‘EVERYONE WAS INVITED’

MOLLY GREGORY

MOLLY.GREGORY@NEWSANDTRIBUNE.COM

NEW ALBANY – After six emotional days of community-wide confusion, anger and debate, around 200 people gathered in the sanctuary of Central Christian Church on Tuesday evening to discuss the imminent closure of the food pantry at the Floyd County Library.

News and Tribune reported last Wednesday that the Floyd County Library Board of Trustees voted in December 2025 for the food pantry to be phased out, months after treasurer Steve Burks first motioned for the pantry to be dissolved in June 2025.

The food pantry is still open for access by appointment as of now, and still distributes day bags to homeless people every day the library is open.

Floyd-County-based advocacy group Hoosier Action, New Albany clergy and nonprofit leaders organized a community conversation to discuss the trustees’ vote and ask that the pantry be restored. Cisa Kubley, an organizer with Hoosier Action, said clergy invited all of the library trustees, the entire Floyd County Council and the New Albany City Council.

Of the seven trustees invited, board vice president Ann Carruthers was the only one to attend the meeting.

“I want you all to notice who was not here tonight,” Will Stauffer, another organizer with Hoosier Action, said during the community conversation Tuesday. “Everyone was invited, and Ann was the only one who showed up … What was so important tonight that they didn’t want to show up and speak like Ann did?”

People attending the conversation were able to ask Carruthers questions with a microphone from the pews. They asked how the trustees came to the conclusion the food pantry should close, how they decided a pantry was no longer part of the library’s mission and how the public was supposed to help support the pantry if they did not know it was going to close.

Carruthers said the trustees’ rationale for phasing out the food pantry was uncertainty in the face of Senate Bill 1, a controversial tax relief bill from last year that cut funding to several government agencies.

She said the impact SB 1 would have on the library’s funding was unclear at the time, and that a library-employed social worker who had helped support the pantry had left for a different job, suggesting that a lack of library funding could have been a reason for terminating the pantry.

An audience member later asked whether that job had been reposted. Carruthers said the library recently hired someone to take the former social worker’s spot. The questioner asked if the hiring of a new social worker would be enough to bring back the food pantry, but Carruthers could not say.

As for how the library determined whether supporting a food pantry was part of its mission, Carruthers said the “social issues” involved in the “broader question” of defining the library’s mission are “macroconstructs.”

“I’m talking about the beginning, when it started,” Carruthers said. “At the time, I do feel like, that necessarily wasn’t our mission, but, because the program was started doesn’t mean that it is part of the library’s mission … it means that they’re

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New Albany clergy ask library trustee Ann Carruthers (right) a question Tuesday evening at the community conversation. Carruthers was the only library trustee to show up at Central Christian Church.

Photos by Molly Gregory | News and Tribune

From right to left: New Albany City Council members Adam Dickey, Greg Phipps, Chris FitzGerald and Louise Gohmann and state representatives Ed Clere and Wendy Dant Chesser listen to questions Tuesday evening at the Central Christian Church community conversation.

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meeting the need until there’s other help that can be organized. Do you understand that?”

“No,” a chorus of audience members said.

“So, yes, there are statutes of the library,” Carruthers tried. “So, again, I feel like companies, or governmental entities, create programs to meet a need, but that doesn’t make us – does not necessarily mean that is a mission of the library, or the company.”

At the end of her allotted time to answer questions, audience members urged Carruthers to explain her vote to phase out the food pantry. Carruthers said she had “heard” that the Homeless Coalition of Southern Indiana had a church where they were going to start a pantry nearby.

“They’re not going to be able to do that work,” someone in the crowd said. “So.”

“Well, I didn’t know that at the time,” Carruthers said. “I felt that if it was closeproximity of the library, and that is in their purview, they can actually form a coalition, which that is what they do … That was my reason for voting, because if they’re two feet away from the homeless coalition, why not— and that was my personal reason.”

The Homeless Coalition of Southern Indiana released a statement Wednesday afternoon saying they do not have any plans to create a food pantry and that they have never been approached by the library Board of Trustees about it.

Though Carruthers was the only representative from the Board of Trustees, two state legislators and four New Albany City Council members came to speak after her.

State representatives Wendy Dant Chesser and Ed Clere, as well as council members Louise Gohmann, Chris FitzGerald, Greg Phipps and Adam Dickey fielded questions from the audience.

City council members Elaine Murphy, Don Unruh, Jennie Collier, Scott Blair and Stefanie Griffith were not present. Griffith could not attend because of a family funeral.

Stauffer said that, while the matter of the food pantry at the library is a county issue, organizers still thought it was important to invite other public officials to discuss homelessness.

“Taking care of people, having an actual shelter for people, is not just a county issue, that includes everyone,” Stauffer said.

The state representatives, Clere and Dant Chesser, the latter of whom only represents a small part of Floyd County, spoke about their worries around Senate Enrolled Act 285, a bill passed during this year’s legislative session that criminalizes sleeping on public land.

“What we’re talking about at the library is very important,” Clere said. “But there’s a lot more going on.”

Dant Chesser agreed, saying homelessness is not unique to New Albany. Dickey, city council president, said homelessness is a complex issue, and that people experiencing housing issues may also face addiction and food insecurity.

An audience member asked if there has been any discussion at the local level of opening a shelter. Dant Chesser took the question and said the first step would be to get state legislators on the same page about homelessness in Indiana.

She said some state representatives believe that if people are brought to jail for sleeping outside, law enforcement can provide resources while the individual is in jail, and that would solve the problem.

“Because of that, we are not having serious discussions about community centers that will help provide services, housing, food, all the things that our vulnerable population needs,” Dant Chesser said.

FitzGerald said he has been working to “figure out” a monetary appropriation for social services in New Albany, and that he expects movement on that soon.

Throughout the course of the community conversation, New Albany residents shared the impact the food pantry had had on them or those they care about.

Shauna Burns said the pantry helped feed her daughter in a time of need.

“I was trying to survive, trying to take care of my daughter, and honestly, I didn’t know where our next meal was going to come from,” Burns said. “At first, I didn’t want to go. Pride will make you think you should suffer in silence.”

She said the library staff working the food pantry treated her with kindness without expecting anything in return.

“I will never, ever forget that,” Burns said. “When someone is struggling, sometimes the difference between hopelessness and hope is simply whether their community chooses to show up for them.”

To close the conversation, event organizers encouraged attendees to go to the library board’s next meeting at 5:30 p.m. June 1 at Floyd County Library in downtown New Albany. Hoosier Action sent around a petition for the food pantry to be reinstated, which Stauffer said they will hand deliver to the trustees June 1.