BELLOWS FALLS — Change was the theme of the first post-election meeting of the Rockingham Free Public Library Board of Trustees on Tuesday night.
With four newly elected members on the board, the six members who were present unanimously voted to oust Chair Jan Mitchell-Love and select a new leadership slate.
The board named incoming Trustee David Gould as chair.
Trustees also elected Carolyn Frisa vice-chair and Doreen Aldrich, secretary. Pat Fowler was re-elected as treasurer. All votes were unanimous.
Tuesday's meeting was called by a majority of six members of the board, warned and posted by Fowler (“representing six of the nine Rockingham Free Public Library Trustees who wish to hold the meeting on the regularly scheduled date”), and held over the objections of Mitchell-Love, who sought to stop it.
On March 6, Mitchell-Love had warned and requested a posting of a March 18 trustees meeting, a change from the date the trustees selected at their previous meeting on Feb. 25.
The date set for the next meeting, March 11, had been agreed upon and referenced several times during the last meeting.
In a March 8 email to Town Attorney Stephen Ankuda, Mitchell-Love, noting that she had heard board members were intending to meet as scheduled, said that the March 11 meeting would “not be legal without a proper quorum” and asked Ankuda to advise the board of such.
“I have warned the regular trustees' meeting for Tuesday, March 18th at 4:30 p.m. so that all can be present. It is my concern that the board intends to take action that would not be legal without a proper quorum,” Mitchell-Love wrote.
“As Chair, I ask that you attend the meeting and advise those board members so that they can take proper action,” she asked Ankuda.
In a March 8 email response to the full board, board member Pat Fowler wrote Mitchell-Love: “I've certainly put up with enough 'special meetings' and 'changed date meetings' over the past year that you called with two day's notice to want to go back to the normalcy of actually attending the meeting that we placed into our calendars in the first place.”
According to the same email from Fowler, six of the nine sitting board members had notified the former chair independently of their desire to meet at the regularly scheduled time of March 11.
Fowler also hoped that Mitchell-Love would be “prepared to pay the full legal fees for your letter to Mr. Ankuda - this seems to be a personal request by you for legal services to delay the election of new officers that would probably mean your having to give up the chairmanship of the RFPL Board of Trustees. Not sure what you hope to accomplish during that extra week.”
In a subsequent March 8 email, Fowler warned the March 11 meeting, which was posted at the kiosk in The Square, at Town Hall, and at one other location.
Ankuda attended at the request of Mitchell-Love, who chose not to attend the meeting, according to Fowler.
Objections to the meeting were raised by Joel Love (Mitchell-Love's husband), and Joel Brissette, (the husband of Trustee Hope Brissette). Trustees Hope Brissette and Paige Pietrzak (the Brissettes' daughter) also did not attend the meeting.
Ankuda upheld the legality of the meeting.
Schedule and protocol
Gould, the new president, assured the board and members of the public that meetings would be warned and posted on the library website, as well as the Town Hall in the clerk's office, the lobby, the kiosk in front of the library, and at the Saxtons River Village Market.
He also said agendas would be available at the “earliest possible moment” to both board members and the public.
Robert's Rules of Order was adopted for the meetings, which will take place the second Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m.
Gould also asked the board members to familiarize themselves with the state's open-meeting and public records law, copies of which were included in their trustee binders.
The meeting ended within the two-hour time limit that Gould had suggested the board agree on, and was adjourned with five minutes to spare.
At the next meeting - a special meeting on Tuesday, March 18 at 4:30 p.m., as warned by Mitchell-Love - trustees are scheduled to receive a report from Vermont League of Cities and Towns attorney Constance Pell, who is representing the town in former Library Director Célina Houlné's lawsuit against the trustees and the town of Rockingham.
That portion of the meeting will be held in executive session.