Staff and patrons voiced strong opposition to the dismissal of popular library Executive Director Richard Lee at an April 9 special meeting of the Pueblo City-County Library District board.
The previous week, the board fired Lee, who had been named to head the library last October following the death of director Chuck Bates, and replaced him with Barclay Jameson, a former executive of the Pueblo Chieftain newspaper with no library experience, the Denver Post reported April 10.
Library attorney Don Banner said the board didn’t feel that Lee could serve as both executive director and project manager for a new library now being built. But Lee’s attorney, Lee Sternal, claims he was fired in part because he questioned the library's contract with board President Glenn Ballantyne, who the Post reported has received over $188,000 since 1997 for fundraising services. According to the Post, the library continues to pay Ballantyne’s business up to $6,000 a month.
Lee rejected the board’s offer that he stay on at his current salary solely as project manager, the newspaper said. The $22-million facility, to be named after Chieftain publisher Robert Rawlings, is scheduled to open in October.
“They’ve removed a very popular, very good administrator and have put in somebody who knows nothing about libraries,” branch supervisor Betsy Berg told the Post. “This is just an untenable situation.”
Posted April 14, 2003.