Sonoma County Library Director Brett Lear announces resignation

Brett Lear, who earned wide praise for steering the Sonoma County Library out of turmoil and to the cusp of new operational stability, stunned colleagues by announcing without warning Monday that he is stepping down from the director’s post he has held for three years.

Lear’s notice came on the same day the library was celebrating the reopening of branches on Mondays, a change made possible by a voter-approved tax increase passed last year.

Lear spearheaded that campaign, which provided funding for the expansion of library hours, as well as a permanent branch in Roseland, the hiring of dozens of new employees and a range of expanded services and programs.

He enjoyed a healthy amount of public adulation for the library’s growth during his tenure. But inside the institution, there have been grumblings about his management style and talk of tension between Lear and the appointed 11-member Library Commission.

Lear sent an email to commissioners 45 minutes prior to their monthly meeting at Santa Rosa City Hall on Monday informing the group of his intention to step down. Though he did not offer specific reasons for leaving, he stated that he made the decision “after much consideration” and noted that passage of Measure Y “puts a new director in the position to come on board and lead SCL to even greater heights.”

He reiterated that sentiment by phone Tuesday and said he would be “leaving the library in much, much better shape than I found it.”

He declined to speak on the record about his relationship with the commission or state whether he was experiencing problems on the job.

He insisted his departure was primarily a matter of timing. Lear is soon to receive his master’s degree in business administration from Sonoma State University and he said he’s looking forward to exploring other career opportunities, including outside of library management. Lear’s wife is a librarian at SSU and the couple have a young son.

“Certainly, I imagine there will be people that, you know, wish I would have stayed and saw this revenue start to flow into the library and achieve even greater things. But I think this is a good time for me to step away,” he said.

Helena Whistler, chairwoman of the Library Commission, who praised Lear for doing a “bang-up job” as director, said the commission, “to a member, was taken by surprise at this turn of events.”

“We are sorry he has made the decision to resign,” Whistler said. “The Commission and the Sonoma County Library system is grateful for his work.”

Whistler would not comment on whether commissioners had issues with Lear’s work. The commission had scheduled a closed-session meeting Monday to discuss the director’s job performance. But Whistler said that was a routine step that was part of Lear’s required annual review.

“There’s nothing nefarious here,” she said.

Still, many rank-and-file employees did not like working with Lear according to Tom Popenuck, a building mechanic at the Sonoma County Library and regional vice-president of Service Employees International Union Local 1021. The library reached a contract deal with its unionized workforce in November that included 3 percent pay increases for most employees.

“What he did was needed and necessary to get the library moving forward. But he was not easy to work with,” Popenuck said.

Lear on Saturday posted on his personal Facebook page that he was seeking help with “achieving productive relationships with self-important, petulant, passive-aggressive people.”

In the interview Tuesday, Lear said the post reflected an encounter he had with people at Saturday’s dedication of Old Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa and not anyone associated with the library.

As director, Lear was paid more than $161,000 annually. Under the terms of his contract, he must work another 30 days unless he negotiates that time down, which he said he will seek to do.

Lear, who holds a master’s degree in library science from Florida State University, was the director of a county library system in that state when he was hired by Sonoma County in 2014 to replace Sandy Cooper, whose management style had drawn a torrent of criticism and prompted county supervisors to launch a review of the library system’s 1975 joint-powers agreement. The system was still struggling from the financial fallout linked to the recession, with service reductions that included branch closures on Mondays.

Lear appeared to right that ship, spearheading a strategic plan for the library that helped set it on its present course for growth. The turnaround culminated in November with county voters approving Measure Y, an eighth-of-a-cent sales tax increase that went into effect last month and is expected to pump an additional $10 million annually into the library’s $17 million budget.

The increased revenue is allowing the library system to hire new staff and to reopen branches on Mondays for the first time since August 2011.

Scott Alonso, president of the Sonoma County Library Foundation, credited Lear for having a “strong vision” for the library system. Wendy Hilberman, the foundation’s former executive director, concurred.

“I think he did a really good job of bridging the gap between a lot of different groups in order to gain consensus and rally people around the ballot measure,” Hilberman said.

Whistler said the Library Commission is in the process of naming an interim director and beginning the search for a permanent hire.

You can reach Staff Writer Derek Moore at 707-521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com.