ST. HELENA — The St. Helena City Council has authorized staff to move ahead with controversial plans to put the St. Helena Public Library and Parks & Recreation under the same departmental umbrella.
City Manager Anil Comelo wants to create a new department, tentatively called the Department of Community Services, to oversee Parks & Rec, the library, arts, culture, grants and community engagement. Dave Jahns, the current Director of Parks & Recreation, is expected to become Director of Community Services.
The position of library director would be replaced by a Deputy Director of Community Services — Library. That person and the Parks & Rec Manager — an existing position — would report to the new department head.
On Tuesday the council directed Comelo to move the plan into the implementation phase, collect more input from the chairs and vice chairs of the Library Board of Trustees and the Parks & Recreation Commission, and come back to the council with final details.
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Comelo said the new structure would enhance services, improve efficiency and produce more collaboration between the library and Parks & Rec, which both revolve around community engagement.
What may sound like an innocuous bureaucratic reshuffling has caused apprehension and even anger among some library supporters who worry the new structure could harm fundraising efforts, make it harder to recruit a top-level library leader, and dilute the library’s clout, both within city government and regionally.
Councilmember Anna Chouteau said she’s open to the reorganization “because I see we can do more.”
“While it’s scary to make changes to something we all care deeply about … this allows us to provide more for our community in a way we can afford,” Chouteau said.
Mayor Paul Dohring said he’s concerned by comments about disempowering the library and lack of trust in city government, “but I’m willing to at least try it” on a trial basis — maybe for one year.
“I don’t have the great fear that others have,” he said. “I don’t see any functional changes in either department.”
Comelo cautioned that the new position of Deputy Director of Community Services — Library could prove difficult to fill.
“If we don’t fill the deputy position, we’re going to have to rethink this, and we might not do this,” he said.
If the reorganization does go through, the Library Board of Directors and the Parks & Recreation Commission will help establish criteria to evaluate how the new model is working, Comelo said.
While job titles would change, the overall head count would remain the same, so the reorganization would have minimal effect on the budget. According to Comelo’s staff report, salary adjustments would add an annual cost of $17,398, although that number could change depending on the salary for the new library head.
Public feedback
The nonprofit Friends & Foundation, St. Helena Public Library, hasn’t taken a position on the reorganization, but Executive Director Deanna M. Griffin did submit a letter addressing the issue.
She asked for assurances that the new Deputy Director of Community Services — Library would still be required to have library experience and a master’s degree in library and information science — a standard prerequisite for past library directors. She also asked that the library staff not be saddled with more responsibilities related to the new department’s oversight of arts, culture, grants and community engagement.
In response to concerns about donations, Comelo said the new structure wouldn’t result in the commingling of donations funneled through the library’s Friends & Foundation and the Parks, Recreation, and Culture Foundation. Charitable dollars donated for the library and Parks & Rec would continue to be placed in separate funds and used only for the donor’s specified purpose.
Comelo said the library would remain “a vital part of our city and an independent library.”
“I can assure you, as staff, we want nothing more than to have the library thrive and to have all of the functions that we are placing under this umbrella become more effective,” Comelo said.
Those assurances have allayed some of the concerns about the plan, but not all of them.
Retired children’s librarian Leslie Stanton said library staff are “not happy” and have felt like the reorganization is “a done deal.”
She warned the council about shifting too much power to Comelo, who has noted that the Community Services structure has worked in communities like San Rafael, Beverly Hills, Pleasanton and Richmond.
“Saint Helena is not those cities,” Stanton told the council in a letter. “Please preserve what we have and reject the notion that our town needs to follow those cities’ example.”
‘If it’s not broken … ’
David Slaby, who resigned from the library’s Board of Trustees after angrily opposing the reorganization and insulting Comelo during a December meeting, called the plan “misguided.” In a letter to the council, he said all the library needs is “a highly qualified permanent replacement for its prior brilliant director,” referring to Chris Kreiden, who retired in November.
“If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” Slaby wrote.
As Comelo was about to begin his report to the council, Slaby interrupted to say the council should table the matter and consider it at a later date. Dohring admonished Slaby for speaking out of turn and, a few minutes later, announced that Slaby had flipped him off from the audience.
“I don’t know why you’d want to do that in a public setting like this,” Dohring said. “It’s very discouraging, very disrespectful.”
“Because you deserve it,” Slaby said.
The police were called to the meeting, but Slaby had left by the time an officer arrived, according to Sgt. Steve Peterson. An officer responded again after the meeting because a few staff members felt uncomfortable as they went out to the parking lot.