Interim director of the Cullman County Public Library System Josie Harrington has submitted her resignation to the Cullman County Commission and will be “pursuing another career opportunity” effective Dec. 1.
In Harrington’s resignation letter, submitted Nov. 2 and obtained by The Times Nov. 10, she lists several concerns which contributed to her decision, including, what she considers, to be a low starting salary, more responsibilities than what is typical of a library director’s job description, and “concerning statements by county commissioners.”
The director position was brought to the forefront of public discussions amid a wave of statewide book challenges in August after the Cullman County Public Library Board appointed Harrington as the successor of former director Sharon Townson during a closed executive session, unwittingly violating the Alabama Open Meetings Act. The board addressed its misstep by naming Harrington as interim director during its September meeting and announcing it would open a public search for candidates to fill the position.
The search was postponed last month when Harrington removed her name from consideration due to the position’s salary — set by the Cullman County Commission at roughly $57,000 annually — but said she intended to fall back into her previous role of assistant director once a permanent candidate was found.
During the October board meeting, Harrington said she had gathered data, which she planned to present to the County Commission, to validate her concerns over what she described as a “low salary.”
When reached by phone Friday, Nov. 10, Cullman County Administrator/CFO John Bullard confirmed that Harrington had presented him with a list which showed other library directors pay throughout the state, but said the data was not complete enough to offer a fair and accurate comparison.
“The library board brought us a comparison of library directors and their pay and $57,000 would be on the lower end of that range. But, there was no calculation in that comparison for how long those people had been in their roles,” Bullard said.
Cullman County Commission Chairman Jeff Clemons, also reached by phone Friday, said the county uses a standardized pay scale with all first year directors receiving a salary of between $57,000 and $58,000. Bullard said the county’s system is “designed to reward longevity” as evidenced by former library director Sharon Townson’s ending salary of $74,000 after serving in the position for 25 years.
Bullard said Harrington’s proposed salary was in line with the last two directors — Economic Development and Sales Tax — who were hired by the county.
“The library is obviously very important, but all of these departments are extremely important. We can’t start one director significantly higher than another,” Bullard said.
Clemons also said that the county supplements employee salaries based on their highest level of completed education, 5% for associates degree and 10% for a bachelors degree or higher. He said based on Harrington’s four-year degree her actual salary would have likely fallen between $63,000 and $65,000.
In addition to her proposed salary, Harrington listed several challenges she has faced in her brief stint as director which she felt exceeded what was typical for her role.
“The past couple of months have been more chaotic than one would expect for a transition of directors, and during my time serving as Interim Director I have found that there are a number of duties required of the next director that are outside the typical responsibilities (handling building storm damage, pursuit of a new building or major repairs/renovations of the current one, navigating a confusing branch system, and more, just to name a couple).”
While Bullard said the commission likely did not account for these specific responsibilities when setting the director’s salary, they did factor in “everything that is the responsibility of the director.”
“There are times that all of us as department heads, or whatever, have additional things come up. Something like storm damage, you can’t plan for. It just happens,” Bullard said. “I understand that there are a lot of things going on [with the library] right now, but you can’t really factor in all of those anomalies. Unfortunately, it’s just part of the job of being a director.”
Additional factors mentioned in Harrington’s letter include too few staff operating with limited hours after employee salaries were taken on by the county and “concerning statements by county commissioners.”
Both Clemons and Bullard said any interpretation they would be able to give as to which statements Harrington may be referring to would be purely speculative.
When reached by The Times Friday, Harrington declined to comment until the Cullman County Library Board meeting Thursday, Nov. 16.