplate only | No |
| 2018 | No | No — notes “labor costs are increasing” | No |
| 2019 | Yes | Yes — “not sustainable in the long term” | No |
| 2020 | Yes — names the 1% cap | Implicitly — hiring freeze | No |
| 2021 | Yes | Yes — “expenditures outpace revenues” | No |
| 2022 | Yes | Yes — “expenditures outpace revenues” | No |
| 2023 | Yes | Yes — “does not keep pace” | No |
| 2024 | Yes — names the 1% cap | No — describes revenue sources only | No |
| 2025 | Yes — names the 1% cap | Silent — fund balance collapsing | No |
| 2026 | Yes — names the 1% cap | Silent — $3.8M deficit in the same document | No |
The only remedies ever proposed across fifteen budgets: hiring freezes, FTE reductions, early retirement incentives, materials budget cuts, drawing down fund balance. The levy rate was never disclosed in any ED message. The 2026 budget’s own revenue section (page 9) reveals the rate is $0.2289 — less than half the statutory maximum — but the executive director’s letter does not mention this.
The budget messages show the pattern from above. The record below shows it from below — the trustees, staff, and community members who raised the levy question directly, and what happened each time.
| Date | Who Raised It | What Happened |
|---|---|---|
| Nov 2016 — Board meeting recording | Trustee Bob Hall | “We blew $400,000 on that last election. I don’t think if we tried it again, it would pass.” |
| Oct 2018 — Board meeting recording | Finance Director | “Salaries and benefits are pretty much outpacing our revenues.” Warned fund balance drawdowns within a few years. |
| Dec 2018 — Board meeting recording | Finance Director | “We can’t keep kicking it. There’s not much left to kick down the road.” |
| Dec 2019 — Board meeting recording | Two trustees | Detailed levy education session. Deferred to strategic planning — then deferred again by COVID. |
| Mar 2020 — Board meeting recording | Budget committee trustee | Presented $2.2M salary growth projections, warned of “shortfalls.” No revenue options discussed. |
| Nov 2020 — Board meeting recording | Departing Finance Director | “You’re going to have to pass the levy lid lift at some point.” No trustee responded. |
| Jul 2021 — Board executive committee recording | Deputy Director | Proposed pairing strategic plan with levy. ED confirmed fiscal cliff timeline. Board extended plan instead. |
| Nov 2021 — Budget hearing recording | Finance Director (on contract) | “Start planning three, four years down the road.” No follow-up. 4.5 years later: 61 layoffs. |
| Dec 2021 — Board meeting recording | Trustee Oliver | “Keep that top of mind.” ED cited finance director’s estimate: “three to five years.” No action. |
| May 2022 — Board meeting recording | Library worker (public comment) | Presented 80% statewide success rate, offered to campaign door-to-door. Board moved to next agenda item. |
| Jun 2022 — Board meeting recording | ED (responding) | Rebutted worker’s data. Emphasized complexity, cost, and 2009 failure. Did not cite 100% post-2015 success rate. |
| Nov 2023 — Budget hearing recording | Trustee Oliver | “Our rate is down to 23.6.” ED recommended hiring tax attorney. Chair said out of time. No action. |
| Sep 2024 — Board meeting recording | ED (public presentation) | “We know it wouldn’t pass.” Unsupported by polling. Also claimed TRL was “in the black” — it was not. |
| Nov 2025 — Board meeting recording | Trustee Mittge | Asked about banking levy capacity. Finance administrator: “I don’t know anything about that.” |
| Mar 2026 — Special board meeting recording | Board President Mittge | First formal action in 17 years. Board now targeting November 2026 ballot. |
The Full Record
In November, EveryLibrary — a national nonprofit that helps libraries pass ballot measures — conducted a free levy planning meeting with TRL staff. No levy planning followed.
In December, Lowell named the deferral strategy outright: “We can’t keep kicking it. There’s not much left to kick down the road, basically.”
Heywood confirmed Lowell’s timeline: “Eric was saying to me that it was going to be about 2024, 2025, where the rubber really hit the road.” She said she was trying to “push that out” with a hiring freeze and expanded access hours.
Trustee Bob Hall, the only board member who served during the 2009 attempt, was skeptical: “Having lived through the last vote, I think the further you push it out right now, I can’t see in the next couple of years, the climate for voting tax increases is gonna change a whole lot.”
Oliver: “I just want us as a board to keep that top of mind moving forward.”
Hall estimated the 2009 attempt cost $500,000. Heywood corrected it to $300,000 and said it cost that much “because it wasn’t an election year.” A trustee asked: “Does that mean all five counties would have to vote for the levy increase?” The answer was yes — 50% across the whole district. The trustee said: “Wow. That must be almost undoable.”
She presented statewide data: “27 out of 34 lid lifts passed — an almost 80% success rate. Since 2015, every single one has been approved. [Spokane County’s 2015 levy failed; the unbroken streak begins in 2017.] That’s seven separate ballot measures everywhere from Sno-Isle to Spokane County to Pierce County to Kitsap Regional Library, which finally won its levy lid lift in 2017 after getting rejected twice during the Great Recession.”
She warned: “With another recession forecasted in the next two years, I don’t think we can afford to wait any longer. At a certain point, fear can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
She offered: “Library workers will fight for their libraries. We’re ready to go door to door in our neighborhoods to get this ballot measure passed. You just need to give us the go ahead.”
She enumerated all 226 special purpose districts (fire districts, water districts, parks, etc.) in the five counties, implying the levy would compete with all of them for tax capacity. This is a real constraint — Washington law imposes a combined statutory cap on all property tax levies, and competing levies from fire, parks, and school districts can limit available capacity. But it is a constraint that every peer system navigated successfully. She referenced the 2009 failure. She warned of a possible 2023 recession. She did not mention Rosewater’s data showing an 80% statewide success rate or the fact that nearly every levy since 2017 had passed.
