Library News

Libraries Lack Hours, Funds

BY MELISSA GRACE DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, January 19th 2006, 7:16AM

BROOKLYN LIBRARIES are open nearly six hours less a week than they were in 2001, the Daily News has found.

The drop in hours is the result of sharp cuts in the city budget after 9/11, officials said.

The economy has recovered, but city funding of the Brooklyn Public Library is still millions of dollars below 2001 levels.

"Brooklyn residents want and need all 58 neighborhood libraries to be open mornings, evenings and weekends," said the library's executive director, Ginnie Cooper.

To get back to pre-9/11 hours, the budget for next year needs to jump 13%, or $9 million, Cooper said.

Brooklyn libraries - open less than the city's two other systems - are open six days a week for an average of 37 hours and 14 minutes, often just four or five hours a day, according to a News analysis. In 2001, the branches were open 43 hours and 10 minutes a week, according to the Mayor's Management Report.

"My goal is to get them back to where they were pre-9/11," said City Councilman Domenic Recchia (D-Coney Island), chairman of the intergovernmental relations committee, which oversees the library systems.

Recchia said the Council formed a subcommittee yesterday to deal with the budget crisis faced by the libraries.

Though library hours have steadily risen since 2004, Mayor Bloomberg has asked the three systems to trim their budgets 3.3% for the rest of fiscal 2006 and for fiscal 2007, which starts July 1.

"Just because this year we are having a good year in terms of revenue doesn't mean that will happen again next year," said Bloomberg spokesman Jordan Barowitz, recently appointed to the Brooklyn library's board.

As the library heads into its annual budget negotiations with the city, the board is looking into a potential conflict of interest.

Bloomberg's special counsel Anthony Crowell, a library board member, has been nominated as vice president - a post charged with asking the City Council to restore mayoral budget cuts. "My concern is that we're placing him in this institutional conflict of interest, and that the library could end up losing in the end," said trustee Mark Lieberman.

mgrace@nydailynews.com

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