BELLOWS FALLS — Célina Houlné, former library director of the Rockingham Free Public Library, said she could not have been happier at getting the chance to respond to the allegations from the library's Board of Trustees - a hearing that would have been held behind closed doors if not for her insistence to do otherwise.
“I'm happy that I'm finally getting a chance to talk about all the issues,” she told The Commons. “This is the very first time I've had a chance to address any issues before the [full] board.”
The Board of Trustees has 21 working days to respond to Houlné's appeal of the board's decision last month to terminate her employment. It has provided no concrete official reason for its decision.
The hearing of the board, represented by Rockingham Town Attorney Steven Ankuda, was recessed after three hours of testimony.
The hearing, conducted in a trial-like format, allowed Houlné to address the allegations of deficient job performance with her own testimony and the testimony of colleagues who gave her glowing marks, and it called into question the accuracy of the evaluation process that ultimately led to her dismissal.
After the hearing recessed, the former library director's attorney, Richard Bowen, said that clear patterns were emerging.
Bowen said that the Personnel Committee, the only members of the trustees who saw the full context of the individual staff and trustee forms that comprised Houlné's evaluation, withheld “all the positive feedback from the staff, [so] it never got incorporated into the board's evaluation (or) in any consideration of the vote.”
He said that he will show in the continuation of the meeting, on Thursday, Oct. 17 in the lower theater of the Bellows Falls Opera House, at 7 The Square, at 7 p.m., “that board members have not been kept aware of what was going on with [subcommittees involved in Houlné's evaluation] because they don't keep minutes and they don't make reports.”
He also told The Commons that, should the board vote to reinstate Houlné, “there will not be a lawsuit” and the appeal proceedings can end.
“The real purpose of this hearing is to be able to convince the board to change their mind, to save time, money, and aggravation,” Bowen said.
But he added that if the board upheld his client's firing, “This is not going to be over after this hearing.”
Bowen said that he would be calling the trustees to testify, in an effort to shine some light on what his client characterized in her statement as “mischaracterizations and misrepresentations” that were presented to the full board by the personnel committee.
Houlné, who had served as library director of RFPL since 2009, maintains that an inaccurate portrait the personnel committee painted of her job performance resulted in the full board's 5–3 vote to fire her.
The hearing
Chair Jan Mitchell-Love, addressing more than 50 attendees, described the hearing as “an opportunity for Miss Houlné to present to the board why her termination should be reversed” and “an opportunity for Miss Houlné to clear her name, so to speak, if she believes it necessary to do so.”
Houlné began by pointing out the discrepancy between the board's findings and how “current and former trustees, Friends of the Library, state and regional library personnel, the Selectboard,” and many patrons and members of the community regarded her performance.
The former director addressed an allegation that she “secretly and underhandedly” gave herself a raise along with the rest of the staff without the board's approval.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” she told the board.
“What actually happened was that all staff, including me (since I am a member of the staff) received a 3-percent increase that had been built into the operating budget,” she said.
“All staff raises have always been approved by the full board through the annual process of reviewing and adopting the next year's budget, which explicitly includes wage increases,” Houlné added.
She noted this was standard practice for the library, that the board has never had a specific vote to approve individual increases, and that no concerns had been raised at any time during that process.
Next, Houlné rebutted the corrective-action plan process as “unfocused, confusing, contradictory, accusatory, and seemed designed to provide the excuse to fire me, instead of actually providing guidance to correct my perceived weaknesses.”
She said that over six weeks she met weekly with the CAP committee board members appointed to oversee her job in an attempt to accommodate the CAP task list, but said that the list was “continually added to.”
She said she also needed to address “new accusations that were made about my past actions (most notably, the rumor about my improper relationship with a board member which, of course, I denied).”
Houlné noted that after the CAP was delivered, “new directives given me were never approved by the full board and had absolutely no connection with the CAP.”
