City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. My name is Ben Weber. I'm the Boston city councilor for District 6, and I'm the chair of the Ways and Means Committee. For the record, today is 05/19/2026, and the exact time is still 02:07PM. This hearing is being recorded. It's also being live streamed at boston.gov/city-council-tv. It broadcasts on xfinity channel eight, r c n channel 82, and phio channel nine sixty four. Just I have a couple preliminary things and then we'll we'll get to the panel. The council's budget review process encompasses a series of public hearings beginning in April running through June. We strongly encourage residents to take a moment to engage in this process by giving testimony for the record.

You can do this in several ways. You can give testimony at one of our public hearings or all of them if you if you can. You can do so in a couple ways. One, you can show up in person to a hearing, sign in on the sign in sheet near the door, and you'll be called on for the public testimony portion. You can also testify virtually at any hearing.

For virtual testimony, sign up using our online form on our council budget review website or by emailing the committee at ccc. Wmboston dot gov or by emailing our budget analysts right here, Karish Machon, at karishma.uhan@boston.gov, and you'll get a Zoom link to testify. You can also come to the last or fourth of four listening sessions, which and I've been saying I've been reading the script and saying it's on Thursday, May 26, but May 26 is a Tuesday. So it's Tuesday, May 26 at 6PM right here in the chamber. Anyone in the public, please come, and counselors will be here to hear your testimony about what what you want to see in the budget again at that listening session you can testify in person or virtually so follow the same steps to get a zoom link if if if you can't make it in person.

In addition to testifying at a hearing virtually in person, you can email written testimony to the committee at ccc.wm@boston.gov. Lastly, you can supply your testimony by submitting a two minute video of your testimony through the form on our website for more information on the council budget process and how to testify please visit the council budget's budget council city council's budget website at boston.gov/city- sorry that was wrong boston.gov/councilbudget. We will have in person testimony following a presentation from the panel and our first round of councilor questions. Again you'll be called on in order you've arrived or you signed up in or get a zoom link from our legislative budget analyst karishma at karishma.chouhan@boston.gov for the zoom link. Your name will be added to the list.

This afternoon's hearing is on docket number seven thirty three to seven forty, an overview of the fiscal year twenty seven operating budget for the Boston Public Library. This is one in a series of hearings to review the fiscal year two thousand twenty seven budget. These matters were sponsored by mayor Michelle Wu and referred to the committee on 04/08/2026. I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, councilor Flynn, councilor Murphy. I've received letters of absence from Councilor Louie Jen and Councilor Culpepper.

Now, I'm just going introduce the panel and then you can give a presentation if you have one. We're joined today by the President of the Boston Public Library, David Leonard, the Chief Financial Officer of Emily Tocarzic. Great. The Director of Library Services, Michael Colford and our Director of Neighborhood Services of the Boston Public Library, Priscilla Foley. Okay, so that's it for me. I'm going to hand it over to the panel, and then we'll go to questions from the Councillors over here.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to be back with the Council once again. I believe this may be my tenth time presenting on our budget for the library. And it remains, although we are a complicated institution with our own challenges, it remains a joy and privilege to lead this institution for all of the residents of Boston and beyond.

We have a number of slides to present on, but I'm just gonna pick off a couple of highlights from the slides so we can get to your questions in particular, which will also lead us into the budget picture. You warned me about this, not to be too aggressive with the clicker, right? So, let me start right here. And you have all of this information in your packet, but the BPL 2025 calendar year snapshot of performance, a few highlights that I want to point out just to give context to the work of our staff and the institution system wide. So, in 2025, we had over 3,200,000 visits to the central library and all of our branches.

Our circulation numbers, I. E, the books borrowed, 1,900,000 physical items, actual books, which is actually an increase over the previous year. And 5,400,000 items downloaded as e books or e audio books. The other number I want to point out is the sign up of new library card holders at 129,000, which is kind of the norm for us from year to year. So what I want you to take away from this slide is a really strong year for the Boston Public Library in terms of serving the community.

We base all of our messaging on our new strategic plan from 2024, which centers four key roles of the library in our work in community. Those are our role as a lifelong learning and research partner, our work as a community engager, our work to present a welcoming destination at all of our physical and online locations, and our work to be a trusted resource. Briefly taking a highlight from each of these four roles in community, from the lifelong learning and research partner role, I just want to point out that last year we delivered an all ages summer reading program, whereas normally it's just for our young people. But last year, we had a very successful program for people of all ages. That was augmented by some work with our LEGO grants.

So learning through play is an important part of how we animate kids programs across the system. Continuing in this role, one of the other highlights relates to our workforce development program, including our ESOL services, which continue to have wait lists and be much in demand. And then looking at bringing history to life, and bringing engagement to life around our arts and culture work, we had 98,000 visitors to our revolutionary art exhibition at the Central Library. The current exhibition, which will be up through September, focusing on the Declarations of Independence, has all eight copies of the original printing that the Boston Public Library holds, for the people of Boston and the Commonwealth. Moving to our welcoming destination.

