[HN Gopher] Sunday service suspended at all NYPL locations
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Sunday service suspended at all NYPL locations
Author : raybb
Score : 53 points
Date : 2023-11-17 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nypl.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nypl.org)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Sunday 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| >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.
| jstarfish wrote:
| Well, shit. Guess not _all_ the kids are at school then.
| chrismeller wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| Our 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 wrote:
| A 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.
| David_Axelrod wrote:
| Of 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 wrote:
| Well, give more money to the cops. That'll fix everything.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| And the immigrants.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| Looks 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=xvmJjhk6Gsg
| ipaddr wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| Well 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 wrote:
| Firstly; 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.
| freeopinion wrote:
| So you're saying that illegal immigration isn't really
| the problem?
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I'm saying that the arrival of a large number of people,
| who are legally unable to work, and who have no support
| system from families, and whom the City is legally
| obliged to house is a problem.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| And "inflation is transitory!" And "the chocolate ration
| has been increased to 20 grams!"
| pseg134 wrote:
| The NYPD is skipping an entire Academy class because of the
| cuts. It was uniform to every city agency.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Five classes if I remember correctly; there are usually
| four classes per year.
| David_Axelrod wrote:
| The police budget is ~6 billion, out of about a $110.5
| billion budget
|
| [0] https://www.nyc.gov/site/omb/publications/agency-budgets-
| pro... [1]
| https://www.nyc.gov/assets/omb/downloads/pdf/fp11-23.pdf
| syspec wrote:
| That's too high for what they do (or don't do)
| woodruffw wrote:
| That's before overtime, which the NYPD routinely abuses to
| the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually[1].
|
| [1]: https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/nypd-
| overspending-on-ov...
| Avshalom wrote:
| great thats a billion dollars left for them after NYC
| covers the budget shortfall.
| gemstones wrote:
| Oh man, I didn't realize it was 3%!
|
| NYC has a ton of people at the top of their fields in a really
| dense setting. I wonder what city services cause such a big
| shortfall! On paper it should be easier to finance NYC than any
| other big city, so I wonder where the money goes.
|
| Or an I incorrect and the city is poorer than I think? Perhaps
| Long Island sucks more incomes away from the city than I
| thought?
| David_Axelrod wrote:
| About $32 billion comes from property taxes and $38 billion
| from "other taxes" (mostly income tax).
|
| [0] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/omb/downloads/pdf/fp11-23.pdf
| ipaddr wrote:
| The mayor of NYC has been talking about illegal immigration
| scaling up this year costing the city billions.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Everything in NYC is expensive. We spend almost $40,000 per
| year on each public school student. Construction is hugely
| expensive. The Department of Corrections has 1.4 corrections
| officers for every person incarcerated.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Simple solution, imprison less people. NYC prisons are
| notorious for overcrowding for decades now [1] [2].
|
| It's shocking for me as a German that this seems to have
| been a consistent fact of life that's just accepted by
| everyone and nothing is being done - no new prisons are
| built to offer more space for prisoners, and nothing is
| being done to reduce the amount of people heading towards
| prison.
|
| [1] https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-
| library/abstracts/prison-a...
|
| [2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/new-york-post-
| photos...
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| NYC average daily jail population has been decreasing
| almost continuously for the last 30 years. Conditions at
| Riker's Island are much more to do with the problems
| between the civilian oversight function and the COs
| unions than they are to do with an actual excess of
| inmates with respect to cells etc.
| xxpor wrote:
| Maybe they should figure out how to build a library for less
| than $2100 a sq ft
|
| https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/118704548054032384...
| Digory wrote:
| Surely there are other cuts with less impact. I suspect many
| more users would rather they redirect the ample Private
| Foundation funds for "NYPL LIVE" stage events (December:
| "Lesbian Poetic Traditions") to staying open on Sundays.
|
| But Library management wants to host cool friends AND generate
| angry voters.
|
| I see this pattern often in government budget showdowns; the
| tiniest cuts produce outsized service impacts.
| gosub100 wrote:
| "vital services"
|
| yeah everywhere I look, someone's reading a book that they got
| from the library. All these people walking down the street not
| minding traffic, because of public library books they're
| reading. Lots of traffic accidents caused by those public books
| too, people are looking down instead of at the road. Lots of
| families are not eating dinner together because the children
| cannot stop reading books they found at the public library.