Heywood said if the board ever wants to pursue a levy, “I would strongly recommend that we hire a tax attorney to crunch the numbers on all of the 225 other taxing districts.”
At the same meeting, she told the board (00:30:52 — Board meeting, September 2024): “We are in the black because of all of our decisions … since 2013.” The phrase may have referred to the remaining fund balance, which was still positive. But General Fund expenditures had already exceeded revenue for two consecutive years, and the fund balance was in steep decline.
On March 18, Heywood revealed (01:35:42 — Special board meeting, March 18, 2026) she had “already met with the Thurston County Auditor” and had cost estimates for August and November 2026. On March 25, Board President Mittge told the board (03:34:50 — Board meeting, March 25, 2026): “We desperately need [a] revenue fix. A levy lid lift is really the only way to get there.” That evening, Heywood resigned.
The Case for a Levy
The record above documents what the author views as a failure of institutional leadership — not a failure of the community. The evidence for hope is clear:
Public engagement signals are strong. At TRL’s February and March 2026 meetings, hundreds of people showed up. Multiple commenters volunteered to canvass all five counties. A library worker told the board in 2022 that “library workers will fight for their libraries — we’re ready to go door to door. You just need to give us the go ahead.” A patron coalition (with which the author volunteers) collected over 2,500 signatures calling for budget transparency, prioritization of frontline staff, and leadership change.
The math works. A levy lid lift to $0.35 per $1,000 — still below TRL’s own 2015 rate and well below the $0.50 maximum — would generate roughly $14 million in additional annual revenue. That is enough to reverse every cut in the 2026 budget adjustment — restore all 61 positions (projected savings: ~$1.5M — Board special meeting, February 10, 2026, before severance, unemployment, and vacation payouts), reverse the $1.8M in collections cuts, restore programs, training, and branch operating budgets (~$3.7M total) — rebuild the General Fund to its 30% policy minimum within a year, and still leave substantial room for the frontline pay increases toward peer levels that Exhibit J shows TRL workers deserve.
The obstacle was a leadership team that treated one recession-era loss as a permanent verdict, and a board that accepted that framing for seventeen years. That leadership is gone. In April 2026, TRL publicly acknowledged for the first time that “it will be necessary to pursue a levy lid lift to avoid further reductions to library services” (TRL FAQ). The same statement claimed the district faces “falling revenues” — in fact, General Fund revenue has risen every year in this dataset, from $23.0M (2017) to $29.0M (2026); the problem is that costs rose faster. The board now has the information, the public mandate, and the opportunity. The question is whether they will act on it.
The 2009 Vote: Why a Future Levy Is Primarily a Thurston County Campaign
| County | Yes | No | % Yes | Share of Vote |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thurston | 23,497 | 27,016 | 46.5% | 52.1% |
| Lewis | 4,536 | 11,025 | 29.2% | 16.1% |
| Mason | 8,144 | 6,554 | 55.4% | 15.2% |
| Grays Harbor | 4,653 | 5,861 | 44.3% | 10.9% |
| Pacific | 2,891 | 2,687 | 51.8% | 5.8% |
| District Total | 43,721 | 53,143 | 45.1% |
- If other counties stay the same: Thurston needs to swing from 46.5% to 55.8% — a 9.3-point swing.
- If Lewis also improves (29% → 45%): Thurston only needs 51.0% — a 4.5-point swing.
- Without Thurston improving at all: The other four counties would need a combined 53.8%, up from 43.6%. Effectively impossible.
The Building Grant TRL Never Applied For
The levy is a revenue tool that requires voter approval and carries political risk. The next gap required neither. In 2019, the Washington Legislature created the Library Capital Improvement Program (LCIP), administered by the Department of Commerce, to help libraries acquire, construct, or rehabilitate facilities. The program awards up to $10 million per biennium in matching grants — up to $2 million per project, covering 50% of eligible capital costs. Priority goes to libraries in distressed or rural counties and buildings on historic registers. The Commerce program defines eligible applicants by reference to RCW 27.12.010, the chapter governing library districts including intercounty rural library districts — TRL’s classification. Multiple such districts have received LCIP awards for district-owned buildings, including Stevens County, Pend Oreille County, and Pierce County.
TRL’s five-county district includes four counties classified as distressed by the Department of Commerce (Grays Harbor, Lewis, Mason, and Pacific) and two Carnegie libraries on the National Register of Historic Places (South Bend, 1913; Raymond, 1912). Between 2019 and 2025, TRL spent over $5 million from its Building Fund on capital projects, including a $1.4 million rebuild of the Mountain View library in Lewis County (TRL Final Budgets, 2021–2026; Building Fund expenditure detail). TRL received no LCIP funding for any of its own building projects. The only LCIP grants awarded within TRL’s district were $249,000 for the city-owned South Bend library and $70,000 for the city-owned Shelton library, both in the 2023–25 round — with TRL providing matching funds from its Building Fund.
There may be legitimate reasons TRL did not pursue LCIP funding for its own buildings — staff capacity or project timing. But the board meeting record does not show these reasons being discussed. What the record does show is that leadership was aware of the program, discussed it by name in multiple meetings, and served on the statewide committee that reviewed other libraries’ applications.
Other library districts in comparable circumstances did apply. Pend Oreille County Library District received $200,000 for its Metaline branch remodel, matching from its own capital reserve — a mechanism TRL’s Building Fund could also have provided. Stevens County Rural Library District received $615,000 to build a new library in Loon Lake and renovate its historic Colville branch. In the first LCIP round (2019–21), 33 applications were submitted and 11 were funded.
