By Alex Brown

The Chronicle

When the Timberland Regional Library board renewed the contract of Director Cheryl Heywood last month, Brian Zylstra, then the board president, told the public that the decision had not been an easy one.

“I’m not going to spill the beans on what’s in the (performance) evaluation for Cheryl, that’s for somebody to look at when they make a (public records) request for that document,” he said. “I’ll just say to the public that the board deliberated very carefully and very long on that process on that evaluation. We did not take that lightly.”

That document, obtained by The Chronicle this week in a public records request, shows just how severely the board graded Heywood’s performance — despite their decision to bring her back.

Heywood and the TRL administration have been in hot water since the September rollout of a Capital Facilities Proposal that would have closed a third of the five-county system’s 27 libraries, and revelations about the silencing of staff who tried to warn the public. Board members have said they were blindsided by the plan, which was a year in the making, and the fierce backlash that accompanied it before it was unanimously voted down.

Few of the criticisms leveled at Heywood in the evaluation are surprising — most have already been stated by board members at public meetings. But the document demonstrates the depth of the board’s reservations about Heywood as they weighed whether to renew her contract. Ultimately, Heywood offered to forego a salary raise this year, and board members said they believed she’d taken the criticism to heart.

Heywood was evaluated on 11 categories, and received strong rebukes in each one. Board members lamented the fact that they had been kept in the dark about the closure proposal and the district’s looming financial issues. They also expressed concern about a communication gap between administration and staff, as well as lost trust in Timberland’s communities.

“Taking most of a year to produce this with virtually no input from Board committees or Trustees led to a disastrous rollout,” the evaluation reads, adding later: “Your failure to involve the Board in the future of our service points has resulted in significant criticism from taxpayers and our patrons as well as distress for much of our staff. … (I)t is of great concern that there were NO budget committee meetings called to discuss the ‘financial cliff’ facing this organization.”

Under the “Government and Community Relations” category, the board’s report sarcastically noted that Heywood had certainly met her goal to “encourage feedback from the public and community leaders.”

“Board members have heard from mayors, city administrators and county commissioners that they no longer trust you or TRL,” it reads. “There is now a significant breach of trust in the relationship with all these stakeholders which must be repaired. You surprised the Board and the Randle community with the proposal to let the building lease lapse for its library. The failure to manage the process and involve the board resulted in sharp criticism from community members and city/county officials.”

That breakdown of trust, the board noted, now makes it even more difficult to ask taxpayers to pass a levy lid lift, one of the options on the table for TRL to address a funding shortfall that’s projected to be more than $600,000 this year.

The board also took Heywood to task for internal communication, noting that staffers have repeatedly expressed they feel “stonewalled” by administrative staff when presenting ideas and concerns, leading to “extremely low” morale. During a presentation of the closure plan to the board on Sept. 22, Heywood’s staff told the board: “If the branches don’t like the changes, too bad, they will just have to do it,” the document reads.

“That is not a good model of leadership on your part,” the board wrote.

The report also took issue with Heywood’s communication with the board.

“With the release of the Capitol (sic) Facilities Plan, the high level of trust between you and the Board of Trustees has been damaged,” it reads.

Board members said they were given a “high-pressure sales pitch” to support the plan during a Sept. 22 meeting, which put them in a “minefield” during the Sept. 26 meeting in which the public was first able to weigh in. The document concludes by saying Heywood must repair the trust of staff, communities and the board.

Heywood issued a four-page response to the report, thanking the board for a “constructive evaluation.” She admitted the closure proposal caused “serious strain,” and apologized again for its rollout.

“I apologize to the Board for the flaws in that process,” she said. “I am also apologizing to staff, Union representatives, and community members, and I am working hard on rebuilding the trusting relationships that are essential to TRL’s success.”

She also outlined just where that rollout went wrong, saying she should have sought the board’s input early on, followed by more outreach to staff and the public.

“This was a poor approach,” Heywood wrote. “It would have been much better to have had an early Board-level discussion about whether to develop other options, how much consideration was needed at the Committee level, and when to involve the full staff and public.”

She pledged that her future work on the budget gap and TRL’s long-term strategy would include more board involvement, as well as seeking early feedback from staff and the public.

Heywood’s contrite tone marks a shift from the self-evaluation she submitted last year. That report was given the board on Sept. 26, the same board meeting at which scores of Randle residents showed up to protest the potential closure of their library and at which the Capital Facilities Proposal was first presented in a public setting.

The self-evaluation highlights that proposal as a point of pride.

“It is only since last fall, with the right leaders in place and with the right analytical tools and the budget in order, have we been working steadily on a new vision, a new model of service,” she wrote. “This document is more than a Capital Facilities Plan — it is a complete re-imagined vision — service model, staffing, and budget alignment. In my years at TRL we have never been through this kind of deep process, questioning everything we do and how we could do it better to reach more people than we are reaching now. We have provided you this document so that you can consider options now, and not be forced to, in less than two years, to make reductions in staffing/closing libraries.”

Perhaps anticipating the backlash from Randle residents, following a contentious town hall the week before in which more than 200 community members showed up to advocate for their library, Heywood blamed Mary Prophit, the library’s manager, for informing the public prematurely.

“We were looking into options for you at Randle, and we were going to report back to you — again this was not a fait accompli,” she said. “The Mountain View Library Manager was asked to be discrete and she acted otherwise.”

Closure rumors first reached the public in a Sept. 13 email from Dennis Degener, pastor of Randle United Methodist Church. Prophit has said she was not responsible for the plan becoming public. Emails obtained by The Chronicle in a public records request show Prophit repeatedly advocated to warn her patrons that their library was on the chopping block, only to be chastised by her supervisors and told the public should not be given the impression that they could “sway the decision.”

Nearly four months later, Heywood and her team are making an effort to solicit the kind of public feedback they rebuffed last year. District Manager Trisha Cronin has organized a “Community Chat” series to hear from patrons at all of Lewis County’s libraries, and Heywood showed up to the meeting in Winlock last week after hearing that residents wanted the chance to address her.

“People wanted to make sure that I heard what they were saying, so I shuffled around my schedule to come here today,” she said.

The board’s review wasn’t all critical of Heywood. It noted that the Capital Facilities Proposal, despite its “disastrous” outcome, has some “innovative” ideas. The proposal was designed to address the many residents Timberland is currently not reaching, accompanying the closures with mobile services, expanded keycard access, remote lockers and coffee stand-style “express” locations.

The board also praised Heywood’s team for pursuing grants, fostering partnerships, adding programs and managing facilities.