The Clear Creek Library District has hired a development director, making it the first time the district will be at full staff since its internal restructure in spring 2017.

Lucy Thoms is moving to the district from Iowa, where she had some library experience but most recently worked at an organization in a marketing-type position, HR/Administrator Cameron Marlin said. Thoms will start with the Clear Creek Library District on Aug. 27 and be responsible for fundraising, grant writing and marketing.

Last May, the district completely restructured with a three-person upper management team, and the branch librarian positions were eliminated. The district’s management became the district director and the newly created human resources/administrator, and a development director position also was created.

With Thoms hired as development director, interim District Director Libby Caplan said the library district now has the resources to pursue larger and more long-term projects, such as updating the website, renovating the library in Georgetown and doing landscaping at the Idaho Springs location.

“I think now that … we have a year under our belts, and our team is getting comfortable with each other, you’re going to see a lot of growth in how we provide for the community,” Caplan said. “ … It’s nice to have a platform that we know works, and now we will be able to implement more services for community members.”

While the district’s restructure last spring included the position, both Marlin and Caplan explained that staff decided not to hire until recently to allow for a sense of steadiness and normalcy to return to the district.

“It has been a very challenging year,” Marlin said. “ … We’ve had a lot of turnover.”

Caplan commented: “The whole goal of the restructure was to make sure … we had good leadership in place before bringing on new people. … We had a lot of groundwork to do with building up our systems again and make sure we could guide these people in the right direction.”

In addition to Thoms, the district brought on Holly McClearn-Grant as its program coordinator earlier this month. Caplan said McClearn-Grant is a published author, and she is excited to do some more creative literacy programs and growing the writing side of the program.

With the addition of the development director position, the district will now have nine full-time employees, five part-timers and eight substitute librarians.

Now that things are steadying out, both Marlin and Caplan said they were thankful to the staff members and are looking forward to building up the district’s services as a team.

“I think that we have a dream team put together right now and that everyone is in it for the long haul,” Marlin said. “We get to keep moving forward with our goals instead of doing triage.”