REMARKS
Council Member Justin Brannan opens Committee on Finance hearing on the Fiscal Year 2025 executive budget for the city's library systems and Department of Cultural Affairs
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3 min
Council Member Justin Brannan opens the Committee on Finance hearing on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 executive budget, focusing on the city's library systems and the Department of Cultural Affairs.
- Brannan recognizes council members and library system executives in attendance.
- He highlights the proposed FY25 budget of $425 million for libraries, a 1% increase from the preliminary plan.
- Brannan states the council called for $58.3 million more to restore funding cuts but the mayor did not include it.
- He cites the council's economic analysis finding $6.15 billion in resources not used in the mayor's preliminary budget.
- Brannan emphasizes working from the same facts in budget negotiations for vital services.
Justin Brannan
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Thank you, sergeant.
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Okay.
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Good morning, and welcome to day 11 of the FY 25 executive budget hearings.
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I'm member, Justin Brandon, I chair the Committee on Finance.
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Today's hearings will begin with the city's library systems followed by the Department of Cultural Affairs.
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I'm pleased to be joined by my colleague, council member Carlina Rivera, who chairs the committee on cultural affairs, libraries, and International Intergroup.
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Relations.
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We've been joined this morning by council members Carr Lewis and Moia on Zoom.
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I wanna welcome Linda Johnson, president CEO of Brooklyn Public library, Tony Marks, president and CEO of New York Public Library, and Dennis Walcott, President and CEO of the Queen's Public Library.
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Thank you all for joining us today to answer our questions.
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Just to set the table here on April 24, 2024, The administration released the executive financial plan for FY 24 to 28 with a proposed FY 25 budget of $111,600,000,000.
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The library's proposed FY 25 budget of $425,000,000 across all three systems represents less than 1% of the administration's proposed FY 25 budget.
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This is an increase of 4,000,000 or 1% from the $421,000,000 originally budgeted in the preliminary plan.
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This increase mostly results from added funds for the collective bargaining agreement.
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As of March 2024, the libraries collectively had 613 vacancies relative to their FY 24 budgeted headcount.
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In the council's preliminary budget response, we called on the mayor to add $58,300,000 to reverse a series of funding cuts made to the libraries.
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To 22,100,000 to undo the baseline cut, 20,500,000 to reinstate the one shot funding from FY 24 and a 100 and 15,700,000 to cover the funds from the city council's discretionary funding.
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Picked up at adoption last June.
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Council's proposal would allow library citywide to expand their current hours, increase programming, and reinstate Sunday library service.
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Stop me if you've heard this one before, but the mayor's executive budget included not $1 towards the council's call for funding our libraries.
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Despite the mayor's recent restorations in the executive budget, they represent a fraction of the cuts The administration is made to key programs like here, which the council has found were never necessary in the first place.
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The council's economic analysis found $6,150,000,000 in resources left on the table by the mayor's preliminary budget.
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In our budget response, we laid out how some of this can contribute to our reserves, be set aside to hedge against under budgeted cost, and other economic hazards and still leave $1,630,000,000 for restoration and investments into valuable service and programs like the ones we'll talk about today, with another 1,000,000,000 left in surplus to address other fiscal issues for good measure.
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As budget negotiations go forward, it's critical that we all work off the same set of facts.
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Council's economists have been consistently accurate year over year While this administration's back and forth approach of cutting and restoring introduces instability into our city's most vital services and programs, that our communities simply cannot afford.
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My questions today will largely go further on the council's preliminary budget response along with examining the library's capital gap.
