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| Above, Assembly Members Micah Kellner and Joan Millman listen to NYPL President Anthony Marx's testimony. Photo from Jonathan Barkey |
Between 50 to 60 people signed up to testify. Not all of them made it to the hearing and some who made it to the hearing to testify were not able to wait through the day to delivery their testimony orally. The hearing which got underway before 11:00 a.am. lasted until just after six. Below is much of the written testimony that Citizens Defending Libraries presented although many speaking submitted additions to that written testimony. Other than the library heads, Anthony W. Marx, president of the New York Public Library, and Linda E. Johnson, president of the Brooklyn Public Library, nobody who spoke on Thursday spoke in favor of selling the libraries.
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| Times story on Marx and the hearing |
Word is that the BPL's Linda Johnson was morose and cranky as she rode down the elevator leaving the hearing complaining about all the opposition to her planned library sales. She was headed for a meeting of the BPL trustees later that evening.
Testimony from the following elected officials was all highly critical of the library real estate deals: City Council members Tish James and Steve Levin, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, State Senator Bill Perkins (by his representative Michael Henry Adams). Those Assembly Members asking the library heads for information including Kellner and Millman were also highly skeptical of the planned sales.
There was superb testimony throughout the day. Video and a transcript of the oral testimony it will be put up on the Assembly's website shortly (July 1st) and is starting to go up on CDL's YouTube Channel and Video Page. Those speaking extemporized to a degree, reacting to what others, including the library heads has said before and minimizing redundancies. The Times picked out the testimony of the Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning writer and biographer of Theodore Roosevelt as being of exceptional interest, as indeed it was, but others also provided stunning testimony among them, on the same panel, former librarian Rita Bott and researcher Donald Christensen. A coincidence: It turned out that Ms. Bott, as a librarian had assisted Mr. Christensen with research years ago but they had never formally met. Noticing New York reported on the revelations of Mr. Christensen's testimony here: Tuesday, July 2, 2013, Startling Testimony at State Assembly Hearing on NYC Library Sales.
Testimony by CDL co-founder Carolyn E. McIntyre
June 27, 2013
Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner
Chairman
Committee on Libraries and Education Technology
Suite 1147, Alfred E. Smith Building
80 South Swan Street
Albany, New York 12248
Re: Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, June 27, 2013 hearing on “The Sale of Public Library Buildings in New York City”
Dear Committee:
I am here today to shine a light on what is happening to our public libraries. I appreciate that Assemblyman Micah Kellner is providing this opportunity for those of us who love libraries and respect the place they have in our democracy. I am not a librarian, a hedge fund manager or a real estate developer. I am a therapist and a concerned citizen who could not watch these sacred spaces continue to be exploited and the librarians devalued.
I became aware of the attempts to close and sell my library, the Brooklyn Heights Library, in January at a community meeting at the library. Our branch is a very well used and loved branch. It is the most well used branch apart from the main library in Brooklyn because of its location and staff. The library sits right where all the major subway lines converge and where multiple bus lines stop. The Brooklyn Heights Library draws about a half million people a year from all over Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx. No other library is accessible by so many subway and bus lines.
At the meeting BPL spokesman, Josh Nachowitz, said they were going to sell the building to a private developer, let him tear it down and build a high-rise that would house a much smaller library, about 1/4 the size. He also said they would remove the Business and Career services. We were stunned and told him it was a bad idea.
I might have walked away doing nothing about the news except that I found out from a study by the Center For An Urban Future that use of libraries has gone up 40% and circulations up 59%. More people want to learn than ever. The report says the users are teens, seniors, immigrants, freelancers, job seekers, nannies and parents with young kids.
This report says that funding has gone down about 30% since Bloomberg started his third term. I heard from library staff that they have had to cut over 1,000 positions. They have provided an increasingly used service with decreasing staff! We owe them our gratitude.
I began asking people coming into the Brooklyn Heights Library why they use it. Just like in the report: Teens find it’s safe, they can be with friends while their parents are at work, nannies congregate with kids, parents come for the art programs and story time, business owners get help growing their business, job seekers get help with their resumes, now people are coming to get help with doing taxes.
I met a woman named Celeste who started a baking business using the Business and Career Services library. She came to research on different ways of baking and she entered a contest for small businesses which offers cash prizes. Her two sons were with her and I asked them why they come. They said to check out books and DVDs and it’s a quiet place to do homework. I talked with lots of seniors and retirees who come almost every day.
There is a line a block long outside this branch when it opens at 10:00 AM. Inside the library there is a giant sign that says “the line starts here.” It‘s to use the computers. They want to close and shrink this branch? It makes no sense.
I started a petition a week after the meeting to stop the public policy of defunding libraries in order to sell the real estate to private developers. We now have about 12,000 signatures, mostly online, and you can easily find Citizens Defending Libraries on the web.