When a trustee asks whether those are the only five libraries to consider, Varness replies (01:30:38): “The ones we own wouldn’t qualify for this because we can’t do it through a city.”
This appears to have been incorrect. The LCIP defines eligibility by reference to RCW 27.12.010, the chapter governing library districts, and multiple intercounty and rural library districts — including Stevens County, Pend Oreille County, and Pierce County — subsequently received LCIP awards for district-owned buildings. The incorrect premise was echoed by other trustees; no one in the room corrected it. TRL-owned buildings were excluded from consideration.
COVID-19 closures began two weeks after this meeting. The Round 1 application deadline was May 15, 2020 — two months into the pandemic. None of the five cities appeared on the Round 1 award list; whether applications were submitted is not documented in the board record. A pandemic-year disruption is a plausible explanation for Round 1. The question is why TRL-owned buildings were never considered in Round 2 (2023–25) or Round 3 (2025–27), when the executive director was serving on the review committee and the Mountain View rebuild was underway.
Fund’s observation was correct. The $18 million reflected the Round 2 (2023–25) appropriation. Stevens County and Pend Oreille County — both intercounty rural library districts, the same classification as TRL — subsequently received LCIP awards for district-owned buildings. No TRL application for a district-owned building was submitted in any round.
She notes that South Bend is applying and that she must recuse: “The reviewing committee will score it. I have to exempt myself from the whole process.” She recommends $150,000 from the Building Fund as TRL’s matching contribution.
At this point, the Mountain View rebuild was in active planning (community engagement meetings began the following month). No LCIP application for Mountain View or any other TRL-owned building was discussed. Committee membership does not bar the member’s organization from applying — the standard mechanism is recusal, which Heywood used for the South Bend application.
Her example is a $20,000 STEM backpack grant. She adds: “You can’t go after a grant to pay for salaries and benefits because grants don’t work that way. Grants are for, you know, programs or the library of things. Stuff like that.”
This characterization is reasonable for small program grants, which do require staff time without covering overhead. But capital improvement grants are structurally different — they reimburse construction costs the district is already incurring. The LCIP, the $10 million program Heywood had discussed by name in 2022 and served on the review committee for, was not mentioned. The committee recommended no changes to the grants policy and set the next review for ten years.
In response to a request for comment, Varness — who stated the eligibility restriction at the 2020 meeting — wrote that after watching the recording, “we all seem to be very clearly under the impression that the only way to access this grant had to be through cities.” She wrote that as a Facilities Committee member she was “led to understand this grant to only be applicable to city owned buildings” and that she is “unclear as to why Cheryl would not have seen that these grant funds would have been available to Timberland owned buildings.” She added that the LCIP eligibility language referring to “governmental units” may have caused the misunderstanding, and that she does not believe “this error on the part of the administration to have been made with malicious intent as they were earnestly looking for grant money to help with funding facilities improvements.” Heywood was offered the opportunity to comment prior to publication and did not respond.
LCIP program: WA Dept. of Commerce, Library Capital Improvement Program; eligible governmental units: RCW 27.12.010; LCIP award lists: WA enacted capital budgets (2019–21, 2023–25); Round 1 application count (33 submitted, 11 funded): NOLS staff report, May 27, 2021 (nols.org); Building Fund expenditures: TRL Final Budgets, 2021–2026 editions. LCIP transcript quotes: TRL board meetings Apr 24, 2019; Feb 26, 2020; Mar 24, 2021; Facilities Committee Apr 21, 2022; Policy Committee Feb 13, 2025. SAO management letter (Feb 28, 2023, covering Jan 2019–Dec 2021): ML1032149 (PDF). SAO follow-up accountability audit (Report No. 1036255, published Dec 19, 2024, covering Jan–Dec 2023): archived PDF | sao.wa.gov. Policy committee transcript confirming $10,000 cap removal in response to auditor: TRL Policy Committee Working Session, Jun 15, 2023. Board vote removing cap: “Timberland library board tweaks policy after audit, says little about audit itself,” Rolf Boone, The Olympian, Apr 27, 2023.
Prepared March 2026. Updated April 2026 (LCIP section added; SAO management letter cited in Exhibit M). Former Trustee Varness responded to a request for comment on the LCIP section; her response is incorporated above.
Why No One Caught It: The Governance Gap
TRL’s board received detailed monthly financial reports — budget-to-actual comparisons, percentage-of-budget tracking, monthly fund balance data. The current year’s numbers were in the board packet. What was missing was the forward view: multi-year projections that would have shown four consecutive deficit budgets compounding toward fiscal crisis. Each year’s deficit looked manageable in isolation. The pattern was visible only across years. The board never required the multi-year projections that would have revealed it — a governance tool four of six comparable peers use by policy or practice.
The Information Gap
TRL’s board received substantial monthly financial data. Each board packet included three documents: a “Financials” spreadsheet with line-item revenue and expenditure detail, year-to-date totals, annual budget amounts, and a percentage-of-budget column; an “Expense Approval Report” with vendor-level detail; and a “Highlights” narrative summarizing notable transactions. The Financials spreadsheet also included a balance sheet tracking the General Fund balance month by month.
The data was there. A trustee reading the October 2025 Financials could see that General Fund expenditures stood at $24.7 million year-to-date (78% of the $31.6 million budget) while revenue stood at $22.3 million (79% of the $28.1 million budget). The balance sheet showed the General Fund balance declining from $8.87 million in January to as low as $3.05 million in September.
TRL’s monthly reporting did not meet the standard recommended by GFOA’s “Budget Monitoring” best practice (2018), which specifies that budget-to-actual reporting should include previous year actuals and projections as a basis of comparison — and asks: “How does the current spending pattern impact the subsequent year’s budget?”
