This weekend, eight Brooklyn Public Library locations will offer their last day of Sunday service. The changes come from Mayor Eric Adams' recently announced budget cuts.
College student Orane Wilkes, a CUNY junior, says she depends on Brooklyn's Central Library branch to study her major, political science. The Central Library is one of the libraries offering its last day of Sunday service this weekend.
What You Need To Know
- On Sunday, eight Brooklyn Public Library locations will offer their final Sunday services
- The changes come from Mayor Eric Adams' recently announced budget cuts. In September, Adams proposed 3% to 5% rounds of cuts totaling 15% across all city agencies by April 2024
- The Queens Public Library and the New York Public Library, which serves Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, ended Sunday service on Dec. 3
"I’m so upset. On a scale of one to 10, I’m an 11,” Wilkes said. “I’m so upset, because the library is honestly one of the last public places we have in the city you can go without spending money.”
The Queens Public Library and the New York Public Library, which serves Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, ended Sunday service on Dec. 3.
In September, the mayor proposed 3% to 5% rounds of cuts totaling 15% across all city agencies by April 2024.
The mayor says an influx of asylum seekers has hurt the city's bottom line, but a dependence on drying-up federal COVID-19 relief money and the persistence of office vacancies created the fiscal hole beforehand.
Elected officials and different unions and organizations gathered outside City Hall on Monday urging the mayor to reverse his planned budget cuts.
"Mayor Adams, shame on you!” the crowd chanted.
Brooklyn Councilmember Chi Ossé said the city needs "someone who knows how to manage a budget — someone who does not make political moves like cutting all of our agencies instead of the agencies with billions and billions of dollars."
“Since he has gotten into the office, he has done everything possible to drive out working class New Yorkers,” Queens Councilmember Tiffany Cabán added.
The library closing will change Wilkes’ homework routine. She'll have to figure out where to get those Monday morning assignments completed.
“I guess I can do work somewhere else. I’ll probably have to go to a cafe where unfortunately, I’d have to spend money,” Wilkes said.
NY1 reached out to the mayor’s office for comment and received no response to its questions, but members of the Adams administration again blamed the economic crises on the migrant crisis, saying five buses continue to come into the city each day from Texas’ border with Mexico, adding to the more than 150,000 migrants who have arrived here since the spring of last year.