Baldwin County residents outside of Fairhope can no longer request the delivery of books from the Fairhope Library as the county commission officially ended the library’s inclusion in the county courier service.
Courier service to and from the Fairhope Public Library ended Friday a week after the Alabama Public Library Service ruled that the library had failed to come into compliance with new administrative voce requirements to be eligible for state aid.
FPL Director Rob Gourlay told APR that the library is no longer allowing patrons of other libraries in Baldwin County to make new requests for books through the interlibrary loan service as there is no longer an easy way for the library to deliver the books and ensure their return. The library will still allow books already out on interlibrary loan to be returned at any branch and arrange for their pickup.
The removal of the library from the courier service did not come from a vote of commission, but rather from the terms of the contract itself, said county administrator Roger Rendlemen.
“Once the state board took official action determining that they were not in compliance with administrative code, it became a breach of contract,” Rendlemen said.
The background of that contract is complicated and messy. The courier service is currently provided by the county directly after years of control by the Baldwin County Library Cooperative. Under that system, the BCLC received the full amount of state funding for all libraries within the county, took 25 percent off the top, and charged each library in the county 15 percent of their individual state aid allotments for participation in the cooperative.
That changed in 2024 after the county took over the service after controversy over how the cooperative was being run. The county acted quickly after the BCLC board abruptly fired all six of its employees in a move the county implies in official documentation to be made by director Elizabeth Webb to claim a year of severance pay.
With the cooperative’s services threatened, the county quickly stepped in to take over. Rendlemen said the contract between the libraries and the commission in place now is largely based on the existing framework of the BCLC.
But with the libraries now receiving state aid directly and having more control over the services, Rendlemen said he and the county attorney are looking over the existing contract to see about crafting something more in line with the new setup.
“This is kind of one of those things where, now that there’s a little more urgency, we’re going to sit down and see what we really need to have in place now that we’ve found a much more efficient way,” Rendlemen said.
Supporters of the library are urging commissioners to rewrite the contract and remove the requirement that libraries be eligible for state aid so that Fairhope, one of the county’s two largest libraries, can continue to participate in the courier service.
“The main thing we want to make sure happens is that the citizens of Baldwin county have access to service,”