I am actually just going to talk about our major capital projects. Fields Corner Branch is almost done, and we look forward to an opening in the fall. This is probably one of the two fastest projects in terms of the building going up, And for those of you in the neighborhood, you can actually see it happening right in front of you. The other branch renovation project is the new Chinatown branch, which is part of the Housing with Public Assets program down on Tyler Street in Chinatown. That's more complicated, so it'll take a little longer, but absolutely underway.

And we have work underway to support a future renovation of the remaining parts of the central library, the old McKim Building on Copley Square. Within our Trusted Resource category, I just wanted to highlight our intellectual freedom training, very relevant to today's period, that all staff, who are very familiar with these principles and concepts, but it's always good to get retrained on things, as well as our Books on Banned program, where we offer, through private funding, resources to those in other parts of the country who are unable to access resources in their local neighborhoods. Our social service program, servicing those who housing

insecure, we continue to double down on that, again, service

that work with some external grants. This year, we were also able to extend our block programming to all 25 branches. And so, whereas in years past, people may have focused on just borrowing a book, or going to use the space at a branch. Programmes and services are key to the work serving all of our communities. We also have work underway around civic engagement, because we want people to be able to participate in our society, and see the library as a resource for that work.

There's a whole set of accomplishments around our internal equity, diversity, and inclusion programs, workplace culture, and collaboration and communication. We have our coming up on the year of our first data analyst on the staff, who's able to help us look at our programs, understand who we're reaching, where they're from, and what they might need. And so, there are a number of programs that we are continuing to do, either patron facing or internally to augment the work of staff. Which leads us to a set of goals for next year. Each of those slides also included some goals.

Those are aspirational, but they are contingent on what our budget capacity will be as we go into next year. And so, I believe we want to leave the budget conversation for questions. But I do want to note that our proposed operating budget from the city of Boston is proposed as a $50,000,000 7 and $24,000 budget. That is largely flat compared with last year. And so while we were originally asked to do a 2% cut across the board, we were able to look at a more modest set of reductions and cuts because we want to avoid this was the guidance from city administration was we want to avoid a situation where we have to entertain the possibility of layoffs.

And we also want to ensure that our operating hours across all locations is currently maintained. And so we've been able to achieve that within the flat budget, largely by holding trimming here and there, but holding a number of vacancies as unfilled going into next year. You may have questions about that capacity. This is about $1,500,000 below what our maintenance budget would have been as proposed. So this will not be easy, but compared with many of our colleagues and what they are facing, we believe this is a fiscal responsible budget right now, and we will do our part with belt tightening and other measures to ensure that it works.

We will be working with our city colleagues to ensure we don't hold too many vacancies because we could easily dip below the minimum standards of service across branches, across central and across back of house spots. And then just a note on our capital budget. The five year capital budget totals about $231,000,000 in proposed renovations. Right now, we are very focused on Fields Corner and Chinatown branches I mentioned earlier, which are well underway, and on ensuring the next project, which is the South goes into construction during the course of the next year. And then there are a number of projects in the out years where there is a level of still uncertainty about when they could start.

Did you want to add anything, Emily, or shall we move to questions?

No, I think if we

can go ahead into questions and we'll add some detail for you.

Okay, thank very much. So we've been joined by Councillor Fitzgerald. You have six minutes for a first round whenever you're ready. Councillor Flynn.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You, Chair. Thank you to David and the library team for being here for your professional work. I share, David, as you know, the South End with John Fitzgerald and Reverend Culpepper. We're concerned about the South End library. David, can you make a commitment? Is the money in the capital budget for the South End Library? What is the delay? When are we going get this built, David?

Yes, the money is in the capital plan. We recently got the release authorization from the budget office to ensure it can go forward, which means the early prequalification and bidding for contractors can begin imminently. There is one outstanding issue, and we both Priscilla and I are rushing off to a community meeting after this hearing I'll be there. Specifically to gather community input on this last issue, which actually doesn't relate to the branch itself proper. That design is done and fixed.

But rather to ensure what is the best option for the alley behind the branch so that our colleagues in the public works departments can continue to service the residents appropriately. That particular matter took a little bit of time for our colleagues to get their arms around and we believe we now have three options for how to deal with that and we want to get one more piece of community feedback on those three options. That will then, once released and decided, allow the architect to get those documents ready to go out to bid. So that will be a three to six month process to complete that and then be in construction over the

course of the next fiscal year. Thank you, David. I'll be at that same meeting. You'll be at tonight, I think it's either at five or 05:30. David, do wanna say that I did a walk through with some residents in the South End in Back Bay on Friday, and some people from the Boston Public Library team when they were out of Copley.

Wanna say thank you to to them, to you for their professionalism in joining us, but also for their input in addressing quality of life issues, public safety issues. So, wanted to start off on that thanking them. So, on the public library in the South End, what are we doing or what steps are we doing on potential for any type of flooding, any type of heavy rain? As you know, that's what damaged the the the library in the past. But, what is our strategy?

What is our plan? I wanna make sure my constituents, John's constituents, Reverend's have the best public library that they possibly can be. What are we what are we gonna do, Debbie?

