As budget negotiations between the New York City Council and the mayor’s office continue, councilmembers and library officials planned to rally on Sunday and call for the full reversal of $58.3 million in cuts to the city’s public libraries.
Twin rallies were set to be held at the Queens Public Library’s Flushing branch and the Brooklyn Public Library’s Walt Whitman branch near the Navy Yard on Sunday morning. Both library systems, as well as the New York Public Library system, have had to cut Sunday service, and would likely have to fully eliminate weekend service if funding is not fully restored. Staffing, programs and other services would also be affected.
“That will translate into fewer staff,” Queens Public Library President Dennis Walcott told Gothamist. “It will translate into fewer books and materials. It will translate into the potential of not being able to open libraries that have been under construction. It will translate into repairs not happening as quickly as possible, or at all.”
Walcott said three branches in the Queens library system have been under construction, including two that are ready to open. But Walcott added that the branches haven’t been able to open because the library system can’t hire anyone to staff them.
Councilmember Carlina Rivera, who chairs the Council’s committee on cultural affairs and libraries, also noted that the sweltering weather played a part in the planned rallies.
“Not only will we be in front of an essential place – a library that people look to for technology services, books, a quiet safe space – but it’s also going to be on a very hot day,” Rivera said.
Libraries make up around a third of the city’s cooling centers, but are closed on Sundays because of budget cuts. And this week, air conditioning outages that officials blamed on deferred maintenance costs led the New York Public Library system to shutter two of its Staten Island branches amid a heat wave. The city planned to open public schools on Sunday to serve as cooling centers instead.
“At most of our libraries, we’re putting the city at a disadvantage in that we don’t have our cooling centers that would be open as a result of these budget cuts, and that will unfortunately continue,” Walcott told Gothamist. “So all these things are piling up as far as what the cuts mean to libraries, but more importantly, what these cuts mean to the public at large.
A balanced city budget is due by the end of the month, and the next fiscal year starts on July 1. The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday night about the status of the budget negotiations.
“Right now, the negotiations, I feel, are going as well as they could,” said Rivera. “We have been very clear since we initially put out our budget response that we know the money is there, that libraries should not ever be on the chopping block.”
But Rivera said she felt optimistic that the Council and the mayor’s office would resolve outstanding issues she said the Council had “laser focused” on in terms of its priorities, including libraries, cultural programs, housing and 3-K, an early childhood program for the city’s 3-year-olds.
“Next week will certainly be intense,” said Rivera, “but I have a good feeling we’re going to get there.”