What the board did not have was any mechanism to see this year’s deficit in the context of the years before and after it. The monthly Financials showed only the current budget year. There was no comparison to prior years, no multi-year fund balance trajectory, no projection of where reserves would stand at year-end or beyond, and no analysis of whether the 30% policy threshold ($8.4 million for 2025) would be breached. Each year’s deficit appeared in isolation.
That isolation is what made four consecutive deficit budgets look manageable one year at a time. The 2025 budget showed a $3.5 million gap between budgeted revenue ($28.1M) and budgeted expenditures ($31.6M). But the percentage-of-budget columns showed expenditures consistently running below 100% — at mid-year, spending was at 47% of budget with revenue at 55%. By November, expenditures were at 86% and revenue at 94%. Both lines looked on track. The structural gap was visible only if you noticed that “on track” meant on track to a $3.5 million deficit — and that the same pattern had played out every year since 2023.
After the crisis became public, President Elect Dustin Loup proposed a financial transparency and planning policy at the March 25, 2026 board meeting. The policy would add multi-year financial projections, organizational staffing reports, collective bargaining agreement fiscal impact statements, and material deviation notifications. Loup identified multi-year projections as the second-highest priority, after the staffing report. He acknowledged that monthly financial data was already provided “in some format” but said the policy “makes it kind of more explicit and defines how it’s provided and how often it’s provided” (Mar 25, 02:20:32 — Board meeting, March 25, 2026).
Trustee Hal Blanton told Lewis County commissioners in May 2025 that TRL was “fiscally… in really pretty good shape” (The Chronicle, May 21, 2025). The record shows Blanton was not inattentive — he asked about the fund balance at multiple meetings and asked in November 2022, “How would we know if we really are spending in the red?” (Nov 16, 00:12:21 — Budget hearing, November 16, 2022). Each time, he was told finances were on track. But without multi-year projections, even the right questions produced reassuring answers. The 2024 ending General Fund balance was $8.9 million — within the board’s 30% policy threshold ($8.4 million for 2025) by roughly $500,000, with deficits already recorded in both 2023 and 2024. A multi-year forecast would have shown the fund balance breaching the 30% threshold within a year. Blanton did not have one.
What Staff Provided
The responsibility for the missing forward view falls on both sides of the staff-board relationship.
On the staff side, no multi-year forecast was presented to the board during the period reviewed. The Finance Administrator confirmed this herself at the March 25, 2026 board meeting, telling the board her team was building multi-year projections “from scratch” (full quote below). TRL’s official job description for the position (class code FINAD, revised January 2025) lists as an essential duty: “Analyzes, summarizes and prepares long-range forecasts for library expenditures and revenue sources, including property tax, timber tax and other one-time and reoccurring income sources.” The Finance Administrator reports to the Operations Director, who reports to the executive director; the absence of projections may reflect direction from above as much as initiative from within the role.
What the public record does show is that the Finance Administrator’s verbal presentations at board meetings framed deficit budgets as conservative estimates unlikely to materialize — a framing the current-year data appeared to support, even as the multi-year pattern compounded:
Budgeting at full staffing is standard practice, and the “wiggle room” observation was factually correct — TRL consistently spent below its salary budget. But without a multi-year projection, the reassurance obscured the fact that even below-budget spending was producing annual deficits that were compounding against reserves.
That statement frames four consecutive years of deficit spending as unremarkable because reserves had covered the gap — and positions the 2026 breach as a development that only just materialized, when the trajectory was visible in the district’s own budget documents for years.
When Mittge followed up on how low the balance might go before the April deposit, Preston said she could not estimate it because the second accounts payable cycle for March had not yet run. She disclosed that “a lot of the North Mason project invoices are pending that accounts payable run, running on the 31st” — expenditures from the Building Fund that draw on the same combined cash pool. She noted that general expenses were trending $300–400 thousand below prior years — but that was a year-over-year comparison, not the projection Mittge had asked for. Mittge accepted the response.
The Finance Administrator could not estimate how low the General Fund balance would drop before the district’s largest predictable revenue event — even though she identified the pending North Mason invoices as the primary unknown. “I believe [the funds] will get us through” was a statement of confidence, not a projection. The inability to project next month’s cash position is the same gap this exhibit documents at the multi-year level: the data existed, the forward view did not.
Later in the same meeting, when President Elect Loup proposed a financial transparency policy requiring multi-year projections, Preston responded: “I will be totally honest with you. The multi-year financial projection is the one that’s kind of the wiliest right now because we’ve reviewed prior finance directors’ documents and have found no real actionable financial projections that they were even using. They may have been in their own personal documents and not in our shared drive. So we’re essentially creating that from scratch for you.”
The district’s files contain no formal multi-year projections from any finance director’s tenure — a gap Preston confirmed on the record when she told the board her team was building them “from scratch.” Her predecessor held the director-level title and warned verbally about the expenditure trajectory, but those warnings were never formalized into written projections. Preston has held the position since July 2021, through all four consecutive deficit budget cycles. In an interview, she said she had created “rudimentary” multi-year projections in 2025 at administration’s request and sent them to her supervisor — the Operations Director — for feedback. “I never heard anything from Cheryl regarding it,” she said. The projections did not reach the board. Preston said she did not recall any board member requesting multi-year projections or additional financial analysis until the issue was raised at this meeting.
The SAO’s actual language, from exit conference materials Preston subsequently provided, was more pointed: “While expenditures did not decline during 2025 as might typically [be] expected, the District maintains a relatively large amount of fund balance. For this reason, our recommendation will be included as an Exit Item rather than being elevated further. We ultimately recommend the District implement a plan to improve and maintain its ending fund balance in accordance with its policy.” The phrase “rather than being elevated further” indicates the SAO viewed the matter as potentially warranting escalation beyond an exit item. The recommendation to “implement a plan” to restore the fund balance is substantively different from the “typo correction” Preston described to the board.
