A 2025 survey of nearly 300 Dayton Metro Library employees, representing 75% of the library system’s workforce, found that a majority of survey participants did not trust the library administration to make decisions on their behalf.
Meanwhile, records obtained by the Dayton Daily News reveal library leaders have been the subject of multiple complaints leading to state investigations in recent years of issues ranging from budgetary and personnel concerns to grievances over a baby grand piano at the Huber Heights branch.
Many of these issues followed the hiring of Dayton Metro Library Executive Director Jeffrey Trzeciak in 2021. Trzeciak’s base salary last year was $169,520, according to 2025 library financial records.
Wellness retreats
Since 2022, the library has paid the local HR consulting firm Charlton & Charlton $433,770 to improve the “culture and climate” of its leadership team, according to audit trail records for the library analyzed by this news outlet.
Representatives from Charlton & Charlton did not return requests for comment about their work with the library.
Contracts obtained by the Dayton Daily News using Ohio public records law show services with the goal of improving new employee performance, increasing new employee engagement and implementing strategies to assist in creating an anti-racist organization.
The 2022 contract also included a 12-month team-building for the executive cabinet that covered topics like empathy, accountability, emotional intelligence, burnout, workplace trauma and other areas, like diversity, equity and inclusion.
Emotional wellness retreats — “designed to promote health and well-being” — were also mentioned in the contracts for 2022 and 2024.
The library paid between $4,333 to $5,000 a month for many of these services.
Dayton Metro Library External Relations and Communications Director Debi Chess said this training focused largely on the executive team, some of whom were new leaders working with a relatively new executive director.
Dayton Metro Library is now paying Training Marbles, the company that conducted the 2025 employee survey, another $65,000 to work with all staff and library leadership to improve the situation.
As part of that effort, Trzeciak earlier this month updated library trustees on the status of the realignments, saying Training Marbles has met with the library leadership team for an introductory meeting and will meet with managers for a similar meeting.
“We’ll begin to work with (managers) on issues related to setting expectations, predictable communication, consistent leadership, faster issue resolution and building a stronger organization,” Trzeciak told trustees.
State investigations
Criticism of library leadership hasn’t been isolated to employee surveys, but has spurred complaints that led to multiple state investigations, the Dayton Daily News found.
Voters in November 2024 approved a 1-mill, five-year property tax levy for the library that raises $10.5 million annually and covers operating costs.
That same month, a group that calls itself “The Concerned Citizens for a Better Library” drafted a memo to the Ohio Auditor of State Special Investigations Unit. They raised concerns over finances, personnel issues, the leadership of Trzeciak and “mission-related” items.
The Dayton Daily News obtained the letter and other complaints to the Ohio Auditor’s Office through a public records request.
The Ohio Auditor’s Office closed out its review of Dayton Metro Library in late 2025 with no formal findings of misspent funds, but one referral to the Ohio Ethics Commission.
An Aug. 5, 2024 complaint sent to the state auditor’s office alleged Trzeciak purchased a $20,000 baby grand piano in 2023, and when he found he couldn’t fit it in his home, he placed it in the newly opened Huber Heights branch.
State investigators found this complaint unsubstantiated. Financial records show Dayton Metro Library purchased a $14,850 piano for the Huber Heights branch in 2023 from the Piano Center in Dayton. Trzeciak signed off on the transaction, with the library listed as the buyer.
The piano at the branch has been used by teachers and their students, and the branch hosts pianists on Saturdays throughout the year.
State investigators also reviewed emails between Trzeciak and his husband, Michael Sieveking who is chief information officer the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance, regarding a contract involving library patrons receiving free tickets for DPAA events.
“An email dated August 19, 2022, indicated that the contract with DPAA and the library ‘(a)s previously discussed ... will provide $15,000 in support’ prior to any legal counsel opinion,” according to the case memo.
The library is no longer contracting with DPAA for the ticket arrangement, a decision that resulted from the library’s needs changing, Chess said. But in total, the library spent a little more than $51,000 with DPAA from 2022-2024.
In a September 2025 interview with the auditor’s office, Trzeciak reportedly told investigators that there were multiple organizations involved in the program along with DPAA, including Dayton Live, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and more.
“(Trzeciak) had not considered his husband’s role with DPAA as a conflict,” investigators wrote.
State investigators forwarded these findings to the Ohio Ethics Commission for consideration for possible ethics violations. The state’s ethics commission neither confirms nor denies ongoing investigations.
Another complaint from November 2024 alleged a library executive visited Tijuana, Mexico while attending an American Library Association conference in San Diego. Library officials say employees can take PTO around conferences, and any work-related expense must be approved. The auditor’s office did not open an investigation into this complaint.
Library officials said the Ohio Auditor of State’s findings for the complaints speak for themselves. Trzeciak did not attend an interview between library officials and Dayton Daily News.
Library patrons weigh in
A Dayton Daily News reporter visited the downtown Dayton library branch to ask patrons about the amount of money the library spent on workplace culture.
For Vanessa Allison, of Riverside, nearly $500,000 sounds like a large price tag for leadership training, retreats and team-building exercises.
“Sounds like a lot of talk and no action to me. But leadership training can be great when it has results,” Allison said. She said those results could look like library leaders being trained in new skills that better the library system overall.
Allison said she likes using Dayton Metro Library branches. She was using the library to search for resume templates, and she wants to see libraries continue growing into hubs for community resources.
Eugene Wright, walking out of the downtown branch with his granddaughter Aarys, said libraries have the core mission of promoting literature. He wants to see library funding continue that, as well as supporting training for library employees on a branch level.
“Reading teaches you more about yourself, more about your community, and more about others around you,” Wright said. “Promoting reading improves a community.”
‘Distrustful of administration’
Training Marbles’ analysis of the Dayton Metro Library staff survey said the organization is in “crisis mode” — “employees appear to be overwhelmed, burned out, feel punished and not valued, and are distrustful of administration.”
Dayton Metro Library Deputy Executive Director Rachel Gut said the results of the survey were disappointing, but she feels they also set a clear path ahead toward change.
“Feedback is the only way we’ll grow,” Gut said.
Library employees across the nation are reporting burnout, according to American Library Association President Sam Helmick.
The role of a library employee has evolved far beyond helping patrons find the right book and signing up families for library cards. For many patrons, library employees are the first response to community needs, and libraries themselves act as the only gathering space accessible to everyone.
“We don’t have the health care and psychological and emotional care infrastructure that this nation requires, and the only third place where folks are pretty much welcome without having to purchase something is your public library,” said Helmick.
Helmick said not every library takes measures to gauge the climate of its workplace, and employees can experience a phenomenon scholars have coined as “vocational awe” — the idea that library employees should not critique the demands made of them and their profession because libraries as an institution are sacred.
“My point is that some of this is probably things that this community is working on and fixing, and the fact that they’re taking in the data and committing to resolving it, to me, suggests that that was always the goal, and sometimes we have to reset the deck and do that,” Helmick said of Dayton Metro Library’s employee climate survey.
“But I also do think that right now, as library workers with so much under our feet feeling like quicksand, you have to wonder about those who are leading us. Are they equipped to meet the moment? Because the moment seems to keep shifting.”
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