The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/668770
A-4 Local Wednesday, April 20, 2016 The Press-Dispatch GSHVIN.ORG Stephanie Fuller, FNP-C Convenient Care Clinic We Are Proud To Welcome Stephanie specializes in Family Medicine and will be practicing at the Convenient Care Clinic. She began her nursing career at Good Samaritan working in critical care and then went on to become a Nurse Practitioner. Stephanie earned her Associate's degree in nursing at Vincennes University, her Bachelor's degree at IUPUI and her Master's degree at at Kaplan University. Please join us in welcoming Stephanie and her family to Good Samaritan! Pike Central's ACP German Film Production Team won an Indiana Uni- versity German Theatre Festival competition for the third year in a row. Pike Central's team is made up of Reid Craig, Gabe Elliott, Breyton Book- er, team sponsor Fritz Krahl and Lane Ridao. PCHS ACP German team wins two first places at IU Competition Pike Central High School German students won the Indiana University Ger- man Theatre Festival for the third consecutive year. The Pike Central ACP German Film Production Team of Breyton Booker, Reid Craig, Gabe Elliott and Lane Ridao submitted their video, which was a theatri- cal adaptation of Die Zeit- machine (The Time Ma- chine). The storyline, script and location photography were all planned and exe- cuted by the team, mostly on their own time. Schools from all over In- diana submitted videos, from which IU instructors/ professors selected finalists for the event based on their proficiency in German. On Saturday, April 9, the Pike Central ACP German Film Production Team was invit- ed, for the third consecutive year, to the 3rd Annual IU German Theatre Festival. Finalists were invited for the quality of their contri- butions. A fter the viewing and judging of the selected finalists' videos, Pike Cen- tral was named the winner. All the team members are in Mr. Fritz Krahl's IU Ger- man 150 course. Breyton Booker also placed first for best use of German. Eighteen students made time to participate in the event, and the associat- ed workshops in German and acting skills. The contest started by Indiana University three years ago has been won by Pike Central every year. ACP German is taught by Krahl as an adjunct instruc- tor with Indiana University. Participants can earn up to 10 credit hours with IU, sat- isfying language or elective requirements that transfer anywhere. Furthermore, the courses are weighted 1.0 at PCHS. partment. McCrary, in a letter ad- dressed to the library board dated March 13, announced that she was filing a "formal" grievance against Stinson. "I feel justified in this grievance for the following reasons," McCrary wrote. "I have been harassed and am still being harassed by Mr. Stinson. I feel he has in- vaded my privacy as his em- ployee. He is not doing his job, therefore I am forced to do his job for him, making it difficult to do my job ef- fectively. He is purposely en- tering my office when I am not there to leave me Post- It notes and items to handle that are not my responsibili- ty, making my job extreme- ly stressful. By him entering my office and allowing oth- er employees to enter as well when I am not there, I feel it is putting other employees' personal (sic) records at risk as well as the library's finan- cial records. This distress- es me because I am bonded and am responsible for keep- ing those records protected. When I am in my office, ei- ther on the phone or work- ing, he just takes his key out without knocking and lets himself in. I feel this situa- tion is mental harassment. He accused me of doing or saying things that I have nei- ther said nor done. Such as accusing me of printing the gateway report for the pa- per, which I had no access to this year and could not have printed. I feel he has purposely tried to throw me under the bus with the board or other employees for situa- tions that were his responsi- bility not mine." In his response dat- ed March 23, Stinson de- scribed McCrary's griev- ance as "incoherent." "This grievance is what the lawyers would call an abuse of process," Stinson wrote. "It is apparently in retaliation for my schedul- ing the March 8 executive session regarding her un- authorized change of locks on her office door, and re- fusal to provide me with a key. She refers to it in the last sentence of the second paragraph, in which she ac- cuses me of trying to 'throw (her) under the bus with the board.' "Those six of you who were on time for that meet- ing will remember that I told you the bookkeeper had apologized for not in- forming me about the lock change, and that I was not pursuing any disciplinary action against her. Her ex- planation of the lock change was that she 'was doing what I was told' by an unspecified Board member. "The alleged misconduct that was the subject of the executive session was not hers, but that of the Board member who told her to change the lock on an of- fice door in the library. Dur- ing that meeting, the Board President identified himself as the member in question. He apologized to the Board and to me in executive ses- sion." Stinson also rejected Mc- Crary's complaint that he had invaded her privacy "as an employee." "The workplace is not a private space," Stinson wrote. "No employee has any right to exclude her supervisor from her work- place. This bookkeeper is the only employee in the li- brary, including me, who locks her office door during the work day. It is very com- mon