Mayor Adams calls off some of his controversial NYC library cuts in new budget plan

Mayor Adams announced Wednesday that his latest budget plan will cancel some of the controversial cuts he proposed for the city’s public library systems — a reversal that came after the austerity push drew intense backlash from industry leaders and Democrats in the Council.

In a morning appearance on NY1, Adams said he’s calling off a 4% budget trim for the New York, Brooklyn and Queens public library systems that he ordered on April 4 as part of a so-called Program to Eliminate the Gap, or PEG.

The PEG instituted 4% spending shaves at nearly all municipal agencies, and Adams said the program generated enough savings from other parts of the city government to enable his administration to spare the libraries.

“When we did an analysis, we were fortunate enough to look at all the other efficiencies we did, and we were able to leave for this round of the Program to Eliminate the Gap the libraries harmless,” the mayor said.

The rollback of the library funding slash will be part of the executive budget plan for the 2024 fiscal year that Adams is set to unveil during a press conference at City Hall on Wednesday afternoon.

Library leaders said the PEG would have forced them to close many of their branches on Saturdays and Sundays and drastically scale back educational and social programming.

However, library leaders haven’t only raised alarm about the April 4 PEG.

Two previous PEGs ordered by Adams last year will remain in effect in the executive budget plan, a mayoral spokesman said.

The first two PEGs alone would subject the library systems to a $36.2 million budget cut — a reduction New York Public Library President Anthony Marx testified before the Council last month would “impact our operations across the board, whether it be the capacity to open new branches, keep our current hours, maintain our collections or offer programs.”

Had the latest PEG been enacted, library leaders say their cut would have ballooned to $52.7 million.

Despite keeping the past PEGs in place, Adams told the New York Times earlier Wednesday that his executive budget isn’t “taking a single penny from our library systems.”

A City Council source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid, accused the mayor of “lying” to the newspaper.

“He said they saved and restored the libraries from budget cuts, which is just factually not true,” the source said.

The mayor and the Council have until July 1 to agree on a final budget for the next fiscal year.

Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan, a Democrat who chairs the Council’s Finance Committee, said his team will continue to push for reversing all library cuts in budget talks with the mayor.

“It’s great that they’re holding them harmless from this PEG, but we’re still talking about almost $40 million in cuts,” Brannan said. “There’s still a lot of work to do.”

Agencies impacted by the latest PEG were ordered by Adams to come up with plans by April 14 for how to achieve the 4% savings target.

The FDNY as well as the Departments of Sanitation and Social Services failed to meet that deadline, according to a source briefed on the matter.

That marks the second time in a row that the FDNY and the Sanitation Department have blown a PEG deadline, as they fell short of their mandated savings targets ordered by Adams last year, too.