Amy Flint wants to bring her experience to another six-year term on the East Bonner County Library District board of trustees.

As a lifelong library cardholder, Flint said that although she never studied library science, she believes her six years on the board, time working at her college library and decades as a library patron makes her a strong candidate for re-election.

As a board member during the library’s expansion and chair for the past two years, she said she believes her experience, paired with her approach to leadership, speaks for itself.

The position has many intricacies that take time to learn, she said — work she’s already done.

“It took me a couple of years to really get up to speed on how everything worked,” she said. “If you saw this trustee manual, it's this humongous binder, full of page after page after page of information. So it takes a fair amount of time to assimilate to it all.”

Flint says she was chosen to chair the board for her “logical, reasonable and open-minded,” approach, and said her background puts her in a good position to be on the board.

“I am a retired English professor at North Idaho College, so I have a good background in researching issues,” she said. “[And] I think I'm a very strong leader.”

The two challengers in the library board elections, Jalon Peters and Kathy Rose, have both voiced opposition to the library’s mask requirements. However, Flint said, those requirements are not a permanent rule.

The board has every intention to remove the requirement, she said, once it’s safe to do so.

[We will be] looking at the number of staff people and Bonner County residents who have been vaccinated, especially the more concerning elderly population,” she said. “Looking at our numbers. Are case numbers low? Have they leveled off? Are they continuing to move in a downward trend? Those are the kinds of things that we'll be taking a look at.”

Flint also contended that many of the supporters for removing the mask requirement are not Bonner County voters — pointing to a letter to the editor by Helen Newton in Tuesday’s Daily Bee, which said only 178 of 351 names signing a petition to end the requirement were Bonner County voters.

Nicole Cummins, the organizer of the petition, has previously justified this discrepancy by saying that the majority of the signatures came from new residents.

Although the mask requirement has been politicized, Flint said, she doesn’t see it as a political issue.

“We don't perceive it as being a First Amendment issue, any more than the fact that you legally have to wear a seatbelt when you get behind the wheel of a car,” she said. “So to us, it's about protecting the health of our community, and it has nothing to do with denying rights. But unfortunately, some groups have perceived it that way.”

Check back this week for more library board candidate profiles.