for me to go to her of- fice and find it locked when she is inside." An executive session that was held on Wednesday, March 23, to discuss Mc- Crary's grievance against Stinson ended abruptly af- ter two-and-a-half hours when three of the five board members who were present walked out of the meeting. During that same exec- utive session, Stinson pre- sented the library board with his own grievance – dated March 23 – against board president Ropp, ask- ing that Ropp be removed as president. Stinson initially withdrew his grievance against Ropp before the conclusion of the executive session because the library's grievance pro- cedure requires that a hear- ing be held within 14 days, and the board was not sched- uled to hold a meeting until Tuesday, April 12. However, Stinson reinstated his griev- ance on Monday, April 4. A fter adopting a resolu- tion honoring former board secretary Shirley Van Me- ter – who resigned on April 4 "due to a family medical emergency" – during its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, April 12, Ropp turned the meeting over to Elkins to conduct a hearing regarding Stinson's griev- ance. The hearing, however, quickly turned ugly, as sev- eral library employees – in- cluding McCrary, head clerk Dana Hughes and cataloger Pat Weathers – lashed out at Stinson. "I have not felt secure in my job because I feel like you've been trying to get rid of me," said Weathers, Ropp's sister-in-law. "I do my job, and I feel like I do it well, and if you have a question, you should come ask me, not put it in the paper for people to decide whether I'm doing my job or not." "I know for a fact you pass out some of your jobs to the staff," Weathers continued. "I don't appreciate having my name put in the paper as a deadbeat up here at the library, not doing their job, when you don't communi- cate with the staff, when you don't communicate with the public, you don't promote the library. So I think you're failing in your duties as well as accusing other people of not doing theirs." Jim Dickerson subse- quently asked to be recog- nized. "I heard the comment made just a minute ago, the same comment made the last meeting, that people are doing the director's job," he said. "The director's job is to direct the working force. If he comes in the library in the morning and tells Pat she needs to clerk today, then she needs to clerk." "That's the director's job – directing this work force," Jim Dickerson added. "It's not this board's. That direc- tor should be in control of ev- ery employee in here. And none of us are (un)expend- able. But the least expend- able person in this library is our director, because he's the only one qualified by state mandate." One major source of con- tention between Stinson and the board was the hir- ing of two part-time tempo- rary clerks. Stinson noted that the board declined to hire some- one that both he and Hughes initially recommended be- cause they – in response to a question from the board – said that they had no new ideas to help the library. Stinson subsequently in- terviewed and recommend- ed the hiring of two individ- uals with advanced degrees, with the understanding with at least one of them that – in addition to serving as part- time temporary clerks – they would also work on spe- cial projects, such as helping issue digital library cards to Pike Central students and setting up a financial aid resource for both students and their parents, as well as adults wanting to go to col- lege. However, Stinson said that Ropp – after asking to see copies of all employ- ees' time cards in January – told Stinson, "I was told that you are bringing temporary clerks in just to give them hours." At Ropp's instigation, the topic was brought before the board at its February meet- ing, at which it directed Stin- son to only use the tempo- rary part-time clerks when- ever a permanent employee missed work. "I'm going to speak up," said audience member Ste- ven Sermersheim. "I don't understand why you would hire two people who have de- grees and want to help the library and bring it forward if you're not going to give them the ability to do that. If you're going to hire people who are educated to help the library, why wouldn't you let them go for it? Why would you limit them to, 'Oh, no, you're only on-call? '" "Bart, were these young men ... aware that they were going to be assigned special projects when they were in- terviewed? " asked Mary Rund, Friends of the Library president. "We talked about it at the time, yes," Stinson said. "And they were very disap- pointed." "I want to say this," Elkins interjected. "It was brought to us to hire them as on-call temporary. This board did not know about any special projects or anything. I don't believe you notified us of that, Bart. As I recall." "In the course of the rec- ommendations, that's when we talked about it," Stinson replied. "I'm not going to speak for the rest of the board mem- bers, but I was always un- der the assumption that they were for temporary clerks," Elkins said. "They most certainly were, and I've never said oth- erwise," Stinson said. "We had plans for them during their brief time here." Former interim direc- tor and bookkeeper Tom Behme asked if all of the discussions regarding the part-time temporary clerks had occurred during regu- lar board meetings. "Some were and some weren't," Stinson replied. "The initial verbal discus- sions in December were in executive session as we were considering who to hire." Behme noted