O’Gara is New Assistant Library Director; Process Described for Interim School Committee Appointment

By Kim Siebert MacPhail

Selectmen Chair Cathy Cordes announced last night that former School Committee member Noreen O’Gara has accepted the position of Assistant Director at the Bedford Free Public Library, effective February 11. O’Gara will replace former Assistant Director Vanessa Abraham who left in November to take the top job at the Groton Public Library. The search for Abraham’s replacement has resulted in O’Gara accepting the job.

O’Gara previously worked at the Bedford Library as a Reference Librarian before taking a position at the Winchester Public Library. Citing “professional obligations,” O’Gara resigned from the School Committee on February 5, where she had served for eight years.

Cordes explained the process by which O’Gara’s School Committee seat will be filled.

“Whenever an elected official in town resigns, leaving an open space, that position is filled by a joint meeting of the Selectmen plus the…. remaining members of the commission or board—in this case, the School Committee. So it will be the School Committee and the five Selectmen [that make this appointment].

“I have been in contact with Anne Bickford—who will not be the School Committee Chair, as I will not be the Selectmen Chair at the point at which this happens,” continued Cordes. “Anne will be gone [from the School Committee] as of March. [However], they would like to have the [joint] meeting at a School Committee meeting on March 19.”

Cordes went on to explain that the first step in the process to fill O’Gara’s seat is that interested people should fill out the Town’s volunteer questionnaire: https://www.town.bedford.ma.us/index.php/committees/committees-q-z/volunteer-coordinating

Candidates will not be processed through the Volunteer Coordinating Committee. Instead, their questionnaire forms will be submitted to the Town Manager’s office and then distributed to the Selectmen and School Committee for review prior to in-person interviews at the March joint meeting.

“My recommendation is that we use the same process as we used for Planning Board interviews last year [when Shawn Hanegan was appointed to fill Margot Fleischman’s seat upon her election to the Selectmen]. I think the proces fair,” Cordes said, “and the Committees appreciated it. So I have sent that out [as] a recommendation [to the School Committee].”

The person who is chosen to fill this vacancy will serve for one year—the duration of O’Gara’s present term—and would then have to run again for a full term, if desired.