Chart #1

Chart #2

The question:

Why did the library director and the library board ignore circulation data when they announced this year's allocations for purchasing library materials?

The comments:

The board spent several years devising an allocation formula to reward increases in circulation-and Hooker repeatedly told managers they'd need to increase their circulation if they expected more money to purchase materials, and that branches doing less business could expect that to be reflected in their annual budgets for re-stocking their shelves.

This year, Hooker and the board suddenly decided to ignore their budget allocation formula and give the branches the same materials budgets as they had last year, regardless of which branches experienced an increase-or decrease-in circulation. Why?

Is it because:

• The board forgot it had devised a formula for determining branch materials budgets?
  
  
• The board mistakenly assumed that the formula they devised should be ignored because of this year's county-wide budget cuts--instead of realizing how the allocation formula becomes even more important in equitably dividing up scarce resources during a budget crisis?
  
  
• There's no one on the library staff any longer who understands the formula, the rationale behind it, and how and when to implement it?

We know for sure that Hooker doesn't understand the formula: she told a group of managers that the formula has something to do with how many videos a branch can or cannot purchase! The "variable factors" portion of the board-approved budget allocation formula have nothing to do with what investments a branch chooses to make in different formats in any given year. Those are determined after the branches receive their annual allocation for materials.

So much for rationally allocating of budget resources among the library's various facilities in light of current demand for services at different "service points." And so much for the credibility of the current regime's claims about how managers can obtain a larger share of the money available to spend on library materials.

Vacant Full-Time Library Positions That Cannot Be Filled Because The Funding for Them was Sacrificed (Effective February 4, 2004) for County Government Budget Cuts:

1. Senior Librarian (C52), Ivan Allen Department, Central Library
2. Senior Librarian (C51), General Collections Dept., Central Library
3. Librarian (C42), Northeast/Spruill Oaks Regional Branch Library
4. Librarian (C42), Northeast/Spruill Oaks Regional Branch Library
5. Children's Librarian (C42), Children's Department, Central Library
6. Librarian (C42), South Fulton Regional Branch Library
7. Librarian (C42), Southwest Regional Branch Library
8. Library Associate (B23), General Collections Dept., Central Library
9. Library Associate (B23), Auburn Avenue Research Library
10. Library Associate (B23), Sandy Springs Regional Branch Library
11. Senior Library Associate (A13), Ponce Area Branch Library
12. Mail Delivery Courier (A13), Service Environment Dept., Central Library
13. Mail Delivery Courier (A13), Service Environment Dept., Central Library
14. Library Assistant (A11), Northeast/Spruill Oaks Regional Branch Library

Source: Action Item #04-15, approved by the library board January 28, 2004

• Bookmobile Manager (C52) to Northside Area Branch Library
• Librarian (C42) to Southwest Regional Branch Library
• Library Associate (B23) to Sandy Springs Regional Branch Library
• Library Associate (B23) to Cleveland Avenue Community Branch Library
• Senior Library Associate (A13) to East Point Area Branch Library
• Mail Delivery Courier (A13) to Environment Services Dept., Central Library

Source: Board Document #04-20, approved by the board January 28, 2004

AFPLWATCH notes with interest how the East Point Branch--which conducts nowhere near a lion's share of the library system's total business--was among the branches that gained a staff member from the dismantling of the Bookmobile staff.

The County Manager has advised all Fulton County Department Heads of the following:

• Do not fill any positions until at least 4/1/04
  
• Expect another round of cuts in June 04
  
• Expect FY2005 to be even more difficult than 2004

--Mary Kaye Hooker's monthly report to the library board of trustees ["Highlights of Monthly Activities: December 2003," p. 2]

“The policy of equal opportunity applies to, and must be an integral part of, every aspect of personnel practices in Fulton County Government. As department heads and supervisors, the front-line responsibility for enforcing EEO related laws and regulations lies with you.... Please know that I take these matters quite seriously and I will hold you personally accountable for failure to handle EEO-related problems in a prompt and fair manner. Absolutely no violations of any anti-discrimination or anti-retaliation laws or policies will be tolerated in this county….” --Memo from County Manager Thomas C. Andrews to Fulton County Department Directors, Managers and Supervisors, July 31, 2001. (Note that the emphasized areas were emphasized in the original memo.)

