The healing needs to begin as the Waukegan Public Library moves into a transition period following the ouster of its executive director, the library board president said.
The library – in particular its staff and governing board – has been rocked by a month-long saga that began with a 5-4 vote in mid-January to not renew Executive Director Selina Gomez-Beloz’s contract and ended last month with an ugly confrontation behind closed doors and a vote killing an effort to retain her.
The next step needs to be the library’s Board of Trustees sitting down and working out its issues followed by similar meetings with the administration, board President Sylvia England said. Trustees are “out there still doing their own things,” but the board needs to come together.
The board will also have to figure out how it wants to go about searching for a replacement director, England said. The library’s chain-of-command policy designates the assistant director as the fill-in acting executive director.
The search process for a permanent replacement may not look the way it did two years ago when it hired Gomez-Beloz, England said. She added that the library has already started receiving resumes from interested applicants.
“We want a library that functions, and an award-winning library that remains that way,” England said. “We really want our library to remain stellar.”
Trustee Mary Stickels said she thinks it would be beneficial to bring in an outside consultant to guide a transition team, a fresh face who could interview the board and staff so that a plan could be put together addressing next steps and morale.
Stickels is one of four trustees whose terms are up this year. The library board is made up of nine members.
Stickels said while she’d like to stay on for the transition, she wonders if it makes sense to replace the entire board and start with a clean slate. She said some of the trustees are “very angry” with her following this saga and now her suggestions are being disregarded.
Those decisions are up to Mayor Sam Cunningham, who makes recommendations to the City Council about who sits on the library’s Board of Trustees.
Cunningham said he wants to review what happened during closed session last month. He said he wants to know if there’s any video or audio available that he can look at and depending on what he sees, he may recommend the trustees attend training.
“I’ve been at some ugly council meetings,” Cunningham said. “If it was anything near to what those council meetings are, it might be time to have a conversation with those board members.”
Cunningham said his priorities are that the library continues to provide services to its patrons uninterrupted during this transition, that the library’s positive image not be harmed and that especially the library’s role in the city’s 2020 Census continue.
That last piece was particularly important to Cunningham, who said the library’s executive director was the city’s lead person on the Census. The library won two grants, which are funding two positions aimed at reaching out to the city’s hard-to-count communities.
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Uncounted residents mean lost dollars, he said.
“I don’t want any of that to fall behind,” he said. “Stability is what is needed.”
Cunningham had said prior to last month’s vote he was questioning whether the city needed to take more of a hand in the library’s operations, but said afterward that the library’s bylaws and state rules would make that difficult.
An assessment that would look at what library operations could be handled by the city, saving costs while maintaining the way the library is governed, is being considered, he said. The library’s payroll is currently outsourced, for example, but could be done by the city’s finance department instead.
Those conversations, which began as the city prepared its annual property tax levy, are in the initial stages, he said.
Trustee Tatiana Amorella said she has concerns about the city taking more of a role in library operations and that the savings could come with strings attached.
“The city will make decisions that are best for the city, not necessarily what’s best for the library,” she said.