Defending Libraries Testimony To City Council Regarding NYC Library Budget, The Sale of Libraries, Privatization of Libraries, Short Library Hours, And The Elimination of Books

Matthew Zadrożny and Michael D. D. White testifying at City Hall about the destruction and privatization of the libraries

On March 11, 2019 Michael D. D. White of Citizens Defending Libraries and Matthew Zadrożny of the Committee to Save the New York Public Library testified at a New York City Council budget hearing before the council’s library committee presided over by councilman Jimmy Van Bramer.

Mr. Zadrożny’s testimony focused on objections to very shortened hours that the 42nd Street Central Reference Library is now open to researchers and the public (there is a petition), and the relationship of those short hours to the privatizing of that library as it is increasingly used for private gala events of the wealthy.

Mr. White’s testimony focused on the elimination of books and sale and shrinkage of libraries in the system overall. . . . even as designer Karl Lagerfeld had just died with a private library of physical books for his personal use rivaling in size the number of book collections down to which some of the biggest public libraries in New York City are now shrinking.

Councilman Van Bramer said that he was unaware of some of what he was being told in the testimony presented. 

Video of the testimony and Councilman Van Bramer’s reaction is available below.



City Council Hearing March 11 2019- Testimony of Library Defenders (click through to YouTube for best viewing)

Here is an example (a Gotham Gazette article about the hearing) of how such incisive testimony as this doesn’t get covered and the public likely gets a very different message about what is happening from the reporting that is furnished:

Library Presidents Seek Additional Funds at City Council Budget Hearing, March 12, 2019, by Ben Brachfeld.

Here is the text version of the testimony of Michael D. D. White:

March 12, 2019

Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer
Committee on Cultural Affairs,
   Libraries and International Intergroup Relations
Council Chambers
City Hall, New York

Re: March 11, 2019 Testimony respecting Preliminary Budget Hearing - Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations-  New York City Council Budget and Oversight Hearings on Fiscal Year 2020 Preliminary Budget, The Preliminary Capital- Plan for Fiscal Years 2020-2023, The Preliminary Ten-Year Capital Strategy for Fiscal Years 2020-2029 and The Fiscal 2019 Preliminary Mayor’s Management Report.
   
Dear City Council Members and Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations:

This letter provides the written version of our Citizens Defending Libraries oral testimony delivered yesterday.

As the New York Times covered in its recent obituary for Karl Lagerfeld,  (Karl Lagerfeld, Designer Who Defined Luxury Fashion, Is Dead), Mr. Lagerfeld had an estimated 300,000 volumes in his personal, private library.  We presented pictures at the hearing that we have up at Citizens Defending Libraries.  Those 300,000 volumes are only a few books shy in number from the number that is being talked about as the number that will be in the reduced Mid-Manhattan Library.

See: Through The Windows of Privilege (Like Karl Lagerfeld’s) The Enduring Value Of Physical Books And Libraries With Big Collections Can Readily Be Discerned               

That’s not the way it should be.  The mid-Manhattan Library was designed to hold 700,000 books.  And now we are talking about it’s being consolidated with SIBL (the 34th Street Science, Industry and Business Library), from which over one million books are missing.  And then it is also supposed to be absorbing all of the hundreds of thousands of books that disappeared from the Donnell Library that was shrunk and sunk to be replaced by a luxury tower.

Mr. Lagerfeld was something of a polymath, but these 300,000 books represent his personal interests, those of just one single man.   The Mid-Manhattan Library, the main circulating library for New York City, should provide books representing the interests of all New Yorkers.

We also presented pictures at the hearing that we have up at Citizens Defending Libraries of the empty shelves at the Flatbush Library.  The pictures were taken the evening that the Brooklyn Public Library trustees held a trustees meeting above these empty shelves, quite oblivious to them and their emptiness, while they held a sort of goofy meeting about how to rearrange furniture in shrunken libraries so that library users wouldn’t notice that the libraries didn’t have enough space.

See:   Atop Empty Bookshelves of The Flatbush Library, Brooklyn Public Library Trustees Meet Displaying Holiday Spirit As They Fuss Over Expensively Tiny Library Space

Earlier at the hearing we heard Brooklyn Public Library president Linda Johnson testify about how the replacement for the Brooklyn Heights Library is going to be a bigger, better configured library.  That’s not true; it’s going to be smaller, 40% of the previous library’s size; it will not be an “Education Library,” not a “Business Library,” not a “Career Library,” not a federal depository library (it was all these things before); it won’t have lots of books like before; and, in terms of configuration, it will be configured as an afterthought (an awkward horseshoe shape) to what the developer wanted for his luxury project.   

