Library Board Member Dismissed for "Misconduct"

Mary Becelia wanted to give back to the library system. The Stafford Board of Supervisors removed her from her role and accused her of "misconduct" without informing her, or explaining the decision.

By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Photo by Jamie Taylor on Unsplash

A majority of the Stafford County Board of Supervisors voted this past summer to allow the county’s official record to reflect that a citizen representative to the Central Rappahannock Regional Library Board of Trustees was removed for “misconduct”—despite the fact that there appears to have been no misconduct.

Supervisors voted unanimously to remove Mary Becelia as the Stafford County’s citizen representative on the CRRL Board after a closed meeting on July 10, 2024. Becelia had served in that capacity since January of 2023.

“Ms. [Monica] Gary motioned, seconded by Ms. [Crystal] Vanuch, to remove Mary Becelia, the Board’s appointee to the Central Rappahannock Regional Library Board of Trustees for misconduct,” according to the Board’s July 10 minutes.

But in September, following another closed session, the Board voted 4-to-2 against a motion by Gary to reappoint Becelia and strike the word “misconduct” from the record.

“Ms. Gary motioned, seconded by Dr. [Pamela] Yeung, to reappoint Mary Becelia to the Library Trustee Board,” the minutes of the September 3, 2024, meeting state. “Ms. Gary said that she previously shared information with this Board, which she believed was not communicated as clearly as it should have been. She said that she did not believe that Mary [Becelia] engaged in any misconduct.”

In an interview with the Advance this month, Gary reiterated that she “[does] not believe that [Becelia] did anything that rose to the level of misconduct.” 

According to the September 3 minutes, Yeung made a friendly amendment to Gary’s motion to have the word “misconduct” stricken from the record. But a majority of the supervisors—Chair Meg Bohmke, along with Tinesha Allen, Deuntay Diggs, and Darrell English—voted to let the previous record stand.

“Her reputation has been besmirched,” said Cheryl Miller, who was Chair of the CRRL Board of Trustees during the time Becelia served on that board. “There was no misconduct, whatsoever. I can guarantee that.”

Becelia said that to date, despite sending numerous emails, as well as a certified letter to Bohmke—who in addition to being Chair represents the Falmouth district where Becelia lives—she has received no explanation from any of the supervisors either for the initial charge of “misconduct” or for the subsequent refusal to strike the term after being presented with the fact that there is no evidence for it.

“I think it’s significant for people to know that the Stafford Board of Supervisors can and will and has treated a citizen with immense disrespect, cruelty, and lack of professionalism,” Becelia said. “This has hurt me and my family immensely.”

‘I Wanted to Give Back to the Library and to the Community’

Becelia and her husband have lived in Stafford for almost 30 years and raised two children in the county. When a vacancy opened for a citizen representative to serve on the CRRL Board of Trustees, she felt it would be the perfect way to give back both the county and the library system.

The CRRL Board of Trustees is made up of one elected official and one citizen representative from each of the three major jurisdictions in the library system—Fredericksburg City, and Stafford and Spotsylvania counties—and one citizen representative from Westmoreland County.

“I have been such a lifelong beneficiary of [the] library’s services and wanted to give back to the library and to the community,” Becelia said.

She said she also was aware from outgoing Stafford citizen representative Kimberly Young, who encouraged her to apply, that the library had been through some “turbulent times.”

In 2022, the Board of Trustees called a special meeting to discuss concerns raised by a Stafford parent over a puberty and sex education book that appeared in the automated feed of new books available at the library on the mobile app downloaded on her daughter’s tablet.

Bohmke, who was the elected official representing Stafford on the library board at the time, called for the app to be paused for all users while a system-wide audit of the library’s collections could be completed.

“I find it really appalling,” Bohmke said, according to a Free Lance-Star article. “We need to do an audit to see what (our kids are) being exposed to.”

A standing-room only crowd of library users attended the next quarterly meeting of the Board of Trustees to express support for the library’s collection and staff.