Since starting the petition it has become increasingly clear that a corporate-style takeover of the NYPL and the BPL leadership is being followed by the selling of significant library system assets, rushing to do this before the end of Bloomberg's term in spite of growing public opposition. Nothing they are doing makes sense in terms of what is best for the library or the public, but makes total sense in creating lucrative real estate deals for private investment companies and developers in real estate.
The new corporatist leadership under individuals hailing from Wall Street, Steven Schwartzman and David Offensend, may conceive of themselves as “leveraging” the real estate. New highly paid groups called “strategy groups” concentrate their time on pursuing real estate deals while librarians who have always done the real work of the libraries are being eliminated and replaced with lower-paid clerical staff.
Does this pattern sound familiar? Aren't we also seeing this happen to our schools, hospitals, and parks? This exploitation of public resources at the end of Bloomberg's term benefitting the one-percent while reducing resources and opportunities for the rest of society sends the message that a few count for everything and the rest count for practically nothing. If this exploitation and plundering is not stopped we stand to lose much more than real estate; we stand to lose all that made our democracy great. After taking all that they can that our ancestors and generous donors gave, what will be left?
We are either moving towards a more caring society or away from a caring society. Citizens Defending Libraries is demanding better from our elected and library administration officials. We need to affirm that all New Yorkers are worthy and deserving of these important public services.
Thank you for listening.
Sincerely,
Carolyn E. McIntyre
* * * *Testimony by CDL co-founder Michael D. D. White
June 27, 2013
Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner
Chairman
Committee on Libraries and Education Technology
Suite 1147, Alfred E. Smith Building
80 South Swan Street
Albany, New York 12248
Re: Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, June 27, 2013 hearing on “The Sale of Public Library Buildings in New York City”
Dear Committee:
People are shocked when they find out that library administration officials are selling libraries, shrinking the library system and that libraries are being deliberately underfunded to create real estate deals that benefit developers, not the public. Who would have thought that they would sell off the public libraries when usage is way up? How can the public defend itself against those who would think to do so?
The public is mostly still just finding out about these plans. Much of the plan to sell libraries is not yet fully unveiled or has been done so quietly that the public hasn’t yet found out about it. How many people know that most of the SIBL, the Science and Industry Business Library, built at a cost to the public of $100 million in 1996, has been sold for a mere $60.8 million? That sale, part of the consolidating shrinkage of the Central Library Plan involving three major Manhattan libraries (four if you count Donnell as you probably should) is only part of what’s happening overall.
Despite the public’s disapproval, the Brooklyn Public Library is plowing ahead with its plan to sell the Brooklyn Heights Library, closely replicating the unpopular sale-for-shrinkage of Manhattan’s Donnell library, which was closed for shrinkage in 2008 to be replaced by a 50-story building, a luxury hotel and condominiums. The Donnell sale netted the NYPL only $39 million!
If you want to know what may be in store when plans like this are not transparent, direct your attention to what those plan-makers do first and what they can do when they do things in secret. Look at the top-down plotted Donnell sale, shrinking the library down to less than one third size (from 97,000 square feet to 28,000 square feet), where it will be mostly underground and sadly bookless, demolishing that five-story building that was recently the beneficiary of publicly paid for renovations. Fifteen percent of the building was the extensively renovated media center paid for by the city and state. In addition, there was the capacious and beautiful auditorium and the new Teen Center.
The same people who brought us Donnell say they consider it a model for what to do to other libraries in the future and are now in charge of the fire sale to sell Mid Manhattan and SIBL and destroy the research stacks of the fabled 42nd Street Central Reference Library. All of the Brooklyn Public Library’s real estate is up for “leveraging” in similar deals, including the Brooklyn Heights, and Pacific Libraries. They are selling the most valuable libraries first.
Libraries should represent the best of our democracy. To sell them off in deals benefitting a few at the expense of the many is democracy’s antithesis. We are starving our libraries out of existence, but keeping them would cost a relative pittance and reflect the public’s true priorities.
If we can’t stop the developer-driven sell-off of our libraries, we won’t be able to stop any transfers of public resources for private, not public, benefit.
Sincerely,
Michael D. D. White
PS: As part of my testimony here today I am supplying herewith a list with links of various articles I have written about the sell-off of the city’s libraries including, how comparatively little value the public is getting for their sale, how disappointing and unlibrarylike the planed new libraries are, and how discriminatorily anti-democratic these sales are.
