With County Commissioner Pam Richardson questioning the necessity of one library and Commissioner Kim Carney questioning its staffing requirements, the future of Flagler County’s two county libraries is uncertain.
The Palm Coast library isn’t going away, and the new South Side library, called the Nexus Center, will open later this summer. At least if the county doesn’t intend to give back the millions in grants that paid for half its construction costs. But how either will be managed is unsettled in a way that the local library system hasn’t ever been before, with Richardson at one point ready to stop construction on the new building and Carney promising not to add a single employee to staff it.
That’s left library staff, patrons and Holly Albanese reeling. Albanese is the assistant county administrator and legislative liaison who’s also been the library director for a couple of decades. The number of hats she wears has inexplicably rubbed a few people the wrong way, including Carney, who openly called for sending Albanese “back to the library”–a transparent meddling of a commissioner in administrative lanes.
On Monday, Richardson was shocked that she’d “been hearing that they’re closing the library in Palm Coast,” as she said at the end of that commission meeting. “That was never mentioned in this building when I was here. I would think that would be a travesty, because it is a heavily used building for the most part,” Richardson said.
No, no one had spoken of closing the Palm Coast library from the commission’s dais. But Richardson shouldn’t have been surprised that the possibility became part of three options the administration prepared at the commission’s request, after commissioners themselves appeared ready to either stop the opening of the new library or staff it at skeletal levels.
Richardson may not have been remembering what she’d said on May 28, when she suggested halting work on the Nexus Center during a discussion on beach-management funding. “Are you going to stop construction?” Commission Chair Andy Dance asked her.
“Possibly. If that’s what’s necessary,” Richardson answered without hesitation. “It doesn’t stop it permanently. It stops it for the time until the beach can be renourished. If that’s the priority, then have a priority.”
Richardson may also not have recalled what Carney had said moments earlier at the same meeting, after County Administrator Heidi Petito said it would take six net new employees added to the county payroll to staff the new library, in addition to existing employees who’d have to be shifted there.
“You want six new employees for the library? Forget it. Forget it,” Carney said categorically. “Take two from Bunnell, take two from Palm Coast, and have Holly go back and be a librarian. You know what? I don’t care how it works. You’re not getting six new employees.”
Albanese was hearing all this. So was Petito, who reminded the commissioners that the new library was built with substantial grants. Those grants have staffing and minimum operational hours requirements. At the commission’s request, she directed Albanese to prepare “several scenarios outlining hours of operation and compliance with associated grant funding to assist in evaluating future staffing needs for the new facility,” as Petito described it in an email.”
“It turns out that we must operate the new Nexus Center to the level provided within the grant proposal to be in compliance,” Albanese said. In other words, the county has some, but not much, flexibility to staff the Nexus Center with 11 employees and operate at least 40 hours a week.
The original plan was to cull three existing employees from the Palm Coast branch and two from the Bunnell branch, with the addition of five new full-time positions at the Nexus Center (four full time, two part-time), and a library director added to the staff count. That would have left 12 full-time employees and a part-timer at the Palm Coast library and 11 at the Nexus Center. It would have required the Palm Coast branch to reduce hours from 52 to 44 per week.
As directed, Albanese crafted three alternatives. Two of them reduce staffing by several employees and operational hours in Palm Coast to 40. A third, rather nuclear option–the option that ended up making the most noise–is to close the Palm Coast library, sell its 19 acres and the building, reduce overall staff from 18 to 11 and move them all to the Nexus Center, which would operate 41 hours.
Of course it’s not what Albanese would want to do. But the commission was looking for options and speaking in pretty drastic terms. Albanese met with her staff and discussed the options, which of course got discussed beyond the library’s walls: there was nothing secret about them (the options are public).
“Please know that it’s not my recommendation, ever, to close the Palm Coast library. No,” Albanese told the commission on Monday. “But it was suggested that we provide the board with every alternative possible.”
In an email, Albanese conceded that she’d also been “a bit frustrated at the time.” But she’d done nothing more than follow the administration’s and commission’s directive. “Administration then asked me to add that option to the presentation as well, so I did.”
Tuesday, a day after Richardson’s seeming shock at the commission and FlaglerLive’s request for the options Albanese herself outlined to the commission, Petito told FlaglerLive that “it’s important to note that they represent initial drafts and not formal proposals or decisions. Without the proper context provided through Board discussion, these documents may not fully reflect the intent or direction the Board may ultimately wish to pursue.”
It’s also no small part of the Nexus Center’s purpose that it is to be the administrative home of the county’s Health and Human Services division–or that, strictly speaking, grants alone paid for the library half, while county funds paid for the HHS portion.
Yet Richardson on Monday again repeated her skepticism about the county needing two libraries, calling it “awkward” and speaking of the new library derisively as “the Nexus Center, whatever name you want to call it.” Albanese found that “disheartening,” noting that St. Johns County has six libraries and is building two more, Putnam County has five, Volusia County has 15.
“While I realize we are a small county in footprint and the population is heavily centered in Palm Coast, not everyone lives near the current Palm Coast location,” Albanese said. “I don’t expect more than two locations, at least not in my professional lifetime and there have been two locations since 2004, this is only a larger facility to accommodate more services and finally bring programming to that part of the community. I have worked tirelessly for more than a decade to make this happen and no it is not because of any friendships.”
There are continuing intimations that the Nexus Center is the product of Petito’s friendship with Albanese. In fact, county commissioners were looking to expand library services at least as far back as 2013, if not 2010, when they supported in principle–but not in dollars–the expansion of the main branch in Palm Coast, then agreed that a new branch should be built, all under then-Administrator Craig Coffey. The Library Board of Trustees kept up the pressure. So it’s perplexing why Albanese would not be a target, as she sometimes appears to be.
“I am tired of people questioning my qualifications,” Albanese said (qualifications that include two master’s degrees, 40 years’ experience and 25 of them as library director.) “I am more qualified than most and my compensation includes acting as Library Director, Legislative Liaison and Assistant County Administrator. Since I have been up in Administration I have worked on the strategic plan, on grants, legislative documents, and other special projects. I oversee the Communications Department too and I filled in as Human Resources Director for about four months. I applied for this position with three other county employees and was selected. I did this because I believe in and wanted to support this county’s administrative team and still do.”
The commission will discuss the library options at its July 2 workshop.
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