West Fargo Library board approves reclassification to add two librarian positions

The West Fargo Library Board voted March 12 to approve reclassifying two programming positions into professional librarian roles, a change officials said will improve coverage, supervision and collection support without creating new full-time equivalents.

Jenna, who presented the staff memo and numbers, said the proposal converts the outreach services coordinator into a librarian and upgrades an adult-services programming assistant to a librarian, so each programming team (youth and adult services) will have two librarians and a manager. "No FTE is being created—we're just doing a little bit of a shift here," she said.

The board asked for and received budget details. Jenna said the reclassifications increase salary costs by about $17,000 for the remaining nine months of this fiscal year; she did not include insurance or benefits in that figure because those costs were already budgeted. "We have a surplus of over $33,000," Jenna said, explaining the savings resulted from recent staff turnover and hiring replacements at lower step levels.

Board members voiced support for the change as a retention and career-pathway measure. Robin noted concern about long-term budget impacts from step increases and cost-of-living adjustments but said she could support the move if it improves service. "Staff turnover is expensive," another board member said during the discussion.

A board member moved to approve the changes "as described in the packet," a second was given, and the motion passed by voice vote with no recorded opposition. The chair declared the motion approved.

Next steps discussed at the meeting included offering one of the newly reclassified roles to a top candidate from the recent adult-services recruitment pool and immediately posting the youth-services librarian opening so the library can have staff in place before summer programming begins.