Fayetteville Public Library employees are raising concerns about pay disparity and a difficult work environment. The problems were raised last week at the library's board of trustees meeting. Ozarks at Large's Daniel Caruth brings us this report.
"$12 to $14.43 an hour and that comes to $13,852 a year. I wonder who in this room can live on $13,000 a year. I know I can't."
Those remarks from Fayetteville resident Nicole Linn came during a tense public comment period at the end of the Fayetteville Public Library's August board meeting last week. Linn said she was compelled to address the board after several employees reached out to her on social media about low pay and what they said is a toxic work environment.
"What I've [heard] over and over is employees going, we told them we could do this, we told them we could do that and management doesn't want to hear it," Linn said. "There is a huge disconnect between what the employees are saying to their managers and what it's getting to y'all. And by the way, y'all aren't seeing this, but I see about 16 people behind you nodding."
The meeting, which took place in the library's Walker event room, was lined with around 30 employees who, at times, applauded during Linn's nearly 20 minutes of comment.
"You have a multi-million dollar budget and you have people choosing between beans and electricity," she said. "It is not acceptable."
Earlier during the board meeting, members approved a new compensation study plan, payment transparency policy and new benefits package for employees.
The new compensation study conducted through the Los Angeles-based company Salary Cube found that 96 positions, or 90% of the total, were below the comparable market rate, and 45 of those positions were at least 20% below the market rate. Lauren Husband is a development coordinator for the public library and said she discovered her salary was more than 35% below the market rate.
"Which was saddening to hear but I was excited to hear that also I would be receiving a raise," she said. "My raise was only 5%, so there it seems to be some miscommunication somewhere between what we were expecting to receive in compensation and what we did receive."
David Johnson is the library's executive director and said nearly 60% of the budget goes toward personnel.
"Well you know we're going into the 2025 budget planning right now and now," he said. "After the feedback we've received this evening we may need to go back and look and say do we want to take some of these monies that we have allocated for programming our services and reallocate that to personnel. Now that means a few fewer things maybe that we can do for the public."
This year's approved budget includes $12.7 million in revenue with $12.6 million in expenses, according to library documents. Most of the library's revenue comes from property taxes and grants, and in 2016, voters approved a bond issue to help pay for the library's $50 million building expansion, which opened in 2021.
Rob Qualls, one of the library board members, said he knows the compensation rates are too low at the library and believes the board needs to listen more to staff to help resolve these problems.
"And having cooperation with those who pay taxes with the people that approve the millage is really important," Qualls said. "They are the ones that determine how much money we get and what we do with it so it's really glad that the conversation is happening and I really look forward to to listening more and hoping we can do what we can to fix fix that issue."
David Johnson said getting the new compensation rates in place in a good place to start. He said pay increases will be rolled out in phases.
"So those 45 [lowest positions] will be getting raises in their October paycheck," he said. "The raises are not going to bring everybody straight to market - it's an incremental raising process I mean we don't have enough money to make everybody flush so we're in the process of figuring out how do I treat the 45 and then we've got others that are in the 10 to 19 % range and how are we going to give those people raises?"
The board also voted to implement compensation studies every three years. Previously, studies were conducted every three to five years— with the most recent completed in 2019.
Lauren husband said there is still more to be done and she hopes the conversation doesn't end here.
"Everyone deserves a living wage," Husband said. "If you work for the Fayetteville Public Library you should live in the city...you're paying the taxes to support the library. It just makes sense that you should be able to live there. I just hope that the public and other stakeholders in our city and the people who live here continue to pay attention."
Library Board of Trustees meetings are every third Monday of each even-numbered month. The next meeting is scheduled for Oct. 21.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
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