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Sunday service suspended at all NYPL locations
- SoftTalker 3y agoSunday seems like a poor choice. Sunday was always a prime homework day for me when I was in school. Typically not a lot else going on, so there was time for quiet, focused work. Why not close on Tuesday or Wednesday? Unless it's also about staffing difficulty on weekends.
- jstarfish 3y ago> Why not close on Tuesday or Wednesday? Library near my parents' house used to be closed or would close early on select weekdays. It really, really sucked for getting schoolwork/research projects done. We expect businesses to be open during the workweek. We do not always expect them to be open on weekends. I don't understand why they don't open late 7 days a week. Who goes to the library before noon? The kids are all at school.
- ender341341 3y ago> Who goes to the library before noon? The kids are all at school. It was a decently common pre-school field trip when I was a kid, though they could easily do those as an 'as needed' and cut hours without a pre-scheduled reservation for those hours.
- nvy 3y ago>Who goes to the library before noon? Parents with young kids/toddlers. Story Time at my local public library (not NY) is very well-attended.
- chrismeller 3y ago>Who goes to the library before noon? I know several older people who use it as an opportunity to get out of the house. They get their coffee and head to the library to read the newspapers.
- freeopinion 3y agoOur libraries do a lot of activities aimed at pre-schoolers. Those activities are best scheduled during school hours so parents can attend while their school children don't require parental attention.
- SoftTalker 3y agoA library isn't a business, and even if you want to think about it that way, weekday closings for business are not that unusual. Barbers tradtionally take Mondays off. Dentists are often closed on Fridays. There are many other examples.
- locopati 3y agoin NYC, libraries are someplace folks without homes can hang out, use computers, be out of the weather people work remotely from libraries (free wifi in a quiet environment and you don't have to buy coffee) libraries offer services as well, especially for immigrant populations
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- David_Axelrod 3y agoOf course no one is happy about cuts to vital services like the library. But people are also unhappy with a 3% minimum city income tax and a $5 billion budget shortfall. Stuck between a rock and a hard place.
- KerrAvon 3y agoWell, give more money to the cops. That'll fix everything.
- CrazyPyroLinux 3y ago[flagged]
- CrazyPyroLinux 3y agoLooks like I hit a nerve - Apparently you can criticize working cops, but not illegal immigrants. In their own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-dh1waEkrk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-dh1waEkrk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvmJjhk6Gsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvmJjhk6Gsg
- ipaddr 3y agoThis is the problem the mayor is trying to get help with. The number of illegal immigrants this year has skyrocketed and it's bankrupting the city.
- freeopinion 3y agoWell if that all it is, there's a simple solution. Make all the illegal immigrants legal. Then the budget for illegal immigrants goes to $0.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y agoFirstly; that would be a Federal problem, not something that the City can do anything about. Secondly; even if they were illegal immigrants (which is undetermined at this point; most of them claim asylum and have had no determination made for their case) they would still have had the right to shelter under City law.
- nostromo 3y agoNew York's budget is a disaster and it's only getting worse. They spent like Covid stimulus would never end, and didn't expect the migrant surge to ever reach their doorstep. Open libraries on Sundays does seem like a reasonable thing to cut. I wouldn't be surprised to see additional cuts or closures in the coming months.
- ziftface 3y agoIn what way has a migrant surge affected the budget?
- shortrounddev2 3y agoSpitballing, but I think they provided shelter for a lot of them. No idea if that would significantly impact NYC's budget
- nostromo 3y agoNYC is housing migrants in hotel rooms that it pays for. https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20230926176/housing-migrants-in-nyc-hotels-will-cost-14-billion-through-2026 https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20230926176/hou... Some hotels are charging the city $300 a night. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-09/nyc-migrants-how-nyc-is-finding-housing-and-what-it-costs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-09/nyc-migra... A billion here, a billion there... pretty soon you're talking real money.
- willmeyers 3y agoShutting down NYPL on Sunday is almost akin to shutting down homeless and rec centers on Sunday. It only hurts the disenfranchised who need the shelter and resources the most.