She cited “the demand that all staff record every request for information made by a member of the public, including the person's name, and that the CAP Committee be informed of every request within 24 hours.”
Houlné said that “since this directive is in violation of state law regarding confidentiality, as well as the library's operational policies, I refused to carry out this order until the town attorney issued an opinion that it was legal and the full board voted to change the library's policies.”
“Of course, the result was that it was not found to be legal, and the board never approved such a directive.” Houlné continued. “Yet it appears that I am being criticized in my evaluation for insubordination. In reality, I was just trying to obey open meeting law, state law, and our own operational policies.”
Houlné then focused on a report and recommendation that the Personnel Committee presented to the full board on Aug. 29 in executive session. The board subsequently voted on this report, which recommended her termination.
She told the board members that they would be presented with facts during this appeal which would show that the conclusions of the Personnel Committee report were “incredibly one-sided and fundamentally inaccurate.”
Noting she was never allowed to respond in person as she had requested of the board, she did respond in a lengthy “rebuttal to all the allegations in the Personnel Committee's evaluation.” The document, she said, refuted the charge that she “failed to achieve any of the specific action items I was expected to complete during the year” and described her “successful supervision of the library's day-to-day operations while the renovation was ongoing.”
She noted that she had “accomplished all of the tasks on the CAP committee's weekly task list, and the CAP committee indicated that they were satisfied with my response.”
Yet, she said, she “was never allowed to meet with the board to answer questions or discuss any aspect of the evaluation or to hear the CAP committee's final summary,” a document that she “never saw until today.”
In conclusion, Houlné told the board, “If you had a true, complete, and balanced account of my performance, I feel certain you couldn't have ignored my many accomplishments.”
She cited the library's reputation for excellent customer service, achieving financial stability, the reorganization and packing up of the RFPL's historical collections and displays throughout the building, and the newly completed renovations.
She said the renovations have addressed mold and asbestos issues in the building. The project provided new insulation for the historic structure and created new handicapped-accessible space for programs and meetings on all three floors.
She told the board that she would have welcomed “discussion at any time about what areas should be flagged as needing more work” but “it remains extremely difficult for me to imagine how my termination can be justified, taking into account my overall performance and how much the library has benefited from my efforts.”
She asked the board to “really look honestly and answer” whether the library was not “in a dramatically better place than five years ago.”
“Do my perceived weaknesses come anywhere near to adding up to a reason to terminate me, after all the leadership I have demonstrated and how far I have taken the library during that time?” she asked.
She urged the board to reverse its decision.
Staff members, former trustee speak
Deb Wetzel, who served on the Board of Trustees from 2010 to 2013 and described herself as “always pleased with Celina's performance,” said she was familiar with the evaluation process and had participated in Houlné's 2011 evaluation.
Bowen asked her about the form that trustees use in the process, which notes that a rank of 2 means that there is “room for improvement,” he observed.
“Everyone needs improvement,” Wetzel said.
“So if there are recommendations for improvement, that would have to fall under a 2, even though the person may be performing everything you want them to do?” Bowen asked her.
“Sounds confusing to me,” Wetzel said.
Addressing Houlné's service to the community - an area where the Personnel Committee had said her performance was deficient - Wetzel explained that when she served on the board, members had increased their involvement in what had been considered the library director's duties.
“The trustees at the time were trying to take the burden off of Celina and delegate to some other people because she had a lot to do with the renovation project,” she said.
“So from July 2012 to March 2013, would you give her anything lower than a 'good' in her service to the community?” Bowen asked.
“No, a 'very good,'” Wetzel said.
Bowen asked Wetzel whether she was aware that the current CAP Committee claimed that Houlné refused to comply with several of the board's recommendations from the past two evaluations.
“Yes,” Wetzel replied. “They asked her to take the coffee pot away, because the coffee pot wasn't making any money. She didn't respond in a timely manner... and so we're canning her for it.”
There was a murmur of laughter in the room.
