New McHenry Public Library District director takes over following longtime staff retirements, amid evolving role of libraries

For a little more than a month, the McHenry Public Library District has had Lesley Jakacki at its helm, a familiar face to the institution with 17 years of employment there.

Jakacki took over as executive director in January, after serving for several months as the library district’s interim director, a position she took following the summer resignation of longtime Executive Director James Scholtz.

Bill Edminster, the assistant director of the library district for more than 29 years, also retired at the end of last year.

Both Edminster and Scholtz’s exits from McHenry Public Library’s employment were accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis, Jakacki said in an interview Wednesday, as they had each planned on staying on months longer, if not a year or more.

In his resignation letter, Scholtz, who held McHenry Public Library’s top position for more than 10 years, referenced his handling of a personnel matter, referencing a business management employee who fell behind with financial records work last summer, according to district records reviewed by the Northwest Herald.

“Unfortunately, we’ve also had some very unprofessional and non-productive staff, no substantial income increases or referenda but increasing costs related to staffing, improvements and services,” Scholtz said in the letter.

The employee falling behind with work during the pandemic led the district to hire back Deb Gunnes, who had held the business manager position previously, as an interim business manager, Jakacki said.

“During the pandemic, a lot of people are having to learn how to manage employees and hold people accountable during this virtual change when you’re maybe not seeing them everyday. I think that was just a very different way of managing people that he wasn’t used to,” Jakacki said of Scholtz.

Attempts to reach Scholtz were unsuccessful.

Jakacki said Scholtz may have caught the underperformance of at least one employee more quickly had the pandemic not necessitated fully remote work for library staffers. She noted Scholtz’s family had also moved out of state by the time he resigned.

Scholtz recommended Jakacki to be the next director, and the library’s elected governing board was satisfied with her performance as an interim director and did not look to make an outside hire.

She accepted the board’s offer at a $95,000 salary, according to an offer letter seen by the Northwest Herald.

“It was a natural step for us to hire Leslie as our director of the library. We’ve had two board meetings with her, she’s doing an excellent job,” Jill Stone, vice president of the library’s Board of Trustees, said just ahead of Jakacki’s official hiring as the permanent director.

For now, Edminster’s former position is remaining open, as are about eight others at the McHenry library, Jakacki said. The staff is in the process of looking at whether to change the balance of administrative and public-facing employees at the library in order to possibly have more front-line workers, she said in an interview.

Library district records show Scholtz in August reported the system was facing stagnant “and even decreasing” revenues due in part to fewer fines and fees collected in 2020, coupled with increasing payroll and insurance costs.

“We have tried to curtail spending as much as we can but we also need to upkeep facilities, not allowing things to go into disrepair because that would result in greater expenditures,” Scholtz wrote to the board.

Since then, Jakacki has told the board she would “review our reliance on full-time staff to part-time staff as a way to reduce the cost of salaries and benefits and she said that we would evaluate vacancies as they occurred, along with input from the management team,” according to library district board meeting minutes.

The Woodstock Public Library, which normally employs fewer people than the McHenry Public Library, also has two part-time positions that have been open for almost all of its current budget year, but the entirety of its full-time positions are filled right now, Woodstock Public Library Director Nick Weber said.

“I think in general, libraries in Illinois have been trying to be a little more cautious on staffing than they probably typically would be because of the impact of COVID-19 and not knowing what tax levies are going to look like in the next couple years,” Weber said.

Jakacki said there was uncertainty surrounding the ability of residents within the McHenry library district to pay upcoming property tax bills that fund the library system and other public services, because of the economic impact of the public health crisis.

Algonquin Public Library District Director Sara Murray said her system also underwent three retirements from mid-level positions last year that stayed purposely unfilled until the fall, but they are now staffed.

“There was definitely some flux in staff. There always is. The capacity to fill those positions may have been affected by the pandemic,” Murray said.

Jakacki said she is looking forward to steering the McHenry library system toward the goals she helps set for it as its top official, a job she wanted and trained to reach for several years before she knew the exact dates of Edminster and Scholtz’s departures, she said.

Among the priorities Jakacki discussed in an interview Wednesday was the library’s role in combatting misinformation’s ability to spread more rampantly than ever.

“I think it’s always important to teach patrons and everybody about media literacy. That’s always been something libraries should do,” Jakacki said.

She also sees the library helping to bridge digital divides in the community by ensuring more of the area’s residents who lack high-speed internet connections at home have ways of accessing the web, as well as other technological tools.

As an example, she said, if the library could double its inventory of about 16 wireless internet hotspots – which can be used to link computers, phones, tablets and other devices to the internet – they would likely all still be checked out at once.

She also wants to stay on top of offering ways for library patrons to convert old media formats into more contemporary files, such as providing devices to turn cassettes into digital files.

UPDATE: This article was updated on April 15, 2022, to correct what former Executive Director James Scholtz described as “unprofessional” in his resignation letter. Scholtz referenced his handling of employee matters in the letter, apologizing for “lapses in judgement” on certain hires. He also stated that the library “had some very unprofessional and non-productive staff” as well as “no substantial income increases or referenda but increasing costs related to staffing, improvements and services.”