BELLOWS FALLS — It has been a tumultuous 12 months as library boards go, but with the finalization and signing of a contract, litigation has all but ended between fired library director Célina Houlné and the trustees of the Rockingham Free Public Library.
The embattled library director fought to get her job back, and won.
Acknowledging the support of her husband, Steven Geller, and attorney Richard Bowen, Houlné told The Commons, “I am grateful to the Board of Directors for offering me this contract and returning me to my duties at the library. Now we can put the past year behind us and move on to dedicate our energies to making the library the best resource it can be for our community.”
The contract between the trustees and Houlné was signed Tuesday night. The board voted 6 to 2 to sign the “evergreen” contract, thus ending a year-long fight that the whole town seemed to care about.
Board chair David Gould summarized the change in the board following March elections as “getting off to a great start by changing the tone and tenor of the meetings to being open and civil.”
He recalled what led to the board’s latest action.
“Almost immediately following the town election of March 2013, it became evident that there was trouble at the library. Tension between the library director and some of the Board of Trustees was obvious. Many of the regular meetings of the Trustees ended in executive session as well as an inordinate number of special meetings. Many of the Board of Trustees and some of the Board Committee meetings were improperly warned and conducted.”
Still a civilian observer at that point, Gould said that “it appeared to me that the majority of the Board of Trustees had adopted the attitude that they were the “boss” and the director was their direct employee, rather than viewing the two roles as cooperative, each with their own roles of responsibility.”
Gould also recalled the chain of events that led to the firing of the library director in August 2013:
“In May 2013, Deb Wright, vice chair of the Board of Trustees, wrote a letter of complaint regarding the director. As a result of that letter, a corrective action plan (CAP) was written and implemented with Deb Wright being one of the administrators of the CAP. Deb Wright was also the one who made the motion to dismiss the director at the Aug. 29, 2013, Board of Trustees meeting.
“In my option, this was a very thinly veiled process to fire the director rather than work through their differences by mediation and cooperation,”Gould said.
Open Meeting Law complaints were filed with Assistant Attorney General Bill Reynolds in May 2013 by then-Friends of the Library Chair Elayne Clift, Adam and Deb Wetzel, and Trustee Carolyn Frisa. The complaints cited former chair Jan Mitchell-Love as having violated open meeting law on numerous occasions.
Following nearly eight months of investigation, a Dec. 16 letter of censure from Reynolds to Mitchell-Love cited violations of the law, but found no “intent” in her having done so. The AAG recommended “additional training and advice” to Mitchell-Love on open meeting laws in Vermont.
Gould noted that March 2014 elections resoundingly reflected the will of the people. Wright came in dead last in an election that saw record-high voter turnout. Four new board members were seated, breaking the majority that had engineered Houlné’s termination.
When Houlné filed her lawsuit, claiming wrongful termination, in January, the personnel committee pressed ahead with its search for a replacement. It seemed, however, that the word was out of legal discord, and no suitable replacement was found, the committee announced shortly before elections.
But even as late as the first meeting with the new board following elections, personnel committee chair Jan Mitchell-Love continued to push to find a new library director. An injunction was filed by attorney Bowen to halt further action by the personnel committee.
The new board then agreed to table the search pending mediation, which the new board agreed upon within the first month they were seated, to resolve Houlné's lawsuit to get her job back.
“Representatives of the Board met with Célina and our respective attorneys to work through the possible reinstatement of the former director. That mediation was successful, and a term sheet was worked through, which became the format for a contract between the Board of Trustees and Célina Houlné,” Gould said.
Hashing out the library director's job description, as well as the details of the contract, led one year, one month, and 10 days later, to Houlné's reinstatement as library director.
“Although it has been a tumultuous year for RFPL, I believe the settlement and this contract will help the board and director work more closely together and develop sustainable goals for the betterment of the library,” Bowen told The Commons.
He expressed what is perhaps the crux of why the community responded so passionately to Houlné’s firing:
“Librarians are special persons living and working in our communities. They should be revered like four-star chefs because they nourish and excite our minds instead of our palates. They can help you visit other cultures without leaving home. And they can provide treasures that feed our imaginations.”
Bowen added that he was “honored to represent Célina.” He said he would take steps to have the suit dismissed after the contract is signed.
New trustee recommended
The board also agreed, in a 4-2 vote with two abstentions, to put forward Saxtons River resident Karin Fisher as the trustee they would most like to see replace Paige Pietrzak, who resigned shortly after elections this year, in a move many saw as trying to maintain a majority on the board through elections.
The Selectboard will have the final say, when this comes before them, to approve the recommendation or suggest their own replacement candidate, as they did once before in putting Ray Massucco on the board following Steve Fuller’s resignation last June.