New Heights Libraries Board members Abby Botnick and Richard Louis Ortmeyer
The Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library is pleased to announce the appointment of two new board members: Abby Botnick and Richard Louis Ortmeyer. Their terms will begin in January 2012.
They replace two outgoing Library board members: Board President Audrey Cole, who retires at the end of 2011 after a seven-year term, and Jason Stein, who resigned in June 2011 after two years of a seven-year term to serve on Cleveland Heights City Council. Ortmeyer’s term will be five years and Botnick’s will be seven.
Botnick, a University Heights resident for seven years, is an attorney with the Cleveland law firm Shapero | Roloff Co., L.P.A. and is also an associate board member of the Anti-Defamation League: Ohio, Kentucky and Allegheny Region. She brings many years of legal and advocacy experience to her board position in addition to her deep love for libraries. “Public libraries are an invaluable asset to any community and serve so many important interests,” she says. “Heights Libraries provide literacy and culture, and resources such as educational classes that enrich the public and assist people who might otherwise not have access to these things.” And as the mother of young children, Botnick also feels strongly about literacy, and believes libraries provide a crucial service by bridging the gap between “the skills that children learn at school and the encouragement they receive at home.”
Ortmeyer, a Cleveland Heights resident for nine years, is a principal at the architecture firm Bostwick Design Partnership in Cleveland, where he has worked on several local library projects, including the Cleveland Public Library’s Rice branch and the Cuyahoga County Public Library’s Gates Mills branch. Over the course of 20 years as an architect, he has had the opportunity to work on over 40 library projects in nine states, experience that he hopes to put to use on the Library board. “Those projects taught me to be a skilled communicator, as they required discussions across all organizational levels, from one-on-one with staff to board presentation to large community forums,” he says. “I’ve developed a deep appreciation for the challenges, opportunities, and responsibilities inherent to library projects in particular but also any institution supported through public funding.” Ortmeyer has also been a member of the Friends of the Heights Libraries, a nonprofit group dedicated to supporting Heights Libraries through fundraising and advocacy.
The new members were selected by the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Board of Education at its December 6, 2011, meeting. Ohio law requires that the local school board be the tax authority for a community’s public library, so library trustees are therefore chosen by the school board.