• Saturday, June 22, 2013, On Charlie Rose NYPL Trustee Stephen Schwarzman Confirms Suspicions: His $100 Million To The Library Was Linked To NYPL’s Real Estate Plans
• Saturday, June 15, 2013, SIBL, NYPL's Science, Industry and Business Library Sold At An Unreported Loss To The Public (And an Elucidating Sideways Look At The BAM South Library Real Estate Games)
• Friday, May 24, 2013, Previews Of The Proposed New Donnell Library: The NYPL Unveils Its Version Of The “Silk Purse” Libraries It Envisions For Our Future
• Monday, May 27, 2013, More Thoughts On Valuation And What The NYPL Should Have Received As Recompense For The Public When It Sold The Donnell Library
• Tuesday, May 14, 2013, A Consideration of Race, Equality, Opportunity and Democracy As NYC Libraries Are Sold And The Library System Shrunk And Deliberately Underfunded
• Thursday, March 7, 2013, Tossing Dwarfs?: It’s Time To Demand That We Change The Way We Fund Libraries . . End The False Political Theater
* * * *Which Libraries Are In Danger? Might Yours Be Next? Library Officials Divide-and-Conquer Strategy- Testimony Delivered By Lucy Koteen
June 27, 2013
Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner
Chairman
Committee on Libraries and Education Technology
Suite 1147, Alfred E. Smith Building
80 South Swan Street
Albany, New York 12248
Re: Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, June 27, 2013 hearing on “The Sale of Public Library Buildings in New York City”
Dear Committee:
The question arises from the public: Which New York City libraries are at risk from the current program of selling off and shrinking libraries as real estate deals?
We need library administration officials to disclose the entirety of their sell-off plans to the public and there needs to be an independent economic impact analysis of their plans.
As of now all the City's libraries are adversely affected due to the underfunding of all the libraries, which makes them vulnerable to be sold off.
Because decisions about the selling of libraries are made in secret, it means that every New Yorker needs to wonder if his or her library is next on the list. Is it just Donnell, the Science and Industry Business Library, Mid-Manhattan, 42nd Street's Central Reference Library at Fifth Avenue, the Brooklyn Heights library incorporating Brooklyn's Business and Career Library and the historic Carnegie Pacific Branch that will be subject to sales and these significant shrinkages? How did those libraries end up on the chopping block? There was no public discussion. There was no oversight from the City Council. What is being decided behind closed doors impacts all our neighborhood and city-wide libraries.
It appears to be by design that the library administration wants to keep us in the dark about their plans. In true divide-and-conquer fashion library administration officials don't want you to know whether your library or another library that you care about will be next on the chopping block. The strategic plan for the Brooklyn Public Library in their own words says that the plan is to “leverage” (a fancy word for “sell”) all of the real estate. The BPL: “will leverage its over one million square feet of real estate by launching partnerships . . .” When the NYPL unveiled its system-wide real estate plans in March of 2008 which states a goal of having “fewer service points” to provide “better service to users” it envisions making changes in Northern Manhattan and Staten Island. In other words, they want to consolidate the libraries. This is the antithesis of the concept of the neighborhood library allowing for easy accessibility for all citizens to libraries.
In reality, anybody's library might not be too far down the list, but library officials rather you did not know if it is. One woman, while leafleting outside and canvassing against library sales was called inside by library administration officials to specifically tell her that her library was not being looked at for sale. This was contrary to what the real estate press said. In response, library officials told her that was just a developer with whom they had no connection taking initiative on their own. Nevertheless, that particular library was included in a list of libraries that at least one developer was given to look at for development in the summer of 2007.
Evidence shows that library administration officials don't tell the public which libraries they are looking at to sell until the very last minute as was seen with Donnell, Brooklyn Heights and the Pacific Branch.
In what looks like a divide-and-conquer strategy, one community is told that their own community library could receive money if someone else's library is sold, little caring about the accuracy of such representations. Residents of Dyker Heights are told (article: Library Vital to Immigrants Squeezed by City Budget, by: Norman Oder, June 18, 2013) that their McKinley Park branch could be renovated (implying it won't be sold) if libraries (like the Pacific Branch) in “gentrifying” neighborhoods are sold, and while residents of Fort Greene are told that proceeds from selling Pacific Street will partially pay for outfitting a new BAM South library. The truth is that the money received from the library sell-offs must go to the city general funds and there is no way to assure any funds will go to any of the libraries.
The library administration officials have publicly said their intent is to sell off the most valuable real estate first. But what is most valuable to a real estate developer is probably also the most valuable and irreplaceable to the public for much of the same reasons. It means that this looting of the system stands to do a lot of damage swiftly and up front. Once an asset is sold there is no reversing the damage it has done. Once the administration views the selling off of these assets as a success, they will continue to work their way down the list.
Because uncertainty of the future of a library's existence creates an unstable environment for the staff and the patrons of that library, it is imperative that the library administrators reveal to the public their short and long term plans for library restructuring. Exposing library sales in a piecemeal way prevents any oversight body and the public from analyzing in a comprehensive way the impact on all city residents of the end game of these sell-off plans.
