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The majority of New York City public libraries will be forced to cut their hours yet again and open just five days a week if Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed $58.3 million budget cuts go ahead, the presidents of the Big Apple’s three library systems warned Tuesday.
Since November, the city’s more than 200 public library branches have already been shut every Sunday to offset the surging cost of the local migrant crisis.
On Tuesday, the presidents of the New York, Brooklyn and Queens Public Library systems laid bare the possible further reduction in services as they testified during a City Council hearing about Hizzoner’s looming 2025 fiscal year budget plan. The NYPL covers Manhattan, The Bronx and Staten Island.
“Right now, we are witnessing, before our eyes, what happens when the library funding is cut,” Dennis Walcott, who runs the Queens library system, told lawmakers.
“Not a single library — not a single library in the City of New York, the greatest city in the world — is open seven days a week. This is New York City. That’s unacceptable,” he said.
Under Adams’ budget proposal, the Sunday service would remain axed, and most branches would also have to scale back yet another day, the presidents testified.
A slew of library branches that are currently being renovated will also have their reopenings delayed — or at risk of not resuming service at all, the library chiefs added.
For the NYPL system, more than 60% of branches will have to drop to a five-day service under the proposed budget cuts, the libraries said.
More than half of Brooklyn’s library branches, too, would scale back to five days.
In Queens, library services would no longer operate on the weekends at all — with the Saturday service cut at all locations except the Central and Flushing libraries.
“The numbers are mind-boggling,” Linda Johnson, chief of the Brooklyn Public Library, told lawmakers during the budget hearing, noting her system faces a $16.2 million cut alone, or 13% of its operating budget.
“We are not blind to the city’s financial troubles, but libraries ought to be held harmless,” she continued, adding that three branches closed for renovation in her borough simply wouldn’t be able to reopen under the current budget.
For the NYPL system, five recently renovated branches — slated to reopen early next year — would be delayed, said its head, Anthony Marx.
“Our buildings are aging, they need help just to stay open — let alone to be the inspiring and respectful spaces that we should be offering in neighborhoods where our citizens have much too little,” he testified.
“The cost of delivering for New Yorkers are going up, and we’re seeing our budget decrease,” Marx said. “We have to resist this, we have to get past this game that we’re in.”
In addition to the $22.1 million already cut from the libraries’ budgets last year, Adams’ overall $109 billion city budget plan for FY25 calls for slashing library funding by a further $36.2 million: $20.5 million in mayoral funding and $15.7 million in City Council funding.
The latter cuts would impact discretionary funding that the library presidents said are usually renewed annually but they have long pushed to make permanent.
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