Similarly, NYPL COO Iris Weinshall said that the reason to sell the Inwood Library was because of its poor configuration, but when they assembled the developers to bid on the property the library administration officials and city development officials told those developers that configuration of the replacement library didn’t matter.

See: The Voice of an Inwood Library Defender- Jeffrey Wollock Provides an Overview: Libraries as Real Estate -How NYC's Libraries are Being Stolen

So what you are told is not true, and we are eliminating books and living in a world where people like Karl Lagerfeld, who have the privilege to own what is valuable, own more books than we are furnishing the citizens of New York City in our public libraries.

Please not as well that Citizens Defending Libraries endorses and supports the testimony of Matthew Zadrozny of the Committee to Save The New York Public Library objecting to the NYPL’s very contracted for the 42nd Street Central Referenced Library and how keeping those shortened hours in order to hold private gala events at the library represents a highly inappropriate privatization of that public asset intended to serve the public.

For more about the disappearance of books from our New York City public libraries see the section of information about it on our Citizens Defending Libraries main page:

How Many Books Are Disappearing From New York City Libraries?     

Sincerely,
       
Michael D. D. White
Citizens Defending Libraries   

Mr. White presented these visuals during his testimony of the many books in Karl Lagerfeld's library and of the empty shelves ignored by the oblivious BPL trustees visiting the Flatbush Library:

Here is the text version of the testimony of Matthew Zadrożny:
   
Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations

City Council of New York City

March 11, 2019

Chairman Van Bramer, Councilmember Borelli, Councilmember Cumbo, Councilmember Koslowitz, Councilmember Moya, thank you for holding this hearing.

My name is Matthew Zadrozny. I am a data scientist and a member of the Committee to Save the New York Public Library, also known as, SaveNYPL.org. I've used the NYPL for 25 years, as a student, freelancer, and recently to research NYC history. I donate money to NYPL through its Young Lions program and attend board meetings as a member of the public.

Earlier today you heard Tony Marx, NYPL's president, request additional funds for longer hours. I support this. But there's more to the story.

The leadership of NYPL wants longer hours for the branch libraries. However, they have resisted longer hours at NYPL's Central Research Library at 42nd & 5th Avenue. For sixty years after its founding, the main library was open around 87 hours per week. Now it is open only 56 hours. Most days, today included, the main library closes at 6pm — before working New Yorkers can get there. On Sundays, the library is only open for four hours. And last summer it was closed on Sundays.

Historically, longer, later hours allowed New Yorkers to come after work and stay till 9 or 10 in the evening, researching, studying, and bettering their lives. NYPL reduced hours in the 70s due to a budget crisis. Now the library's endowment is at a record high of more than $1 billion. The obstacle is not money but leadership's addiction to corporate events and weddings.

SaveNYPL has been protesting this. We want NYPL to give priority to the public and readers, not parties and rentals. We have collected some 2,000 signatures from New Yorkers who need the main library to be open late. These include high school kids, college students, researchers, writers, and freelancers — people who are the engine of NYC's economy and culture.

Over the library entrance are the words: "The City of New York has erected this building for the free use of all the people." The 42nd street building is owned by the City of New York and it belongs to all New Yorkers. It is the greatest publicly accessible research library in the world. Closing the library for private events during prime time is de facto privatization and unbecoming of a great city.

What is more important: Cocktail parties for the connected? Or a quiet space for students, scholars, startup founders, and job seekers?

The City Council should tell NYPL's leadership that the best way to help the public is not through expensive and unnecessary capital projects. Instead, keep the central library, and all libraries, open longer. Serve readers, not cocktails!

PRESS RELEASE: De Blasio, reversing campaign pledge, commences selling NYC libraries delivering, in Grinch mode, huge shrinkage

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New York City 

WHAT: Mayor de Blasio is expected to break a significant campaign promise he made calling for a halt to the sale and shrinkage of New York City libraries.  The mayor is expected to approve the precedent-setting proposed fire sale of a major public asset, Brooklyn's second biggest library, the central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn.  Tainting Mayor de Blasio's expected decision is: 1.) the fact that de Blasio has been  taking money from the developer and 2.) on December 16th it was announced that the mayoral controlled  Department of Education is redeploying substantial resources to promote the library sale.
WHEN:  Imminent
WHAT ELSE?:  Citizens Defending Libraries is available to provide facts about the Mayor de Blasio's decision and about the city library sales.