Preston’s salary — $119,778 (2025) to $142,607 (2026), a 19.1% increase adopted in the same deficit budget — appears in the eight-position table in Exhibit I. The figure is noted here to establish that the position whose official job description includes long-range forecasting as an essential duty is compensated at a senior level — not a junior analyst position with limited authority or expectations.
In an interview, Preston said she was informed there was a “three to five year mastery” for the role and described herself as “essentially in training, learning how to do this job in real time.” She said she “wasn’t ever expected to direct anything” and was not involved in major decisions like the 2025 public services restructuring until it was being implemented. She said she felt supported by her supervisor but that the complexity of the role left insufficient time for the deeper learning she needed to be “fully successful.” She volunteered: “I personally do agree that I think Timberland needs a finance director” and that “having finance at the table in admin eventually would be what this organization needs.”
What the Board Required
The board’s role is to require the information it needs to govern — not to passively accept whatever staff provides. TRL’s Budget Committee existed for exactly this purpose.
The committee was chaired by Mary Beth Harrington, a Certified Volunteer Administrator and nonprofit governance consultant with over 30 years of experience, who has presented nationally on library board governance, including at the American Library Association’s 2024 Annual Conference. In a system where staff never produced multi-year projections and never flagged their absence, the committee had the credentials to identify the gap. It did not.
At a November 17, 2025 Budget Committee working session — two months before the shortfall became public — Harrington told Finance Administrator Preston: “Send me your notes and I will pretty much read them verbatim” at the upcoming board meeting (Nov 17, 00:20:01 — Budget Committee working session, November 17, 2025) — describing her role as relaying staff’s presentation of a budget the committee was responsible for scrutinizing. Page 6 of the preliminary budget document under review at that session showed TRL entering 2026 with a fund balance of roughly 19% of estimated revenues — well below the board’s own 30% policy minimum. The ending fund balance and total revenues appeared on the same page; the arithmetic was not complex. The breach was not discussed at the session.
Three weeks before the layoffs were announced, Harrington told a public audience that TRL was “the most efficient library organization I have encountered” (Feb 25, 00:18:41 — Board meeting, February 25, 2026) and said there was “no wicked witch or wizard behind a curtain pulling levers” (00:20:21 — Board meeting, February 25, 2026) — responding to heated public comment by characterizing demands for accountability as a search for villains rather than a governance question.
During the four years the deficit compounded, the Budget Committee did not require multi-year financial projections, did not flag the compounding trajectory across budget cycles, and did not recommend the levy strategy that Exhibit K documents every comparable peer pursuing. In December 2025, without projections in hand, the full board unanimously approved a two-year executive compensation package at the same meeting as a 2026 budget showing expenditures exceeding revenues by $3.8 million.
In response to a request for comment, Harrington wrote that “all members of the Board have been involved in the budget process” and that “there’s context that is not included” in the report’s account. She wrote that Budget Committee members “may or may not have had discussions with the finance manager independent of the committee meetings.” She added that board members’ clarification questions “may be asked and responded to outside of the committee meetings.” She did not identify specific discussions or dispute any of the statements quoted above. (The invitation to comment remains open. A public records request for written communications between Budget Committee members and finance staff during the relevant period has been submitted. This report will be updated to reflect any response or findings.)
At the March 25 board meeting, Mittge asked Preston what the fund balance would look like before the April property tax infusion. He received year-over-year trend data — expenses running $300–400 thousand below prior years — but not the projected balance he had asked for. “Okay, that answers my question,” he said (02:03:10 — Board meeting, March 25, 2026). Thirty-five minutes later, he acknowledged the broader gap: “This issue that we’ve been having, you know, that’s acute now, but we’re realizing has been happening for years — what is our burn rate versus our income rate. We need to really get that solidly in hand. And I still, just speaking for myself, don’t feel that I completely do” (02:38:43 — Board meeting, March 25, 2026).
What Peers Do Differently
Four of TRL’s six Exhibit J peers publish multi-year financial projections by policy or practice. Sno-Isle publishes a ten-year revenue and expenditure estimate as an appendix to its adopted budget — a chart showing exactly when expenditures will cross above revenue. KCLS publishes an eleven-year financial forecast in its budget book. Pierce County’s fiscal management policy requires a “long-term cash-flow projection as an anticipatory approach to budget.” Fort Vancouver requires a five-year rolling forecast presented to the board annually. Each of these tools would have surfaced TRL’s trajectory by 2023 at the latest. These practices align with the Government Finance Officers Association’s “Long-Term Financial Planning” best practice (2022), which recommends that all governments project revenues, expenses, and financial position at least five years forward (GFOA, “Long-Term Financial Planning,” March 2022). Washington’s State Auditor’s Office cites GFOA best practices as the standard for local government financial policies (SAO, “Top 12 most important financial policies,” June 2021).
KCLS — the largest system in the comparison — faces its own structural deficit, drawing $10.4 million from reserves to balance its 2026 budget. But KCLS had the tools TRL lacked: its 2026 budget book includes an eleven-year financial forecast (2026–2036), and staff warned the board in October 2025 that reserves “could deplete as early as 2027” without additional revenue (KCLS Board Minutes, October 2025). KCLS also held cash reserves equal to roughly ten months of operating costs ($130 million against a $165 million annual budget). TRL held roughly three and a half months’ worth — and had no projection showing when the floor would be breached.
TRL’s own fund balance policy — a 30% minimum of budgeted revenues, adopted in 2019 — was stricter on paper than several peers’ thresholds. The problem was not the policy but the absence of any mechanism to project when it would be breached. The policy triggered a restoration plan only after the balance fell below the floor. Without multi-year projections, the board adopted four consecutive deficit budgets while the General Fund balance fell from $13.2 million (2020) to $5.9 million (2026) — breaching the $8.7 million threshold without anyone having projected when the crossing would occur.
