Savannah Board Shifts Support
to Director Dickerson
In a surprise power shift, the trustees of the Chatham-Effingham-Liberty Regional Library in Savannah, Georgia, passed a resolution in support of Library Director Lon Dickerson and restructured the way that he reports to the library board. The decision, made in open session at the board’s April 11 meeting, directs Dickerson to report to the board’s vice chair rather than Chair Mary Ellen Sprague, according to the April 12 Savannah Morning News.
The action came in the wake of a private memo to the board by Sprague, published by the paper on March 7, that alleged Dickerson was insubordinate, lacked truthfulness and customer-service skills, and failed as a manager and political strategist. Sprague had been at odds with Dickerson after several years of main library construction delays, funding blunders, and controversy over a decision to close six of the library’s smaller branches.
Board member Richard Riley told the April 13 Morning News that Sprague’s push to fire Dickerson would have led the board into long and costly litigation. “She said, ‘I can’t work with Dickerson—either he leaves or I leave,’ and she was the one who called for a vote,” Riley said. “It was a decision that she made us make.”
Posted April 17, 2000.
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