Many institutional and commercial facilities that rely on public funds to operate — from K-12 school districts and universities to government buildings — have been fighting an uphill battle for decades against growing backlogs of maintenance and repair needs. For some such New York City facilities, the latest budget crunch has resulted in a series of moves that bode poorly for their future.
New York City’s public libraries will reduce building maintenance and repairs and will no longer be open seven days a week, according to NY1.
“Without sufficient funding, we cannot sustain our current levels of service, and any further cuts to the libraries’ budgets unfortunately will result in deeper service impacts,” representatives of the three library systems wrote in a joint statement, which also said the public libraries will reduce spending on library materials and programming.
Mayor Eric Adams said the city has a $7 billion gap in next year’s budget. Looking to the future, libraries are bracing for deeper budget cuts in fiscal year 2025. For that year, there is a proposed 5 percent cut.
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