Yeah. I mean, the the original reason that the branch had to close was because of the two flooding incidents in the basements basement. And unfortunately, the prior design involved locating all of the mechanical, plumbing, electrical work in the basement of the branch. And the current design, actually raises the branch, up, the new design and most of the, equipment is located either on the interior or on the roof. So, will not have that problem again for sure. Okay.

I've been active and engaged and involved in the Chinatown library. I think the temporary library is great. The staff there is excellent. Enjoy going down there and talking to them. I wanna acknowledge mayor mayor Marty Walsh also for pushing this public library in Chinatown. David, my question on Chinatown is how are we going to ensure and and I think your team does this well. But how are we going to ensure that Cantonese speaking residents are included, their voices matter, and that there will be books, programs for for the seniors that mostly speak Cantonese, that they're included?

Yeah. I'm gonna turn to Priscilla Foley, director of Neighborhood Services to answer that question. Okay.

Thank you. We actually had a wonderful meeting just last Monday where Melissa joined us and for meetings like that we do make sure we have interpreters on-site. But with that, the staff there are majority multilingual, and there are certain positions that we have that we do require language. And so, making sure that we have either a Mandarin or Cantonese speaker at the branch. And part of that is also bringing in community partners as well.

So, the staff that are there, as you said, they're excellent, and they make sure that they're connecting with the Cantonese speaking community there. There will be, as you said, it is a smaller branch right now. We'll have about, the collection itself will be about half Chinese. So we will be able to be continuing to serve residents there and then across the system.

Thank you, Priscilla, and thank you for your important leadership. My final question, I think I have twenty four seconds left. David, you you forgot about the residents of South Boston, though. You you've forgot about the community for the longest period of time. We were trying to get a a a library built there, and you you said we were going to get it done. And then, you know, that fell off the fell off the map and here we are. What what happened to the plan for a brand new South Boston Library?

So, councillor, I assure you we did not forget about our friends and important residents in South Boston. The next step always was and still is a programming study to look at the conditions of the branch, to look at the needs of the neighborhood. We may even be able to use that vehicle to, as we stated before, to have one eye on the needs of the South Boston Waterfront or the Seaport. There remains funding for that study in the five year capital plan. Now, we both know that it's a rolling five year capital plan and so that's one of the difficulties about not being able to say when things are in the later years when exactly will we have capacity to do that.

So our list of priorities has not changed. Our order of precedence has not changed. But as I sit before you today, because it's in the latter years of the plan, I cannot give you a guaranteed year when we will be able to do that work. The good news remains that it is still in the plan and so we have it on our horizon to do as we have the available funds and capacity to execute.

Thank you. I receive not complaints, I receive questions all the time from residents as young as like two years old, three years old. And the little kids, they love the library. They're they're with their their mothers or fathers or nannies at times. All the way from two years old to my parents at age 87 years old. Who are frequent users of that branch. Yeah. So, want they said to me before they pass along, they wanna see a brand new library, and how can you say no to your parents, David, you know?

I understand understand your quandary very well, very well. Thank you. Thank you Councillor.

Thank you David and thank you to your team for always being professional. Thank you Mr. Chair.

Okay, thank you. Councillor Murphy, six minutes.

Thank you. Counselor Flynn, I have a young and old story to share. I first want to thank you all for being here, but also give a shout out to miss Celeste from the Rossendale branch. So I'll share with you this digital image she created yesterday. So that would be my great niece, my niece, Murray's daughter, who's 10 old.

And they have a program there of the 1,000 books before kindergarten program. So she is the youngest ever. She got there at 10, but she visits the library, I think, daily and is continuing and has already hit a thousand books way before kindergarten, before her first birthday. So it just shows the, you know, the importance of our libraries. But also, I know I've called you and talked before about, like, the chess club that moved from the Adams Street branch to the Lower Mills.

And it must still be going on because I went over Monday night to help my mom, like, watch my dad while she went, and she had her chess bag with her. So I wanna thank you for that also. Libraries are just places residents can visit, hopefully, and just thrive there. So it's important that we continue to fund. So I'm glad to hear that we don't have cuts.

Unfortunately, this is, you know, a year where we may have to, you know, make hard we do have to make hard choices, but I'm glad that we don't have to make hard choices with our libraries. They're, like, lifesaving spaces for our neighbors. So and also wanna shout out and thank my district counselors who I know speak eloquently about advocating for the branches in their neighborhoods. As an at large counselor, I obviously represent all of the branches and care deeply that we continue to invest in them. So I really don't have more specific questions.

I know you're always open and just a phone call away if there's any questions or advice or just information I wanna pass along. But, Priscilla, if you maybe could speak to if there are any libraries. I know some, if they're under construction, they're just trying to be creative. But if there are there certain branches that you've been needing to give, you know, a little extra support to to make sure they can continue to provide services if they're in some sort of in between stage either with staffing or construction?

Yeah. So we actually, along with our operations team, we actually did a furniture survey, which I know that that seems like something that's so basic, so important to have the right chairs, the right tables, the right size, and we are actually working to just on that basic thing, making sure our furniture is accessible because if we have a table from 1930, it's not necessarily gonna fit 2026 standards for how we use the library. So, we're looking at that for our branches that maybe are further out on the capital plan and making sure that we are getting furniture for that. So, that's like the basics, making sure we are still a welcoming environment. And additionally, we work with the Boston Public Library Fund to All of the branches are able to request additional program support, which is one of the ways that we have this amazing trust programs in the system.

