Houston Public Library’s new director Cynthia Wilson talks fixing morale, other big changes

Cynthia Wilson doesn’t consider it a secret that the biggest problem currently facing the Houston Public Library system is low morale .

In the few weeks since Mayor John Whitmire tapped her to replace the library’s longtime executive director Rhea Lawson , she’s heard about plenty of concerns about what library employees have described as a “hostile” work environment across the department .

“Clearly, we’ve heard lots of things about the morale issues,” Wilson said last week during a sit-down interview with the Houston Landing. “And quite frankly, I’ve worked in large organizations for the last 31 years and know that if there’s a culture that’s not working, then nothing else is probably going to be working at its peak.”

Her biggest goal, she said, is to fully understand the roadblocks and ripples that have led to this current flashpoint.

To find the answers, she’s making herself available to the 400-or-so employees across the library system. And she’s noticed something important along the way: Library employees are desperate to have their insights heard and appreciated.

A hostile workplace at the Houston library

The Houston Landing has been investigating employee claims of a toxic, hostile workplace across the city’s library system since last June. In that time, employees have reported their concerns have been brushed off by leadership — or worse, that in several cases, employees who speak out have been retaliated against .

In March, the Landing made public results of a survey that found the library had the second-lowest employee satisfaction among all city departments.

When answering that survey last fall, more than 40 percent of library employees said it isn’t safe “to challenge the way things are done in my department.”

No more, Wilson said last week.

“I do not believe you improve an organization by asking people to be quiet,” she said. “You improve an organization by getting more input: People support what they help to create, and that means adding their voices, having a voice.”

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While this interim role is Wilson’s first foray into the world of public libraries, she recently came out of retirement following a long career in public education, including serving as chief of staff for the Houston Independent School District in 2017 and 2018.

Wilson is very clear: She has no intention of serving as a permanent leader for the embattled library system.

The best interests of the city, she said, would be served by finding a leader who can stay in the city for a decade or so. (She has two grandchildren in California, ages 5 and 3, and said, “I don’t want to miss that.”)

While long-term vision and changes will be the responsibility of some yet-to-be named executive director, there’s plenty on Wilson’s plate at the moment.

“I’m just kind of working on emergencies,” she said. “Of course, we had the Montrose issue.”

Montrose library closes – then opens

Last month, one day after the Landing published an investigation into the deteriorating conditions at Houston Public Library’s Montrose branch, and a potential bid from neighboring University of St. Thomas to purchase the property for $1.25 million, the library made a surprise decision to permanently close the historic building .

One day later, the mayor — who had not been made aware of the decision to close the library ahead of the library’s announcement — replaced Lawson with Wilson. And within a couple weeks, Whitmire announced the branch’s April 15 reopening.

“We had two weeks” to reopen the library, Wilson said last week. “We were in a meeting, and someone said, ‘What about four weeks?’ And I said, “Mm, no. Two weeks. Let’s challenge ourselves.’”

That taste for challenge, Wilson said, is a defining part of the spirit of her work. Library users across Montrose who were suddenly without a branch, she said, didn’t have the luxury of waiting. So neither did she.

The two-week deadline also made it possible to reopen the branch before it had officially been closed for 30 consecutive days, a benchmark that would have triggered a clause in the gift deed granted to the city upon the donation of the library property, which noted that if the building went 30 days without serving as a public library, the University of St. Thomas could take back the property.

While city officials have been mum on the long-term future of the Montrose branch, Wilson said that “the library as it exists today will remain,” even as the city continues to re-evaluate the best use of the new library location planned to open in the mixed-use Montrose Collective later this year.

“The new library, we just have questions around, is it conducive to the purpose of a library, or would it serve as something that’s more technology driven?” Wilson asked. “I don’t have all the answers right now, but we’re trying to figure out what’s the best way to serve the community with the finite resources we have.”

Revamping operating hours at the Houston library

And speaking of those resources, she said, the library system plans to do a better job of evaluating operating hours across the city’s libraries, including at the Montrose branch, where the number of open hours dropped by 44 percent over the past six years , according to a Houston Landing analysis.

“Sometimes people are like, ‘Well the easiest way to shrink my budget is to cut the hours, or the easiest way to shrink my budget is to have fewer people, which means I have to cut my hours,’” she said.

As a result, she said, the Montrose branch “is closed Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which frankly doesn’t resonate with me.”

As the department makes cost-cutting decisions during this budget season, Wilson said she plans to direct her staff to examine possible reductions that are “further removed” from the on-the-ground services the library offers. To do that well, she said, she needs feedback — not just from employees, but from library users across the city.

“It’s their library,” she said. “It’s not my library.”

More leadership changes on the horizon?

When asked last week whether Wilson planned to make more leadership changes, she demurred.

“It’s possible. But I’m very thoughtful about anything that I do when it comes to life decisions that I make for someone else,” she said. “I have to be fair, and I have to be cognizant of the decisions I make, because I’ve always found that the decisions that I make too quickly are usually wrong – or that I wish I’d taken more time to study and to be informed and to make well-informed decisions.”

On Tuesday, the library issued an all-staff email announcement, alerting employees to the resignation of longtime Chief Operating Officer Ricardo Peralez.

Peralez was second-in-command at the library. His last day at the library will be May 3.

“We thank him for his years of service and wish him the very best in his future endeavors,” library spokeswoman La’Donna Weems wrote in Tuesday evening’s all-staff email.

It remains to be seen whether more leadership changes could be announced in the near future.

As Wilson said last week, “I won’t promise you there won’t be changes, but I will say they will be well thought through. And I will say there won’t be surprises to anyone.”