Did New Yorkers do something so very naughty that they deserve this huge lump of coal for the holidays from their mayor?: De Blasio reversing his campaign pledge is, with his expected approval of the sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library, launching the sale and shrinkage of New York City libraries.  Mayor de Blasio is imminently expected to approve the sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library, the central destination library in downtown Brooklyn with a special focus on business, career and education.

The library was recently expanded and fully upgraded so that it's is one of the most modern in the system and advanced in terms of solely needed computer support.  De Blasio’s approval of the sale allows the library to be “replaced” with another library shrunk to just 42% of the current library’s size (63,000 square feet) that will be stuck in the bottom of a privately owned tower of luxury residential condominiums to be built by the developer purchasing this city-owned property.   The “replacement” library will have just 15,000 square feet above ground instead of the almost 38,000 square feet above ground the existing library has now.  A very substantial proportion of the space to be visited by the public in this vastly shrunken library will be shifted underground.  Presently, none of the space the public visits at the existing library is underground, only two half-floors that are used for books storage.

In the bottom of privately owned residential building the mistake of shrinking this library can never afterward be corrected and it cannot ever grow in the future.

The proposed sale and shrinkage is a close replication of the 2007 Donnell Library sale debacle, the first, for which a "replacement" library in the luxury tower opened last March is still nowhere in sight.

Brooklyn Public Library president Linda Johnson told the City Council at its hearing about the Brooklyn Heights sale (a  first ever proposal of this kind before the council) that the sale was a "model" for transactions underway with respect to libraries throughout the city, not just for other libraries in her BPL system, but also for Queens and the NYPL.

At the BPL trustee meeting last Tuesday (the 15th), the trustees applauding this sell-off and shrinkage were reminded how sale of this library was chosen as a “demonstration” for what was possible.  They were told that this was a “huge turning point for the library system” and “across the city in general” with Johnson `pioneering’ the future of libraries.  They were also told that Alicia Glenn, de Blasio’s Deputy Mayor for Development had adopted this project as "her own" pushing “it across the finish line.”

These plans are opposite to what candidate de Blasio promised.

When de Blasio was running for mayor he stood on the steps of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library on Fifth Avenue with Citizens Defending Libraries and called for a halt to the sale and shrinkage of New York City public libraries and specifically cited and included the Brooklyn Heights Library among the examples of what he was talking about.  Candidate de Blasio said that:

“It’s public land and public facilities and public value under threat. . . and once again we see, lurking right behind the curtain, real estate developers who are very anxious to get their hands on these valuable properties”

Permission is hereby granted to use video clips, images and audio of de Blasio saying this contained in the following videos (and we can also supply an audio file upon request):

Selling Our Libraries!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD88Puy3px8

Will Steve Levin Save the Brooklyn Heights Library?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aks6ymI9Bws

The de Blasio administration will almost certainly maintain that the Mayor is not violating his campaign promises about not selling this and other libraries because the mayor believes that the city is getting appropriate value for the sale of this library.  That, however, is not true.  The developer is paying nowhere near the value of the library from the public’s perspective given that this fully upgraded library would cost over $120 million to replace.  Instead the only consideration of value for this library that has been offered by the BPL and the city’s Economic Development Corporation selling the library has been from the developer’s perspective, just its “tear-down” value.  It’s essentially valuing the library property as if it were just a vacant lot.  In fact the developer will probably pay less than he would for a vacant lot given that the developer will have demolition costs to absorb.

The BPL has previously said the city will net only $40 million from this transaction, but, on Tuesday, Johnson told her board the city will be actually be netting less than that amount although the previous $40 million estimate is what Johnson and a number of members of the City Council, including local City Councilman Steve Levin, have continued to publicize.  Citizens Defending Libraries believes that the figure to be netted is considerably less with approximately $20 million probably being needed to outfit the replacement library lopped off the top of the $52 million gross price paid by the developer and many other additional expenses the BPL has refused to reckon into its faulty math promoting the developer’s real estate transaction.

Mayoral underfunding of the libraries is being given as the excuse to sell and shrink the library which underfunding by now mayor de Blasio certain key members of the City Council say is not possible for the council to override.  When de Blasio became mayor he did not restore cuts to the libraries put in place by the Bloomberg administration despite the libraries being used 40% more in terms of programming and 59% more in terms of circulation, most of that being physical books.

Not only has de Blasio not restored the Bloomberg cuts, at the beginning of this budget year, with cuts to his own prior year’s budget, he also reintroduced the so-called “budget dance” that was supposedly abandoned when his administration took office.  That helped a subsequent addition of funds to the budget this year look bigger, although it is described as not enough to abandon the Bloomberg generated library sale plans.

