Four Brooklyn public libraries will once again be open on Sundays, returning to a seven-day schedule that was ended this year in anticipation of budget cuts.
With funding restored, the Central and Kings Highway branches will open on Sundays from 1p.m. to 5 p.m., while the McKinley Park and Borough Park branches will be open on Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. during the school year only.
Also starting tomorrow, 16 local branches will once again stay open from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Sunday service was axed in early January after Mayor Bloomberg proposed a $17.5 million – or 21% – cut to the library’s budget in March.
That was a particularly bad blow to neighborhoods like Borough Park, where most residents are Shomer Shabbos, and can’t use the library then.
The cut would have forced the library to slash hours even more drastically, to an average of just 25 a week. But public outcry led to negotiations, and the City Council and the mayor found money to restore service, though the BPL was forced to fire 13 employes this summer and is $5.5million short of its budget.
(Source: NY Daily News)
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2 Responses
Note that branches that are open on Saturday are typically open 10-5 (seven hours), so this is still clearly a continuation of past discriminatory practices (even if it is less discriminatory).
If they had a neutral policy, then branches that are heavily used such as Boro Park would get more hours, but their policy is still based on religion rather than usage statistics.
akuperma, Like it or not we must recognize that America is a Christian country. That is part of golus, and we should not be sticking the gentiles with our demands too much.