| They cannot get thier homework done because their faces are
| glued to the screen, oops, I mean paper, PAPER, from pages off
| public library books. I don't know what we would do without
| this vital service. I dont' know where people could _possibly_
| get information or read stories if it wasn 't on paper bound by
| thread stitched between cardboard and glossy print. Do you have
| any ideas?
| stetrain wrote:
| Good thing that libraries also provide digital information
| services, including digital book rentals and digital records
| and academic publication searches.
|
| As well as facilities to access those services if you do not
| have an adequate computer, internet connection, or
| subscription access to these resources at home.
| cakeface wrote:
| Tax the billionaires. Tax the vacant real estate holdings at
| the high end. Tax short term rentals.
| CraigRo wrote:
| We lost net 10 of them costing hundreds of millions of
| dollars already. Short term rentals were basically banned
| outright. Not very many vacant real estate holdings, and how
| are you going to prove that they were sufficiently vacant --
| going to roust them all at night?
|
| City needs to actually get its act together to become more
| efficient.
| stetrain wrote:
| A quick google says the proposed city library budget was $471.5
| million and the total city budget is $107 billion.
|
| That's less than half a percent of the overall budget.
| nostromo wrote:
| New 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 wrote:
| In what way has a migrant surge affected the budget?
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Spitballing, but I think they provided shelter for a lot of
| them. No idea if that would significantly impact NYC's budget
| nostromo wrote:
| NYC is housing migrants in hotel rooms that it pays for.
|
| 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-
| migra...
|
| A billion here, a billion there... pretty soon you're talking
| real money.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Wonder why they don't include AirBnB in that? Oh, yeah, I
| forgot, they're _totally not_ a hotel, right?
| nostromo wrote:
| AirBNB is all but banned in NYC.
|
| So the hotels are full of migrants, not tourists, and
| there are few other options, which further hurts the
| local economy.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Tourism numbers are rapidly approaching pre-pandemic
| highs[1], with the main inertia being Asian tourism, not
| a lack of hotel availability.
|
| The city really shouldn't be attempting to house migrants
| in midtown Manhattan, but doing so isn't _actually_
| appearing to hurt tourism numbers.
|
| [1]: https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/09/05/tourists-china-
| hotel-rate...
| lapphi wrote:
| Why does it cost so much? Seems strange that the city is
| unable to negotiate better rates if these hotels are
| struggling
| DamnYuppie wrote:
| Any quick googling will return numerous stories about this.
| Here is one that estimates it at $5,000,000 a day that NYC is
| spending.
|
| https://nypost.com/2023/03/03/bidens-migrant-mess-costing-
| ne...
| barretts wrote:
| NYC has a "right to housing" law that requires the government
| to provide a roof for anyone who needs it, including
| migrants. With the recent influx of migrants this is causing
| unforeseen spending that will total $5bn in 2023.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/nyregion/adams-nyc-
| migran...
| couchand wrote:
| > NYC has a "right to housing" law
|
| Not a law, a consent decree, and Adams just suspended it.
| willmeyers wrote:
| Shutting 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 wrote:
| Personally 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
| TimedToasts wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| The 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.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| It's easy to paint with a broad brush "'the homeless' =
| bad". That is as casually discriminatory as being
| antisemitic and is offensive. Perhaps some empathy and
| nuance would help rather than condemning a group of people
| for the actions of individuals.
| willmeyers wrote:
| I see where you're coming from and I honestly don't like it
| either. Some are disruptive, shout, smell bad, ...etc. But of
| all the times I've been to the library (any maybe I'm just
| lucky), I can only count a few instances I felt uneasy about
| the people I was around. Of the few times they did act out or
| pulled up porn; they were escorted out. I think that's mostly
| a consequence of how our city deals homelessness and our city
| should do better, but that's complete tangent.
|
| To me a library is a public service that should serve all. To
| this day, after a decade living here, I've yet to find a
| cafe, bar, or any place to get free internet, a laptop,
| shelter, and a decently maintained public bathroom.
|
| I just want to reiterate I agree with your frustration. I
| want the NYPL to be better, but it needs to serve everybody.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I agree but libraries are not a daycare either.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| A 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-
| 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-
| transi...)
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Definitely just a lay person but I seriously doubt that figure
| is as large as a soaked sponge...
| ghaff wrote:
| Ridership 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Sunday 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.)
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