In setting up the transaction for de Blasio’s approval with a vote at City Council (Wednesday, the 16th), David Greenfield, chair of the Council’s Land Use Committee said that “the reality is that our public libraries are underfunded” and that we can’t hope that the resources for needed repairs “are going to fall from the sky.”  Greenfield’s professed hopelessness is despite the fact the city has a very substantial and escalating budget surplus, with the City Comptroller Scott Stringer observing that evidence of the city’s flush situation is that the city, remarkably, has no out-year budget gaps.

Comptroller Stringer’s office wrote to Deputy Mayor Glen December 9th objecting to the transaction: “It is simply unsustainable for the City to rely solely on the disposition of property to cover capital needs without fixing the systemic causes for the capital gap.”

Councilman Brad Lander who has been pushing hard for the sale of this library and others endorsed Greenfield’s glum assertion that resources for any alternative course of action would be unavailable from Mayor de Blasio saying, “we are not going to get there in the near term, honestly this decade.”  (The end of the “decade” would be the end of a de Blasio second term.)

City Council majority leader Jimmy Van Bramer also weighed in.  He is chair of the Council’s Cultural Committee overseeing libraries and has been a strong proponent of the library sales.  Van Bramer said “the fact is that several mayoral administrations long neglected the capital needs of our libraries.”    Councilman Van Bramer’s saying “several mayoral administrations,” would seeming implicate the Giuliani administration, but under the Giuliani administration libraries, like SIBL that de Blasio now wants to sell were being expanded.  The Brooklyn Heights Library was expanded and fully upgraded at the very tail end of the Dinkins administration, just as Giuliani was coming in.

In actuality, according to the Brooklyn Public Library minutes (November 2008), the neglect of capital needs, or their intentional deferral resulting a backlog, began concurrently with the launching of the BPL’s  "Strategic Real Estate Plan," pursuant to arrangement that fall with the Bloomberg administration’s NYC Office of Budget and Management.

Similar to these expressed City Council justifications, when the City Planning Commission considered the sale City Planning Commissioner Anna Hayes Levin said the “main argument” for selling the library was to get funds that would supposedly go to other libraries.   But, City Councilman Brad Lander has previously stated with respect to other attempts to assure future library funding from the city that there is no way to assure that it will happen because administrations and legislatures cannot bind future ones respecting future budget years, that bottom line it is “not constitutional” to seek to bind future budget decisions.

Citizens Defending Libraries believes that using underfunding of libraries as an excuse to hand off sweet deals to the real estate industry actually creates a perverse incentive to continue to underfund them in the future.

Frighteningly, this sale may not be a de Blasio precedent for selling off just New York City libraries.  When this proposal was before the City Planning Commission, Mayor de Blasio’s Commission Chair Carl Weisbrod indicated that he viewed this as a precedent equally applicable to a program of selling public schools for redevelopment.  The question of whether administration priorities would be development or education are raised by the way that with the planning of this project under Deputy Mayor for Development Glen the de Blasio administration raided Department of Education funds to commit to a suspect ill-described, probably ill-conceived, so-called “STEM Lab” revealed at the eleventh hour to push this library sale through.  The 9,000 square foot “STEM Lab,” for which there is no city precedent, is a possible three-classroom K-12 facility.  Investigate and you may find that the DOE said that, if they were forced to take this underground space off the developer’s hands, they would really have preferred to put a gym in it.

The deal is described as “unlocking” the city’s unused development rights, but little mention is made of the fact that in 1986 the city transferred out about half of its development rights to Forest City Ratner and that only reason the developer’s 400 foot luxury tower is so tall is that the deal has “unlocked” the development rights of Saint Ann’s a neighboring private school which will thereby significantly benefits form the transaction, but do so without demolition and loss of its building.  The details for the benefits Saint Ann’s private school is getting remain mostly secret.

Mayor de Blasio may try to justify this transaction saying that, in order to build a much bigger building, the developer buying the property is building so-called “affordable” housing units “poor door”  far away from Brooklyn Heights in another school district (only five of the units that might be considered more truly “affordable” would be large enough for families), but Public Advocate Tish James wrote the city council objecting to the sale of the library saying:

“Supporting affordable housing and preserving public assets like libraries must not be competing imperatives. We should not be asked to choose between our need for affordable housing and our libraries.”

