Monthly Archives: February 2014
The New York Times reports today on the decision facing Mayor de Blasio on whether to spend $150 million of NYC taxpayer’s money on the NYPL’s proposal to gut the 42nd Street Library and sell the Mid-Manhattan and SIBL libraries.
Incidentally, don’t buy into NYPL’s framing – this isn’t a “renovation”; this is the disemboweling of a great library and the sale/shrinkage of two others!
As a candidate last summer, Bill de Blasio told Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg that New York City should stop financing the ambitious renovation of the Fifth Avenue flagship of the New York Public Library until someone figured out how much it was all going to cost.
Now that Mr. de Blasio is mayor, he holds that very power, and people on both sides of the question are weighing in on how he should wield it as the city budgeting process begins.
For the time being, Mr. de Blasio has let stand the $150 million in capital funds that the Bloomberg administration pledged to the renovation project. But the cost analysis that he called for last summer has yet to be completed, and his office has said its final funding decisions on the library and other capital projects will not be made until the spring.
Now is the perfect time to send an email to the mayor asking him to do the right thing and save the 42nd Street Library, along with the Mid-Manhattan library and $150 million of desperately needed city funds!
Read the full New York Times article here.
Tell Mayor de Blasio to stop the Central Library Plan and save branch libraries across the city! Send an email to the mayor by clicking on this link:
www.savenypl.org/email-the-mayor
The NYPL administration has hired a professional lobbying firm to pressure Mayor de Blasio to change his mind and support their plan to gut the 42nd Street Library and sell the Mid-Manhattan, a plan that will cost over $150 million to NYC taxpayers.
We don’t have costly professional lobbyists, but we have you! Speak up load and clear – act now to send your email to Mayor de Blasio asking that he follow through on his commitment to halt the Central Library Plan and reconsider the sale of Brooklyn libraries.
Copies of your message will be automatically sent to City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Public Advocate Letitia James, Comptroller Scott Stringer and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.
After you have sent your email to Mayor de Blasio, it’s essential that you help us spread the word. Please share the link to our “Email the Mayor” web page with your friends via email, Facebook and Twitter.
Thank you so much for your help!
The Committee to Save the New York Public Library has just released a new broadside listing 5 steps to save the 42nd Street Library and strengthen NYC’s library systems.
Download pdf: A Call for Action!
Click on images to enlarge:
1. The $150 million which former Mayor Bloomberg earmarked for the destructive 42nd Street Library “renovation” should be redirected to other,urgently-needed library uses.
2. Don’t starve the local libraries to pay for the 42nd Street “renovation.”
3. Stop the sale of the Mid-Manhattan Library.
4. Insist on full transparency regarding decisions by the New York Public LIbrary board of trustees.
5. Keep the 42nd Street Library a world-class research facility by saving all of the research stacks and updating the existing climate-control systems.
State Senator Brad Hoylman, whose district includes the 42nd Street Library and the Mid-Manhattan Library, has announced his opposition to the Central Library Plan:
I am deeply concerned about several of the proposed changes, notably the proposal to displace the historic stacks, dramatically reducing the number of readily available research volumes and increasing the wait times for materials. As a result, the Central Library’s function as one of the world’s premier research facilities will be significantly diminished.
I am also staunchly opposed to the the proposal to sell of the Mid-Manhattan Library and Science, Industry and Business Library branches and consolidate their contents within the Central Library in a space less than one-third their current combined size.
Thank you Senator Hoylman for your powerful and articulate statesment! Read the full statement here.
A great report from the “Translationista” blog of a tour of the now-empty stacks at the 42nd Street Library which the NYPL recently gave for a delegation from PEN:
Yesterday I was invited to tour the stacks at the 42nd Street Library as part of a delegation from the PEN American Center, which the NYPL is hoping to win over to its cause. The purpose of the tour was to convince us that the demolition of the stacks is necessary and a contribution to service and scholarship. What I saw convinced me of the opposite…
Read the entire article here.