The Morton Grove Public Library is in search of a new director and board member following recent departures from its leadership.
The library is accepting applications from individuals interested in serving as a trustee following the resignation of board member Cathy Peters.
Peters, who served as library trustee for five years, said her departure stems from a need for the library board to properly stagger its elections. She said she discovered that the board was not in compliance with the Illinois Local Library Act regarding its election cycles while researching its bylaws two years ago.
The board is made up of seven trustees who each serve for a six-year cycle. The Illinois Local Library act stipulates that two trustees run one year, two run during the next election cycle and three in the following, Peters said.
“In researching your library district’s past ballots, it appears that an error was made sometime in the past and the district has been electing trustees on a rotation of three at one election (2009, 2015), one at another (2011), and 3 at another (2013), before starting the rotation all over again,” wrote Stan Zegel, elections director at the Citizen Participation Institute, in an email dated Jan. 23 of this year to former Morton Grove Public Library director Debra Stombres.
“Your attorney would confirm that the Illinois Local Library Act (75 ILCS 5) specifies that they are supposed to be in groups that are a permutation of 2-2-3, not 1-3-3,” Zegel wrote.
In his email, Zegel recommended one member of the board resign and then be reappointed to serve for the remainder of their term before running for a slightly shortened term in the next election cycle to get the board back on track.
“I was aware things were a little out of whack and was going to adjust at the next elections,” Stombres responded at the time. “I will review your recommendations and see what we can do.”
Zegel said in a recent interview that his organization is working on creating a directory of nonpartisan elective local offices in the eight counties in the Chicagoland area to make it easier for more people to run for office.
In compiling the information, he said he’s discovered “about a dozen” different libraries whose elections cycles are not in compliance with Illinois law. He said it’s often hard to get anyone to run for library trustee, and because people resign and new residents are appointed “pretty soon people lose track.”
Peters said she asked the board to adjust the cycle prior to the last election in 2015 but her fellow trustees did not concur with her recommendation.
“I knew it was a problem,” she said. “The whole board knew it was a problem.”
Library board president Barb Novick said she had been aware of the issue for the past year and a half.
“There was a plan set up. I can’t remember the exact plan,” she said.
Trustee Mark Albers said he became aware of the problem “four or five months ago” and does not remember Peters discussing the issue with the board.
“I don’t think it’s something the board can ignore,” he said.
Peters said she stepped down so that whoever is chosen to replace her could run for a four-year term during the next election, which would get the board back into compliance with Illinois law. She said she had already planned not to run again when her term was up in 2017.
“I decided that with all the changes, and the fact I would not run again, they’d be better off finding somebody who would be willing to take this ride with them for the next five years,” Peters said. “It just made more sense.”
Both Albers and Novick said no one has applied to fill the vacant board position.
“We’re not pushing very hard,” Novick said. “It’s a matter of having a full board or not having a full board — I don’t think it will make much difference at this point because we’re not doing much to change things.”
Stombres left her position earlier this month after two years at the helm to take a job as executive director of the Poplar Creek Library District,
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Albers said the board hired Vernon Hills-based library executive search firm John Keister & Associates during a board meeting late last month. The library will pay the search firm nearly $14,000 for the service, he said.
“I’m hoping within the next month we start to get some qualified candidates presented to us,” Albers said. “We don’t have a hard and fast time line. It will depend on what the search firm can accomplish on our behalf.”
Former Morton Grove Public Library director Pam Leffler was hired as interim head of the agency at the board meeting in late February, Albers said. Leffler left the library in December 2013 after a year and a half to take the top job at the St. Charles Public Library.
Leffler resigned from the St. Charles post in February, according to her LinkedIn page.
“Both (Leffler and Stombres) added much to the library when they were with us and were well-liked,” Novick said.
Lee V. Gaines is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.