Along with the Department of Education commitments revealed at the eleventh hour to push this library sale through.other plans were revealed (or not) that modified the transaction dressing it up for passage by the City Council that don't bear up well under close scrutiny.  For instance, the BPL announced a new library in DUMBO, but BPL minutes show this was originally planned back in 2007 when the Brooklyn Heights Library and Donnell Library sale plan were being planned and undertaken.  The DUMBO library, only 5,000 square feet, was considered by the BPL to be a model for much smaller libraries.  With the shrinking 2,500 square foot library in the Walentas BAM South project (286 Ashland Place) we now seem to have two of these very small libraries.  (The DUMBO library was originally supposed to be just 1,700 square feet.)  (Anything less than 10,000 square feet for a library is considered “woefully small.”)

Will Mayor de Blasio try to say that the Brooklyn Heights Library sale has become a much better deal than it was in July of 2013 when he called for a halt to it?  If he does, he will be ignoring all the facts that have come out since that make it obvious it is far, far worse one.  . .  Beyond that, the only other important change in facts was de Blasio taking money from the developer's team while their application, ultimately selected by his administration was pending.

Other libraries being sold and shrunk?  The 34th Street Science, Industry and Business Library built in 1996 is proposed to be sold.  When that is sold, it is proposed to shrink Mid-Manhattan as a result.  The second floor of the Williamsburg Library was given away to a private firm which was also offered and almost got a substantial portion of the Red Hook Library's space.   The Sunset Park Library is being made the subject of a real estate deal kept under wraps that the community is now objecting to.  There are indications that the Pacific Branch is being eyed for sale again.  Libraries like Clinton Hill are being looked at in conjunction with inducing proposed upzonings.

The list is long enough already, but the plans of those running the libraries still remain largely undisclosed..

CONTACT:
Carolyn E. McIntyre, Michael D. D. White
Michael White, 718-834-6184, mddwhite [at] aol.com
Carolyn McIntyre, 917-757-6542 cemac62 [at] aol.com

Follow us on Twitter: @defendinglibraries

For photos and videos of prior Citizens Defending Libraries rallies opposing the sale, shrinkage, underfunding of New York City libraries, and elimination of books and librarians in the two and a half+ years since its founding, see:

PHOTO GALLERIES- PAST EVENTS

                                                                  #   #   #

Citizens Defending Libraries
(718) 797-5207
http://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com
@DefendLibraries on twitter
backpack362 [at] aol.com

Citizens Defending Libraries Statement About Today's City Council Vote Approving the Sale and Shrinkage of Brooklyn Heights Library (stated by BPL president Linda Johnson to be a “model” for future NYC library deals)

The Brooklyn Heights Library as it stands now (left) and as it would be squeezed down to just 42% in the bottom of 400 foot luxury tower replacing it (right)

The City Council’s vote today to approve the sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights Library should greatly alarm all of us.  We are not safe because this heedless plundering is intended to be just the first.

Last night at the Brooklyn Public Library trustees meeting the announced sale received more than one round of hearty applause from the trustees and we heard how this library was chosen as a "demonstration" for what was possible.  The trustees were told that this was a “huge turning point for the library system” and “across the city in general” with Brooklyn Public Library president Linda Johnson `pioneering’ the future of libraries.

Let’s be clear here, we are demolishing a sturdy, recently enlarged, and fully upgraded library, one of the most modern in the BPL system.  We are proposing to shrink it down to just 42% of its current size (63,000 square feet).  We will wind up with just 15,000 square feet above ground instead of the almost 38,000 square feet we have now.  And, we will have to wait years to get even that after demolition of this valuable asset.

No thought has been given to the library’s value to the public, costing more than $120 million to replace.  We are selling it off to net a minuscule fraction of that amount.  This is a central destination library located in the downtown serving all of Brooklyn and a substantial part of lower Manhattan with a special focus of business, career and education.

What’s appalling is the way that the library is being sold off as the result of a back room deal that apparently has been secretly in the oven for some time now.  We learned at the BPL trustees meeting last night how Alicia Glen, de Blasio’s Deputy Mayor for development adopted this Bloomberg initiated sell-off  “as her own” pushing it “across the finish line.”

We still don’t have all the facts but we know that the secret deal goes back weeks with many days spent at City Hall and the BPL referring to months of preparation and very worrisomely we see the Department of Education under the mayor’s control stepping in to pony up untold sums as part of the package.  This seems to reflect a mayor hellbent to see the library sold to the developer.

It would be nice if people who cared about schools were looking after schools and people who care about libraries were looking after libraries, but instead we get this recipe for misfortune: A deputy mayor for development handing out these resources to make deals with developers who send money to the mayor.

It’s telling that what exactly the so-called “STEM lab” facility is that DOE is buying to facilitate the deal is only going to be figured out some time in the future.