Becelia did not address these events in her application to the library board, stating only that “This opportunity was brought to my attention by outgoing member, Kimberly Young, who encouraged me to apply. As a long-time patron (since 1993) of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library system, I would like to give back in service some small percentage of what it has given to me and my family.”

The Board of Supervisors approved Becelia’s appointment to the CRRL Board in January of 2023 by a vote of 4-to-3, with Bohmke, Vanuch, and English voting against it.

Becelia said that aside from Bohmke, who lives in her neighborhood, she doesn’t personally know any of the supervisors and doesn’t understand why they would have voted against her.

Becelia attended quarterly meetings of the library board starting in March of 2023. She said the meetings were “calm” and that she was “starting to build relationships.” In October of 2023, she was elected vice chair and Cheryl Miller was elected chair.

Confusion over Voting

Then in June of this year, longtime CRRL director Martha Hutzell announced that she planned to retire effective October 1. The board quickly called a special meeting on June 18 to decide on a process for hiring her replacement.

“None of us had been through the process of hiring a director,” Miller said.

At the special meeting, the trustees discussed assembling a search committee to review applications and conduct interviews, Miller said.

She said Gary expressed a desire to be on the search committee and left the special meeting early with that understanding.

Miller said that after the special meeting, she talked with staff of the Library of Virginia, in addition to former members of the CRRL Board of Trustees who were involved with Hutzell’s hiring, to learn best practices for hiring library directors.

She said the guidance she received is that a hiring committee should be made up of citizen representatives, as opposed to elected officials, and also that it would be helpful for a “neutral” library professional to review applications and provide a recommendation to the hiring committee.

Miller communicated these plans to the library board via email, informing them that the hiring committee would be made up of herself as chair and the citizen representatives from Stafford and Spotsylvania—Becelia and David Ross, respectively.

Miller said she mistakenly wrote in the email that the “neutral” third-party professional would be able to vote on the new CRRL library director.

“This caused consternation,” Miller said. “I corrected it immediately, but not everybody reads emails.”

Lori Hayes, the Spotsylvania elected official on the CRRL board, and Gary both sent emails to Miller asking why a non-Board member would have voting power.

“I have similar concerns, being an elected official and not having voting rights on the committee. Can you please clarify what the reasoning is that an appointee may vote but not that County's elected official?” Gary wrote in a July 2 email, which the Advance received through a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

Miller responded that evening in an email copied to all board members.

“In the end, every Board member will be voting for the Director position. The ‘neutral’ person is not voting—just providing a professional recommendation to the Hiring Committee,” she wrote. “The Hiring Committee is only three people—Mary [Becelia], David [Ross] and myself. All we are going to do is narrow down the final selection. The three-person committee will receive all of the applications that are qualified according to the posted Job Description.”

In the same email, Miller invited the full Board to listen to the candidate interviews.

The following day, Miller sent another clarifying email to the full Board, stating, “everyone on the Board will be voting on the Library Director position; no one is trying to keep anything from the whole Board of Trustees. This process is streamlined to bring the best candidates forward for the Board to consider three or four people instead of twenty or thirty, etc.”

‘I Was Absolutely Gutted’

Becelia said Gary reached out to her by text message on July 10, asking if they could talk by phone. When they connected, she said Gary asked for her seat on the hiring committee.

Becelia took notes during the phone call. “She said ‘her Board [the Board of Supervisors]’ was not happy that she was not a voting member, and that a large amount of money goes to the library,” Becelia recalled.

Becelia told Gary she needed to reach out to Miller, the chair.

“It wasn’t my seat to give away, and I couldn’t do it in a phone call,” she said.

Becelia said the phone call ended cordially. She said she informed Miller of the conversation after it ended.

