NY City Council Testimony: Citizens Defending Libraries
Channel: CitizensDefendLibes
Date: 2013-03-12

New York City Council committee hearing on library budgets, March 8, 2013
James G. Van Bramer, Chair

Video by Jonathan Barkey. License: Creative Commons. For broadcast rights, contact: jonathanbarkey.com

Entire hearing video available at: 
http://legistar.council.nyc.gov/DepartmentDetail.aspx?ID=7021&GUID=5E857830-B913-46E5-A804-566CC980172B

The following members of Citizens Defending Libraries testified:

00:00 Carolyn McIntyre
05:10 Michael D.D. White
08:51 Judi Francis

Click on time-code to jump to the segment you wish to view.

CAROLYN MCINTYRE 00:00
Thanks Councilman Van Bramer, whose "heart is the right place", acknowledges others in the room who didn't get the chance to testify. Camera pans to audience.

Recounts watching video of earlier part of the hearing from an overflow room on the 16th floor.

01:00 "I am also deeply disturbed by what I heard [from] the leadership up here."

Contrasts BPL's Linda Johnson plea for funding with BPL's plan to sell off branch libraries.  Cites Johnson's  exchange with Tish James on closure of Pacific Street branch and its ties to the BAM South real estate deal.

01:40 "There's a mixed agenda going on here ... it's very demeaning ... we see through it."

01:40  Re Councilman Levin's question to library presidents about Bloomberg commitment to libraries: "... and they laughed, I'm sorry, its says it all. ... It's very damaging that there are people in the leadership positions in these libraries whose hearts are not in the place of the libraries..."

02:12 Recounts meeting at Brooklyn Heights Cadman Plaza branch headed by BPL spokesman Joshua Nachowitz. Plans to remove business and career services from that location [move it to Grand Grand Army Plaza], close that library, sell land to a private developer, incorporate new library on the first floor of the new building — but only one-fourth the size of the existing library.

03:18 "Decreasing space is decreasing opportunities. It's the same thing."

03:34 "My heart goes out to these librarians, to John Islop, who has come to our meetings.  They are working under horrible conditions, by a leadership that doesn't have their heart in line with what they're supposed to be protecting. This is outrageous."

03:44 "We are giving away tremendous real estate, so that a few people who are connected to Bloomberg, via Linda Johnson and Josh Nachowitz ... so that they can get more, and more and more. And at the same time, decrease, decrease, decrease. With every shrinkage, with every foot lost, they are decreasing opportunities for the public to learn and to grow."

04:15 "The libraries are the least expensive way for the public to learn and to gain a foothold in this society ... they are less than one percent of the city budget."

COUNCILMAN VAN BRAMER
Gently reminds panel of the 3-minute time limit (not applied to any previous speakers), acknowledges that McIntyre is speaking on behalf of many other people.

MICHAEL D.D. WHITE 05:10
Notes activation of three minute clock.

05:16 "Do we want a shrinking library system for a growing, wealthier city? Because that's what we're going to get as the library system becomes a generation of real-estate deals for developers. The new city-wide policy has, in a very harmful way, turned into a perverse incentive for the city to de-fund libraries and drive them into the ground."

Libraries have higher attendance than all sports teams and cultural events combined. Library funding is a top priority of community boards. But library funding pales in comparison to the massive subsidies to corporate sports stadiums and arenas.

06:14 "... the process of the annual 'funding dance' for libraries is a farce... we know that insiders are referring to the process as 'dwarf-tossing'... Libraries are the little guys. They are the pittance that should be easy to include in the city budget ..."

It's "political theater" pitting the "big, bad mayor" against heroic city council members who "ride to the rescue" and restore some, but not enough, funding, which is less than that of Detroit, "a city on the edge of bankruptcy".

07:25 Meanwhile, "low funding is being used as an excuse to push the system's valuable assets out the door to real-estate developers — in crony-capitalism abuse. You're essentially funding the asset-stripping by the mayor ... Even if it shakes loose a few deals ... it's an utter travesty to drive all the libraries and the entire system into the ground financially."

COUNCILMAN VAN BRAMER
Notes White has come in under the three minutes.

MICHAEL WHITE
Says he has more to say, that's why the group's testimony was divided up. The entire written testimony is available on the Web:

http://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com/2013/03/testimony-by-citizens-defending.html

JUDI FRANCIS — Testimony summary/quotes continue in separate clip on this channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stoA0re26sA