“...I believe we must create and maintain an environment in which all employees can perform their work free of any improper conduct such as discrimination or harassment. This memorandum is to remind you that no form of unlawful discrimination or harassment will be tolerated in this county. That there is no place for discrimination or harassment in Fulton County is underscored by the county’s clear and unwavering policies of providing equal employment opportunity on the basis of merit, and prohibiting discrimination on the bases of race, color, national origin, sex, age, religion, disability, and sexual orientation.... I wholeheartedly embrace the following key objectives of the Office of EEO:...

• Holding management personally accountable for enforcing anti-discrimination and EEO-related policies and procedures...

--Memo from County Manager Thomas C. Andrews to Fellow Fulton County Employees, August 10, 2001. (Emphasis in original.)

• The most recent breakdown in the library's e-mail system has gone on now for over two weeks. [March 19th Update: Make that "for over seven weeks."] There's been no clear signal from the administration of when e-mail is going to be restored. Staff have received several missives about an impending switch to Fulton County government's email server, but that does not address the inaccessible email messages on AFPL's email server and all the continuing stalled communications, delayed decisions, and sheer confusion resulting from the delays in dealing with the damage done to the library system's email server by yet another computer virus.
  
  
• With increasing frequency, the courier delivery staff are forced to skip daily pick-ups and deliveries at many branches. The result: piled up crates full of library materials that patrons can't get hold of, branch staff running out of crates to stockpile materials headed for other locations, and boatloads of library users becoming increasingly impatient with the unexplained delays in getting the materials they've asked for. The unprecedented breakdown in reliable daily courier service are due to cuts in part-time courier staff--cuts which Hooker to this day is still denies were ever made--and to inadequate numbers of staff to provide coverage when delivery personnel are sick or otherwise absent from work. The breakdown in reliable daily courier service comes at a particularly inopportune time from a customer service point of view: the very month the library system suspended for several months library customers' ability to place computer-generated Holds for branch loans.
  
  
• Avoidable snafus related to this year's vendors of library materials. Some materials are arriving only partially processed, even though the library's contract with the vendors require--and we are paying for--full processing. Vendors are shipping materials to libraries before the bibliographic information for those items has been loaded into the library's catalog, resulting in stockpiles of books, audiobooks, and videos that can't be loaned to library users piling up in cramped branch quarters; in flurries of repetitive phone calls to find out whether the records have finally been loaded; and in confusing or inaccurate shelf-status notes in the library's catalog. All these problems are a direct result of the inadequate staffing of the Technical Services Division--a development Hooker can (and does) take full credit for "achieving"-- and the lack of qualifications possessed by the persons Hooker has put in charge of that decimated Division.
  
  
• The failure of the administration to persuade the board that the library system needs to be closed on Easter, Independence Day, Christmas Day this year --and every year.
  
  
• The failure of the library administration to notify in advance library staff and library users of the three-month suspension of Interlibrary Loans as of January 22nd--and the lack of clarity about whether or not this service has, in fact, been suspended.
  
  
• The increased frequency of last-minute cancellations of monthly meetings for library managers. Yet another consequence of the Library Director's ongoing job security anxieties interfering with the need for her to take some responsibility for managing the library?
  
  
• The fact that some managers and acting managers were not aware of the final deadline--which changed several times, and on short notice--for expending 2003's year-end funds for library materials. For some branches, this resulted in a large amounts of funds not being expended for branch-specific collection gaps.
  
  
• The ever-increasing numbers of acting or interim managers, and an increasing number of "temporary" appointments of unqualified and uncompensated staff to management vacancies.
  
  
• All sorts of problems at the Central Library. The consequences of Hooker's strip-mining of this crucial facility, followed by several years of decidedly non-benign neglect--including the failure to obtain the county manager's approval to recruit a Central Library Administrator--are too numerous and demoralizing to list here. Here's a sampling of Central's infrastructure problems:
  
  
  • Breakdowns in Microfilm Reader/Printers.The four microfilm reader/printers on the second floor have been out of order for several months and cannot be repaired because the service contract expired. Successive managers have requested that this dated equipment be replaced, but requests for new reader/printers have not been honored. A service technician has had to come frequently because the readers malfunction often and parts continue to wear out. The second floor houses a complete run of the Atlanta Journal/Constitution and New York Times and extensive runs of the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post in addition to back runs of many periodicals. The AJC is heavily used by students, genealogy patrons, and historians, and the early years are not available elsewhere in our system in any format. Patrons are forced to carry microfilm to the machines still working on the fifth floor; when the fifth floor machines are out of order or are occupied by fifth floor patrons, second floor patrons sometimes have to go to other libraries to get the information they came to Central for, and that Central posseses. There is no projected date for returning these second floor reader/printers to service.
    