Libraries are one of the most profound instruments of Democracy. We see these library reductions and shrinkages as part of the consistent erosion of all people's access to information and knowledge. These decisions are in the hands of a few men and women of great wealth and power who lack comprehension of the importance of neighborhood and other libraries. They have undisputed ties to the real estate industry. Their motives, based on their actions, are clearly not in the interest of the everyday man, woman and child.
Sincerely,
Citizens Defending Libraries
* * * *How Much Are Libraries Being Downsized and Library System Assets Shrunk? Delivered By Peter Rooney
June 27, 2013
Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner
Chairman
Committee on Libraries and Education Technology
Suite 1147, Alfred E. Smith Building
80 South Swan Street
Albany, New York 12248
Re: Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, June 27, 2013 hearing on “The Sale of Public Library Buildings in New York City”
Dear Committee:
How much are these real estate deals that don’t benefit the public shrinking the library system? We can only know, judge and evaluate the first deals we have had a chance to find out about, the first they want to do.
With Donnell, the Central Library Plan and every library sell-off plan the details of which have actually seen the light of day, including the Brooklyn Heights library, there has been a consistent and substantial diminishment of the publicly owned assets (usually by 2/3rds to 3/4ths) with no benefit to the public while others are benefitting in nontransparent top-down concocted deals that, like Donnell, benefit connected players in the real estate industry.
• Donnell Library: Reduction of public library space by more than two-thirds (from 97,000 square feet to 28,000 square feet- NY Times figures, though by other calculation it is more extreme). A library worth perhaps $120 million to the public in terms of continued ownership (based on recent transactions) is sold to net $39 million!The proponents of these shrinking libraries will never refer to them as smaller. They will call them “state-of-the-art” and quibble, speaking about the spaces in terms other than apples-to-apples comparisons referring to `found space,’ `equivalent space’ and `flexible space,’ but the fact of the matter is that space will always have its value and publicly owned space is publicly owned space and publicly owned assets are publicly owned assets.
• Central Library Plan: Reduction of public library space by more than two-thirds or about three-quarters (from 380,000 square feet down to 80,000 square feet- That’s the 139,000 sq/ft Mid-Manhattan plus the 160,000 sq/ft SIBL plus the 80,000 sq/ft of stacks being destroyed. In the very recent past, before the real estate guys took over administering the libraries, it was proposed to nearly double Mid-Manhattan’s space, increasing it by 117,000 square feet for more library services). The cost of this 380,000 square foot shrinkage is $350 million or more. It is not paid for by the real estate sales because they bring in less than that amount (Marx referred to bringing in $300 million at least a $50 million loss). Another cost to the public?: Most of the recently built $100 million SIBL has been sold off for $60.8 million. Instead, the shrinkage is justified because it is asserted by Marx and the NYPL that a smaller library (with fewer librarians) might cost $15 million a year less to run. Most savings of this sort involve personnel cost reductions, not brick and mortar. (The libraries being destroyed are not just physical assets.)
• Brooklyn Heights Library: Reduction of public library space by more than two-thirds (from 62,000 square feet to 15,000 or maybe now 20,000 square feet). Cost benefit to the public this time? Not out yet, but it’s supposed to be a “partnership” arrangement rather than a request for bids arrangement and likely with Forest City Ratner with a record of abusing those relationships. (The no-bid arrangement for the BAM South library to "replace" the historic Pacific branch- hearings were Tuesday morning- started out as an RFP to build a "parking garage" which through partnership has become something extravagantly different and more generous for the developer.)
Sincerely,
Citizens Defending Libraries
* * * *
Is The Downsizing of Libraries a "Right-sizing" or Possibly a Wrong-Sizing?
June 27, 2013
Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner
Chairman
Committee on Libraries and Education Technology
Suite 1147, Alfred E. Smith Building
80 South Swan Street
Albany, New York 12248
Re: Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, June 27, 2013 hearing on “The Sale of Public Library Buildings in New York City”
Dear Committee:
We are downsizing our libraries with these deals that turn libraries into real estate sales. Despite increasing library use we see substantial reductions with library space decreased to as little as one-third or less its previous size. Are we right-sizing the system? Have we really thought about what size our libraries should be, whether or how much they should actually be shrunk rather than grown and expanded?
Doesn’t it seem to be entirely too odd a coincidence that in the New York Public Library’s Central Library Plan it is estimated (calculated?) that ALL the library space of the libraries the NYPL has decided to sell, the 300,000 square feet of SIBL and Mid-Manhattan combined will just happen to fit (they say) in the 80,000 square feet of space where that plan proposes to eliminate the research stacks of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library? Is it really a coincidence or was the NYPL in doing these `calculations’ just working backward from the real estate it wants to sell? It appears so because when Citizens Defending Libraries met with NYPL Chief Operating Officer David Offsensend, Mr. Offsensend said that they do not yet have information about how many books they want to keep in the library when they finish planning.
