Jalon Peters wants to bring conservative values to the East Bonner County Library board of trustees.

Peters, who owns the handyman business Concepts 2 Completion and has lived in the area for four years, has centered his campaign platform on his opposition to the library’s mask requirement.

“I decided to run because of all that’s going on in our world and our country. With not being able to go to the library in the past year and a half,” he said, “there’s people making decisions locally that [don’t represent us].”

Peters runs alongside another challenger, Kathy Rose, who also opposes mask requirements. Both are running for one of the two contested spots held by trustees Amy Flint and Jeanine Asche.

Although Peters said he acknowledges COVID-19 is real, and endangers certain groups, he believes the mask requirement violates constitutional rights.

Social distancing and handwashing make sense to him, Peters said, but he believes everyone should make their own decisions on masks — a safety precaution he views as wholly personal.

He also noted that the requirement specifically affects a greater proportion of homeschool families, including his own.

“Most of the homeschool families don’t want to comply with this,” he said.

While Peters’ platform focuses heavily on the library’s mask requirement, he said he also wants to foster a sense of “morality and love of country,” which he believes is a role of the library.

Some of the concerns Peters noted were recent webinars, including a one on white supremacy, and recently held watch parties and discussions regarding climate change.

The first, he said, raised concerns over critical race theory — which Peters said he believes is connected to Marxism.

That concern mirrors the talking points of many conservatives in the Idaho Legislature, who have been vocal opponents to critical race theory and “indoctrination” in schools, although it’s unclear whether that curriculum is currently being taught in any Idaho schools.

In regards to climate change, Peters said he doesn’t believe in it.

“I personally don’t believe that global warming is a thing, I believe it’s an agenda that’s being pushed to regulate and control people through Marxism,” he said.

In addition, Peters said he would like to see greater financial transparency from the library.

Although financial documents are publicly available, they’re not accessible on the library’s website, he said. That makes it challenging to look through them for people who can’t come to the library in person during its usual hours.

“They want everybody to do stuff online, but then they don’t do stuff online,” he said. “Everything’s open to the public, [but] all the financial documents are in a binder in the basements.”

Check back this week for more library board candidate profiles.