- shortrounddev2 3y agoPersonally I hate the fact that libraries have become de facto homeless shelters. It gives them a constant background noise of danger and a lot of these people just sit around watching softcore porn on youtube. I think you'd see more library attendance if the places felt safer to leave kids at alone
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoI agree but libraries are not a daycare either.
- TimedToasts 3y agoI spent a decade as a public library board member. I saw every possible combination of anti-social behavior from the homeless that would encamp there. Many times I had to 'assist' asking someone to leave. The librarians _could_ have called the cops and had the violators permanently barred from re-entering but they would rarely do that. It is 100% scaring away families and elderly.
- lapphi 3y agoIt’s interesting how we (as a culture) tolerate people who have broken the social contract. As Americans we’ve really let the bottom fall out. They’re so far away from society they do not care anymore about norms. And we do not care to do anything except let them exist in our spaces to the detriment of the public.
- anotherhue 3y agoThe costs they create far outweigh whatever a programme to help them would cost. We're literally giving up on social activities and safety and trust because we're not willing to meaningfully address the down and outs.
- shadowgovt 3y agoI wish they'd can Wednesday instead of Sunday. Sunday is when people have time off to use something like a library. If they're going to cut a day, cut mid-week.
- ilamont 3y agoA lot of American cities are experiencing budget shortfalls thanks to the WFH trend and other factors, and it will exacerbate problems with many important and popular services. Here in Boston, we just found out that the estimated cost for fixing the subway system is $24.5 Billion (https://www.universalhub.com/2023/maybe-if-we-held-bake-sales-every-t-stop https://www.universalhub.com/2023/maybe-if-we-held-bake-sale...). It's been neglected and mismanaged for years, and no city or state agency can come up with that kind of money (it's about half of the commonwealth's annual budget). The NYC subway is in a similar situation, but at a much larger scale. There are similar problems all over the country - see "America’s Trains and Buses Are Speeding Toward a Cliff"(https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/americas-mass-transit-systems-are-speeding-toward-a-cliff.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/americas-mass-transi...)
- hnthrowaway0315 3y agoDefinitely just a lay person but I seriously doubt that figure is as large as a soaked sponge...
- ghaff 3y agoRidership of public transit in Boston has slowly improved but it's still down something like 40% since pre-pandemic. I don't know how much is WFH--auto traffic seems and everyone I've talked to agrees as bad as ever or worse. But it certainly doesn't help on the funding site, especially to the degree that low ridership leads to service cuts which make for even lower ridership.
- woodruffw 3y agoThe NYC subway is run by the MTA, which is a state agency. They aren't included in the city's budget. (Historically, this has been a large reason why the MTA has been woefully underfunded -- the state has used it as a political lever against the city.)
- freeopinion 3y ago> no city or state agency can come up with that kind of money Every major city can come up with that kind of money. Spread it out over 20 years and raise taxes 10%. So sales tax goes from 6.25% to 6.875%, property tax goes from 0.1% to 0.11%. If a city with 675000 people needs to raise $24B, they just raise taxes $3500 per person per year for the life of the project. You're not going to spend the $24B in a single year, so you don't have to raise the money in a single year. MBTA claims a daily ridership of ~800,000. Raise the fair $0.25 per ride and you get an extra $50M/year. I'm not saying you would be popular, but you could raise the money. Shutting down the subway wouldn't be popular either. Aren't those your options? Either it's worth the money or it isn't.
- riordan 3y agoSunday service has always been particularly important to the New York City public libraries. Andrew Carnegie’s original deal always was, he would find the construction of the branches the libraries would run the branches, and the city would fund the branches with seven-day service. For a while. the Carnegie branches open seven days a week, even as they had to follow through on cutbacks at the non-Carnegie branches. But that ship sailed long ago. Very few were still able to offer Sunday service before this: - NYPL (Manhattan/Bronx/Staten Island): 8/92 sites - Brooklyn Public Library: 8/66 sites - Queens Public Library: 2/66 (Yes, there are three separate public library systems for New York City. They pre-date the consolidation of the city and no matter how hard folks have tried every study on consolidating the three systems into a single organization, winds up costing significantly more than the current status quo.)