What if this calculation of the space needed is wrong? Mr. Offensend said that if the space calculations of the Central Library Plan are wrong there is no way to expand and correct the space afterward. In addition, if there is a need for growth or expansion in the future there is no way to accommodate it with additional space in the future.
The previous plan for the Mid-Manhattan library, a recent one, in existence just ten years ago, was an expansion plan, an almost doubling of space, adding 117,000 square feet to the existing 139,000 square feet. Similarly recent plans for the Brooklyn Public Library existing within that same time frame (even a little bit more recently), called for a substantial addition of space with a new 150,000 square feet of library across from the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
If it was just so recently that we were increasing and expanding library space aren’t we now making a big mistake by shrinking space as drastically as with the Central Library Plan, which takes 380,000 square feet of library space shrinking it down to squeeze it in 80,000 square feet with no possibility of expansion afterward?
Sincerely,
Citizens Defending Libraries
* * * *
We Need A "Cooling Off" Period, A Moratorium On Real Estate Sales: A Look Alleged Repair Costs That Look Suspiciously Inflated
June 27, 2013
Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner
Chairman
Committee on Libraries and Education Technology
Suite 1147, Alfred E. Smith Building
80 South Swan Street
Albany, New York 12248
Re: Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, June 27, 2013 hearing on “The Sale of Public Library Buildings in New York City”
Dear Committee:
We are here to say again we need a “cooling off” period. . .
. . . We need a moratorium on the selling off of the library system’s best and most valuable assets until more is known about the questionable reasons being given for why the best real estate needs to be sold off to developers.
We need a “cooling off” period because every time they want to sell libraries, often recently renovated ones, they seem to find an insurmountable problem with the library’s air conditioning system. It’s highly suspicious!
Whenever library officials want to push a library out the door as a real estate deal they find air conditioning problems a handy complaint.
• The reason Donnell Library needed to be closed, sold and shrunk? An air conditioning problem! To sell a whole library? At a considerable loss to the public because the NYPL netted only $39 million for the 97,000 square foot library? By way of reference, much of that library had been recently renovated, the auditorium, the Teen Center, and in November of 2001 a new 14,500 sq ft state-of-the-art media center paid for by the City and State of New York. That complete and extensive renovation included new air conditioning for about 15% of Donnell’s space. It cost $1 million. While that much of the building had been so recently renovated for so little (and other recent renovations of more space were in place) the NYPL provided cover for the announcement its announcement of Donnell’s sale in 2007 estimating that renovation of the rest of the building would cost $48 million!
• Why demolish the historic research book stack system at the Tilden Astor Central Reference Library at 42nd Street? According to the NYPL. . . An air conditioning problem!
• Need to sell off and shrink the Brooklyn Heights branch and Business and Career library? According to the BPL . . . .An air conditioning problem!
• Sell the historic Pacific Branch? An air conditioning problem! Want to sell off a lot of libraries in Brooklyn? Announce that a lot of them have air conditioning problems and start closing them in the summer! See: More libraries fall as heat nears 100 degrees, By Mary Frost, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 6, 2012.
Highly suspicious. We need an audit!
The Brooklyn Public Library announced that it wanted to sell the Brooklyn Heights Library because of the condition of the air conditioning this January but plans to sell the library go back to at least 2008 with the decision being made by at least the Fall of 2011. The air conditioning breakdown that `couldn’t be fixed’ didn’t occur until the next summer, 2012.
Although the public was told that the air conditioning was the reason to sell the library in January of 2013, library administration and city officials withheld information about exactly what was supposedly wrong with the air conditioning until mid-June, days before an RFP (Request For Proposals) to sell the library (because of the “air conditioning”!) was sent out. The withheld information finally released was simply a July 12, 2012 DDC Construction Report but even then the requested cost estimates that had been cited in the press all along were still withheld. When these documents were requested from the Brooklyn Public Library they referred our representatives over to DDC (New York City Department of Design and Construction) and when the DDC was requested to give up these documents they referred our representatives back over to the BPL. To date they haven’t been produced.
In substitution therefor the BPL has produced another in a series of escalating estimates of the cost of repairing the air conditioning. A repair that was once estimated to cost $700,000 or less went to $750,000 and from there to $3 million, then to $3.5 million. The official estimate has now recently escalated to between $4.5 and $5 million (and is apparently at odds with previous engineering assessments). You know that they are reaching to find costs because both the architect delivering the estimate and Brooklyn Public Library spokesperson are saying that one of the hard-to-meet challenges in fixing the system is all the heat that modern-day computers are throwing off. These modern-day computers are also being blamed by the BPL for making the library too expensive to repair in another way: It would be far too expensive to supply them with the electricity they need!
