The annual negotiation over money takes an enormous, and unnecessary, toll on everyone involved.
As the heat dissipates and the city’s children return to classrooms, our libraries have again opened some of their doors on Sundays, resumed their robust after-school programs and restored service back to the levels they were at a year ago. While the three New York City systems are all non-profits, they get almost all of their operating funding from the City. So the June restoration of $58.3 million in funding by Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council enabling their return to strength was welcome news for patrons throughout the five boroughs.
Still, the potential for mid-year cuts looms as part of what’s called the “November Plan.” (A clear and handy guide to the budget, by the city’s Independent Budget Office, is here.) Such is the nature of New York’s seemingly perpetual and endlessly exhausting budget dance.
As the former executive vice president for external affairs at Brooklyn Public Library, I experienced this dizzying dance too many times to count. It goes like this: The mayor, knowing the City Council would negotiate for some service improvements at the end of the fiscal year and budget season, threatens steep cuts; a hue and cry follows; and finally the Council, at the 11th hour, pressures City Hall or uses its own resources to ensure funding is restored. The administration still gets partial credit for averting the supposed catastrophe, while councilmembers can say that they saved the day.
Though many city agencies end up on the same dance floor, the library dance stands out, in part because these indispensable institutions always seem to be invited. This past year’s version began with mid-year cuts and proposed deeper reductions down the road. But while the libraries have not actually absorbed large full-year cuts since the Bloomberg administration following the aftermath of the 2008 recession, our collective acceptance of the budget dance year after year obscures the toll it takes on the three systems, their staff and their patrons. This is worse than an empty exercise. It is corrosive.
The moments when the City’s finances are most precarious are the very moments when the city’s libraries are most critical to its future.
Library operations, while integral to the city’s vitality, are fairly simple from a budgetary perspective. In order to operate, the three systems need to maintain their buildings, purchase books and most importantly pay their staff: the librarians, custodians, public safety officers and others that helm 200-plus branches.
When cuts are on the table, what does this mean in practice? For months, while library leaders wait for the budget process to play out, only the most dire building repair projects get underway; the others are put on hold. Similarly, book purchasing must be scaled back. And that impact is felt immediately. The systems buy fewer titles — including fewer materials in other languages for immigrants and fewer books for children and young adults. For new best sellers in high demand, that means fewer copies and longer waits — for both ebooks and material on the shelves. Recently, in Brooklyn Public Library alone, there were 267 holds for hard copies of Jonathan Haidt’s bestseller “The Anxious Generation,” meaning readers will have to wait anxiously for months in order to be able to check it out. Had the libraries been allowed to purchase as planned, waits like these would have been shorter.
It is the staffing pains that are most troublesome. Last winter, all three library systems had to freeze hiring. So as the normal churn of staff attrition continued, the libraries were unable to backfill those positions. When the good news at last came in late June that funding was restored, the three systems could only start the beginning of the hiring process. Meaning, it will take months for open positions to be filled and for the systems to catch up. By the time they do, next year’s dance could already be underway.
It’s no small thing for branch managers and their teams to juggle operations with shrinking staffing levels. Staff get spread thin and fewer programs are held. At times there are even ad hoc closures at individual branches because not enough employees are on hand to open the doors.
It’s all well and good for those orchestrating the dance to assume it will probably work out in the end because, from a politician’s-eye view, it usually does. But the folks whose livelihoods are at stake can’t afford to make that assumption. If budget cuts were to actually move forward and continue, then it would not just be prospective hires’ but existing employees’ jobs at stake. For potential recruits, all the attention on possible cuts flies in the face of what they are often looking for: a career with job security.
Also troubling is the opportunity cost of the budget dance. Not surprisingly, library leadership and staff play their expected roles during the dance. They strategize. They advocate. They pressure elected officials, hold rallies, turn out for City Council hearings and encourage patron support. The dance prevents those involved, who have to divert time, energy and resources to fending off operating budget cuts, from focusing on lasting challenges like addressing dire capital budget needs and working toward other improvements. Over a century ago, upon giving the New York City Library systems $5.2 million to open 65 new branches, Andrew Carnegie made a deal with the City of New York: In return for his generosity, the city would operate its libraries at least 72 hours a week (9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday to Saturday). Today many branches are open for fewer than 50 hours. While we dance, we fall further and further short of the letter and spirit of the Carnegie Agreement.
While no agency or taxpayer-funded service should be exempt from modest attempts to find efficiencies, library service should be sacrosanct.
The irony is that the moments when the City’s finances are most precarious are the very moments when the city’s libraries are most critical to its future — because the well-being of vulnerable New Yorkers are at risk, and they are in need of adult English classes, resume workshops and so many other services.
For all the attention and all the hubbub, the total operating funding for all three library systems is currently under $500 million annually, less than 0.4% of the City’s total budget. While no agency or taxpayer-funded service should be exempt from modest attempts to find efficiencies, the service supported by this money should be sacrosanct. Library patrons and staff need to be able to count on a baseline of robust service and funding for every branch throughout the city. And as budgets get proposed and negotiated, the dance chaperones should bear in mind the impacts of the drawn-out process itself.