NEW YORK — After a lengthy campaign that featured Hillary Clinton, meetings with city council members and a slew of memes blaming the mayor Eric Adams The city’s three library systems will see $58 million in budget cuts restored for eliminating Sunday services.
Thursday evening’s announcement by Mayor and City Council President Adrienne Adams came as tense budget negotiations neared a resolution. The informal agreement also included a guarantee that a group of city-funded cultural institutions will recoup $53 million in cuts.
“These institutions are a critical part of New York City’s social fabric, on which New Yorkers depend for the growth of their children and the vibrancy of our city,” Mayor Adams said in a statement. “The budget will ensure these essential institutions have what they need to serve New Yorkers and attract visitors every day of the week.”
The agreement — which is expected to be memorialized in a handshake deal Friday and then passed by the Council before Monday’s deadline — will also include an additional $2 billion in capital for affordable housing over the next two years, according to a person is familiar with the blueprint. The additional capital funding was first reported by the Daily News.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City Ballet and affiliated institutions previously celebrated with the mayor an earlier announcement of $22 million in additional funding ahead of the release of his $112 billion executive budget. They then went right back to lobbying his office and protesting publicly for the restoration of additional funding — and achieved their goals.
However, the library systems failed to reverse the cuts until a final deal came to fruition, with the mayor suggesting on multiple occasions that the institutions dip into their endowments rather than ask the city for more money. The deal announced Thursday means libraries will see an increase in base funding to $43 million over the next few years, according to Gothamist, which first reported the deal.
The restorations are the culmination of a tumultuous budget cycle that saw the mayor announce multiple rounds of cuts, citing financial challenges, but then restore funding in response to improved revenue projections.
The strategy came at a high cost. There was a huge outcry after the mayor first announced the cuts in September, with the cuts to the library in particular being strongly condemned. The mayor’s poll numbers suffered.
The mayor has defended his previous proposal as fiscally responsible. He said the budget cliffs caused by decisions made during former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, as well as the unexpected and substantial costs of housing and serving more than 200,000 migrants over the past two years, left him no choice .
The Council has maintained that the mayor’s budget office was overly conservative in its revenue projections, pointing to evidence that it estimated $12 billion less in revenue last year than it actually received. And throughout the process, the speaker has been adamant that cuts to libraries, cultural institutions and other parts of the budget were unnecessary.
Thursday’s deal represents a political victory for her over the mayor, amid a period of increasing tensions in their relationship.
“The Council has consistently advocated for funding restoration for these institutions as a top priority, and we are proud to have reached an agreement with Mayor Adams and the administration to successfully secure these critical investments for them within the city budget,” Adrienne Adams said in a statement.
