Trustees were supposed to go over the results of a performance review they completed for Scott. But Board Chair Ann Silver began the meeting with a surprise announcement.
“Director Scott has voluntarily resigned his position as library director effective immediately, and so our agenda will look a little different this evening,” she said.
Four of the five trustees gave Scott low ratings in areas like operational management and board relations. That negative feedback led to speculation the board would fire him, but it was nothing new.
Trustee Gianna Jacks attacked Scott over his support for LGBTQ-inclusive programming, and unsuccessfully pushed for his ouster in late 2023.
Trustees Silver and Lea Moser were also critical of the former director. But according to public information officer Jamie Hemingway, Scott had a positive relationship with library staff.
“He hires good people. He believes in what we do, and, you know, gives us a lot of freedom to make the library as good as it can be,” she said.
Hemingway praised Scott’s leadership — including during the pandemic, when he reassigned librarians to help with the public health response. And she added that his resignation isn’t an isolated incident.
“There's a lot more pressure now, I think, on a national level, on libraries, you're seeing a lot of these kinds of situations come up,” Hemingway said.
Republican activists started disrupting Washoe County library board meetings in 2022, at the same time as far-right groups like Moms For Liberty started attacking libraries across the country.
They scored a victory last year, when county officials canceled Drag Story Hour. The county said a librarian was hurt by a protester during one such event.
Then, in November, library antagonists helped defeat a ballot measure that would’ve renewed library-specific funding — leaving the system at risk of layoffs and reduced hours.
County commissioners could still maintain library funding for the next fiscal year. But with projected countywide deficits in the future, Hemingway said they’re bracing for budget reductions.
“If you look at it in a cyclical way, we're kind of just going into another era of cuts,” she said. “Which we have faced and weathered before.”