We need an audit and we need a “cooling off” period until that audit is completed and the mind-set of library and city officials is no longer one that prioritizes creating real estate deals for developers! Remember: These breakdowns accompanied by inflated repair estimates only came after the decision to the sell the library.
Sincerely,
Citizens Defending Libraries
* * * *The Problem of Offering `Credible' Assurance That Money Given To The Libraries Will Be Properly Used- Delivered By Martha Rowan
June 27, 2013
Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner
Chairman
Committee on Libraries and Education Technology
Suite 1147, Alfred E. Smith Building
80 South Swan Street
Albany, New York 12248
Re: Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, June 27, 2013 hearing on “The Sale of Public Library Buildings in New York City”
Dear Committee:
Many of us have given money to the libraries intending to see our donations benefit the system. Citizens Defending Libraries has also called for more taxpayer money for the libraries, an end to underfunding at a time of substantially increasing library use and city growth.
Unfortunately, giving to support the libraries has now become a perplexing problem for donors in more ways than one.
At City Council Budget hearings on Monday, June 3rd of this year 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, nearly everyone seems to acknowledge the harm of the annual city budget dance around library funding and how it involves cynical gamesmanship.
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 netting 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, probably a net financial loss for the NYPL, a gross reduction of 380,000 square feet of library space squeezed down into only 80,000 square feet counting the elimination of the 42nd Street Reference Library’s research stacks. SIBL, completed in 1996 for $100 million, has been quietly, and nearly entirely (87%), sold off for $60.8 million. The BPL is now following suit with similar plans of sell-offs for real estate deals.
What then became of our donations and public expenditures? Those giving money to the libraries, whether regularly in the past or those wanting to in the future are loath to see our gifts squandered and thus made meaningless. In addition to donated funds, much of what is being squandering or plundered came from the taxpayers. There needs to be accountability to assure that all these monies will be used as, and in the spirit of, what was intended. There should be investigation, and new and better assurances are in order.
Sincerely,
Citizens Defending Libraries
* * * *Problematic Mind-Set of Library Trustees- Delivery Together With Other Written Testimony By Michael Leslie
June 27, 2013
Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner
Chairman
Committee on Libraries and Education Technology
Suite 1147, Alfred E. Smith Building
80 South Swan Street
Albany, New York 12248
Re: Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, June 27, 2013 hearing on “The Sale of Public Library Buildings in New York City”
Dear Committee:
We need to investigate. We as taxpayers pay the lion's share of the library budgets but the libraries are run by trustees with a mind-set we cannot trust.
Brooklyn Public Library CEO Linda Johnson said that Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is her idea of an ideal board member for her library system board. That is indicative of a terrible mind-set on her part.
Mr. Blankfein is exactly the kind of board member one could expect to get behind real estate deals that shrink libraries while craftily conferring more benefits upon the wealthy and connected. Mr. Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs took advantage of special relationships and maneuvering to procure unique real estate benefits, design overrides and subsidies for its new corporate headquarters in Battery Park City. It was written about in the New York Times. Mr. Blankfein is also a proponent of the notion that the public needs to lower its expectations about entitlements that he firmly says “they're not going to get.”
What better candidate to help plunder the libraries’ public real estate assets for the benefit of a wealthy few?
At the same time, the biggest real estate sell-off and shrinkage of Manhattan’s main libraries (the Donnell library and the three premier libraries more formally a part of the NYPL “Central Library Plan”) is unfolding, Stephen A. Schwarzman is on the board of the NYPL pushing such deals for the real estate industry? Why?
Mr. Schwarzman is the Blackstone Group. That’s one of the biggest real estate companies around. If you were watching PBS last week Charlie Rose was helping Mr. Schwarzman with a lot of boasts about Blackstone:
Rose: . . . it is now the world's largest alternative investment firm with over $200 billion under management.Schwarzman runs seven lines of business under Blackstone generating huge possibilities for conflicts of interest, including hedge funds. Hedge funds are notorious these days for making a lot of money. Schwarzman says his private equity business is bigger:
* * * *
Rose: I think you're the largest real estate investor in the world, aren't you?
Schwarzman: That's true. (Nodding)
* * * *
Schwarzman: We are the largest investors in the world in hedge funds.
Schwarzman: … Private equity is a bigger business… The rates on return on private equity tend to be much higher.At the same time that Mr. Schwarzman is apparently making lots of money at Blackstone, a fair amount connected to real estate, the New York Public library seems to be transacting a series of real estate deals like Donnell, SIBL and the Central Library Plan that are very bad for the public.
Did Mr. Schwarzman’s consider that his name was being put on a boondoggle when it was put on the Tilden Astor Central Reference Library at 42nd Street which will be destroyed as a reference library under the Central Library Plan shrinkage and sell-off plan. He told Charlie Rose when he transferred $100 million to effect the name change that he knew those plans and how the money would be spent.
