Garfield County Commissioners will take applications for three trustee positions, despite libraries board’s reappointment of two candidates

Garfield County Commissioners on Tuesday stated they will take applications and interview candidates for three positions on the Garfield County Libraries Board of Trustees, despite the reappointment of two trustees by the libraries board during a public meeting on Thursday, Nov. 7.

“It comes back to the fact that the library board doesn’t have the ultimate or the final say on their board members,” Commissioner Tom Jankovsky said during the meeting Tuesday. “That has been in the purview of the board of county commissioners since the library board was established.”

According to the board of county commissioners, there are three openings on the libraries board to fill: one due to the resignation of member Crystal Mariscal and two from terms ending for current board members. 

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The libraries board believe current members seeking reappointment can be approved by the libraries board and do not need to go to the county commission for final consideration, which is why the board moved to reappoint two members last week.

The Garfield County Public Library District is governed by a board of seven trustees, one from each of the six municipalities, Parachute, Rifle, Silt, New Castle, Glenwood Springs and Carbondale, and one member at large.

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During a public meeting on Thursday, Nov. 7, the Garfield County Libraries Board of Trustees reappointed two current representatives, Jocelyn Durrance, Carbondale, and Susan Use, Glenwood Springs, whose terms were set to expire on Dec. 31. 

The board of county commissioners started advertising for three spots on the board of trustees on Nov. 5: one for Carbondale, one for Glenwood Springs and one for New Castle, to replace representative Crystal Mariscal who resigned from the board effective Nov. 8.

“It’s our opinion that that is not effective,” Garfield County Attorney Heather Beattie said Tuesday when asked if the libraries board’s reappointment of Durrance and Use on Nov. 7 was official.

During the libraries board meeting on Nov. 7, Board President Adrian Rippy-Sheehy referred to the Garfield County Public Library District Board Bylaws, which states that “any new member of the board shall be presented to the Garfield County Commissioners to affirm an appointment.”

Earlier this year, commissioners approved resolution 24-12, which states that “Whenever a vacancy on the board of trustees occurs, due to the expiration of a term of office or otherwise, the board of county commissioners, acting as a committee, shall appoint a qualified person to fill the vacancy. Said appointment must be ratified by two-thirds majority vote of the commissioners.”

“I just wanted to say, this is something that we may not agree on this particular point. It seems to me that they’re not in agreement with this,” ” Beattie said. “That’s really why the board, in March of this year, the 24-12, that specific resolution, specifically states and gives the board of county commissioners the authority to appoint any new members, any members whose terms are expiring. So I think that’s actually being misunderstood by the library district.”

The  Garfield County Libraries Board of Trustees and Board of County Commissioners will meet on Nov. 21 to finalize an intergovernmental agreement outlining the trustee appointment process. 

“We have always been able to just say the board has selected these people for reappointment, and the board of county commissioners rubber stamped it,” Jamie LaRue, executive director of Garfield County Libraries, told the Post Independent Tuesday. “The two versions that we’ve seen of the IGA, one that we proposed, one that they proposed, they continued that, so the assumption was that we would again be able to just automatically sign up people who had already been appointed by the board of county commissioners.”

Beattie stated during the county commission meeting on Nov. 4 that even if signed on Nov. 21, the IGA will not take effect until 2025 and will not impact the trustee appointment process in December. 

Commissioners plan to interview candidates for all three libraries board spots on Dec. 5 and appoint trustees on Dec. 9.

“This board is going to appoint new members, and who knows, they may end up being the same members that have applied and that the library board has appointed,” Beattie said. “We’ll just have to see how it plays out in December.”