Library board appointments on Tuesday

By John Labriola - Citrus County commissioners will be meeting in their capacity as the Library District Governing Body on Tuesday morning to make their annual appointments to the Library Advisory Board (LAB), the nine-member volunteer panel that makes policy and budget recommendations for the county's library system.

The meeting will take place at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 11, at the Citrus County Courthouse, 110 N. Apopka Ave., Inverness, FL 34450. County commissioners will be joined by Inverness Councilwoman Crystal Lizanich and Crystal River Councilwoman Gabrielle Satchell, who are part of the seven-member nominating body that appoints LAB members.

Three of the four LAB incumbents whose terms are expiring this month are seeking reappointment. Of those, two are conservatives. They are Elaine Kleid, an independent author/publisher and current secretary of the Citrus County Republican Executive Committee, and Justin Strickland, executive pastor at Crystal River Church of God and the current LAB chairman.

Lorraine Benefield, a retired Edward Jones branch office administrator, also is seeking reappointment but has a mixed voting record. In 2022, she helped defeat a motion by LAB member Kleid to revisit the county library display policy following numerous complaints about the library system’s LGBT Pride Month displays (which were subsequently canceled), but she was awarded Christian Family Coalition (CFC) Florida’s Pioneer Award in 2023 for voting to cut Citrus County’s ties with the American Library Association (ALA), which has become notorious for its aggressive promotion of Drag Queen Story Hours and explicit LGBT materials targeting children.

I, John Labriola, am also applying for a seat on the LAB. I believe my successful advocacy for ending LGBT Pride displays in the libraries, cutting ties with the ALA and opposing LGBT porn in the teen section make me a strong candidate for the position. If appointed, I also will look for ways to save taxpayer dollars by reducing the library system’s procurement budget, which currently calls for purchasing about 1,300 books a month, most of which are not vetted for inappropriate content.

At least three far-left residents also have applied for appointment to the LAB. They are Dale Gilliam-Saunders, Terry Morriston and Rebecca Beattie.

Gilliam-Saunders is a homosexual activist who vocally opposed the recent removal of the hard-core LGBT porn novel "Jack of Hearts (And Other Parts)" from the Citrus County library system's teen section. Last year, he verbally berated the Inverness City Council for not taking up the cause of LGBT porn for minors.

Morriston, a liberal online professor and retired teacher-librarian, has a long track record of supporting "LGBT Pride Month" propaganda displays in the libraries and the ALA. A few years ago, during the months of controversy surrounding the LGBT Pride Displays and subsequent library policy debates, she was part of a band of Friends of the Library members showed up at commission meetings in their group's yellow T-shirts in a show of solidarity for the LGBT agenda. In 2022, she spoke out against an unsuccessful motion by former County Commissioner Ron Kitchen to establish a policy to prohibit sexual orientation displays in the libraries. She also was one of just three hard-core ALA supporters who showed up at a LAB meeting in 2023 to urge members to reject a move to end the county's affiliation with the ALA, which nonetheless passed, leading at least 14 other Florida counties to do the same.

Beattie is another LGBT activist who enjoys defaming conservative residents during county commission and city council meetings for their conservative stances on issues, especially if they oppose LGBT grooming materials targeting children in the libraries.

So please show up at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 11, at the Citrus County Courthouse, and ask commissioners to appoint myself (John Labriola), reappoint Elaine Kleid and Justin Strickland, and reject far-left candidates like Dale Gilliam-Saunders, Terry Morriston and Rebecca Beattie. If you can't attend, email county leaders at the email addresses below to urge them to name LAB members who will reflect Citrus County's conservative values and won't push for rejoining the ALA, bringing back LGBT propaganda displays and purchasing pornographic materials for minors.

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