BELLOWS FALLS — After nearly a month of seeking and interviewing candidates to replace Célina Houlné, the terminated director of the Rockingham Free Public Library, the search committee has returned to the library's board of trustees without a recommendation.
At a Feb. 25 special trustees' meeting, the board voted 7 to 1 to repost the ad on “several sites” with a new application deadline of April 11.
Members of the search committee informed the board they were “not comfortable” making a recommendation at this time and suggested that the search continue.
Nineteen candidates responded to the original job posting in December.
The search committee met approximately six times between Jan. 31 and Feb. 24 and interviewed three candidates of the original five finalists after the remaining two dropped out.
None of the final three candidates “meets our needs at this time,” according to Trustee Pat Fowler, a member of the search committee.
“At another time, in other circumstances,” some of them might work, Fowler told the board.
Candidates would be notified of the decision by email following last night's meeting.
Houlné's lawyer, Richard Bowen, filed an injunction on the Board of Trustees Feb. 15, seeking to have the court halt the hiring process pending the civil lawsuit that Houlné had filed in January.
On Tuesday, Bowen told The Commons that Houlné would await the outcome of this meeting to decide on the next step. The search committee will not meet before the new board is seated following elections next week.