Two months after the Waukegan Public Library executive director was ousted in a series of votes that tore a fissure through the library’s governing board, the library remains without a new permanent leader.
The library’s Board of Trustees is set to meet May 20 – the logistics of which is still being worked out as the coronavirus pandemic pushes meetings online – and the executive director position will definitely be on the agenda, board President Sylvia England said.
The agenda for the meeting hasn’t yet been released, but England said she expects the board to discuss how it wants to go about finding a new executive director.
More Top Picks Computer Vision Syndrome In Children Warning Signs
“I definitely think we’re headed in a good direction,” England said.
The executive director position was filled on an interim basis by the assistant director starting March 1, after the Board of Trustees voted Feb. 19 to table a contract that would have kept the Executive Director Selina Gomez-Beloz on despite a vote a month earlier to not renew her contract.
The fallout from the Feb. 19 meeting – which was marked by a closed session that multiple trustees have described as “ugly” – hasn’t ended.
The meeting devolved into screaming at one point and resulted in two trustees walking out of the meeting, trustees have said.
Mayor Sam Cunningham said he wants to see video of the meeting because he has concerns about what happened that night. He said if the behavior of one of the trustees did play out the way it has been described to him, he will not be reappointing that trustee for another term.
While the library functions mostly independently from the city, the mayor is responsible for picking trustees, appointments the City Council then approves or rejects.
Four of the nine trustees have terms that expire this year. They include Larry McShane, Rachelle Mendez, Jean Smith and Mary Stickels.
England said she agrees that some of the behavior that night was “quite uncalled for” and “unprofessional.”
The Board of Trustees will also be deciding at the upcoming May 20 meeting how much of the Feb. 19 meeting video to voluntarily release, she said.
With the assistant director holding the reins and pandemic ongoing, Cunningham said he thinks the city and the library board has time to come up with a game plan. He said he would like to see the trustees go through training on the Open Meetings Act and other policies before it takes on the job of picking a new executive director.
The last time the Board of Trustees conducted a search for an executive director, it hired a search firm and undertook a nationwide search.
England said she doesn’t think that’s necessary this time around, in part because that process took many months. Even so, she said she agrees with Cunningham that there’s no reason to rush as the assistant director is doing a good job and she’d hate to see a new director take over just as the pandemic is ending.