Testimony By Citizens Defending Libraries At June 5, 2013 City Council Committee Hearing On Library Budget Issues

The June 3, 2013 City Council hearing in the NYC library budget where the first letter of testimony below was first distributed.

Below are two letters of testimony submitted at the City Council's budget hearing on June 5, 2013.

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                                    June 3, 2013

James G. Van Bramer, Chair
Committee on Cultural Affairs,
   Libraries and International Relations
250 Broadway, Committee Rm 14th Fl
New York, NY 10017

Re:    Council Hearings about New York City Library Budgets And Library Funding/New York City Council Fiscal Year 2014 Preliminary Budget, Mayor’s FY ‘13 City  Preliminary Management Report and Agency Oversight Hearings

Dear Committee:

Today the City Council at its committee hearing concerning budgeting for New York City Library budgets and library funding will necessarily be talking about the mayor’s deliberate underfunding of New York City libraries and the massive additional proposed cuts the mayor is now proposing.  City Council members will say that this underfunding is unjust and must be reversed.  Citizens Defending Libraries wholeheartedly concurs in calling for an end to such underfunding at a time of substantially increasing library use and city growth.  However, we also point out that in the political theater of the annual budget dance whereby the libraries have been abusively underfunded, funding is regarded with cynicism by those partaking in the process and those regarding it from outside.

But as our libraries are being deliberately underfunded this way there’s an elephant in the room that must be talked about or these hearings will be irresponsible and meaningless: The deliberate underfunding of libraries is being used as an excuse to wastefully sell libraries and shrink the library system. 

In this context the City Council cannot simply vote to provide more funds and resources to libraries without intervention because the wasteful sell-offs of library system assets is a squandering of publicly paid for and funded assets if it is being done as a result of library official incompetence.  If library officials know what they are doing in selling off these assets then it is worse: It is an intentional plundering of these publicly paid for and funded assets to benefit the real estate industry, not the public, and must be investigated.

For example:

    •    The Donnell Library was a five-story Manhattan library across from MoMA (now proposed to be reduced to less than 1/3 size and placed mostly underground) sold by the NYPL in a rushed secretive sale netting only $39 million for a 97,000 square feet building, much of it newly renovated with spectacularly valuable facilities.  The 7,381 square foot penthouse in the building going up to replace the library is on the market for $60 million.

    •    The Central Library Plan similarly involves the selling off of the huge amounts of library real estate purporting to be based on a “right-sizing” shedding of library system assets that’s highly suspect: The 300,000 square feet of the Mid-Manhattan and SIBL libraries are proposed to be squeezed into only 80,000 square feet of non-expandable space at the 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue Central Reference library.  That plan also involves getting rid of the research stacks, another net loss of space and loss of incredibly precious and irreplaceable library assets.  The cost of this downsizing to the public will be substantial when measured simply in dollar expenditures: at least $350 million with at least $150 million being paid for by directly out of the New York City budget.  Demolition permits to commence this waste were filed last Friday, before the total potential of the work has been priced out and before an economic impact study has been done to determine the consequences to the public from the downsizing.

    •    The wasteful selling of assets is now being exported from Manhattan: for instance to Brooklyn, where the Brooklyn Public Library proposes to “leverage” all of its real estate assets and has started with a proposed sale-for-shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights and Business and Career Library at Cadman Plaza in a transaction closely replicating the Donnell sale disaster.  The BPL also wants to sell the very historic Pacific Branch library which is, perhaps not so coincidentally, just yards away from the heavily subsidized “Barclays” arena.

The City Council cannot vote to supply additional city budget funds that will be subject to such squander and/or plundering without intervention and investigation.

                            Sincerely,


                            Citizens Defending Libraries

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Note: The Monday June 3, 2013 City Council committee hearing about the library budget (where the above letter was first distributed) managed to go from start to finish without one single mention of the above referred to elephant in the room: The deliberate underfunding of libraries as an excuse to wastefully sell libraries and shrink the library system. 
        
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                                    June 5, 2013

James G. Van Bramer, Chair
Committee on Cultural Affairs,
   Libraries and International Relations
250 Broadway, Committee Rm 14th Fl
New York, NY 10017

Re:    Council Hearings about New York City Library Budgets And Library Funding/New York City Council Fiscal Year 2014 Preliminary Budget, Mayor’s FY ‘13 City  Preliminary Management Report and Agency Oversight Hearings

Dear Committee:

On Monday, at the first portion of ths City Council committee hearing concerning budgeting for New York City Library budgets and library funding Anthony W. Marx and Linda Johnson, the respective heads of the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library, testified that they had a problem approaching donors asking that they give monies to fund the libraries because they cannot make a `credible’ case that any money given to the libraries by such donors will not be immediately subtracted out by the mayor of New York in budget cuts.  Indeed, supporting the observation that there are games being played that we must guard against and that are damaging to the public, Committee Chair James G. Van Bramer concluded with an acknowledgment that the annual budget dance around libraries is a `game.’  It’s a very cynical game.

In this world of cynical games respecting the deliberate underfunding of libraries at a time of increasing use and city growth there is another significant problem in approaching potential donors to the NYPL and BPL that Marx and Johnson did not talk about but which is just as significant, probably much more so: The library heads cannot make a `credible’ case that generous gifts given to the libraries by generous public-spirited donors will not be subtracted out in the form of real estate deals that squander or plunder generous gifts given to the libraries.

John D. Rockefeller gave the land at 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, across from the Museum of Modern Art for the building of the Donnell Library.  Ezekiel Donnell paid for the building of the five-story library 97,000 square foot building there.  Over the years many other others donated to further improve that library, funds that included the investment of taxpayer dollars for state-of-the-art facilities.  Did Rockefeller, Donnell or any of us suspect that the assets bequeathed the public would be virtually given away for a mere $39 million, less than two-thirds of what the 7,381 square foot penthouse in the 50-story building replacing Donnell is being marketed for?

Similarly, the Central Library Plan involves a careless and very expensive discard of public space and assets, taking the 300,000 square feet of the Mid-Manhattan and SIBL libraries and housing them in reduced quarters of only 80,000 square feet, a gross reduction of 380,000 square feet of library space if you count the elimination of the 42nd Street Reference Library’s research stacks.  The BPL is now following suit with similar plans of sell-offs for real estate deals.

In the world of charitable giving big donors insist on convincing assurance that their gifts will not be squandered or otherwise made meaningless.  When it comes to funding New York City libraries it is the city that provides the lion’s share of all the funding for the libraries yet the city and this Council has not investigated or requested assurance that such squandering of funds given will not occur even as it is obvious that these public gifts are indeed being plundered.

                            Sincerely,


                            Citizens Defending Libraries