With the search for qualified applicants for a new executive director coming up empty, the board of trustees for the William F. Laman Public Library System in North Little Rock wants to hire a search firm instead of having the city continue to lead the effort.
Trustees voted 4-0 at its monthly meeting Monday to approve using $18,000 from the library's endowment fund to hire a search firm if the city's job advertisements don't produce a suitable candidate soon.
"We need to decide whether to stay on this path or jump over to something else," board Chairman Vicki Matthews said during the meeting.
"I just don't know if we have a choice," board member Esther Crawford said.
No timetable was set, but Matthews and city Human Resources Director Betty Anderson spoke by phone after the meeting and will meet today to discuss the search firm possibility, Anderson said. Matthews, Anderson, interim library Director Mary Furlough and city Finance Director Karen Scott are on the city's search committee, which was formed near the start of the year.
"I don't see it being a problem," Anderson said about considering a search firm. "We'll meet and kind of talk about it. We'll go back and regroup."
The job opening has two applicants currently, Anderson said, adding that advertisements done through the Arkansas State Library, library associations nationally and library systems in surrounding states remain open.
The search committee previously interviewed five applicants whose names were released by the city in mid-March. Two were offered the position but declined, Furlough said Monday. The job advertises a salary range of $70,000-$90,000 annually.
Mayor Joe Smith didn't say the city had been turned down twice when he announced in mid-April that the job search had reopened. Smith confirmed that Monday, adding that both candidates would have needed to relocate to North Little Rock and "changed their mind."
At the time the city reopened the search, it contacted Bradbury Associates in Kansas City, Mo., for a quote on its services. Smith vetoed the idea when the company's standard fee was quoted at $16,000-$18,000. The company is experienced in library director searches, Furlough said.
"I've thought with what we were going to get from the search firm, we could do a lot of it ourselves," Smith said Monday. "Obviously we haven't been very successful, so we'll certainly look into going that route. Maybe we can negotiate [the price] down some and get it to where it's more reasonable."
Smith repeated Monday what he had said in April, that the requirement for a library director having a master's degree in library science was hurting its search. Both applicants who were offered the job, however, had such a degree, Smith said.
The requirement, needed for the library system to retain state funding, "really cuts our field of applicants down by a lot," Smith said. "So we're having to struggle through that."
The Laman Public Library System is composed of the main library, 2801 Orange St., and its Argenta Branch, 420 Main St.
Former Executive Director Jeff Baskin died in September after receiving a diagnosis of an advanced stage of cancer eight weeks earlier.
The library also is advertising for an office manager and an assistant director for its children's and teen centers, but isn't having much better fortune in those job searches, Furlough told the board. The library cut its hours late last year and laid off 11 staff members, effective Jan. 1, because of budget shortfalls. The library now has 19 fewer employees than a year ago, Furlough said.
"Everybody we offer these jobs to, they turn us down," Furlough said.
Metro on 05/12/2015