This fight is one for the books

Flathead County and the city of Whitefish once again are at loggerheads and in court over a jurisdictional matter.

This time around, however, it’s not the two-mile planning “doughnut” that’s causing a major turf battle — it’s library books. What could have been an amicable divorce somehow has turned into an ugly custody battle.

Whitefish is breaking away from the county’s branch library system to establish an independent city-operated library. The split came after a lengthy conflict between Whitefish library personnel and County Library Director Kim Crowley. Allegations ranged from heavy-handed administration to inequities in resources and unacceptable treatment of Whitefish branch library employees.

Though it may seem to some that the resort town has an elitist or separatist attitude, the state attorney general ruled that Whitefish is well within its right to create its own city library and use tax revenue collected for the valleywide library system to operate the new Whitefish library.

The last round of this city-county boxing match has been over 6,380 books that were removed by the county from the Whitefish library before a temporary restraining order was issued in early June, prohibiting the county from removing more books. Flathead District Judge Stewart Stadler last week lifted the restraining order and essentially told the two government bodies to play nice and equitably divvy up the remaining 27,000 volumes.

Apparently the whereabouts of the 6,380 volumes was not tracked, however, and now no one can document exactly where those books went. That seems irresponsible of county library officials, especially since they had to know this would be a sticking point with the Whitefish library group. Supporters of the new Whitefish library were livid when it was recently discovered that several hundred library books were found at a local recycling plant.

Whitefish library supporters aren’t without their share of the blame, though. Apparently some library patrons checked out scores of books and have kept the renewals going to keep them from getting into county hands.

This tit-for-tat behavior is unprofessional and downright childish. It shouldn’t take a district judge to intervene to force the two sides into a mediation process, which is now the case. It’s time for both sides to turn the page and proceed with an orderly and civil transition with an eye on the real goal: serving their constituents.