So, we have a lot of different opportunities to be bringing in different kinds of programs. There's sort of maybe a riskier program like, we've never done this there before. And, like, you know, they like, the Brighton branch just started their Shut Up and Write, and so people just go in there and they write together and they can share what they want. And they you know, we've been in there since 2010, But again, with the furniture, we need to be looking at that. So, we have a lot of different opportunities to continue to welcome people across the system.

Awesome. Thank you. Just thank you for all you do. And we'll all be advocating and making sure your funding stays strong. Thank you. Thank you, chair.

Okay. Thank you. We've been joined by councilor Braden. Councilor Fitzgerald, you're up next.

Thank you, chair. Mr. Lynn, I know you're saying on the cuts, everyone's taking a haircut. And just the what do you feel the most? And ask that because I know you said you're keeping some of the jobs, the vacant jobs available, where a lot of others, the vacant jobs are being cut from departments. Just talk to me about the strategy a little bit more in-depth and sort of where you're feeling more of the heat or what you're concerned about? And if you could, what would you want to preserve?

Yes, I think and our CFO will be able to give you a couple of examples related to the collections budget, because that is still our bread and butter. The thousand books before kindergarten, those thousand books have to come from somewhere. So and in last year's budget cycle, the council actually restored part of the collections budget cut that we experienced. The council restored $100,000 of a $200,000 cut. And that cut has actually been carried forward to this year, so in exactly the same position against the backdrop where materials are costing more and where the demand for more expensive e books is actually increasing.

So that's one area if you'd like to talk a little bit more about.

Sure. No, I can jump into that. So our collections budget, we are eligible for state aid funding to particularly to service operations, building operations for the library. So to be eligible for our state aid funding, need to spend the equivalent of 12% of our city operating dollars on collections. So for us, that's a little bit over $6,000,000 annually.

The city operating budget typically is between like 3.5 to $4,000,000 that the library receives for collections. And what we're seeing recently, a couple of different things. One, the cost of materials that David just referenced. So a physical book itself, the average cost is around $20 for us to receive a digital format, whether it's an audiobook, an ebook, is around $70 per item. And those are actually only valid for two years.

So, you're essentially leasing the leasing the item. What we found over the past few years is the demand for the digital copies to actually far exceed the physical. So I think 2025, the audiobook actually was the the most checked out circulated item that we through our collections. That's not only an easier way for people to receive items, it also provides an accessibility. So people who may not be able to hold a book, may not be able to focus on a book for that long, or perhaps turn pages, we're actually providing additional access through our materials by purchasing more of these digital collections.

And what we're finding though, because of the demand, the hold times are exceeding. So we have $6,000,000 It's actually providing us fewer quantities of books collections. And I wanted to point out right now our largest hold across the system is a book fiction book that just came out last year excuse me, last month called Yesteryear. And currently, the library holds 417 copies. There's over 4,600 people on hold.

So, what that equates to is three zero five days hold for an e book, two seventy days hold for an audio book, or fifty days hold for a print book. If we were to say a reasonable time period, we will fulfill all of these holds within a month. It would cost us $55,000 just to do that for this one title. So, the collections budget and the demand that we're having, we're trying to keep up with it and service the community. The other piece of this on the flip side, going back to the vacancies, these holds aren't gonna go away.

So what we need to ensure is that there are staff in the buildings who can respond to people coming in and saying, why am I waiting nine or ten months for this book? And actually being able to engage with them and say, here's something that you can get off the shelf right now that's equivalent. It might be in the same genre. And making sure that we're engaging with these folks and supporting reading for pleasure. And like David said Thank you. Our core responsibility here.

Awesome. Thank you for that answer.

I would add, if I could, that when it comes to vacancies, if a small branch has six staff or a medium sized branch has eight staff and maybe they have one vacancy, 'll they still be able to open successfully and maintain hours, but where is the time for programs and outreach work that brings this fully to life? So, again, this is workable. This is fiscally responsible right now. But we're one or two vacancies away in any place from not being able to meet that. So we have a commitment to continue working with our budget colleagues to ensure we pass that threshold.

Thank you. I know I'm running out of time. Do you think yesteryear is in high demand because everyone just wishes it was yesteryear? As opposed to today?

You know what,

I haven't been able to get it off the shelf yet, so

I'll have to get back to you.

You can't bump yourself up in line there. Although I do find it odd that by going to electric, I thought everything was supposed to be faster. It's more expensive and have slowed things down. That's not a great sign overall, but I that's just an aside. To some of the physical aspects very quickly, thank you for the Fields Corner branch. Looks beautiful so far. I can't wait to be at the ribbon cutting. It's gonna be awesome. And I love the little triangle we have there of academics, athletics, and arts with what's going on in across the old building. There should be like an arts thing going in, and then you have town field across.

