The president of the Monroeville Public Library’s board of directors said several Monroeville Council members directed that a special book section for Pride Month be taken down.
Monroeville’s municipal manager said he asked the library staff to prepare upcoming special sections planned for the Fourth of July and Monroeville’s 75th anniversary.
On June 19, Councilman Bill Krut reposted a photo from the Monroeville Library Children’s Room Facebook page of the “Love Is Love” special section curated for Pride Month. It included books like “I Am Perfectly Designed” by Karamo Brown, “The GayBCs” by M.L. Webb and “Mama and Mommy and Me in the Middle” by Nina LeCour.
Krut captioned the repost: “Should these books be available at the Monroeville Library? I think not. I don’t care what adults do. This is child, sexual grooming.”
Kelly Meredith, president of the library board, said, at that point, members of the community began taking action.
“Particularly offensive was the implication that our library staff is, in any way, grooming children,” Meredith said. “We had a library board meeting on June 22, where about 50 or 60 people in support of the special section showed up, with 17 people speaking in support.”
Krut and fellow Monroeville Councilman Bob Williams also attended the meeting and spoke out against the display.
“All I wanted was for the books to be removed from the children’s area,” Krut said. “I don’t believe it’s ‘inclusive’ to expose children whose parents wouldn’t want them to be exposed to those books.”
Krut said he spoke with a number of other council members who shared his view and communicated those concerns to Monroeville Manager Alex Graziani.
Four days later, on June 26, Graziani reached out to library staff and requested that they take down the “Love Is Love” display to begin preparing July’s special section.
“As June was coming to a close and the municipality was preparing for our All-American Weekend celebration on July 3-5, which also commemorates Monroeville’s 75th anniversary and is part of the America 250 initiative, I asked the Monroeville Public Library director to have the children’s library staff shift their attention to those community events,” Graziani wrote in a statement released to news outlets. “The decision was based on the timing of seasonal displays and our focus on the upcoming municipal events.”
The library is funded in several ways. Roughly two-thirds of its $1.49 million budget comes directly from Monroeville tax dollars, and the rest is a combination of money from the Allegheny County Regional Asset District and from fundraising and grant-writing done by the library’s own nonprofit.
“But the state library code and Monroeville’s home-rule charter both dictate that the library is its own entity, governed by its own board of directors,” Meredith said.
Graziani said that while library staff are not part of any municipal employee unions, they do receive similar benefits to municipal staff.
“We’ve funded them, and they’ve had a lot of autonomy in the past,” he said. “The Fourth is on a Saturday this year, so essentially the week of June 29 is the week of July Fourth. That was my thinking.”
Mayor Dennis Biondo said he is opposed to the display’s removal.
“To my knowledge, there was no meeting where I would have had the opportunity to voice my dissent,” Biondo said in a statement released to media.
The state’s Sunshine Act mandates that elected officials conduct discussions and business not covered under executive-session privilege in a properly advertised, public meeting.
Melissa Melewsky, attorney at the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, said the situation raises concerns about whether council members are adhering to the Sunshine Act.
“A call from a borough councilman, even if it’s four or five of them, is not the same as the library board making a decision,” Melewsky said. “From the municipal side, what I hear is a series of one-on-one conversations in order to avoid a (council) quorum. The question is: Was this a decision made outside of a public forum? And I would say yes.”
Library patron Patty Whitaker of Monroeville, who helped spread the word about the June 22 library board meeting, said she doesn’t believe the upcoming holiday has anything to do with the section’s early removal.
“They definitely overstepped,” Whitaker said. “Everyone at the library board meeting except Bill Krut and Bob Williams was in support of keeping the section. We even had three or four pastors at the meeting in support of keeping it up, and Bob Williams was up there quoting Leviticus and telling church pastors that they didn’t know the Bible.”
Both Meredith and Whitaker said that, in their converstions with Graziani, he indicated there had been pressure from multiple council members to remove the display.
“It’s a difficult situation because the municipality doesn’t have direct control over the library, but we also want our staff to feel comfortable in the workplace,” Meredith said. “So ultimately the display came down on (June 26) because that’s what we were directed to do.”
In the wake of the board meeting, Whitaker said a group of supporters went to the library to examine the books in the special section.
“There was nothing sexual, nothing about peoples’ bodies,” she said. “It was very benign, basic kids’ stuff. If anything they were moreso about, these are the types of families you may encounter. Johnny might have two daddies. But they were referring to these books as tools for grooming, and they were not. They weren’t teen-romance novels or anything with sex scenes that would be age-inappropriate.”
Meredith added that if Krut and Williams objected to specific items in the special section, the library has a collection development policy and a reconsideration procedure to go along with it.
“A reconsideration request would be forwarded to the library board, and we’d have had a discussion at our regular meeting,” she said. “If deemed necessary, we would take a vote on whether to remove it.”
Krut reiterated that his issue was the placement of the books.
“The people who want those books there are calling me a bigot,” he said. “I don’t care what adults do, but the books were right there in front of a play mat for children, and for them to say they’re not trying to influence children — then why are they there?”
Williams could not be immediately reached for comment.
Meredith said that since joining the library board in 2021, she hasn’t encountered Monroeville administrators or elected officials pressuring library staff to remove materials.
“They appear to have done this without any public participation, and the public has a right to a voice in the process,” Melewsky said. “I think it raises a lot of questions under the Sunshine Act, and it raises potential additional problems: Does this council operate like this on a regular basis? Something like this throws up a red flag.”
Monroeville solicitor Robert Wratcher did not return multiple calls for comment.
Biondo encouraged residents to contact their local council representative to voice their opinions, and Whitaker said she hopes residents will attend the July 7 council meeting to do the same.
“I’ve done a lot of work with the queer community and was on the Gay and Lesbian Community Center board (now the PGH Equality Center),” Whitaker said. “I’ve never seen something like this.”
The July 7 meeting will be at 7 p.m. in the municipal building, 2700 Monroeville Blvd.