Asked if that should be a basis for termination, Wetzel said, “I don't believe so. But there's a lot of contradictory things.”
“So Celina is getting a lot of mixed messages from the board?” Bowen asked.
“They don't want her to come to board meetings. They do want her to come to board meetings,” Wetzel responded. “What is she supposed to do?”
Another former trustee, Duane Whitehead, who testified favorably on Houlné's reports to the board, said he understood that the wage increase line item included Houlné among the staff. He also said she did the right thing when she publicly defended herself following public allegations that she was conducting an affair with him while he was on the board.
Cathy Michael, a librarian with 28 years of experience who has volunteered at the RFPL, testified that she had reason to be in contact with many state and regional librarians in her career and that she found Houlné “excellent” and “one of the best in the state.”
Youth Services Librarian Sam Maskell was presented with the evaluation that she completed.
Line by line, Maskell read her results to each question, which alternated among “good,” “very good,” and “excellent.”
Maskell said Houlné's leadership was “outstanding” from her “little lens as youth services director.”
“I do not understand why she has been fired,” Maskell said.
Asked if it has been difficult for the staff following Houlné's leaving, Maskell said “Yes, it has been.”
“To be down a person, to not have someone looking out for the big picture ... working on restoring the goodwill that the community has for the library, those are things that we need somebody to be overseeing. We're overseeing the day-to-day stuff, but there is definitely a huge piece of it that we are missing,” Maskell said.
She also said that the documentation that Houlné left behind was crucial in her being able to complete the annual library report to the state, which she described as “a huge document.”
“So, her organizational skills are very important for you to be able carry on your job?” Bowen asked.
“Yes,” Maskell replied.
Maskell, who has worked at the library since 2001, was asked by Trustee Ray Massucco how she would compare Houlné to the two directors that preceded her.
“Oh, absolutely incredible,” Maskell said.
Massucco then asked if Maskell had asked that her evaluation and comments be kept from or not be shown to the full board.
“No. I actually assumed it was going to go through the Personnel Committee and to the board and be weighed along with the other staff evaluations,” Maskell replied.
“So you were never promised anything about the confidentiality of that, or told not to show it to us?”
“No,” Maskell said, shaking her head.
“Were you aware that we have never seen those?” Massucco asked.
“I am not aware of that,” Maskell testified.
Maskell, who learned via meeting minutes of the board's decision to close the library during renovations earlier this summer, called that decision a “huge disservice to the community.”
“While there are a lot of people who would like to have the library open, there are people who need to have the library open,” she said.
Maskell said she was concerned that the board had voted “just to shut us down without making any sort of accommodation.”
When asked why she went to address the board by reading a letter at a June meeting - an act that board members had described as flouting the process and was held against Houlné - Maskell said she sought staff involvement in the board's process of rewriting library policy.
“At that point, we felt that the library director's voice was being completely ignored and that was a way we could support [Houlné],” she said.
Librarian and bookkeeper Mary Van Hartesveldt, who had worked with both Houlné and the previous director, said her evaluation for 2012 was “high,” and that this year, she gave Houlné “excellent” and “outstanding” scores with explanatory comments for context.
Hartesveldt took exception to an earlier comment by the trustees' lawyer, Ankuda, that the library is a business.
“The library is not a business. The library provides a service to the public,” she said.
She testified that she and Houlné would collaborate with town officials to create a yearly library budget. She described Houlné as someone who “is always trying to figure out how to make the bottom line.”
First trustee witness
The first trustee to be called was Wright, author of the May 1 complaint and the resulting CAP document at the request of the Personnel Committee.
Wright joined the trustees in 2011. She has served on the Finance Committee since 2011 and this year was elected as its chair. In 2012, she was also named to the Communications and Fundraising committees, as well as the Building Committee.
She also served on one of the two policy committees that were established this year to update policies and procedures for the library. Wright was appointed by the Personnel Committee to administrate and run the CAP meetings, with Mitchell-Love observing as chair.
