GOP Lancaster County commissioners favor new members over librarian and church leader on board

• By Tom Lisi/ LNP | LancasterOnline

Lancaster County’s two Republican commissioners on Tuesday appointed three newcomers to the county Library System board, opting not to reappoint two members, one of whom was the only professional librarian on the seven-member volunteer board.

In a 2-1 vote, with Democratic Commissioner Alice Yoder voting against, Commissioners Josh Parsons and Ray D’Agostino declined to give new board terms to librarian Alexandra Godfrey of Lancaster city and Cody Diehl, an Elizabethtown church leader and former health care administrator.

“I’m disappointed they did not reappoint our two existing members, but I am sure the new board will do its best to support the system and its mission,” said Dale Hamby, the sitting board president.

Godfrey and Diehl did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

In letters to the board of commissioners, the Library System’s executive director, Karla Trout, had recommended that both members be reappointed in January, according to county records.

But that was before a surge in interest came after Parsons and D’Agostino took to social media beginning March 7 to pan a scheduled children’s event featuring a drag queen at the Lancaster Public Library.

In the days following the commissioners’ posts, more people formally applied for appointment to the board, including the three new appointees approved Tuesday: Theia Hoffstetter of Elizabethtown, Realtor and Lampeter-Strasburg School District board member Andrew Welk of West Lampeter Township, and unsuccessful Manheim Township School District board candidate Tess Wallace.

The three appointees did not respond to requests for comment.

In the resume submitted with her application, Hofstetter listed experience working with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and for nonprofits. She also cited experience in “program coordination, consistency and management.”

Hofstetter in the past has called for banning certain books from schools that include sexual themes. “Trying to justify child pornography in a book because the overall story has merit is like trying to justify taking a minor to a strip joint because the dancing has artistic value,” Hofstetter said at a Elizabethtown Area School District meeting in February 2022.

Wallace is currently a surgical nurse for Wellspan Ephrata Community Hospital, according to her resume. County officials received her application four days after Parsons made his first posts against the Drag Queen Story Hour.

Wallace did not grant interviews to LNP | LancasterOnline last year as a school board candidate. She was listed as a member of the Moms for Liberty private Facebook group and on social media attacked LGBTQ+–friendly public policies as a global conspiracy. “This global progressive campaign to erase women sees binary gender as an oppressive biological reality that must be excised from our lexicon,” one post read.

Welk, a realtor for Berkshire Hathaway and L-S school board member, sent in his application on March 9, according to county records. Welk also donated $500 to D’Agostino’s reelection campaign in October. He has a background as a firefighter and paramedic, according to his resume.

Board connections

It’s unclear what effect the new members may have on the library system board.

Hamby said new members to the board hoping to take action on issues like the drag queen story hour are likely to be disappointed. The county library system is a mostly behind-the-scenes organization providing resources like IT and software to connect member libraries across the county.

Trout, the executive director, said local libraries in Lancaster County would not be able to function without the system, given that it performs a lot of the processing and cataloging to manage libraries’ books, videos and more.

Parsons and D’Agostino declined to say Tuesday whether they had pre-existing relationships with the prospective board members, saying only that they knew some applicants from “around the community,” according to Parsons.

The two Republicans also repeatedly declined to say whether close political allies should be appointed to local boards.

“We are all elected to implement certain policies,” Parsons said.

Yoder said she had only met Diehl once before, and said she would likely recuse herself on appointing a political ally to a board.

The Democrat said she favored reappointing Diehl and Godfrey, noting it was customary for the commissioners to take their cues from the existing board and staff.

For one seat on the board, Yoder proposed Carrie Rampp, a former university librarian and now an IT executive at Franklin & Marshall College, or Michael Foley, a corporate attorney.

Rampp and Foley submitted their applications just ahead of Tuesday’s vote: April 5 and April 8, respectively.

None of the commissioners knew at the Tuesday meeting whether the board currently included an attorney.

“Seems like most boards I’ve been on there’s always been an attorney to sort of help guide the board in some decisions,” Yoder said.

The Library System supports Lancaster County’s 14 public libraries. All operate as independent nonprofits with the exception of Manheim Township Public Library, which is a department in the township government. The largest library, Lancaster Public Library in the city’s downtown, serves nearly 220,000 people. The smallest, Moores Memorial Library in Christiana, serves 4,648 people.

Nathan Willison and Ashley Stalnecker contributed reporting to this story.