Peer comparison uses the same six systems as Exhibit J. Data verified from published policies, bylaws, budget documents, and board packets where publicly accessible. Full source detail in collapsible panels below.
| System | Multi-year operating forecast | Fund balance policy | Levy lid lift pursued |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pierce County | Required by policy (“long-term cash-flow projection”) | 4 months + 2% reserve | Yes |
| Fort Vancouver | Five-year rolling forecast (policy) | 60–90 days operating | Yes (2025) |
| Sno-Isle | Ten-year estimate (budget appendix) | Board-designated reserves | Yes (2018, 2026) |
| KCLS | Eleven-year forecast (budget book) | Published in budget | Yes (2010; 2026 planned) |
| WCLS | Capital plan only (no operating) | 9 designated funds, $9.5M | Yes (2025) |
| Kitsap | None | 10–15% operating reserve | Yes (2017, 2025) |
| TRL | None | 30% (breached 2026) | None since 2009 |
View policy detail for all peers
Pierce County Library System
Fiscal Management Policy (mypcls.org, updated August 13, 2025; originally adopted August 3, 1995):
- Multi-year forecasting: Staff required to “administer a long-term cash-flow projection as an anticipatory approach to budget for and meet the Library’s expenditure needs for future operations.”
- Fund balance: Four months of anticipated operating costs required as of January 1, plus a separate 2% reserve, plus dedicated Capital Improvement, Levy Sustainability, Elections, and Property funds.
- Annual policy review: The board reviews this policy annually during the budget process.
Pierce County’s policy is the most structurally sophisticated among the peers reviewed. The multi-year cash-flow projection requirement addresses exactly the tool TRL lacked.
Fort Vancouver Regional Library District
Fiscal Management Policy (fvrl.org, last revised March 17, 2025):
- Five-year rolling forecast: “Staff will build and maintain a five-year rolling forecast of the budget to be presented to the Board as part of the annual budget and long-term planning process to ensure FVRL’s financial stability is managed and maintained.”
- Fund balance minimum: 60 to 90 days of annual operational expenditures.
FVRL passed a levy lid lift in August 2025 — its first in 15 years (54.2% yes) — with board minutes from March 2025 showing staff presenting scenarios with financial projections through 2030 and 2035.
Sno-Isle Libraries
- Ten-year projection: Appendix A of the 2025 Adopted Budget contains an “Operating Revenue and Expenditures — Ten-year estimate” projecting both lines through 2032. The chart shows expenditures crossing above revenue around 2025–2026 — the same crossover TRL experienced in 2023 but never projected.
- Reserve structure: Board-designated accounts for cash flow, capital needs, economic uncertainties, emergencies, and revenue losses. Executive Director provides annual summary with recommendations (Unreserved and Reserved Fund Policy, adopted 2012, revised May 2023).
Sno-Isle faces the same structural deficit as TRL — rising costs under the 1% cap — but its published ten-year projection made the trajectory visible to the board years before it reached crisis.
King County Library System (KCLS)
2026 Final Budget (kcls.org, adopted December 2025):
- Eleven-year forecast: The budget book projects revenues, expenditures, and fund balance from 2026 through 2036.
- Depletion warning: Staff told the board in October 2025 that “the system could deplete its reserve funds as early as 2027 without additional revenue” (Board Minutes, October 29, 2025).
- Levy strategy: Rate has fallen from $0.50 to ~$0.24 under the 1% cap — nearly identical to TRL’s erosion. Board began planning a levy lid lift for August 2026.
KCLS faces a structural deficit comparable in kind to TRL’s — but responded with the two tools TRL lacked: a published multi-year forecast that made the trajectory visible, and a levy lid lift to address it.
Whatcom County Library System (WCLS)
Finance Committee Report (Board packet, February 18, 2025, pages 10–15):
- Fund balance structure: Nine designated fund categories totaling $9.5M against a $10.9M operating budget — each with a named purpose (cash flow, emergency, capital, facility maintenance, etc.).
- Administrative share: 15% of expenditures. (TRL’s Service Center share of FTE reached 19.2% in 2026; its share of salary spending reached 25.7%.)
- Multi-year capital projections: WCLS publishes a Five-Year Capital Improvement Plan (2026–2030, updated annually per policy) with year-by-year capital fund balance projections. However, no equivalent multi-year General Fund operating forecast — projecting when operating expenditures would cross above revenue — was found in the 2025 or 2026 Final Budgets or in board packets reviewed from October 2025 through February 2026.
WCLS demonstrates forward planning through its capital projections, designated reserve structure, and a new Levy Stabilization Fund ($1M) — but does not publish the multi-year operating forecasts that Pierce County, Fort Vancouver, Sno-Isle, and KCLS maintain. That operating forecast is the specific tool that would have surfaced TRL’s trajectory.
Kitsap Regional Library System
- Levy resilience: Failed in 2007 (55–46) and 2010 (56–44), both at $0.48, then passed in 2017 at $0.43 (63–37) and 2025 at $0.39 (62–38). Adjusted the ask based on voter feedback rather than abandoning the tool.
- Multi-year projections: No multi-year operating forecast found in the 2025 or 2026 budget books, bylaws, levy campaign materials, strategic plan, or annual report. Budgets cover only the proposed year with a single prior-year comparison. No published capital improvement plan.
Kitsap’s story is one of revenue strategy, not financial forecasting: four levy attempts over eighteen years, adjusting after each failure, versus TRL’s zero attempts since 2009.
