A much-anticipated public meeting scheduled for Tuesday, April 2 with the Garfield Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) and the Garfield County Public Library District (GCPLD) has been postponed.

BOCC Chair John Martin told The Sopris Sun on Monday, March 25 that he wants to have the full BOCC in attendance. He said that Commissioner Tom Jankovsky is unable to attend due to a medical procedure and he does not know when Jankovsky will return to county duties. Martin added that the library board wanted more time to review the BOCC’s March 18 intergovernmental agreement (IGA) about the trustee appointment process. 

Jamie LaRue, GCPLD’s executive director, told The Sopris Sun Tuesday that he was not aware that the April 2 meeting had been postponed. He said he and the library board met with their attorney last week.

After the BOCC did not approve Hannah Arauza’s nomination for the library board in November, the appointment process stalled. The GCPLD started their process over on Friday, Feb. 23, but three days later, the BOCC suddenly took control — from advertising for the position to appointing the trustee. The BOCC said that applications should be sent to them. But this direction was not posted on either the Garfield County website or the GCPLD website, which still instructs applicants to send materials to LaRue. 

“Some applied to us, some applied to the county and I didn’t know if all of them had been contacted,” LaRue stated. “We had produced a trustee packet; some people said they got it, some people said they didn’t.”

He explained that the county recently asked the library board to provide questions for the interviews. “But that interview was coming up really, really fast,” he said. They asked their attorney to talk with the county to see if a delay of some kind could be arranged, but LaRue was not notified of the postponement.

Stalemate

Both sides want to create an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) to settle the trustee appointment matter but neither wants to give up control over the process. The BOCC stated in a March 18 letter to GCPLD that “…there is not room to negotiate which entity will have authority to recommend and appoint future trustees. The [BOCC] has made that policy decision.” 

GCPLD’s March 8 proposed IGA basically resumes what the process has been since 2008. Candidates and application materials go through an interview committee before recommendations are presented to the library board for final approval. The BOCC will get advanced notice of the presentation of the candidates, can submit five candidate questions and is welcome to attend trustee interviews to observe in a “non-participatory role.”  In essence, the BOCC would still approve or deny the final candidate but the rest of the process would be left to the library board.

“Right now, we have dueling IGAs,” said LaRue, who hoped that the library board and the BOCC would be able to hammer out something mutually acceptable. “The [BOCC] will not negotiate about the core issue: who gets to interview and select the candidate to present for approval.” 

Fourteen Garfield County residents have applied for the Rifle trustee position, but since the interview meeting has been postponed with no new date in sight, what happens next remains a mystery.

“I’m pretty confident that, left to themselves, the [BOCC] will continue to be flagrant in their belief that they can do whatever the heck they please,” said LaRue. “So the possibility is still there for some sort of legal recourse. And we’re looking at a commissioner election and, somehow, library materials wound up as one of the deciding questions for all the [county commissioner] candidates. So will this be decided by the voters? Will it be decided by the courts? I don’t know yet.”