Unfortunately, with the revelations of just the last week or so, we have learned a lot about Councilman Steve Levin and his embrace of the de Blasio maneuvering that is not to Levin’s credit.  It is clear that the Councilman has a strange philosophy of government that involves a huge lack of transparency, failing to keep promises and perform obligations basic to his elected office while feeding misinformation to his constituents.

At the BPL trustees meeting last night we also learned that tucked into Levin’s deal list is an earmarking to intercept library sale proceeds to go for enlarging the Greenpoint Library (in his district).  It is not necessarily bad, but was undisclosed to the public and possibly the City Council Members voting.

How much of this did the City Council know?: Talking with members today, apparently not much.

Especially frightening today was the surreal way that incorrect and misleading information was cited as the reason for the vote.  Councilman Brad Lander and David Greenfield made speeches repeating claims by Levin and BPL’s Johnson that the deal means a net “$40 million” will go to other libraries even though Johnson told her own board last night that number will be smaller.  (We calculate it is actually still much less even than that if the math is done properly.)

Councilmen Greenfield and Lander said (respectively) that we have to sell libraries because we can’t expect “the money to fall from the sky” to do anything else “at least through the end of this decade.”  Really?  When the city has one of the largest ever surpluses?  Let’s remember that before Bloomberg and de Blasio we had money to expand our libraries, not be artificially backed into deals that serve the real estate industry. . .  Let’s also note that Lander has said that we can’t obligate legislators or administrations to spend more money on libraries in the future so there can be absolutely no assurance of greater spending on libraries in the future as result of such sales.

It has been clear that with these library sales we have been witness to the exercise of an enormous amount of power.  What we did not see today was the exercise by the City Council of the power that it has to protect the public.  

We must view the new era the City Council seemingly ushered in with its vote today as an absolutely unacceptable future.  Accordingly, we have our work cut out for us.

Testimony By Citizens Defending Libraries At March 8, 2013 City Council Committee Hearing On Library Budget Issues

Citizens Defending Libraries March 8th rally outside City Council's offices.  Photo by Jonathan Barkey.  Click to enlarge.

[Back To Main Page] The following is the testimony given from Citizens Defending Libraries about budget issues related to New York City's libraries (after CDL's rally) at the March 8, 2013 hearings on: New York City Council Fiscal Year 2014 Preliminary Budget, Mayor’s FY ‘13 Preliminary Management Report and Agency Oversight.

The hearing was run by James G. Van Bramer, Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Relations.

Bowing to time constraints, only three representatives of the Citizens Defending Libraries contingent there to testify at the meeting actually testified orally, presenting the first three letters of testimony below together with some extemporized remarks taking into account earlier events at the hearing.  The presenters were Carolyn E. McIntyre, Michael D. D. White and Judi Francis, in that order. The other statements appearing below were handed in at the hearing in writing.

Keep reading for information at the end about additional testimony by the Committee to Save The New York Public Library.

Citizens Defending Libraries testimony about to be delivered

 * * * * *   
                                    March 8, 2013

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

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

Dear Committee:

I became aware of the attempts to close and sell my library branch, the Brooklyn Heights branch, a month ago at a community meeting at the Brooklyn Heights library. Our branch is a very well used and loved branch.

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.
               
A study, by the Center For An Urban Future, out this January, tells us usage over of our libraries has gone up 40%, circulations 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 everyday.

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, shrink this branch?  It makes no sense.

Carolyn McMillian said she mainly used the library to use the computer.  She said when her son was deployed to Iraq the use of the computer at the library was the only way to keep in touch with him.  It was their lifeline.

I started a petition after the meeting to stop the public policy of defunding libraries in order to sell the real estate to private developers.  We have over 8,000 signatures and you can easily find Citizens Defending Libraries on the web.

At a another meeting a week ago run by Josh Nacowitz, Mr. Nacowitz told me:

What's in your petition really speaks to what we are trying to do here.  It's actually hugely helpful and it's part of the message we've been trying to deliver to the city for years and years and years. [except that during most of those years he was still working for the mayor defunding the libraries at the city’s real estate development agency]  We face huge budget cuts every year.  . . .  We would all love that your petition would be hugely successful and we'll get the mayor and the administration to seek changes to the way they look at funding libraries.  It would solve a lot of this. 

In other words, if the libraries were properly funded they wouldn’t have to be sold to real estate developers who are friends with the mayor.

These libraries are loved, used and cherished more than ever.  The numbers back that up.

We are either moving towards a more caring society or away from a caring society. Citizens Defending Libraries is watching you.  Are you listening to us?