The organizational gap extends beyond forecasting policy. All six peers place their finance lead on the leadership team at director level or above.
| System | Finance lead title | On leadership team |
|---|---|---|
| Kitsap | Deputy Director, Chief Financial & Operating Officer | Yes |
| KCLS | Director of Finance and Facilities Management | Yes |
| Sno-Isle | Director of Finance | Yes |
| Pierce County | Finance Director | Yes |
| Fort Vancouver | Finance Director | Yes |
| WCLS | Director of Finance and Administration | Yes |
| TRL | Finance Administrator | No |
Titles verified from official system websites and published board documents, April 2026. TRL leadership page history verified via Wayback Machine snapshots of trl.org/leadership-team (August 2019 through September 2023) and trl.org/leadership/ (November 2023 through February 2026). TRL’s leadership page listed a Director of Finance through April 2021; the position was removed from the page by June 2021, and the role was later reclassified to Finance Administrator (not on the leadership team). Full verification detail in source archive.
The title alone would not have prevented the crisis — TRL had a finance director who warned the board verbally, and those warnings were never formalized into projections. But the subsequent downgrade of the role from director to administrator, and its removal from the leadership page, signals how the organization valued the function. At the November 2021 budget hearing, Heywood explained the change: “We created a finance manager position instead… So Paige does not sit on the admin team. It’s one less person on the admin team” (00:05:30 — Budget hearing, November 17, 2021). The department gained specialist positions; the leadership table lost its finance voice. The finance administrator presented directly to the board at every budget cycle from 2021 onward and never produced the forward-looking analysis that four of six peer systems provide. Both problems compounded: the institutional authority of the role diminished, and the forecasting function it should have carried disappeared with it.
The post-crisis transparency policy proposed by the board in March 2026 — with multi-year projections as the second-highest priority — is evidence that the board now recognizes what was missing. The question for the independent audit recommended in Exhibit M is why the position whose job description names long-range forecasting as an essential duty never produced one that reached the board — and whether the verbal framing that accompanied the monthly data accurately represented the district’s trajectory.
Peer governance policies: FVRL Fiscal Management Policy (fvrl.org, revised March 17, 2025); FVRL planned 30% staff reduction if levy failed: The Columbian, April 22, 2025; levy passed 54.2%: The Reflector, August 25, 2025; Sno-Isle Libraries Bylaws (sno-isle.org, approved February 26, 2024); Sno-Isle Unreserved and Reserved Fund Policy (sno-isle.org, revised May 30, 2023); Sno-Isle 37-year clean audit record (sno-isle.org/budget); NOLS Fiscal Management Policy 5.15 (nols.org, revised January 25, 2024). WCLS Finance Committee Report: Board packet, February 18, 2025 (pages 10–15); WCLS 2026 Final Budget (archived); WCLS Bylaws (archived). Pierce County Library System Fiscal Management Policy (mypcls.org, updated August 13, 2025); Pierce County Library System Staff Reductions Update, November 30, 2009 (archived; original via archive.org). KCLS 2026 Final Budget (kcls.org, adopted December 2025; includes eleven-year financial forecast); KCLS Board Minutes, October 29, 2025 (archived); KCLS Finance Report, January 2026 (archived). Kitsap Regional: 2025 and 2026 Operating and Capital Budgets (archived); 10–15% operating reserve policy (krl.org/budget); Bylaws (archived); Levy FAQ (archived); levy history from Washington Secretary of State certified election results and Exhibit K; Sunday hours eliminated 2011, restored May 2018 (Kitsap Daily News, April 30, 2018).
Harrington ALA presentation: “10 Things Every Board Member Needs to Know,” American Libraries Magazine, July 1, 2024. Harrington consultancy profile: 501 Commons.
Finance Administrator salary data: 2024 and 2026 TRL Final Budgets (position inventory tables). Finance Administrator job description: TRL position classification, class code FINAD, revised January 2025 (archived PDF). Blanton “fiscally in really pretty good shape”: The Chronicle, May 21, 2025. General Fund balance data: Exhibit C. SAO courtesy financial condition review (exit conference materials): archived screenshot, voluntarily provided by the Finance Administrator.
Prepared April 2026. Comment requests sent to Finance Administrator and Budget Committee Chair (deadline April 8, 2026). Both responded; their comments are incorporated above.
Heywood built durable workforce development partnerships. In summer 2019, all 27 TRL libraries became certified connection sites in the WorkSource system through the Pacific Mountain Workforce Development Council (PacMtn), where Heywood served on the board and Executive Finance Committee. In rural Lewis County, the Veteran Connection Cafe — opened in November 2019 in partnership with WestCare Foundation — connected veterans with service officers and benefits counseling via video link at a library branch with no nearby VA access. She was a visible advocate for libraries beyond the district: featured in the University of Washington iSchool’s Library Leadership Spotlight Series, active on the Professional Development committee of Public Libraries of Washington, and described by community stakeholders as a compelling public speaker who could energize a room about what libraries do.
These strengths were outward-facing: partnerships, advocacy, presence. The failures documented above were inward-facing: fiscal forecasting, cost discipline, board transparency. That pattern is not uncommon in mission-driven organizations, and recognizing it matters for what comes next — TRL’s next executive director will need to preserve the external relationships while rebuilding the internal systems this tenure left unbuilt.
What the Board Can Do
Some of the growth may be justified — IT staff for digital services, facilities workers for new buildings. Others should be evaluated for whether they serve an ongoing operational need or were discretionary additions during a period of declining reserves. Examples: the Employee Experience Advisor ($127K, created August 2024), the Patron Experiences Advisor ($107K → $131K, retitled from Public Services Manager; technically in the Public Services department, not the six tracked above), and the Special Projects Coordinator ($106K, created 2026) were added or expanded while the fund balance fell 55% and frontline layoffs approached.
