Criticism has been leveled against the Alexandria Library Board after Libby Bawcombe, a voting member, was expelled earlier this month for supporting a study on converting the library system into a city department.
At a special meeting of the Alexandria Library Company on April 8, Bawcombe was expelled by a secret ballot for voting with three other Library Board members in February to direct Alexandria Library Director Rose Dawson to work with city staff on assessing the library system’s transition into a city department.
A number of library supporters and volunteers told the Library Board at its meeting Monday (April 20) that they were dismayed by Bawcombe’s expulsion.
Sarah Hill, a volunteer at the Ellen Coolidge Burke Branch Library, said Bawcombe was an attentive board member.
“Why would you do this?” Hill asked the Library Board. “I can only surmise that you are afraid of what opening a course into a different relationship between the city of Alexandria and the Alexandria Library System might discover about an exclusive fraternity that may have once had a purpose but no longer does. I’m really angry about this cowardly decision, and I’m very disappointed.”
Bawcombe was appointed to a three-year term on the seven-member Library Board in 2024. She was one of three representatives from the Alexandria Library Company, the historical founding body of the organization, along with Board Chair Robert Ray and member Oscar Fitzgerald.
The board is made up of three members appointed by City Council, three members appointed by the Alexandria Library Company and one member of City Council.
The Alexandria Library Company was founded as a subscription service in 1794. The library system has operated as a quasi-city agency since 1937.
In February, City Councilman Canek Aguirre, the lone City Council representative on the Library Board, got consensus from his colleagues to direct the City Manager to work with Dawson on creating the proposal.
“Most people think the [Alexandria] Library is already a city department,” Aguirre told ALXnow. “I think the larger questions are: What’s the Library Company? Why do they have three seats, and why are they so against just a study to see what potential benefits there might be in doing this?”
Alexandria provides the majority of the library system’s operational costs — including salaries, facility maintenance, IT infrastructure — while other funds come through fundraising, private donations, book sales and sponsorships. In City Manager Jim Parajon’s proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget, he has allocated $10.13 million toward the Alexandria Library, a 1.9% increase over the current budget.
Bawcombe attended the board’s meeting Monday and said that the effort to move her was intended to ensure that all three Alexandria Library Company appointees will vote to block any effort to turn the library system into a city department. She said she was surprised by her expulsion.
“I’m gonna keep coming to these meetings,” Bawcombe said. “My impression from being on the board is I always thought it was much more open to discussion, and there wasn’t an expectation of voting a certain way just because of how you’re appointed to the board.”
Bawcombe said the effort to remove her was led by Board Chair Robert Ray and Fitzgerald, the other two representatives appointed by the Alexandria Library Company.
Ray said removing Bawcombe was a “joyless process.”
“Removing Libby was not taken lightly by any of the members, and it was primarily a joyless process,” Ray said. “I have, over the last five years, made it one of my goals to bring into the company and onto the Library Board, prominent and active library friends. I have wanted to give those most engaged with Alexandria’s libraries the opportunity to sit on the library board with the real authority to alter policy and to engage directly with the budget.”
Ray then announced that Peter Sealy, a former longtime member of the city’s Board of Architectural Review, has agreed to fill the open seat on the Library Board.
Patty Riley resigned as a member of the Alexandria Library Company after the vote to remove Bawcombe.
“Libby’s removal from the Alexandria Library Board is deeply troubling,” Riley said. “This was not about qualifications. It was about punishing independent judgment, and that should concern everybody at this table, because when a board member is punished for seeking facts, it sends a terrible message that independent judgment is not truly welcome. This board and this library system deserve better than that.”
Image 1 via Alexandria Library/Facebook