I think if you can do all three, you'll become a good individual. So I'm excited to bring my kids down there. Upper Corner branch. I know that there's we got a public private partnership housing going in. Just explain to me where we're at. I think the holdup is on the housing side, if I'm not mistaken.

But maybe Yes, it's the housing funding We have a developer on board. We have our own architects on board. They've gone as far as they can until the developer is able to get the right combination of housing subsidy and housing funding for the overall project. So, you know, we're good on the city side, we're good on the library side, and they are dependent on a variety of commitments either from the city through housing or more directly from the state for housing subsidy. So, to go when they are.

And that's it will follow the same path as the Chinatown time line, for example.

That sounds great. And I know my time is up, but I just wanna say as a neighbor to the Adams Street branch, I just saw a riveting performance of Peter Pan by my my oldest son who's in the third grade at the Kennedy School. And we thank guys you for letting, the school and the library having such a close relationship, being right next to each other. And, it really works out awesome, and and my kids love going to the library after school. And so I don't wanna, disincentivize that even when the time is not there. I'm like, it's hard to say look at your kids and be like, no, we're not gonna go to the library. Right? Like that should be the only thing you want your kids to do. But, so thank you for that opportunity for myself. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Braden.

Afternoon. Good A to see you couple of things. The audiovisual equipment that we got funding for for the Honan Library, are we in the procurement process or where is that at at the moment?

Thank you. We're going through a couple of things right now. One is we have a gift agreement that we're working through with Harvard for receiving the funds. And then part of what we need to do basically is show them a scope of work. So, this is what we've outlined for the location, the costs associated. I know they like specifics on updates and making sure that the material and the software that we're using actually can last, you know, five, ten years. So, we're working through the scope, and I hope

to have the gift agreement complete soon. Very good. And are we fully staffed in all of the branches, like the Honan? I think they had, they were down one maybe. Priscilla, you

So, lived with

have a vacancy of the branch librarian. Karen O'Connor retired earlier this year, and we're currently in the search for a new branch librarian. We have extended an offer for a children's librarian. She's coming up from Texas to come work here, which is fabulous. And we anticipate her start date in June. Alston Brighton will have full staff we expect in the next few months once the Horn and Alston position is filled.

Excellent. And then I'm just thinking about this is the two hundred fiftieth and we are our Boston Public Library is a pride of joy our pride and joy in the center of town. Are we doing any special programs around the history given the incredible history that the Copley Square Library has as a repository for presidential papers and God knows what?

Why, yes, we are. So, we just completed the larger exhibition, 120 objects from our collection, revolving around different stories of revolutionary art. Basically, telling the story of the history of the country through different pieces of art in a very inclusive manner right through all of the decades. Not just dragging something from two fifty years ago, but really telling the whole story as a journey. And that had 98,000 visitors while it was open.

Right now, we have our Declarations of Independence exhibition up at the Central Library. That has not one, not two, but eight copies of the Declaration of Independence on display, which we hold and have held for many, many years. They've never been on display together before, And so that will be up through September. That is our premier contribution to the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Our programs team and several of our branches are doing other programs as well.

Excellent. And then can you outline any new or strengthened partnerships with schools, community centers or non profits in the upcoming year?

So we have an ongoing relationship with the Boston Public Schools in particular. And I believe there is a program actually in the next week or two specifically around supporting the GSAs of the Boston Public Schools. So we continue to look to different opportunities for collaboration. The Boston Public Library is also a infrastructure provider to the school library system through the Metro Boston Library Network, and we continue to support that work. I think Priscilla and I probably both agree that at the local level, it's the where the branch librarian or the children's librarian has a strong relationship with the local principal or teachers, that is where it really comes to life in a meaningful way.

And we wanna continue encouraging those collaborations really across the city. The nonprofit world more broadly, we continue to develop multiple partnerships across the arts and culture space, across the education and learning space, and across human services and civic engagement. Company one just honored our director of library services to my left, Michael Colford, for his years of service in community impact really through seven years of collaboration. Michael will actually be retiring in July after twenty two years of service. And so that was a great note to go out on in a way that celebrates not just the work at the library but the work in community with another partner.

Okay. I've got forty five seconds left. Let's see what happened. In terms of programming for residents with limited English proficiency, I know we all we have a network across the city and Brighton in particular, have our adult learning coalition. I think that includes the librarians. In this moment, are we able to keep up that level of service and offer those I'm to ask Michael to respond to that.

Michael Yeah, we're actually doing quite a bit in that area. We bundle our English language learning with workforce development and digital literacy and entrepreneurial support, social services and community connections. We don't view them as isolated programs, but really work really well together. We continue adapting our services in that area in response to any changing workforce and immigration trends. We're focusing on a few areas right now.

Multilingual ESOL instruction and workforce development together to help people find better jobs or find jobs. We're doing one on one workforce support and continued case management approach with people who are looking for work. And then, really we just entered received a fairly large grant where we were able to hire a grant funded ESOL and work readiness instructor who speaks several languages and he's going to be really build on the workforce education that we're already doing and training system wide across the entire system. So, we do have currently 20 excuse me literacy classes including workforce focused classes and a chorus that helps people learn English by singing. Seven of those classes are at six branches, Mattapan, Roxbury, Grove Hall, West End, Chinatown, and Rossendale.