    April 6th Update: There are still no film reader/printers in Ivan Allen. Two have been committed from other agencies, but there is no way to transport them to Central. Meanwhile all film reading at Central must be done on the fifth floor where there are (sometimes) two reader/printers. As of April 4, one of those readers was not working. The repair technician is being called frequently because of the heavy use of that equipment. When someone is using a film reader for an extended time, other patrons leave. Thousands of microfilm reels in the building; one reader/printer....
    
    
  • Mail service for correspondence leaving Central was recently interrupted due to the failure to pay the library's postage meter bill before the library system ran out of credit with the postal system.
    
    
  • Gaps in the library system’s serials collections resulted from the library system’s failure to pay the library's serials vendor on time last year.
    
    
• Hooker keeps blithely reassuring the board that we're "on track" to implement a new automation system when literally dozens of issues have not yet been addressed or even acknowledged, much less resolved. Hooker, for example, has accomplished zilch about deciding which SIRSI management reports will be generated when the new system is implemented, and she is the chair of that particular SIRSI planning subcommittee.
  
  
• There is an inadequate level of technical support for the library's computers. There is always an inordinate number of out-of-order computers in our libraries (anybody care to guess how many screens are dark at this very moment?). This situation drives the library system's huge cadre of computer-dependent/addicted patrons into unpleasant frenzies. Constant computer breakdowns with inadequate and non-speedy technical support is a chronic headache for everyone who works in public service at AFPL, and no one in the current administration is doing a thing about it. This is not the fault of the computer support staff: they make heroic efforts day in and day out to keep the computers, print managers, and printers working, but these few overworked souls can't be everywhere simulataneously, and Fulton County isn't getting any smaller. Like Tech Services, Computer Services has seen its staff cut by Hooker, and Computer Services' manager, like the manager of Tech Services before him, fled Hooker's regime and has not been replaced. Branch and Central department staff fear that the recent decision to move the supervision of what's left of the library's computer support staff from the library to county government headquarters is not going to improve the response time of computer technicians to the library's constant equipment breakdowns and software problems (including the software problems related to the Internet filter the library's currently using).

1. Fulton County now has two standards for dealing with violations of constitutional rights and county policies on racial discrimination.
   
   
   • For rank-and-file employees caught in violations of this nature: immediate termination.
     
     
   • For county department heads caught in violations that cost taxpayers over $18 million dollars: mandatory sensitivity training.
   
   This double standard should go over big with the judge and jury in the next lawsuit.
   
   And there will be other suits. AFPLWATCH has learned that Fulton County officials have already discreetly reversed several unwarranted disciplinary actions against library employees that Hooker authorized and that at least one recently terminated library employee has instigated legal action.
   
   When will the price tag attached to Hooker's tenure as Library Director become too high? Apparently only when library board members--rather than taxpayers--become liable for the financial burdens resulting from their actions--or failures to act.
   
   
2. By failing to fire Hooker, the library's trustees have not only endorsed racial discrimination as an acceptable employment practice at the county's libraries, but have declared their indifference to the “trickery and deceit” that the U.S. Court of Appeals found in the library administration's cover-up of its unlawsful conduct.
   
   
3. The board’s refusal to fire Hooker demonstrates just how little regard the board has for the library system's employees.
   
   Does the board really believe library employees welcome the wildly unlikely prospect of a "kinder, gentler Mary Kaye Hooker"??? As one employee has aptly put it: "Gag me with a spoon!"
   
   The woman has violated the law--whether she should have done so with a smile instead of a scowl is completely beside the point. That the trustees think their "punishment" or "remedy" (or whatever they think they've devised) fits Hooker's crimes says a lot more about the cluelessness, stubbornness, and spinelessness of the board than it does about how to properly deal with violations of federal employment law.
   
   With "stewards of the taxpayers' money" like these, it's no wonder the library system is in such a shambles.

• Convince Georgia legislators to abolish the current board and fashion a new board in a way that eliminates the commission's inability to easily and directly redress grievances and punish violations of law and government policy.
  
  
• Remove the board members appointed by the Commission--including the two County Commissioners who sit on the library board.
  
  
• De-fund the library in whole or in part until the board fires Hooker and thus indicates its commitment to complying with federal law and county policy.