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By DEREK MOORE
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Harsh criticism of Sandra Cooper’s management of the sprawling Sonoma County Library system is fueling calls for county
Sandra Cooper (PD FILE, 2007)
supervisors to seek more authority over her position, a move that could put Cooper’s job in jeopardy.
A Sonoma County grand jury report released late Wednesday called Cooper an “unresponsive” leader and claimed she micromanages her staff, edits minutes of meetings to paint herself in a more favorable light and makes arbitrary decisions that have alienated her from the public and from city and county officials.
Cooper faced similar criticism Tuesday during a budget hearing, where she was grilled by county supervisors for more than an hour. It was the second time since March that supervisors had asked Cooper to appear before them to discuss library operations.
Cooper declined to comment Wednesday. She was hired as library director in 2005 and is paid a base salary of $150,820, plus an additional $39,829 in benefits.
Cooper formerly was North Carolina’s state librarian. In Sonoma County, she oversees 138 employees at 13 library branches and a budget of about $16 million.
Supervisors appear united in revisiting the joint powers agreement that was formed in 1975 and gives oversight of the library system to the city of Santa Rosa, the county and an independent library commission made up of seven volunteers.
The commission’s members are appointed by supervisors and city councils in Santa Rosa and Petaluma. It has the sole authority to hire and fire the library director, who reports directly to its members.
Supervisor Shirlee Zane, the board’s chairwoman, said Wednesday that she supports revising the operating agreement to give supervisors authority over the library director’s position.
“That’s got to be a consideration given that we approve the budget, and given the fact constituents come to us when they have a problem,” she said.
Asked whether the board has confidence in Cooper’s ability to continue leading the library, Zane would say only that “we have great concerns.”
The grand jury report recommends that supervisors evaluate the library’s leadership structure and follow up on what it called Cooper’s “disuse” of the joint powers agreement. The nine-page report is titled “Whose Library Is It?”
The grand jury’s investigation appears to have been sparked in part by a complaint that Cooper was holding up the purchase of new equipment for the children’s section at the Guerneville library.
River Friends of the Library raised money to pay for the new equipment in 2009 and submitted a request for it to be ordered, according to Angie Orr, the group’s past president.
But two years later, after the equipment had yet to arrive, members of the group confronted Cooper.
“She said it was on her to-do list,” Orr said. “Of course, that led to an uproar.”
Orr said the group demanded a refund of the money. It was returned two weeks ago.
Cooper also faced criticism after she decided to close the Sebastopol library for three weeks in May and June while staff relocated from a temporary site back to the main branch, which had undergone renovations.
In the face of protests, Cooper had the library resume operations temporarily in a space at the main branch.
Branch manager Sue Struthers said she “concurred” with Cooper’s original decision to temporarily shut down the library because of the amount of work it required to keep it open on even a limited basis.
“There are lots of people who think everything they want can be done simply. It cannot,” Struthers said Wednesday.
The Sebastopol community will celebrate the formal reopening of the library branch Saturday.
The grand jury report cites concerns brought to Cooper by the public or her staff. It also found evidence that Cooper provided the library commission with “inaccurate, misleading or incomplete information,” including with regard to a $61,000 retrofit to book return bins.
Commissioner Helena Whistler, who was appointed by Supervisor Efren Carrillo, said Wednesday that “at times I have felt I have not gotten the information I’ve needed.”
But she said Cooper still appears to have the support of a majority of commissioners, who are in the process of evaluating the library director’s job performance.
“There definitely is a lot of room for improvement,” Whistler said.
Cooper previously came under fire in 2007 when she initially discounted concerns about the homeless using Santa Rosa’s main library as a de facto shelter. Only after pressure from the community and from the library commission did she relent and institute changes, which included hiring a security guard.
At Tuesday’s budget hearing, Supervisor Mike McGuire told Cooper that he felt the library system has been “operating like an island,” and that he wasn’t going “to sit here and beg you to work with us.”
Although the joint powers agreement gives Cooper the authority to make final decisions regarding the library, Supervisor Valerie Brown said the director should be doing more to foster communication with the board.
Brown said Wednesday that she was “surprised how united the board seems to be on this.”
“It’s not just one district. It’s not just one place. It’s everyone and that causes us to have some concern about her role,” she said.
Carrillo said he “absolutely” supports supervisors taking a look at the library’s leadership structure. He would not say whether he supports Cooper remaining in that role.
“I’m not going to comment on that right now,” he said.
The grand jury report paints the leadership structure of the library as dysfunctional, saying that library advisory boards comprised of community members meet irregularly and have been lax in making recommendations, and that the library commission has limited resources and ability to fact-check and supervise management.
“The result is a vacuum where there should be clear lines of authority and responsibility,” the report says.
The report states that Cooper edited minutes of library commission meetings for her own advantage, including after an Oct. 5 meeting in which a member of the Service Employees International Union presented a petition of no confidence in Cooper signed by 78 employees.
The draft minutes included the union representative’s list of Cooper’s alleged failings. The grand jury report said Cooper edited that to say the person read a statement giving “many examples” of the director “not being able to manage the operations and budget of the library.”
The grand jury report does not note that Cooper currently is in negotiations with SEIU for a new employee contract, and that the current contract expires Saturday.
Brown said at Tuesday’s hearing that she doesn’t want to “get in the middle” of those negotiations.
