BY-LAW 956/15 - Appointing Members of the Petawawa Library Board Petawawa, 15 Jan 2015 What follows is a letter that was sent to the Mayor of Petawawa, as well as specific members of the Petawawa Town Council + the Petawawa Library manager questionning a secretive process to appoint town residents to the various local oversight Boards. In this current age of openness, this selection process, based on who you know and which does not involve any interviews of applicants and which merely rests on the decision of town council members behind closed doors, is regressive in a democratic society. Unfortunately, I never received any feedback to my application or to my letter either from the Town mayor, council members, or library manager. Finally, as Petawawa Town Council is looking at ways to cut down on the operating cost of its Public Library where the usership is on the decline, it is even more important to move forward with a public forum to select governance board members who feel strongly for the Library and who have a vision of the way forward to maintain and increase the numbers of patrons of the local Library, expand the librarys influence in the homes of Petawawa, provide greater synergy between the Library and the rest of the town departments, and establish specific quantifiable objectives for our local library with regards to our families, schools and seniors. These are all reasons why in a democratically-elected society you cannot afford to cut deals behind closed doors when appointing top level public servants. It is unthinkable to beleive that you can hire whoever, and then expect the governance boards to produce an inclusive vision, shared by all appointees. Instead, the first order of business, from the Town Council down, would be to formulate clearly and openly their desire and only then, after a rigorous selection process that includes a public forum to interview all hopefuls, should they move to appoint their future board members, this in effect ensuring that all personnel share in the same direction both within their team and with their elected officials. -------------------------------- Petawawa, 15 Jan 2015 Dear Mr Mayor, As you are well aware, I am full of enthusiasm when it comes to be involved in supporting our Community. Things seem to work thru my extra curricular activities such as the Emergency Radio Services and volunteering for various other local endeavours. However, I am now puzzled as to how the Town works its magic when it makes appointments to the various local boards such as the Petawawa Library Board. When it comes to the Petawawa Public Library, it is well known that most former Board members barely ever used the facility that they were appointed to govern. That observation can be corroborated by talking with the Library Staff. This led to what I see as a prime reason why our first class library is seeing a decline in usership. A governance board must make use of and thoroughly know the organization that they are governing as that knowledge will impact positively or negatively the direction taken by said organization. I also learned thru library staff and past Council Agendas that at least 2 of the former board members did not want to sit on the board for the new term and as a young and energetic resident, I hurried up to apply for a position on this same library Board going forward as my small contribution, as part of a new team, to rejuvenate the Board and shake up the Library with the goal of increasing our communitys usage of the facility. Council should always strive to represent as many age groups as possible as well as residents of our two most important demographics, both our English and French residents when appointing members for the Library, Waste, Airport and Police Boards to have full representation of the population. For the Police & Library boards, this should be easy as there are plenty of seats to go around. The initial application process for any individual to join the Library Board ran until 10 December. By the end of December 2014 when I inquired on the status of the application, I was informed that the process had to be extended as there were not enough applicants to make up a new board. Fair enough. However, I have learned today that on Jan 19th, Bylaw 956/15 is recommending that 7 individuals be appointed as the new Petawawa Public Library Board. Allow me to share my scepticism in that, in the span of a couple months there were not enough interest and that all of a sudden 7 individuals manifested themselves whereas my application was never considered. What concrete skills and experiences are being considered when making up these boards? The boards and council that I have sat on in the past (DND, schools, community,etc) always required an interview or thorough application process of all applicants when the numbers of applicants were higher than the numbers of positions available. I guess Petawawa is better than most then as we seem to have a secret committee determining secretly who they are going to appoint based on their whims rather than an openly verifiable process. I strongly believe in the hiring of the best person for the job. However, this can only come about thru an Open and fair process. The way that Council treats this Boards business and considering the quick show up of interested individuals and the fast nomination process, I question if the individuals were picked more because they were approach by and happened to know someone on the inside rather than interviewing and selecting based on merit. While I am on the topic of the Petawawa Library, it is quick to say that it tries to offer French Story time. However, the advertisement is in English which is counter-productive to reaching out to our French demographics, especially to those possibly new in town and who havent learned English enough to get by. Last Saturday 10 Jan 2015 and for the month of January, I volunteered my time to the Library to assist with the French Story time. At first, only 2-3 French people showed up. However, the Civic Center had a Hockey Tournament on the go. Plenty of French families from in and out of town showed up for the occasion. None of