We need an investigation. We need an audit. We cannot trust trustees who think with such a different mid-set to guard our precious publicly paid for library assets.
Sincerely,
Citizens Defending Libraries
* * * *Library Officials Keeping Librarians Quiet. What About?: Getting Rid Of Books And Policies Of Shrinkage That Don't Make Sense
June 27, 2013
Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner
Chairman
Committee on Libraries and Education Technology
Suite 1147, Alfred E. Smith Building
80 South Swan Street
Albany, New York 12248
Re: Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, June 27, 2013 hearing on “The Sale of Public Library Buildings in New York City”
Dear Committee:
Library administration officials don’t want to hear what librarians have to say. They also don’t want the public to hear what librarians have to say.
Did you know that:
• In 2009 the NYPL started having departing librarians sign “nondisparagement agreements.” They were written about in the New York Times where one departing librarian refusing to take money to sign the agreement referred to it as “hush money.” (See: New York Times: Employees Feel Silenced on Library Project, by Robin Pogrebin, May 23, 2012.) Many librarians are being fired these days so that, with their leaving the oral history of what we have historically intended our libraries to be is also leaving.What is it that library administration officials are concerned librarians might be communicating about were they not thus silenced and intimidated? Librarians could be telling the public about:
• Library administration officials have pursued librarians still working at the libraries, seeking to have them sign similar documents (loyalty oaths).
• NYPL administration officials ended the ROAR program, a program where retired librarians could come back and work (without benefits) on an hourly basis at a reduced cost to the system.
• Whatever reason officials might give for ending the ROAR, fewer former librarians are present in the library environment, and officials have now gone a step further by banning former librarians from volunteering at the libraries, something any other member of the public is free to do.
• The number of librarians that have been laid off and fired is at an all time high.
• In addition, there has been a huge amount of shifting librarians around between libraries. Such shifting can limit the ability of librarians to know about their libraries and can be used as a tool to stifle criticism. {What was it that now allows libraries of a certain status to be transferred to the Bronx- that they are no longer union?)
• Librarians haven been transferred and/or encouraged to retire not because of their own opposition to what is being done at the libraries (like the sale of Donnell and elimination of books), but because staff working for them have expressed dissatisfaction with some of these sorts of things.
• Librarians have been told not to discuss or give out information about library “renovations.”
• Libraries now run by “site managers” (a real estate sounding description) rather than “head librarians.”
• Programs of book removal and shrinkage. Did you know that NYPL librarians have been given directives from senior officials:If librarians could talk, they could tell the public what it might want to know about the way libraries should be. It should be against public policy to silence librarians and they shouldn’t be abused for exercising their free speech rights in this of all environments! Aren’t libraries where we are supposed to be able to go for knowledge and truth?
• That bookshelves should always be less than 50% full.
• That shelves should never have more than two copies of the same book. Not even Hamlet!
• That books that are “shabby” in appearance should be thrown out? So-called “shabby” looking books just might be limited edition or out-of-print books
• Books are being thrown out in middle of night
• Librarians might tell people how very well used and popular libraries being closed down or shrunk like Donnell were.
• Librarians might have something to say about what it means to send books away to less accessible off-site locations.
• Librarians might notice and point out when valuable assets at the library go missing? Did you know:
• Bibliographies representing years of work by librarians intended to be ready to assist the public are being thrown out?
• The New York Times donated a substantial portion of its morgue to the NYPL? It organized research in a way modern day computers don’t duplicate. It was once kept in the Annex? Does anyone know where it is now and that it wasn’t thrown away?
Sincerely,
Citizens Defending Libraries
* * * *Coincidences? The Mayor's Deliberate Underfunding of Libraries The NYPL's Selling Of Libraries And The BPL's Selling Of Libraries Are All Unfolding Synchronously?
June 27, 2013
Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner
Chairman
Committee on Libraries and Education Technology
Suite 1147, Alfred E. Smith Building
80 South Swan Street
Albany, New York 12248
Re: Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, June 27, 2013 hearing on “The Sale of Public Library Buildings in New York City”
Dear Committee:
Are we dealing with coincidences or are we dealing with planned and coordinated actions? There are those who would like to excuse the Bloomberg administration’s deliberate, extreme underfunding of New York City’s libraries and deem it not to be associated with the currently proposed sell-offs of the city libraries that are consequently short on funds, saying that it must, instead, be a coincidence that the two are happening at the same time.
Is it a coincidence that the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library are both selling off and shrinking libraries at the same time? That both the NYPL and the BPL started planing these sales at the same time and are now both pressing such deals forward, rushing them along at the end of the Bloomberg administration? Is it a coincidence that the current extreme underfunding of city libraries began as the plans for these real estate sell-offs got underway?