“The next day, Cheryl called me in utter shock,” Becelia said. Miller had been forwarded a letter from Bohmke, directed to Hutzell, stating that, “At its Board meeting held on Wednesday, July 10, 2024, the Stafford County Board of Supervisors discussed and voted unanimously to remove Mary Becelia as a member representing Stafford County on the Board of Trustees of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library.”

There was no explanation or reasoning provided for the action.

Both Miller and Hutzell sent emails to Becelia, expressing sadness that she was no longer on the Board and thanking her for her service.

“Thank you very much for your dedicated and professional role on our library board and your service and support of CRRL,” Hutzell wrote on July 14. “I appreciate it very much and will most certainly miss your guidance and your careful and thoughtful advice.”

Becelia said she was sad and puzzled by what transpired, but accepted it—until August, when she read the minutes from the July 10 Board of Supervisors meeting and saw that the record stated she had been removed for “misconduct.”

“I was absolutely gutted, shocked, horrified,” she said. “It was like the bottom dropped out of me.”

Becelia immediately wrote to all seven members of the Board of Supervisors.

“I respectfully request that I be provided with an explanation of the cited misconduct, having received no hint of any wrongdoing on my part at any time during my tenure on the Board, nor was I ever provided the opportunity to speak with anyone on the Board about any perceived issues,” she wrote. “I also respectfully request that my name be stricken from the minutes as soon as possible as having it there damages my name, my reputation, and my standing in our community.”

Becelia received no responses except for one from Gary.

“I have not contacted you directly via phone, as there was some significant frustration about your removal and I was letting the dust settle, again, with the understanding that staff had sent you a letter from our Board articulating our actions. I am happy to speak with you when you have some time,” Gary wrote on August 20. “I also want to take responsibility for not having more communication with you over these couple of years while you served on the CRRL Board. I appreciate your service.”

To date, this is the only communication Becelia said she has received from the Board of Supervisors about this matter.

‘It Was a Mistake’

In an interview, Gary said Becelia’s removal has nothing to do with the hiring committee. She said she isn’t able to share what occurred during the two closed sessions but “I will emphatically reiterate that I think that we should not have removed her.”

“It was a mistake,” Gary said. “But when I brought that back to my board, they found it otherwise. I am incredibly disappointed about how that was handled. I do not believe that she did anything that rose to the level of misconduct.” 

Gary said she was “pretty devastated” when supervisors didn’t vote in September to reappoint Becelia or strike the word “misconduct” from the record.

“It’s very concerning,” she said. “It just seems like it was convenient to continue doing something that was not the right thing.” 

Becelia said that with time, she’s become concerned about the larger implications of there being no protections for citizen volunteers to government boards. The letter from Stafford County notifying her of her initial appointment to the CRRL Board of Trustees informed her that she “served at the pleasure of the Board,” and Virginia Code section 42.1-35, which deals with “library boards, generally,” states only, “A member of a library board may be removed for misconduct or neglect of duty by the governing body making the appointment.”

Becelia said she would like the Code to lay out a process that must be followed before members can be removed. She said she has reached out to Del. Joshua Cole’s office to ask that he propose adding such language.

‘A Troubling Lack of Transparency’

Terrell McAndrew, Vice Chair of the Stafford Democratic Committee, said Becelia’s experience points to a troubling lack of transparency on the part of the supervisors.

“They have the option to be transparent,” he said. “When they came back and [Gary] said this really wasn’t for misconduct, and they took another vote, that was a time to be transparent. If it wasn’t for misconduct, what was it for?”

McAndrew said it should give future citizen volunteers pause to know that they can be removed without explanation.

“I just don’t think this is the way to treat volunteers in Stafford County,” he said.

“It’s just not right—especially somebody who is a volunteer and never ever did anything wrong,” she said.

Becelia said that not only does she no longer have any trust in her elected officials, but she is also afraid of them.

“How could I feel like I can trust [them]?” she said. “They won’t even answer me.” 

To date, there is still no Stafford citizen representative on the library Board of Trustees.

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