As the administrator of the CAP Committee, she was also tasked with writing the report that was given to the Personnel Committee to approve - the report on which the termination vote was based.
Wright told Bowen she did anticipate that the money for the staff wage increases “is built in, but it does not necessarily have to be spent.”
She said that she “did not assume” that Houlné's salary was included in that line item; rather, she said that she understood salary increases for the director “are tied to the evaluation.”
Wright said she also expected evaluations would be tied to staff wage increases, and that “you would expect [an increase] if they were doing well.”
Conversely, she said, because they are discretionary, “If they are not doing well, I would expect the director would not give them an increase,” Wright told Bowen.
“Where does it say anywhere in the budget that it's discretionary?” Bowen asked Wright.
“It doesn't say that, sir,” she replied. “But it doesn't mean that the money needs to be spent just because it's been allocated.”
“The board did not vote for or approve a 3 percent increase for the director,” Wright said on further questioning.
Bowen pointed out that trustees did approve a line item of a 3-percent increase for staff.
“But not the director,” Wright said.
Moving on to the trustees' evaluations of his client, Bowen asked Wright if she participated in collating the individual evaluations into the summary that was presented for the full board's vote.
Wright said she had not, that the Personnel Committee performed that task.
She then refused to identify her evaluation from the array of forms that town counsel had provided.
“I do not believe I prefer to do that, sir,” she said.
Wright then objected to revealing the numerical scores for each individual question that she had answered on her evaluation of Houlné, saying she felt it inappropriate. Bowen disagreed and walked her through the form.
When asked if she filled out the portion about whether Houlné performed her duties in overseeing staff, Wright said that she did not because she did not have that information.
She added that she would have been able to complete that question had she seen the staff evaluations, but that she was not given enough time to do so, as trustee evaluations were due at the same time as staff's.
Despite having heard the staff's testimony at that point of the proceeding, Wright still said she did not feel qualified to fill out that section of the evaluation.
Wright was then asked, item by item, what numerical grade she gave Houlné and why - a line of questioning that suggests that she did not answer more questions than she did. And of those questions she did answer, her evaluations landed in the “needs improvement” realm.
Bowen noted that if a majority of the board members did the same thing, then in spite of the possibility that Houlné was actually performing in the “3” and above range in some categories but might “need some improvement” in others.
If this is the case, he argued, then an average of those numbers would present a skewed view to the rest of the board who had not seen the evaluations but had only been given the summary.
Public response
The Commons could not identify anyone who supported the board's decision among the attendees of the meeting, and none of the trustees felt it appropriate to comment at this time.
Mary Narkiewicz said during a meeting break that she was learning a lot during what she termed “an interesting process.”
“I'm glad to hear [Houlné's] side,” she said.
Wesley Nies, who spends a lot of time at the library doing volunteer genealogy, said that he doesn't think the public “really understood” the nature of the disagreement around the staff pay increase.
“I don't have any faith that this board will listen to anything that anyone has to say,” Sarina Hickey said. “I have always been under the impression that all of the members of the board are not getting all of the information, [that] things have been piecemeal-ed and broken up and determined by the person in charge.”
“I am not aware of all of the situation... I am completely new. I am unbiased,” Christine Kelly-Terrana said. “I feel that there is strong evidence that she should be reinstated because to me the board seems to be at fault for some dysfunction of the board.”
“I love this library,” said Susan Brace of Bartonsville. “I think Celina has been railroaded. This is just a disgraceful process.”
The appeals process will work, she said, only “if the Board of Trustees has the courage to reconsider a bad decision and reverse it.”
“I'm concerned about the future of the library,” she added. “We'll never be able to attract another librarian of any stature, because who would touch this job? It's poison. And this board is responsible for having created that.”
“It's the best public resource in the town of Rockingham,” Brace said. “It's just a shame to have screwed it up this badly.”