In the wake of the firing of Director Kellie Flynn, disgruntled patrons of the Lincolnwood (Ill.) Public Library announced at the July 15 Board of Trustees meeting that they would run a candidate against board Chair Barbara Balbirer, who must stand for reelection in April 2003. The announcement followed trustees’ rejection of a petition signed by 500 Lincolnwood residents to reinstate Flynn, who was dismissed June 17 after two years’ service.
The confrontation echoed the rancor that Flynn and Balbirer have been expressing in the suburban Chicago community’s weekly newspaper. Flynn said in the July 11 Lincolnwood Review that Balbirer had offered her “$10,000 to resign” but that she declined “because of my concern regarding the poor behavior I’ve witnessed in the trustees over the past two years.” Flynn accused trustees of micromanagement, making “negative personal comments about the staff to me,” and being “unwilling or incapable of creating a competent and objective director evaluation process.”
Balbirer responded August 1 by claiming Flynn failed “to keep the trustees apprised of her work schedule” and that she had a “general disrespectful attitude towards the board,” among other charges. She also refuted a July 25 Review editorial crediting Flynn for the March passage of a $500,000 annual tax-hike referendum. “The opposite is true,” Balbirer asserted.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story erroneously reported that the library Friends group intended to run a candidate against Balbirer.
Posted August 5, 2002.