But Zane on Wednesday said criticism of Cooper amounts to more than just labor unrest.
“The complaints we’ve received at these offices have been from more than staff members. They’ve also come from library users,” she said.
You can reach Staff Writer Derek Moore at 521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com.
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Bear-I don’t agree with you on this. Bob Deis got a job in Stockton after SEIU trashed him and he infuriated the BOS. He’s still working toward ANOTHER pension to add to those he already has. When I worked for Penny’s about a thousand years ago, the assistant manager stole money out of the cash room. We employees were being watched and it turned out that the person responsible was the one with the keys. He was given a good recommendation and we found out later he got a job with Montgomery Wards in another city. Those at the top often land on their feet no matter how incompetent they are.
She should have treated her underlings like human beings instead of what seems to be, bipolar & borderline personality disorder. Seriously. If what bear says is correct, she can’t get a job elsewhere, and that is sad for her, yes but think about the people she forced out. What about them? She’ll be forced to work at Walmart…UNDER someone else. Serves her right. I’m sick of mentally deficient nutjobs getting into supervisory positions, yet it happens all the TIME.
@Marc
I am beyond sympathetic for anyone who is going through financial disaster. I’m not there yet, but I can see it from here.
And I’m really angry that so many managers get paid so much. They don’t do the real work! Hey, make that statement bigger and apply it to the whole economy: managers and executives DO NOT do the real work!
This poor woman screwed up, AND the system screwed up to let it get to this. Why didn’t someone with oversight do something about the donated stuff? It’s a philosophy of “do what you want as long as it doesn’t result in a problem for us.”
If there’s a problem, you’re really dead. Just as if there’s a budget problem (not your fault) and you get laid off.
I’ve always wondered about that term “laid off.” Makes it sound like fun?
Bear, where are all you concerns for the Private sector job losses that have NOTHING in their futures except SSI. She can join the ranks of underemployed with little or no medical coverage and suffer with the rest of us.
They don’t need another librarian running the county library system. They need a professional business manager. The head of the library system should not spend her days checking out books and advising which books children should read.
A bookie will no and cannot fill the bill. Nurses do not run hospitals, professional managers are hired to do that.
The library board needs to be abolished and the head of the library system reports to the county manager. Or go back to city run libraries.
Give the taxpayers a break and cut the $200,000 a year salary and benefits. That is way to much in this econony.
OK there are good reasons for this situation. The current director is toast, and she knows it.
But it’s sad in a way, because this person will not qualify for any employee health benefits from anywhere she was employed for however many years. If you don’t serve ten years AND retire from that agency, you get zero.
And if you trash her reputation, as the Grand Jury and BOS have done, her chances of another comparable job approach zero.
For this much trouble to pile up, a lot of people would have to have been inattentive, including the BOS, the Library Board and the Grand Jury.
Based on what I have seen in the county libraries, dirty bathrooms, homeless hanging around causing distruptions in the downtown branch, books missing and never replaced, something has to change. That change is a new chief librarian.
Why does she admit equipment cannot be put in place after purchase? Her salary is out of line with the current public sector financial crisis.
The overall management structure with an unwieldy board is outdated and ineffective.
Yes, time for some restructure and replacement.
Here we go again with the best and the brightest that money can buy at these positions. This is the same as the dog catcher where we pay tons of money and benefits for the best money can buy! Are you kidding me that she makes 200k with pay and bennies to run the library. How much does the president make? Next time they want to raise your taxes for the poor people that run the government keep this in mind!
It’s narrow minded to say that libraries are old technology. If anything, libraries help connect people who cannot afford to buy computers with technology. There are lots of people in our communitee who don’t know how to use computers. Plus, not everything is found free on google. Libraries have free programs for all ages. If you’re not using your library regularly you’re missing out.
Read the grand jury report, “Whose Library Is It?” for yourself: http://sonoma.courts.ca.gov/sites/all/assets/pdfs/general-info/grand-jury/2011-2012/4-library.pdf
Easy, fire her and get another, hopefully a long time local librarian, But the County will pick someone from Fresno or somewhere.
BOS to director: “go away now.”
Anyone who thinks there is some inherent security or longevity to being a public employee should understand that this is not true at any level of County government.
If the BOS wants you gone, you’re gone.
Who needs library when you have google? Libraries are old technology.
Its like spending billions of tax dollars so people can send telegrams or use typewriters.
Shut the libraries DOWN
It’s regrettable that we are experiencing these problems with our library system. Books are one of my passions, and I consider our libraries to be a precious resource.
All the more reason though that we need a director who is capable, transparent, and willing to work with the public, the union, the employees themselves, and the politicians. The commission needs to take action so that we will have a director (whomever that might be) who can and will fulfill these requirements.
Also, the salary being paid for this position is too high in the current economic climate.
Let’s have a more proactive commission and director who will collaborate more closely with the interested public and the cities and county to find a way to open our libraries up again on Mondays (or, at least, have a staggered system in which some libraries are open Monday but closed Tuesdays and vice versa). Let’s find a way to allow vounteers do more in libraries (without cutting any current paid positions). Let’s put the emphasis back on a “can do” attitude.
Our libraries are important to many people in our community, and we need to see to it that they are available more than the current 40 hours a week.
Come to the library commission meeting this next Monday, July 2, at the new Sonoma Library at 6:30 p.m. and make your views known.