11 are at Central, two are online. Then we also have 11 conversation groups where people can come and practice their English together. They're at 10 branches. They're at Jamaica Plain, Hornet, Alston, Parker Hill, East Boston, Faneuil, Rossendale, Connolly, Chinatown, Lower Mills and Common Square. We also have 10 at Central and four online. So, as David mentioned in his opening remarks, I think before you got here, we are having trouble keeping up with demand. There are many, many people who are looking for these services. We're just trying to keep ahead of it.

Wonderful. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you. My time's up. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay, thank you. A couple questions from the Chair and then we're going go to public testimony. If anybody is here and they want to give public testimony, please sign in on the sheet near the entrance. Okay. So, I guess one thing I don't think I heard about was Eggleston Square branch. Maybe I wasn't listening close enough. But where are we at? I think last year we talked about having designs being nearly finished. Yes.

So on the capital front, we're effectively waiting for there to be funding available for it to go next essentially. The South End is, as we talked about earlier, is will be happening next year and that funding has been released for that. South End does not have a branch right now, and so it was very important that that go first of the ones that are not already shovels in the ground. And from the library's point of view, we would see Eccleson Square go next as soon as

funding is available. What's the what is

the timeline on that? Five years, ten years? The funding remains in the five year capital outlook. So, it's really about the cash availability. And on that front, is the balancing act that our colleagues at the Capital Office in Finance have to balance across the city.

Okay. And then, guess, I've been asked about and I think councilor Braden got to this. But like foreign language programming, you know, in Jamaica Plain, and I I've heard that there are many calls for more of it. I or some of it. I don't know what we're offering right now.

We

have language programs available all of them. And as we were talking about, we have endless need of ESOL classes, but like for example at Connolly, we have Maria who's a fabulous librarian there who started a Spanish language book club. So, do wanna make sure that our key roles of making sure that we're connecting language access to workforce development, but we also wanna make sure people are having fun, and which is really important. And, so, we do have, you know, classes that are for that, or even just people that don't speak Spanish that are learning Spanish at the Connolly branch. So we do have multiple language programs that are for you know some of them are targeted and some of them are for open for everybody.

Okay. And then, so you just have, but is that just your funding staff who are already there? It just happens to, I mean, or is that how the programming for that works? Or do we have

Yeah, as I was saying, it works so many ways.

Yeah. I think in our ideal world that we understand for each community what are the languages other than English that are spoken predominantly. And we rely to a little extent on the BPS data for what languages are spoken in the home. From our point of view, having collections that are responsive to those languages, having programs, the partners that we engage to help with programming, and then incenting staff, either they already have the multi language capability, or can become, can take on a challenge of at least being conversational perhaps in those languages. That's our ideal.

So, in terms of partnering with the Office of Language Access cabinet in the city as well as our own equity diversity and inclusion managers focus, being able to deeply understand what the needs are so that we can be a multilingual institution. But that is not an overnight proposition as you can imagine.

And I think last year in the budget, I think it was like a $50,000 maybe amendment from us for diversity in hiring at BPL. Has that been used?

How so? Yes. And Michael can speak to the specifics. Think we have three individuals in September. Oh,

yes. We have a partnership with Simmons University and so we are people who are going into the master's degree in library science. We have availability for three positions. We currently have one external candidate who is going through the first year of their program and in September they'll be starting in the second year of their program which has them working in the system. And then also starting in September we have two more candidates that ended up being internal candidates who do not have the library degree and will be starting their first year of the program.

The program tends to be about two to three years and it is to try to diversify the pool of library applicants and we're very excited about our next three. September. They'll also help us fill out some of our vacancies and do some of the work.

And so thank you to the council for ensuring that was preserved in last year's budget.

Okay. Then just going over the budget for the library department, I see for permanent employees it's about $35,000,000 Is that right? That's I have 51,000

Correct.

Is the line item is just the number, $51,000 So, and that's down 500,000. Is that impacting your staffing levels or

Sure. Where is that coming So the library city operating budget is personnel heavy. So we're about 70% toward personnel and then 30% remaining expenses that get allocated to city operating budget. This was part of the challenge when we were coming up with our budget submission for this year. We did focus on current vacancies. We wanted to make sure that we could maintain operating hours and avoid any changes to fill positions. So the drop that you see there is related to our budget reductions that we proposed around holding some of the vacancies. I think there were a couple of long term old positions that aren't actually current anymore that were removed as well. So that's why you're seeing the drop there.

Okay. And then there's a large increase or a couple 100,000 in utilities. Is that just expensive to keep the lights on?

Sure. So that's a centrally budgeted line item there. I know the city utility rates fluctuate year to year, but we noticed that as well.

Okay. Okay. So that's going to wrap up the first round. Don't know if did anyone sign up? Nobody's here to give public testimony? No?

