Alisa M. Schafer

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

MANITOWOC - Fred Hazlewood was voted in as the Manitowoc Public Library’s Board of Trustees president during its meeting Monday.

While other board members cited a lack of time to devote to the responsibility for not taking the position, Hazlewood said he would volunteer as president to get the board through current issues, such as the search for a new library director and a police investigation into allegations of false library accounts created to boost circulation numbers.

However, Hazlewood said once he felt the board was out of troubled waters, he would step down as president.

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“I hope it’s an interim appointment and I’ll be done with it as soon as possible, and be able to go back to enjoying my retirement,” he said. “Primarily, what I want to do is get the library back and the board on an even keel and running as efficiently as it has been over the past few years. Now, that means we need to get to a conclusion on the ex-director of the library and resolve the issues that are associated with that.”

Hazlewood is the retired Manitowoc County Circuit Court judge who presided over Steven Avery's December 1985 trial in which Avery was wrongfully convicted of rape/attempted murder. Avery served 18 years of a 32-year sentence, before DNA evidence exonerated him in that case. Avery was released from prison in 2003 and then was arrested in 2005 and convicted in 2007 for the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach. Avery, whose story has been made famous by the Netflix series "Making A Murderer," is serving a life sentence without parole.

Until recently, David Gratz served as library board president. However, the city’s Common Council rejected Mayor Justin Nickels' recommendation to reappoint Gratz to the board at a special meeting July 21. Gratz's term had expired July 1.

Ald. Jason Sladky said he felt there was a lack of leadership and a lack of good judgment on the library board.

Joining Hazlewood in leadership roles are board members Lee Thennes as the board’s vice president and Robert Vollendorf as the secretary and treasurer.

The Board of Trustees took its first steps toward finding a director for the Manitowoc Public Library during its meeting.

Thennes, who had volunteered to lead the search with the board’s Personnel Committee in an earlier meeting, submitted a “moderately aggressive” approach to the search for a permanent director for the board to discuss.

In the timeline, he allotted two weeks for the job posting through various agencies and another two weeks to screen the candidates and interview them. Thennes said his timeline is very flexible, depending on the needs of the board and the personnel committee.

Rebecca Petersen, director of the Manitowoc-Calumet Library System, offered to create a list of organizations where the job posting would be seen by qualified people for the director’s position.

During the public comments section of the meeting, Ald. Christopher Able advocated for increased communication between the Board of Trustees and the Common Council.

“I know right now there is some tension and some confusion between the board and the council,” Able said. “I really think the fission between the library board and the council began almost two years ago with the budget. Some of you will remember that we had serious disagreements when the mayor and the council reduced the library’s budget by $80,000.”

Able said the board’s decision to close the library on Thursdays as a result of the decreased funding seemed like a political move to increase pressure on the city to restore the library’s budget. He also shared that he recently discovered that employees of the library still worked on Thursdays, even though the library is supposed to be closed.

“We want to reasonably know that you are exercising your responsibility to make sure patrons and taxpayers are being well served by library operations,” Able said.

Petersen said those employees working on Thursdays are needed to keep the library open to people renting rooms in the library and also to prepare materials for other libraries in the system that rely on the Manitowoc Library for resources.

“This library has a responsibility on Thursdays to our other member libraries as far as processing books, having holds ready to go out on Friday,” she said. “We are also renting a space here, so the library does need some personnel here to allow us to come in to work our normal hours. The library is the resource library for our entire system, so to have no personnel here on Thursday would be letting the other libraries down. “

Later in the meeting, Board Member Todd Holschbach said he’d like members of the Common Council to research their claims before offering advice on library matters.

“It’s unfortunate that we have city council folks offering their advice to us and speaking to a couple of these issues that are a little more dramatic right now,” Holschbach said. “What’s unfortunate about it is they clearly don’t have the information to be speaking on the topic. … Today, we heard from someone who clearly didn’t know what the board had discussed about closing the library on Thursdays. I would hope that our friends on the city council gather their facts before they talk a lot about this.”

The board later went into closed session to discuss their search for an interim director for the library. The board took no further action after the closed session.

Alisa M. Schafer: 920-686-2105 or alisaschafer@manitowoc.gannett.com