them even knew about French library services on that day. When I approached one of the library Staff at closing time to discuss the French advertisement in French as well as tap into the potential of the dozens of people attending the hockey tournament or looking at what to do in their downtime between games, I was met with sneers as there was only a handful of French people anyways and the Library does not cater to out of town people since they dont borrow books. This is backward thinking and this mentality is partly to blame in our abysmal numbers using the Library. A Library is a seat of power thru its many mediums of knowledge and should be heralded for all to see and use, not kept for the few. Even though in the same building, the Library and the Civic Center are worlds apart in their scheduling. For all of our town services to grow and attract deserved attention, Park & Recreation departments must strive to work their various commitments in complementarity; building on one anothers as promotion mediums, drawing from each others pools to sustain one anothers programming. At a minimum, I would like to see the Civic Center and the Petawawa Library sharing their information and events packages. Lets inform our Civic Center users on the hours and programs currently going on in the Library, and lets keep the library users abreast of what is going on in the rest of the building. Not even the small vendors’ exposition set up in the Rotary room was advertised and you wouldnt know there was one unless you walked in the room and asked one of the exposant. This Town has the potential to do better and it usually does when given proper enthusiasm and Leadership to a project or initiative. I almost forgot - within minutes of Hockey Tournament families finding out about the French story time, we greeted 12 French kids to our programming. The library received over 2 dozen hockey kids and their parents within its walls. Some families from as far as Fort Coulonge, were envious of our library both in size and business hours compared to their own. Some Fort Coulonge families who usually maintained a subscription with the Pembroke Library questioned openly if they shouldn’t switch their membership to the Petawawa Library. As far as the library goes, I know that the Town is examining ways to reduce cost and match those to the usage level. To that effect, I would suggest we look at reworking the opening hours to when town residents are actually around to use the Library before anything else. It is a fact that during the week, the Library will mostly see usage from seniors and sometimes schools. Toddlers are at daycare, parents are working and kids are in school. It is imperative the Library capitalizes on the weekends to attract people in. Let’s expand the Librarys business hours on Saturday, say, from 0900 - 2100 and open noon - 1600 on Sundays. We can then open up the Petawawa Library from noon - 1600 on Mondays and Tuesdays, extend the hours to noon - 1700 on Wednesdays, and finally extend them some more to noon - 2000 on Thursdays and Fridays. This 44-hrs scheme (versus the current 53 hours week) not only brings the closing time in line with most businesses, but it also keeps the library operating when residents are around to use it. We can then move most, if not all, of the library programming tot he weekends and make use of all Town Departments to promote its activities. Seniors and schools would have first use on week days, while other town residents AND out of town guests & temporary residents would show up for Saturday morning toddlers and kids screening, afternoon story time, etc ... Evening would still be there for students to perform their homework. Should Town Council find the money or desire to keep the current 53 hrs/week scheme, that is an extra 9hrs that can be worked out in my propose schedule, which I would use to extend hours in the evenings or mornings where the Civic Center operates events (showcases, hockey, etc, markets) so the Library can benefit from the increased exposure. Partnership with schools could be established for special tailored programming once or twice a month during their week days afternoon hours. I have also heard that the current evaluation of the inner working of our library is being done while keeping its staff in the dark. In this day and age, it has been established as excellent business practice to involve employees in program and institutional revisions. Library staff has to be involved as part of this effort to move the Library forward, know all of the issues plaguing their workplace as well as be involved in the solution process. Doing otherwise introduces fear and uncertainty and detracts from an employees tasks. As it stands, some of the library employees are vaguely aware that their job could be cut due to some cost-cutting measures but when inquiring on what is going on it is like their concerns are being thrown into a black hole, affecting their focus and preventing them to accomplish their job to their highest standard. As most successful Leaders would tell you, Employees are a companys best asset, and by empowering them the institution can only grow stronger. Your Worship, these and many more are some of the ideas that I have and would be interested in exploring further with other colleagues of the Library Board, the Library manager as well as the library staff as solutions to rentabilize our First Class library need to be explored as a team of many players and sharing a common enthusiastic vision of the way forward. I hope I successfully outlined the issues with the current appointment process and gloomy thinking that seem to surround the Petawawa Library, while sharing a glimpse of my vision for the future of the Petawawa Library and a first draft on how we can rentabilize the investment in our facility while keeping its cost under control, increase our users base and still offer a decent, if not an increased level of services. Respectfully Yours, Dominic Grosleau Petawawa Resident ---------------------------------------
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 12:53:26 +0000
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