You

sure? Going once, going twice. Did did you Oh, did you sign up? Okay. Great. So in the order you signed up, you can come down and read your name out. You'll have two minutes each, and then we'll go to a second round of questions from my colleagues. So just give me a second here. And then so just watch the clock. At two minutes, again, like, you know, can work together on this. I'm used to being told to wrap it up. Okay. I'm not gonna cut you off. Just, please, you know, just acknowledge that you're aware of the time and we'll work. Whenever you're ready.

Sure. My name is Bryce Kieran Healy. I've lived in Boston since 2008 and I've worked at the Boston Public Library since 2014, where I am a cataloging supervisor as well as a chief steward of the Boston Public Library Professional Staff Association. I'm here today for the latter because the city's proposed budget cut for the Boston Public Library is a step in the wrong direction for the library, a step back for the city of Boston, and an attempt to balance the books on the backs of library patrons and library workers alike. For a system that is already barely treading water, this budget seems designed to break rather than build the library.

Our own strategic plan highlights how the BPL is critically underfunded and understaffed relative to peer public libraries and peer American cities. In my own department, staffing cuts, unfilled positions and an increased workload is ensuring that we are falling behind and are struggling to process materials in order to meet the public's needs. We're entering a period of sustained economic crisis and social uncertainty, and the library will be needed more, not less in this time by the public. Library funding therefore needs to be sufficient to the task at hand, and it is presently not. As city workers, we cannot make all the city does possible on mere thanks alone.

We need resources and we need support. We cannot do more with less, we can only do less with less. The library needs increased funding for more collections, for more programming, for more resources for patrons, and for more staff, and for better compensation for those staff because we have to live in this city. And we deserve not to just be able to get just to scrape by here, but we deserve to be able to thrive. And our communities deserve to as well.

They deserve a fully funded, fully staffed library that can fully meet their needs and allow them thrive as well. As a representative of the BPL PSA, I'm calling for the city to course correct, reverse these cuts, and to raise the budget of the Boston Public Library so that the library workers can meet the needs of our patrons and our communities. Thank you.

Thank you and well done with the time. Allison Khan, I think. I'm misreading your

Hi. I'm Allison or Ali Hahn. I'm the president of BPLPSA and I am also the children's librarian out at the Brighton Branch Library, more fondly referred to as miss Allie out there. And I'm here today to say it maybe a little nicer, a little less nicely than my the senior leadership team has presented. They're doing a really good job of reassuring you that we can continue that what our services are with the money that we are being given in this budget, and that is likely true.

Our staff is dedicated. Our staff is self sacrificing. Our staff they are public servants through and through. None of us get into this for the money for sure. But these budget cuts, even though they might look small on paper, have incredibly large impacts in our communities.

A loss of collections as we face those rising costs of physical and print books that Emily went through, books that we don't even get to keep at the end of all of that because they are digitally snatched back from us makes demand hard to keep up with. While Boston is prioritizing keeping their library open in this fiscal crisis, that is not true across the Commonwealth, and we serve as the library for the Commonwealth in addition to serving as the library for the people here in Boston. So as other libraries across the state close or have to reduce their service and reduce the collections that they have there, BPL is there to catch them. We are, as Bryce said, treading water. This budget will allow us to continue and that is much better.

We will not have to lose our staff that are currently employed, which is of the utmost importance to all of us, and we will be able to keep those doors open for the people that need us the most. But at the end of the day, this budget has incredibly real impacts on the people who need us the most, the people who will be relying on us when things get harder, our free classes, our free books, our free programming for children. It is in a lot of ways I serve as the preschool for kids who are not in preschool. I get them ready for kindergarten the same way a private education might get them ready for kindergarten, but I can only get less kids ready if I don't have the funding I need to support their growth and education as part of the library. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Okay. No one virtual, so go for a second round. Five minutes. Councillor Flynn.

Thank you. David, just wanna follow-up on that public testimony. Are there programs that are being cut that impact youth, children in terms of literacy or other educational programs?

I think I would characterize it as capacity rather than individual programs. And we heard in the public testimony from our colleagues about the challenges that already exist, and that certainly I shared last year with the council in referencing our strategic plan, did in fact look at us compared with our more well funded peers across the country. And so, had we not been in this more broad fiscal crisis this year or fiscal challenges this year, I would certainly be sitting here advocating for deeper investment in the library because the need is so great as you also heard from our colleagues.

But, getting back to the question, capacity is the word you use. Use. But if there are programs being cut for youth, for educational programs, for children, literacy programs, that's what I'm trying to get at.

I'm sorry. To David's point, the loss that we may see is regarding a delay of vacancies being filled. So, the actual programming dollars, funding for the classes or the materials or the outside contractor coming in, those are not currently in our operating

Okay. Because basically, because there's a hiring freeze or or we're not moving forward on potential new hires, that person is not able to provide educational programs, outreach, literacy programs for youth. Is that fair to say?

The staffing would not be there to provide those programs. The actual funding for the vast majority of our programs, however, does not come from the city budget. It actually comes from external funding. And mostly through the Boston Public Library Fund, our five zero one(three) partner on this effort. They are not predicting a fall off in their funding this year. So, it's from the library's point of view, the risk factor here is about the staffing levels.

David, the Boston Public Library Foundation. Yes. How much do they have in the bank?

