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Gwinnett Board Chair Resigns over Director HearingA testy exchange between two patrons and Gwinnett County (Ga.) Public Library Executive Director Jo Ann Pinder on March 17 led to trustees calling a special hearing to decide whether to discipline Pinder. However, two days before the April 17 hearing took place, board Chair Dan English submitted his letter of resignation, telling the April 19 Atlanta Journal-Constitution he felt other trustees resented his support of Pinder.The controversy centered on Pinder’s interaction with Robin Shoulla and Denise Varenhorst, who had spent the afternoon of March 17 examining three years’ worth of board minutes to investigate collection-management decisions. When Shoulla and Varenhorst asked for a document on the library’s automated circulation system, Pinder told American Libraries, “I can’t say I screamed at these customers, but I didn’t talk to them in my inside voice. They felt I was rude and trying to be an obstructionist,” and complained to library trustees. Pinder said she wrote notes of apology several days later, but the women said they never received them. At the hearing, the trustees voted 3–1 to cut the hearing short and declare sufficient Pinder’s face-to-face apology to Shoulla and Varenhorst during the proceedings. The board’s decision came after a court stenographer—who was retained to record testimony—took a sworn statement from Shoulla, prompting Pinder’s attorney to object that her client hadn’t been given proper notification of the nature of the meeting. Characterizing the decision to hold the hearing at all as calculated to embarrass Pinder, English told the Journal-Constitution that he ended his eight-year tenure on the board “to change momentum any way I can.” The day after the hearing, Shoulla told the newspaper she accepted “Jo Ann’s public apology for screaming at me and my baby,” whom she had brought along to the library. Varenhorst forgave Pinder as well, saying, “I would like to move forward, working with Jo Ann and the board to help build a more comprehensive collection of educational materials.” Both women, who are home-schooling their children, have been pressing library officials to acquire more educational material. Varenhorst had also been critical of the library’s selling its DVDs last year due to high theft rates—a move officials subsequently backed away from, restocking the collection. Posted April 21, 2006. |
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