                            Sincerely,


                            Carolyn E. McIntyre



* * * * *   
                                    March 8, 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:    New York City Council Fiscal Year 2014 Preliminary Budget, Mayor’s FY ‘13 Preliminary Management Report and Agency Oversight Hearings

Dear Committee:

Do we want a shrinking library system for a growing, wealthier city?  That’s what we are getting as the principal purpose of the library system becomes the generation of real estate opportunities for developers.  This new city-wide policy has, in a very harmful way, turned into a perverse incentive for the city to defund libraries and drive them into the ground.

That libraries are underfunded is without doubt: “More people visited public libraries in New York than every major sports team and every major cultural institution combined.”  The funding of libraries is one of the highest priorities of the city’s community boards.  And yet libraries do not receive funding anything like, for instance, the massive subsides we channel to Yankee Stadium or the so-called “Barclays” Bruce Ratner/Mikhail Prokhorov arena.

With all due respect, and I will leave it to you to decide how much respect is due, the process of the annual funding dance for libraries in this city is a farce that cannot be allowed to go on for even one more year.  In Noticing New York I have lifted the veil: We know that insiders are referring to it as “dwarf tossing.” . . .

. . . Libraries are the little guys.  They are a pittance that should be easy to include in the city budget, especially given that the money goes far since libraries are so well used.  Everybody will care about libraries as their funding fate is cruelly tossed around in an annual battle that serves as political distraction.  The political theater is that the big bad mayor cuts libraries and in the end the City Council and Borough Presidents ride in like heroes with discretionary funds to make up some, but only some, of the cuts.  In the end we are funding our well-used libraries at such a low level we keep them open even less than Detroit, a city on the verge of bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, the mayor is getting what he wants: The low funding is being used as an excuse to push the system’s valuable assets out the door to real estate developers in crony capitalization abuse.  You are funding this asset stripping by the mayor.

The greatest shame of underfunding the libraries in order to create real estate deals is that, even if it shakes loose a few real estate deals, maybe a few every year, it is an utter travesty to continually drive all libraries and the entire system into the ground financially.


                            Sincerely,


                            Michael D. D. White
                           

* * * * *   
                                    March 8, 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:    New York City Council Fiscal Year 2014 Preliminary Budget, Mayor’s FY ‘13 Preliminary Management Report and Agency Oversight Hearings

Dear Committee:

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 the libraries 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!

    •    Why demolish the historic research book stack system at the Tilden Astor Central Reference Library at 42nd Street?   An air conditioning problem!

    •    Need to sell off and shrink the Brooklyn Heights branch and Business and Career library?   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, September 1, 2012.

Highly suspicious.  We need an audit!  The  BPL hasn’t released any of its bid documents respecting the Brooklyn Heights air conditioning problems, is stonewalling on the release of minutes pertaining to public meetings that relate to the issue and there is every reason to believe that the cost and difficulty of fixing the air conditioning in the Brooklyn Heights branch is being grossly overstated.

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!

                            Sincerely,


                            Citizens Defending Libraries

* * * * *   
                                     March 8, 2013

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

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

Dear Committee:

Josh Nachowitz, the Brooklyn Public Library’s VP of Government and Community Relations, said that the BPL said something misleading in a community meeting this week.  The meeting was organized by City Council Member Steve Levin and related to the proposed sell-offs of libraries out of the city system, and most particularly the historic Pacific Branch library as one of the very first the Brooklyn Public Library would sell.  Nachowitz said the BPL was selling libraries to bring money into the library system.

To say that funds from a sale, even some of them, would go to the library system is highly misleading.

First, because the city owns the property, the funds from a sale would go to the city, not the library system. There is no existing enforceable agreement that any money would go to the libraries. A decision was made to sell libraries before there was any basis to say that some or how much money might be given to the libraries. That should be an embarrassment to the Bloomberg/library officials who are flogging these deals because it means selling the real estate is their first and likely only real priority. . . .  not doing what is best for the libraries.

Library officials are now cognizant of the incongruities in the story they were telling because of such things as coverage in Noticing New York. On Tuesday night, for the very first time, they stated that they had reached an agreement in principle to get some money back from the city. That agreement is still not signed (they said it would be in the form of an MOU) and not publicly released or vetted.  In fact, because money is fungible (and Bloomberg officials have already demonstrated they want to keep underfunding the libraries to create more of these real estate deals) it is impossible to structure an agreement where the city does not simply take back with one hand what it gives with other.

Tuesday night at Councilman Levin’s meeting the community heard Mr. Nachowitz say that the city would likely flow back some identifiable funds to the library system based on what it would cost to build replacement libraries (the Brooklyn Heights library and the Donnell library are both examples of how the replacement libraries are a fraction of the size of libraries being replaced) but that library officials don’t even know what these costs and amounts might be. Would there be money in addition to that? No promise was heard that it would go to the libraries. Don’t bet on it.