that the li- brary board digitally re- cords its regular meetings. "So if he didn't hear it and you didn't hear it or you didn't say it and he didn't hear, then you just play the tape and say, 'Here it is,'" Behme said. "I think what Phil's saying is that I didn't initially bring this to their attention," Stin- son replied. "I think Phil probably remembers that I brought it back to them in February and asked them if they really meant not to use these guys. So I don't think we have a dispute as to Feb- ruary, that it was discussed in open session. The dispute is you say I didn't bring it to you in December, at the original time, and I say that I did." "I understood what it was supposed to mean when I was at the meeting," Dick- erson's wife, Marilyn, said. "I understand exactly what you wanted, because you said they were going to be part-time to do this. You talked about the whole pro- gram, how they were sup- posed to help these individ- uals, and we were wanting to get this program started. And I thought it was a great idea." McCrary spoke up as well, noting that the advertise- ment for the two part-time temporary clerks designat- ed them as "on call." "They weren't supposed to be brought in for special projects," McCrary said. "The budget's $14,465 short because the budget didn't get put into Gateway, so the budget couldn't handle hav- ing more hours for people." Stinson noted that the hir- ing of the two part-time tem- porary clerks occurred be- fore the library board voted to increase Hughes' and Mc- Crary's work hours. "Deb didn't object to in- creasing her hours, to 40 hours, because the budget couldn't handle it," Stinson said. "She is still in favor of that. And so, to me, it's not very persuasive to say that we couldn't handle these two young men, part-timers, making $ 8.75 an hour – the other makes $ 8.50 an hour – for very minimal hours to ac- complish things like this for the community." "And I got more hours al- so, Bart, because you gave me all the HR responsibili- ties," McCrary said. "That's true," Stinson re- plied. "Uh-hum," McCrary re- plied. "Yeah, it is." Former head clerk Ka- tie Hartley, who resigned her position in December, blamed "gossip" for the on- going problems at the li- brary. "It's somebody gossiped to somebody," Hartley said. "That's why I quit. Because I looked wrong at some- body, 'Oh, my God,' and the board jumps on the band- wagon and comes in here and has a special meeting. It makes you feel like crap. So then you get an ulcer, and you quit, and you don't want to quit, because you would rather stay." "But the crap that goes on in this building – and there is a lot of crap that goes on in this building, knee deep – is all because of gossip," Hart- ley added. "Somebody said something to Frank, Frank goes, 'Oh, let's look at the time cards,' and now this is where you're at. You're los- ing a director." "Another director," Cindy Sermersheim said. "Another director," Hart- ley repeated. "Everybody looks at the paper. People are reading the paper and laughing at Pike County, again." Cindy Sermersheim re- minded the library board that it had gone through four directors and three interim directors in approximately six years. "For gossip," Hartley said. "And micromanaging ... by the board," Cindy Serm- ersheim said. "This isn't whether they use those guys for whatev- er," Hartley said. "It's be- cause somebody said, and then somebody said, and then Frank looked at their time cards, and you got the ball rolling, again. You're losing people. You're los- ing ..." "Credibility," Cindy Serm- ersheim interjected. "Yes," Hartley agreed. "I'll be out in public and people will look at me and go, 'What the (heck) is go- ing on now? '" Hartley add- ed. "I don't know. I don't care. I'm not there any- more." Hughes, who served as in- terim director after Behme was fired in October 2014 un- til Stinson was hired in Au- gust 2015, complained that Stinson was often out of the Petersburg branch and was difficult to reach by phone whenever decisions needed to be made regarding wheth- er or not to close the library during inclement weather. "I have to call Frank and I have to say, 'Frank, what should we do? '" Hughes said. "Aren't you the second in charge? " Marilyn Dickerson asked. "I'm the second in charge when he's not here," Hughes replied. "So take some initiative and step up and make a de- cision," Steve Sermersheim said. "That's not my job," Hughes replied. "And I don't get paid $50,000 a year for that. That's not my job." Cindy Sermersheim asked if the library board al- lowed Stinson to do his job as director without interfer- ence. "If they did, they wouldn't be on director four," she said. "It's easy to say when you're not in this building," Hughes said. "I'm sorry." "I was in this building," Cindy Sermersheim replied. "But you're not now," Hughes fired back. "But you're not now," ge- nealogy clerk Teresa Ed- wards said. "I'm glad I'm not, now," Cindy Sermersheim replied. Jim Dickerson jumped into the discussion, noting that he thought the Pike County Library had a "ter- rific" staff – at all three li- braries – was well as a "ter- rific" director. "I think we've got a lot of petty, picky grievances go- ing on," Jim Dickerson said. "And for myself as a board member, I think it's time to stop. Quit back stabbing, quit biting people in the back and do your job, and do LIBRARY Continued from page 1 See LIBR ARY on 10 Pregnant... or think you are? 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