According to the NYPL’s Chief Operating Officer, David Offensend, the NYPL began looking at doing its Central Library Plan in 2006 or perhaps as early as 2005. The BPL was having real estate developers look at multiple properties for development at least as early as the summer of 2007. In the fall of 2007 the NYPL suddenly announced that Donnell Library had been sold. Even if the public hadn’t been told there must have been a little planning of this in advance! Similarly, although the public was also not told, the BPL decided as of 2008 that evicting the Business and Career Library from its Downtown Brooklyn home in the Brooklyn Heights Library would allow that library to be sold and shrunk like Donnell.
Mayor Bloomberg, a candidate for a third term, attended the March 11, 2008 press conference where the NYPL announced plans that would entail changes to its real estate holdings although listening to the public relations statements of the time one would have had to be psychic (or a student of the Donnell debacle) to realize that what was being talked about was a shrinkage of the system and a shedding of valuable assets for far less than their value. Thereupon, the reelected Bloomberg promptly starved the libraries, each year cutting their funding back more.
Coincidences? We don’t think so. And they ought not to be treated as such.
Sincerely,
Citizens Defending Libraries
* * * *The Top-Down Plotted Libary Sell-offs Lack Transparency and Accountability
June 27, 2013
Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner
Chairman
Committee on Libraries and Education Technology
Suite 1147, Alfred E. Smith Building
80 South Swan Street
Albany, New York 12248
Re: Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, June 27, 2013 hearing on “The Sale of Public Library Buildings in New York City”
Dear Committee:
As a new Center For An Urban Future report on library funding and usage points out, the “libraries depend on the city for the lion's share of their budgets” but “they are technically independent 501(c)(3) entities, not government agencies.” The anomalous result is that while we as taxpayers are funding the library system those running the system are busy selling off its assets, crown jewels first, without accountability or transparency, in deals that create enormous private benefit for the elite of this city.
This was pointed out in 2008 in an editorial by the editor-in-chief of Library Journal after the sale of the Donnell library. That library, now only a construction site, was sold after recent, expensive, city and state-funded renovations, with the intention of shrinking it down to less than one-third size, a library that will now be mostly underground and sadly bookless. Those who got the real estate are putting up a high-end hotel and luxury condominiums.
There were all sorts of questions about the location of some of the collections with the breakup of the collections diminishing the role of Donnell as a central library. The decisions were communicated to staff (and in the case of Donnell, to the public) almost entirely after the big decisions have been made.
It was wrong for the New York Public Library, a public/private entity funded mostly by the taxpayers, to blithely sidestep public and staff input with respect to Donnell and now library trustees are doing it again as libraries throughout the system are being put on the chopping block. Look at the Central Library Plan in Manhattan. Look at what is going on in Brooklyn where a BPL “strategic plan” puts every piece of the system’s real estate into play.
When Donnell was sold the City Council’s Libraries Subcommittee chair didn't know about the Donnell sale ahead of time even though he said it was “troubling” in terms of “the whole mission of the library.”
Now Donnell and that lack of transparency and that lack of accountability is being used as a model everywhere in the city. Taxpayers fund the libraries and these plans need to be audited and brought into the daylight.
Sincerely,
Citizens Defending Libraries
* * * *Another Privatization Of Publicly Owned Property and Public Realm Associated With Digitizing Public Collections
June 27, 2013
Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner
Chairman
Committee on Libraries and Education Technology
Suite 1147, Alfred E. Smith Building
80 South Swan Street
Albany, New York 12248
Re: Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, June 27, 2013 hearing on “The Sale of Public Library Buildings in New York City”
Dear Committee:
While many of us are well aware that these proposed library sell-offs represent real estate deals that privatize publicly-owned assets there is another associated concern about privatization that should not be overlooked. Library officials talking about getting rid of books are at the same time discussing digitizing and relying on digital content sometime in the future even if their plans are not yet ready for prime time).
But we must be wary that there are many who see the digitized future in terms of an increasingly privatized future where corporations pushing for various plans expect to make a lot of money
by controlling digitized information, in many cases, by charging the public for what's already owned by the public in public collections that are being put out of reach.
Many consider that this was the principal motivation behind the sickening 1995 hollowing-out of the San Francisco Public Library collections, which was underwritten with big-ticket contributions from telecoms and Silicon Valley.
Digital activist Aaron Swartz warned about this disturbing trend:
The world’s entire scientific ... heritage ... is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations....The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it.In the future we may expect that after the libraries have contracted out to privatize content we will be charged exorbitantly high fees for what was once publicly owned. The further irony in all of this is that much of the transcription and other work to create digitally available content may have been crowd sour Dear Committee: ced so that the public will be charged for what it once freely owned and for the result of its own freely contributed work product and intensive labor creating privatized content.
Sincerely,
Citizens Defending Libraries.
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