Meriden
Near the end of a 75-minute meeting, the five-member Board of Trustees overseeing Plainfield’s libraries voted to reaffirm its Dec. 2 decision to eliminate Norwalk’s position as associate library director as of Dec. 31, but agreed to continue the dialogue and consider a proposal from Norwalk’s attorney to give her another year of employment.
“We are going to keep it in mind going forward and try to come up with something that works for Nancy and the library board,” board Chairwoman Emily Sands said.
Sands said the trustees are open to more discussion and want to set up a meeting with the Selectboard as the next step. As for a time frame for a decision on whether to accept the proposal from Norwalk’s attorney, Brad Wilder, or find some other solution, Sands said it is too early to say.
“I do expect we will be in touch soon,” Sands said.
More than 70 residents braved snow and slippery roads to attend the hearing on Norwalk, whose work on the special collections room in the Philip Read Memorial Library has earned her praise beyond town borders. But as the meeting — billed as a public hearing — concluded, Sands said public comment was “not appropriate,” and the trustees voted to adjourn.
Afterward, Norwalk said she was overwhelmed by the turnout.
“This is phenomenal support, for people to come out like this on a snowy night,” Norwalk said. “I feel so supported.”
The meeting, which included some residents who backed the library board, opened with a 30-minute presentation from Wilder, a Plainfield resident. He harshly told the trustees he was “ashamed and not proud” of his town and that they had “stabbed an icon in the back.” He went on to allege violations of law on the part of the trustees when they decided to discuss Norwalk’s employment without her knowledge and further claimed they broke the law by terminating Norwalk because library employees can only be removed because of “malfeasance, misfeasance, incapacitated or unfit to perform duties.”
“In Ms. Norwalk’s case, none of these reasons exists,” Wilder said.
The dispute appears to center on a “transition agreement” that the town’s attorney, Barry Schuster, said Norwalk signed, in consultation with a lawyer, not Wilder, in July 2015. The agreement, which has not been made public, laid out three specific duties that Norwalk was to complete with respect to the special collections room, which has material on Plainfield’s history, such as town records, ledgers, diaries, letters and photographs. The collections room is named for Norwalk, who is in her 70s.
Norwalk was to oversee transition of the collections to a new location; help develop guidelines and policies for the collections room with respect to access and organization; and catalog the material.
According to Wilder, the trustees at their Dec. 2 meeting said the work had been done and the special collections was useable. Wilder disagreed.
“None of it has been completed,” Wilder said.
Schuster on the other hand, said Norwalk was not fired and the trustees’ action on Dec. 2 affirmed what was signed by Norwalk in the transition agreement hammered out in July 2015. According to the agreement, at the end of the 18-month transition period, Norwalk would step down, Schuster said.
“She willingly signed it with her attorney that put in (in the agreement) a year-and-a-half transition,” he said. “The board simply stayed with the agreement.”
In the trustees’ view, Schuster said, the project with the special collections room is “satisfactorily complete.”
The transition agreement was the end result of the trustees’ decision to contact Schuster a couple of years ago to discuss “differences” they were having with Norwalk. His response was mediation, he said.
When they settled on a mediator, the agreement was worked out and finalized on July 27, 2015. Schuster said it was announced in a public letter that Norwalk would have 18 months to finish her work.
Wilder made it clear litigation likely was the next step if Norwalk was not allowed to return to her job and complete the work. Toward the end of his presentation, he apologized to the trustees for sounding harsh and then proposed what he termed an “amicable way” out of the situation.
The amicable path, he said, would heal wounds, unite the community and bridge a divide, while an alternative way forward would hurt library donations and further divide the town with more conflict, he said.
In addition to asking for another year of employment for Norwalk, Wilder proposed the trustees pay for any subscriptions needed for the special collection and give Norwalk the time needed to the collection “up and running.”
Several letters in support of Norwalk were circulated at the meeting. They expressed everything from dismay to anger over the trustees’ decision regarding Norwalk and strongly suggested she be given her job back.
“Nancy Norwalk’s work is not done,” wrote Philip Zea, son of the late Howard Zea, Plainfield’s town clerk for 58 years, and president of the Deerfield Historical Society in Deerfield, Mass.
After the meeting, Wilder said he would wait to hear from the trustees and Schuster before deciding whether to pursue any legal action.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
Correction
The more than 70 residents who attended a meeting of the board of trustees overseeing Plainfield’s libraries included both supporters of former Associate Library Director Nancy Norwalk and residents who supported the board’s decision last month to eliminate her job. An earlier version of this story was unclear on that point.