This review targets non-represented administrative positions — the roles excluded from the AFSCME bargaining unit (executive staff, HR, IT, finance, administration). Bargaining unit positions housed in the Service Center, including courier and facilities maintenance staff, are governed by the Collective Bargaining Agreement and its Article 15 layoff provisions. As noted in Exhibit I, these positions are service-supporting, not purely administrative, and should be evaluated on operational merits, not lumped into an administrative headcount reduction.
With the executive director position vacant, an external review is more credible than an internal one. Any savings identified should be directed toward restoring frontline service capacity. The CBA’s recall register (Article 15, Section 7) gives laid-off employees one year from the March 2026 layoff date — the review timeline should account for that clock. This review should be completed by no later than December 2026, so that findings inform both the 2027 budget and the new executive director search. The benchmarking study (Step 2) provides the data; this step applies it.
Results should be reported publicly before the 2027 budget cycle (i.e., by fall 2026). The scope should be tightly defined: administrative position-level comparison to peers, not a system-wide classification study that defaults to 75th-percentile recommendations.
The review recommended here is a management and governance review — not a re-examination of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) compliance. TRL’s five consecutive clean financial audits from the SAO test whether financial statements comply with accounting standards — they do not evaluate whether policy decisions were prudent or whether the board received complete information. Those are the questions this review should answer.
The distinction is not hypothetical. The SAO’s most recent accountability audit (Report No. 1036255, December 2024) reviewed financial condition and reported no distress — but not whether the district’s expenditure trajectory was sustainable under the 1% levy cap. Routine accountability audits are not scoped to answer that question. It is the question the finance director raised repeatedly before his departure — and that no external review has examined. An independent management review would.
The board should control selection and scope — the auditor reports to the board, not to staff. Under RCW 43.09.260, the board may request that the State Auditor’s Office conduct an examination; alternatively, the board can engage a private firm with no prior or concurrent TRL contracts. The scope and findings should be public.
Every comparable peer system has used this tool (Exhibit K). Sno-Isle: 2009, 2018, and now 2026. KCLS: 2002 and 2010. TRL has not tried since 2009. The 2009 attempt failed district-wide (45.1% yes) but passed in Mason County (55.4%) and Pacific County (51.8%) — the rural counties that would be most harmed by dissolution. Lewis County rejected it most strongly (29.2% yes).
The board should begin evaluating a levy immediately — the fiscal math demands it. But the ballot measure itself requires public trust, and trust requires visible action on Steps 1–3. Sno-Isle is targeting an August 2026 ballot. TRL cannot afford to wait years, but it also cannot credibly ask for more money without first demonstrating it will be spent differently.
A failed first attempt is not a final verdict. Kitsap Regional failed in 2007 and 2010 before passing in 2017 with 63% support. But a second attempt requires runway — the cost discipline in Steps 1–3 is not just about building public trust for the ballot. It is also about stabilizing the district’s finances enough to sustain operations without further service reductions if the first levy does not pass, preserving the option to return to voters with a refined case and, if warranted, an adjusted rate.
A levy is not the only tool that requires no new legislation. The LCIP building grant program documented in Exhibit K accepts applications on a biennial cycle; the 2027–29 round closes April 15, 2026, and future rounds will follow each biennium. Any planned capital work on TRL-owned or city-partnered buildings should be evaluated for LCIP eligibility. At 50% match, a single successful application could return up to $2 million on projects the district would otherwise fund entirely from reserves.
The position was not always marginalized. Through early 2021, TRL listed a finance director on its leadership team (trl.org/leadership-team, archived April 15, 2021, via Wayback Machine). By mid-2021, the position had been retitled to Finance Administrator and removed from the leadership page (archived August 23, 2021). The title gap reflects a structural gap: Finance Director Lowell warned the board verbally about the expenditure trajectory (Exhibit L), but those warnings were dismissed and never formalized into a projection tool. His eventual replacement continued the current-year reporting format without adding forward-looking analysis. The informal judgment was dismissed when it was present and absent after 2021 — at no point did the district have a forecasting function.
The board should establish the top finance position at the director level and place it on the leadership team. The next executive director must have the financial literacy to supervise the role — to recognize when critical outputs are not being produced and to act when they aren’t.
Policy alone is insufficient if the internal capacity to execute it does not yet exist. The board should evaluate whether the finance function requires external support — a contracted CFO review, periodic municipal finance consulting, or engagement with MRSC (Municipal Research and Services Center) advisory services — to ensure that multi-year projections are not just required but competently produced. Based on commercial fractional CFO market data, contracted finance consulting for a district of TRL’s size — whether a project-based multi-year forecast ($25,000–$75,000) or ongoing fractional CFO support ($5,000–$12,000 per month) — is well within the operating budget of a $27 million district (cost ranges from published fractional CFO pricing surveys, 2024–2025; government rates typically run below commercial equivalents).
Filling these seats has been complicated by an intercounty standoff: Mason County has refused to approve Thurston County’s appointee until Thurston approves Mason County’s appointee (Mason County BOCC Briefing Minutes, July 21, 2025). The matter was tabled in August 2025 (Mason County BOCC Briefing Minutes, August 4, 2025) and never revisited — even as the crisis unfolded. Both county commissions should resolve this promptly.
The governance failures documented in this report point to three qualities that matter in trustee appointments. First, financial literacy: the board received detailed monthly data but never required the multi-year projections that would have revealed four consecutive deficit budgets compounding toward fiscal crisis (Exhibit L). Trustees who can read a budget independently — and who know to ask for a forward view — might have caught the trajectory years earlier. Second, a willingness to ask follow-up questions: twice the prior finance director warned the board about unsustainable spending, and twice the minutes record no trustee response and no action item. Third, commitment to the district’s service mission: every recommendation in this exhibit — the audit, the levy, the staffing reforms, the governance changes — requires trustees who are working to strengthen the library system, not to constrain it.
Prepared March 2026.