I don't have that information with me. Does anybody there on

the panel have that information? Not

today.

No. Is that public information?

It's a private five zero one(three) entity, so we could request the balance sheet. But do they fund the public library system? They fund programmatic aspects of our work.

How much do they provide each year?

What we have available on the website, and I apologize I didn't bring those figures today, we do post annually what's called a gift report. So, of the funds that come in from external sources, we have the totals there for all of those donations.

And you will see in the budget packet a reference to the external funds budget, which includes funding on an annual basis. So for example, in FY 2024, the total from those sources was $3,400,000 in 2025, 3,800,000 and we don't have actuals in the budget for 2026 or 2027 yet. That's what they That's what they

donate From to the public

multiple sources, but yes. Okay. So, how would

I get that information about how much they they have in the bank? We could request that. Okay. So, those trustees are appointed by the mayor.

Is that correct? Those are not. Are Those are not. That's a self perpetuating Okay. Board privately privately incorporated. Okay. Then the one that's appointed by the mayor, what is their role? Have care in custody of the library, which means that we kind of have dual reporting, both to the mayor and the council, but also to the the library's board for oversight of policy and

strategy. Okay. And just a just one another question. The the public library property or the public libraries in Boston, that's all owned by the public library. Is that accurate? City of Boston. It's owned by the city of It's not owned by the public library.

Is not. Okay. Karen custody is with the trustees of the library. Okay. Ownership of the land and buildings, think, is almost exclusively, if not entirely, City of Boston. Same with Copley?

Yes. Okay. How much how much of the property at Copley is City of Boston property? Do you have an idea of how much like all of that area outside, do

you know how much? I don't have that off the top of my head. I mean the total square footage of the two complex is just shy of a million square feet. That includes all of the interior space and the exterior space. Okay. Thank you David. Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Okay. Thank you very much. Councillor Fitzgerald.

Thank you, Chair. I don't really have any further questions. I just want to say thank you to the folks that came and testified and those that work. I think the great thing about these hearings and hearing from folks who are on the ground is you always learn a different way to sort of look at the job and your perspective of, hey. We are the we are the teachers before they even get to teachers is a is a is a light that I hadn't thought about it in, and I think that's a very cool way to look at your job. So I appreciate I have that much more appreciation when I see it under that light. So thank you for describing and educating me in that light as a librarian is ought to do. Right? So thank you again. But also to all the librarians and all the Dorchester Libraries, I thank them, especially the ones at the Adams Street. And thank you all for the work that you do and provide for the city. So that's it Chair. Thank you so much guys.

Okay. Just a couple of questions from the Chair. So in terms of vacancies, like is there a hiring freeze?

Is not technically a hiring freeze. We are running between 45 to 55 active vacancies currently and about half of them are released to be filled currently. Okay.

And let's see. So different topic. West Roxbury Library, we would love to have a new carpet, especially in the children's room. How do we get that done? Does that come out of capital? Does that, I mean

We have, as we said, we have our operations team is working through and then identifying locations that we do need to have some consistent upgrades and replacing that. But we will definitely include that in there. But it's that there would be a mixture of capital depending on how extensive the project is.

Okay. Yeah. Mean it seems like a small ask, you know, but it would make a huge difference and it's very heavily trafficked and the carpet hasn't been able to hold up as well as we we had hoped. Okay. Let's see. So there's there is like external funds for permanent employees. It goes down from several million to like 400,000. Can you just explain what impact that has? I I

have Sure.

Yeah. So, yeah, it's going actually oh, no. No. You know what? Again, it's going up. Sorry. I misread this. So, it's going up 477. Can you just explain what's happening with that then? It's going from 5.1 to 5,600,000.

Sure. So, there are contracted increases to the salary. So, that's year over year and that's what that figure is representing.

Okay. And who would the external fund permanent employees, what's the who's doing that except

for the existing? It's a combination. So, we have some library for the commonwealth funding. We have our associates, another one of our philanthropic arms, funds and positions as well. It's a combination.

I would note, Councillor, that all of the employees, regardless of funding, are City of Boston employee and subject to the same standards, whether those be through one of the two unions or exempt positions. So, though the funding source may be different, the entirety of the staff population is one body. Okay.

And then there's another drop in the budget for library administration personnel services? Can you explain what's going on there?

I had to explain it to myself, Councillor Weber. So, we did notice that as well. When we put in our budget reductions for this year and like we've already pointed out, we were focusing on the vacancies. So when we actually submitted them into our budget they were qualified as salary savings within the President's office which hits that administrative line. So that's where savings, the reductions that we made were captured. They are not all going to hit the administrative line. It's it's vacancies across the system, but that's what that that figure is showing.

Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. So that's that's all the questions I have. Councillor Fischel, thank you very much for sticking around to the end. I wanna thank the panel for for coming in and answering questions. I wanna thank everyone who came in to give public testimony and central staff for making the hearing happen and and all the staff for the our libraries that we I mean, you know, we love our Boston Public Library system and and look forward to all the great work you're gonna do in the next year. Okay. With that said, this afternoon's hearing is now

adjourned. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.