The Alpena County Library will have a new member on the library’s board of directors, as Joe Garber announced he is resigning. Garber was on the board for more than two decades.

ALPENA — After more than 20 years of sitting on the Alpena County Library Board, Joe Garber has decided to step away from the board with.Alpena County has begun the search for his replacement.

Garber was a long-time president of the board and was most recently vice-chairman. Garber said his decision was not due to the drama over some children and teen books that some people considered sexually graphic.

The county is accepting applications through Monday at noon.

Then the Alpena County Personnel Committee will announce who they intend to interview during a meeting on July 7 at 11 a.m.

The full board will vote on the new appointment during the finance committee meeting on July 8.

Garber said it has been an honor to sit on the board, serve his community, and watch the library grow. He said now was the perfect time for him to step away.

“I have been contemplating it since the millage passed, but then our director resigned and a search for a new one began and I wanted to have a part in that,” Garber said.

For more than two decades on the library board, Garber helped the special collection get created and grow and witnessed the incorporation of digital media and technology improve, allowing people to utilize the library in different ways. He also saw the library expand and be renovated.

Garber said he believes the current staff, administrators, and board members will continue to keep the library on the right path and he believes the future is bright.

Over the last year, nearly the entire library board has been reshaped. In December, the commissioners appointed Traci Collins and Julie Byrnes to the board.

For nearly two years, many county residents have pushed the library board to move or remove a handful of books in the children and teenager sections of the library that those residents viewed as overly sexual and inappropriate for young readers. The board, prior to recent appointments, refused and it sparked a local debate.

At one point, the commissioners threatened to replace the entire board in one sweep. However, they eventually retreated from the idea and instead have made changes through attrition.

Today, the books remain on the shelves where they were previously, but a new book classification system was recently implemented that should make it more difficult for a young person to stumble across them.

Garber said the issue and the divide in the area over it was challenging, but it was not enough to make him resign. He said over the last several months things seemed to have simmered down and that was another reason he believed it was a good time to move on.

‘It did take some of the wind out of my sales for a couple years, but it has toned down now,” he said. “If it hadn’t, I might have had second thoughts.”