By Bob Seidenberg and Alex Harrison
Evanston Public Library is already without a permanent executive director.
As of Wednesday’s meeting, the library will also be without most of its senior board leadership.
In dramatic fashion, board trustees Meghan Shea and Esther Wallen announced they would resign from the board this month, and Michelle Mills announced she would withdraw herself from reappointment. Each voiced lack of support from the city in their efforts to win an intergovernmental agreement sharing costs for the city-owned library buildings as a factor in their decisions.
The exits will leave the nine-seat board with just three members, as terms are also expiring for Board President Tracy Fulce and Trustee Catie Huggins, and the board has an existing vacant seat.
Evanston’s City Council, meanwhile, is expected to consider four new appointees to the board at Monday night’s meeting. Among them is Councilmember Shawn Iles (3rd Ward), a previous resident board member before he ran for his current seat in 2025.
City was ‘actively hostile’
Library officials worked hard “to advance a capital strategy for our aging facilities — a complex undertaking given that EPL does not own the building it occupied,” said Mills, the library’s finance committee chairperson, about her decision not to seek another mayoral appointment to the board. “Which makes every conversation about renovation and investment require a level of city partnership that has proven extraordinarily difficult to secure.”
She said trustees tried to advance that plan, navigating a city relationship that “at worst, was actively hostile to this library’s governance and independence.”
“We worked for years on a lease and intergovernmental agreement that would have clarified and strengthened that relationship,” said Mills, often the library’s point person on these talks. “Despite many meetings with the mayor, city councilmembers and attorneys, despite an enormous amount of work, we were unable to get it over the finish line.”
“My parting words … to the board, to the public, to the City Council and city staff are ‘Please remember this is one city,’” said Mills who also acts as treasurer. She was slated to succeed Fulce as board president.
“The building is not the City Council’s building. It is owned by the people of Evanston, as are all of the library’s assets. We have to stop thinking of these false divisions and start thinking about what the vision is and how we achieve it,” Mills said.
She said the City Council’s recent move to dissolve the library’s independent status entirely and return it to city department status — a status the library broke away from in 2012, after incurring substandard budgets because of the city’s perennial financial woes — also figured in her decision not to seek reappointment.
“And I am glad this has so far not moved forward,” Mills said, “but the fact that this was seriously contemplated tells me something important about the environment the board has been operating in.
“We need leaders who understand why this is important, and why the features of our arrangement protect free speech and independence,” she said.
Other members of the board stepping down early also referred to the relationship with the city as a basis for leaving. The treatment of Fulce and Yolande Wilburn, EPL’s first Black director in the library’s 150-year history, was also mentioned during the comments.
Shea maintained that during her time on the board, “I have witnessed a consistent disregard for the vision and advocacy of this board, and what I’m seeing leads me to believe that skilled, deeply competent Black women leaders in this community have time and time again been pushed into impossible conditions with little to no support.”
She said that by stepping down early, she hopes her action will encourage community members to ask harder questions.
“Why do so many Black women leaders in Evanston end up leaving their roles, getting silenced or feeling like leaving is their only option for their own well-being?” said Shea, who was recently a chairperson of the PTA Equity Project in District 65. “Why are we fighting over a beloved public institution in a city that prides itself on being progressive, and why has a board that has tried in good faith to get clarity and accountability from the city around fiscal responsibility and basic building maintenance been met with so much resistance?”
Defending library’s ‘fundamental’ independence
Wallen, a former vice president of the board and head of the library’s diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging committee, who also had another year in her term, said she was troubled by efforts during the last few years “to undermine the purpose and independence of the library board.”
“These efforts have included proposals to refer libraries to (departmental status) of the district, critical challenges to the board’s governance authority and responsibilities, criticism of the board’s review of operational agreements with the city, and discussions regarding the appointment of a sitting City Councilmember to the library board,” she said.
“Taken together, these actions erode the independence that is fundamental to effective public library governance,” Wallen argued. “Library trustees are entrusted with exercising independent judgment in the best interest of the library and its patrons. They are responsible for providing oversight, accountability and stewardship, free from political influence. When that independence is questioned or diminished, the library’s ability to fulfill its mission is placed at risk.
“The board’s review of operational agreements with the city was neither unprecedented nor extraordinary,” she said.
“Similar reviews have occurred periodically for more than a decade and reflect responsible governance practices. Seeking clarity regarding roles, responsibilities, accountability and service expectations through an intergovernmental agreement is not an act of hostility; it is an act of stewardship.
“Likewise, the appointment of a sitting City Council member to the library board, regardless of who the individual involved, would establish a concerning precedent,” Wallen said. “Such an appointment would blur the distinction between two separate governing bodies and compromise the independence that public library governance is intended for them to protect. Effective partnership between the city and the library requires mutual respect for each entity’s distinct legal responsibilities, not a consolidation of authority.”
Mills, who had been slated at the previous board meeting to succeed Fulce as president, originally agreed to extend her term, which expires this month. She was seeking a new term of service, “and then I asked the mayor to not consider it,” she confirmed after Wednesday’s meeting.
Iles not trying to be ‘city oversight’
Appointing a councilmember to the board is new in Evanston, but allowed under state law. The Illinois Local Library Act only states that “Not more than one member of the city council shall be at any one time a member of the library board.”
In an emailed statement to the RoundTable, Iles said he is “uniquely qualified” to join the board as it onboards other new members and searches for a new permanent director. Iles has a master of library and information science degree and spent 10 years on the board as a resident, including two years as its president.
“The Board is facing significant turnover and an accompanying loss of institutional knowledge,” Iles said in the statement. “My history on the Board will be useful to provide background for new appointees.”
“I do not see my role as City oversight of the Board, but I certainly think I can help with communication between the City and EPL as they sort out a new Intergovernmental Agreement,” he continued.
Besides Iles, City Council will also vote on appointing resdients Sharef Al Najjar, Gustav Granchalek and Liz Kenney to the board. Each will serve a three-year term if confirmed by a majority vote of councilmembers, which Iles indicated he will abstain from.
The vote could lead to another highly contentious debate across the dais, as happened with some other appointments this term to the Land Use Commission and Finance and Budget Committee.