Bottom line: This is not about getting money for the libraries. It is about getting real estate deals out to developers. And to do that, they are actually intentionally underfunding the libraries at an unprecedented level to create plausible cover.

Brooklyn Public Library spokesman Josh Nachowitz also confirmed this week that the BPL’s priority is to move the highest valued real estate out the door first.  That means that by pursuing these wrong priorities they intend to do as much damage in selling off the most of the valuable system assets up front and as fast as they can.

                            Sincerely,


                            Citizens Defending Libraries

* * * * *   
                                    March 8, 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:    New York City Council Fiscal Year 2014 Preliminary Budget, Mayor’s FY ‘13 Preliminary Management Report and Agency Oversight Hearings

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 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 a recent, expensive, city-funded renovation, with the intention of shrinking it down to half-size.  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

* * * * *   
                                    March 8, 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:    New York City Council Fiscal Year 2014 Preliminary Budget, Mayor’s FY ‘13 Preliminary Management Report and Agency Oversight Hearings

Dear Committee:

We need to investigate.  We need an audit.  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 says that Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is her idea of an ideal board member for her library systems board.  That is indicative of a terrible mind set on her part.

Mr. Blankfein is exactly the kind of board members 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 this week.  Mr. Blankfein is also a proponent of the notion that the public needs to lower its expectations about entitlements that he says he is firm “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?

Why is it that 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?  Mr. Schwarzman is the Blackstone Group.  That’s one of the biggest real estate companies around.

Why is Mr. Schwarzman’s name now 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?   Mr. Schwarzman has put his name on a demolition project, a real estate boondoggle.

We need an investigation.  We need an audit.  We cannot trust such trustees with our precious publicly paid for library assets.

                            Sincerely,


                            Citizens Defending Libraries

* * * * *   
                                    March 8, 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:    New York City Council Fiscal Year 2014 Preliminary Budget, Mayor’s FY ‘13 Preliminary Management Report and Agency Oversight Hearings

Dear Committee:

How can we be funding the libraries without being told what the plans are to reorganize the system, shrinking and preferentially selling off its real estate assets, the most valuable first?  We as taxpayers pay the lion's share of the library budgets: We are therefore entitled to know the overall plans, what it is intended we will be left with when the great fire sale is finished.  Possibly only crumbs?

We know that New York Public Library has converted the four main libraries into real estate deals.  We know that the Brooklyn Public Library’s strategic plan calls for “leveraging” (read “sale” of all its real estate assets.

These sell-offs cannot be consented to piecemeal, without knowing the overall plan.  We are the taxpayers paying for the system and paying for the assets now being sold for private benefit.  We demand that these deals be stopped until the full plan is comprehensively revealed, studied and approved by the City Council.

We need sunlight on these issues.  We need an accounting of what the overall system plans are.

                            Sincerely,


                            Citizens Defending Libraries

* * * * * 

Some of the supplementary handwritten testimony delivered by CDL hearing attendees (click to enlarge)

James G. Van Bramer and collgues listening

Also testify at the hearing were representatives from the Committee to Save The New York Public Library

They testified from their “The Truth About the Central Library Plan” document released the previous day (see Press Release- “This detailed analysis questions many of the Library's assumptions and calls for public debate about the CLP's impact on the Research Library and its users, on branch libraries throughout the city, and on the financial well-being of the library itself.”)  

Representatives of Committee to Save The New York Public Library testifying

The starting bullet points of that document (which supplies a wealth of useful footnotes) :                       

    The plan is highly controversial:

    • It will be hugely expensive, costing a minimum of $300 million (probably much more), of which $150 million will come from New York City taxpayers. There is great concern that the Library's focus on a highly-complex construction project will absorb desperately-needed funds which might otherwise pay for renovations of branch libraries, and replenish slashed curatorial and acquisitions budgets.
    • It will radically reduce the space available for the Mid-Manhattan and SIBL.
    • It will threaten the 42nd Street Library's status as one of the world's great research libraries.
    • It will threaten the architectural integrity of the landmarked 42nd Street building.
    • It does not take into consideration more efficient and less destructive alternatives, such as combining SIBL and the Mid-Manhattan into a rehabilitated and expanded building on the Mid-Manhattan site.

There is a whole section about how in facilitating these real estate deals for developers, “The Library Has Chosen the Most Expensive Option.” 


CONTACT: To contact Citizens Defending Libraries email Backpack362 (at) aol.com.

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Save New York City Libraries From Bloomberg Developer Destruction