The Library Advisory Board: Who are these people?

By John Labriola - Citrus County Commissioners will meet next week to decide whether to reappoint or replace five members of the nine-member Library Advisory Board (LAB), the volunteer body that has been pushing "LGBT Pride Month" displays in our libraries. Although Library Director Eric Head recently announced a "cooling off period" on LGBT displays this year, the LAB will likely insist on bringing them back in 2023 if all five members are reappointed. The meeting on LAB nominees will take place on Tuesday, April 26, at 1 p.m. in the Citrus County Courthouse, 110 N. Apopka Ave, Inverness, FL 34450.  

The five members whose current terms are expiring have spent a combined 28 years on the LAB, and all five are seeking reappointment. They are LAB Chairwoman April McLaughlin, Vice Chairwoman Neale Brennan and members Carol Spring, Shavonna Reid and Edith Ramlow. 

Who are these women? The Citrus Crusader has prepared the following brief profiles on each of them based on publicly available information. 

APRIL MCLAUGHLIN is a retired AT&T wireless store manager who has spent more than six years on the Library Advisory Board. Since last June's LGBT library displays first sparked community outrage, McLaughlin has spoken at several county commission meetings to defend the displays, which she has dishonestly minimized as "a couple of little books and a little rainbow." In fact, the monthlong displays in the library entranceways were quite elaborate, featuring multiple rainbow flags, LGBT political slogans and dozens of books promoting homosexuality and transgenderism to young people. McLaughlin has accused residents who have objected to the displays of engaging in "hate speech" and has compared them to people who "want to ban the Christmas tree and the menorah."

NEALE BRENNAN, a retired Citrus County Chronicle editor whose husband served as Citrus County Administrator in the 1980s, is a liberal activist and ardent defender of LGBT indoctrination. She urged commissioners last summer to continue the LGBT displays after many residents began complaining. At the March 22 Library Advisory Board meeting, she vehemently insisted our library system should obey the dictates of the far-left American Library Association (ALA), a private association that actively encourages libraries to serve as LGBT indoctrination centers by expanding their collections of homosexual materials directed at children and hosting Drag Queen Story Hours for toddlers. (See Brennan recite the ALA's LGBT talking points HERE.)

CAROL SPRING is a longtime leftist activist who has worked on Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) programs for a number of radical organizations including the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), where she served as executive director for the Broward County/South Palm Beach Region and led the NCCJ's Metrotown/Anytown program, a "social justice youth leadership camp" that puts teens through various exercises such as "Privilege Lines" to make them feel either guilty or victimized based on their skin color. (See video of one of its camps HERE.) Spring also has served on the board of Project Equality, a Black Lives Matter-supporting organization that condemns America and the police as systemically racist. In addition, Spring has had close ties with the radical Islamist organization CAIR – the Council on American-Islamic Relations. As a member of the Leadership Broward Foundation Selection Committee, she nominated CAIR Florida Executive Director Altaf Ali to the Leadership Broward program. Ali and CAIR have a history of leveling phony charges of "Islamophobia" against the police to shield Islamic terrorists from prosecution. Spring's activism has earned her special praise from Broward's Islamic activist community and Fort Lauderdale's homosexual Sunshine Cathedral, which bills itself as "the world's largest progressive QUEER church." On March 22, she voted to reject Citrus County residents' request to cancel the library system's LGBT propaganda displays, bafflingly arguing that going by majority opinion is "not democracy."

SHAVONNA REID is director of operations at Right Rudder Aviation, which provides commercial pilot flight instruction at the Inverness Airport. She was appointed last November to fill a vacancy on the Library Advisory Board. At last month's LAB meeting, she voted along with most LAB members to reject a request by dozens of citizens who attended the meeting and hundreds more who signed a petition to cancel the LGBT displays in the libraries. She has mostly kept quiet as a LAB member, saying only "No comment at this time" when asked if she had anything to say about the display issue, so residents were not even given the courtesy of an explanation as to why she voted to dismiss their concerns. 

EDITH RAMLOW is a College of Central Florida librarian. She has served on the Library Advisory Board for more than 14 and a half years. At the March LAB meeting, she suggested a more “balanced” approach to library displays but said she was not for canceling the LGBT promotional displays in June. She instead suggested simply adding more displays to recognize other months of the year such as Child Abuse Prevention Month in April and Respect Life Month in October to appease residents concerned about the state of families.