The long search for a new executive director of the Nashville Public Library system has been put on pause as the board eyes elevating interim director Terri Luke to the permanent position.
Luke has been in the interim spot for 15 months after former director Kent Oliver retired in July 2022. The process over the past year included a search firm, which presented the board with four finalists who participated in public interviews Monday and Tuesday. At the end of the meeting Tuesday, most board members said that as they listened to the candidates and tried to weigh their strengths, they began to compare the candidates to the interim director.
“Somewhere in the middle of this process I started thinking, ‘You know what? I need to weigh who’s in front of us with what we have,’” said Katy Varney, a library board member who also serves as Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s interim communications director. “And this board has spent a lot of time over the course of many months saying what a great interim director we have.”
Board member Keith Simmons echoed the thought.
“We heard four great presentations yesterday, and we heard four great interviews today,” he said. “I think we’ve got four good candidates. ... I think Terri’s got to be sort of in the mix because we know what a good job she’s done.”
Karen Miller, president and owner of the search firm Bradbury Miller Associates, warned the board that even having the conversation put them in danger of losing their current candidates.
“I feel like it’s my responsibility to remind you of what is left off the table if you go in this direction,” she said. “You are very likely to lose your finalists if you want them, and delaying this process, the longer you delay it, the more likely you are to lose them.”
At least one board member spoke up to say that was a risk he was willing to take.
“I think this process might have made a majority of this board realize what they had was great, and I think that’s why you’re hearing this now,” Charvis Rand said.
The board also lamented how long it has taken to reach this point, with Varney wondering if the length of the process has affected the candidate pool.
Simmons told the Nashville Banner it took almost a year for Metro to issue a request for proposal for a search firm.
After some time talking about the consideration of Luke in the process, it was a concern whether she would even want the job. She was in the room and was recognized by the board to speak.
“If you’re asking me, ‘Would I do it?’ I would do it," Luke said. "I’ve been doing interim for the last 15 months when we thought it was going to be four to six months."
Luke didn’t apply originally, she said, because she thought a new director would be hired and spend a decade or more in the post, while she would likely retire sooner than that. But she described her passion for the job and said it would be something she was willing to continue doing.
Ultimately, the board suspended the search until their next meeting and agreed to have the chair, Joyce Searcy, explore their options with Metro Human Resources. The next scheduled meeting is Dec. 12, though the board acknowledged the possibility of a special-called meeting.
The board sought the opinion of Razel Jones, workforce diversity manager for Metro HR.
“We want to measure everyone according to the same standards, otherwise it’s inequitable,” he said. “We didn’t have a presentation from Terri. We didn’t have the materials from Terri. We didn’t have interviews from Terri. ... There’s all sorts of parts of the process that are very different, so again that’s just an equity consideration.”
This article was first published by our sister publication, the Nashville Post.
