The city of Long Beach has proposed cutting library hours and laying off librarians to help balance its budget. In response, educators, the local library foundation and union leaders are pushing back, saying the city can\u2019t afford to lose a vital service for kids and families.<\/p>\n
Under the budget proposal, five of the city\u2019s 12 libraries \u2014 Bay Shore, Burnett, El Dorado, Harte and Michelle Obama \u2014 would drop from six days of service back to five, losing their Monday hours just a few years after<\/a> those hours were added. (The city\u2019s other libraries were already closed on Mondays, and all are closed Sundays<\/a>.)<\/p>\n On an average Monday, those branches see a total of more than 1,000 visitors, according to city data.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a city the size of Long Beach, and with our population, we could be seeing a 2027 where there are no libraries open on Monday. I think that\u2019s pretty crazy,\u201d said Kristen Hernandez with the Long Beach Public Library Foundation. The nonprofit, which raises money for the local library system, is gathering signatures on a petition<\/a> protesting the cuts. As of Friday, it had more than 1,800 signatures.<\/p>\n Changes to the city library system are a sliver of the cuts unveiled last week by Long Beach City Manager Tom Modica as part of a citywide winnowing in programs and services to close next year\u2019s expected $58 million deficit.<\/p>\n Beyond cuts to programs and facility hours, Modica proposed laying off more than 260 city workers and cutting more than 200 additional vacant positions \u2014 about 4% of the city\u2019s roughly 6,000-person workforce.<\/p>\n The proposed library cuts<\/p>\n Local libraries would lose 14 positions, 11 of them currently filled, including five library clerks, four library assistants, a vacant general librarian position at the Billie Jean King Main Library, and a mental health associate who serves as the library\u2019s teen specialist. The plan also cuts funding for library pages who stock books and funding for security services, as well as nearly all print and digital newspaper subscriptions.<\/p>\n The combined cuts would save the department a little more than $1.4 million.<\/p>\n Elizabeth Cespuglio, a librarian at Billie Jean King Library, said that the library assistants at risk of being cut are responsible for planning and running workshops and programs at the branches, pulling materials, tracking which books and genres are most in demand and staffing the information desk. Clerks handle check-outs, check-ins and library cards, while pages keep the shelves organized.<\/p>\n Perhaps most at risk, Cespuglio said, is the library\u2019s mental health associate, Jasmin Flores, who spends her days building rapport with teens in need. Losing that specialist, she said, leaves her \u201cquite fearful\u201d for the patrons and staff alike, since the library\u2019s other social worker focuses on unhoused adults and doesn\u2019t have the time and energy to build the same relationships with youth.<\/p>\n Each day, Flores is the calming face for more than a dozen kids. Many of them are in and out of homelessness; some have been in juvenile detention. Others are LGBTQIA and struggle to find friends; others struggle to find food. She\u2019s already told some that she may not be showing up anymore. It\u2019s a difficult conversation, she said, having to console others for the loss of her job.<\/p>\n \u201cIt honestly breaks my heart that I probably will not be in that position anymore,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Flores\u2019 main worry is that some of them will stop showing up. \u201cWe\u2019ve built that rapport, and it hasn\u2019t been easy to build,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s taken a while to get there, and I just hate to see all that go to waste.\u201d<\/p>\n Librarians say they\u2019re already stretched thin<\/p>\n The real problem, Cespuglio said, is that libraries are losing funding even as they\u2019re increasingly in demand \u2014 more than 2,800 patrons visit daily across Long Beach\u2019s 12 branches, an 8% rise since last year. The number of programs offered has increased by 50%<\/a> in the past year, with more than 1,000 adult participants.<\/p>\n Annually, city libraries have continually climbed in foot traffic since the onset of the pandemic, though averages are still lower than in 2018 and 2019.<\/p>\n Branches have been understaffed for more than a decade, Cespuglio said, at least since the last time the city announced library layoffs in 2012.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s still an expectation on the system for us to be doing all of these things and continue the same level of service as we\u2019ve done,\u201d she said. \u201cCutting those hours, or those Mondays, not only does it impact the public\u2019s access to the library all over the city, but it has these other ramifications in the rest of the five days that the rest of us are working.\u201d<\/p>\n The looming cuts have created an \u201cundercurrent of anxiety\u201d among staff who still don\u2019t know which of them may lose their jobs, according to Cespuglio. Her own position is not at risk, but her partner\u2019s is, and she said the possibility of losing half her household income is real. She said that rent in Long Beach has outpaced her pay raises for the 12 years she\u2019s lived and worked in the city.<\/p>\n The bigger budget picture<\/p>\n The library cuts are part of a far larger fiscal reckoning for Long Beach.<\/p>\n The proposed layoffs stretch across more than a dozen departments and offices, hitting fire, police, homeless services, parks and libraries alike, as the city grapples with rising personnel costs, mounting legal payouts, the loss of federal grants and a local economic slowdown that has weighed on tax revenue.<\/p>\n City officials have said the strategy of previous years \u2014 pulling from cash reserves to delay layoffs \u2014 is no longer sustainable; the city drained tens of millions of dollars from its reserves<\/a>, including its emergency fund, just to close out the current fiscal year.<\/p>\n Sashi Muralidharan, a labor representative with the city\u2019s largest union, IAM Local 1930, said they will \u201cfight for every job,\u201d even as labor negotiations \u2014 which coincide with the budget talks \u2014 are looking grim.<\/p>\n Eighty percent of the positions proposed to be cut are represented by IAM, including 209 filled positions.<\/p>\n \u201cAnything that does result in a layoff, we will be bargaining over those impacts to make sure that we lessen the negative impacts,\u201d Muralidharan said.<\/p>\n At a Long Beach City Council meeting<\/a> this week, nurses, union shop stewards, library staff and other city workers turned out to protest the cuts, arguing they would bring greater ramifications to the public\u2019s quality of life and further enervate its remaining staff, pushing them to look for work elsewhere.<\/p>\n Nate Kim, a city nurse and negotiator with IAM Local 1930, told the council that while his own position had been renewed, many of his colleagues had not been so fortunate. \u201cMany have been laid off already,\u201d he added. Emily Quest, a resident who uses the library\u2019s free craftspace, begged council members through tears not to cut the hours or the staff who run it.<\/p>\n Mayor Rex Richardson has proposed restoring 70 of the positions slated for elimination and said the city remains on track for its first structural budget surplus by 2028, even as another deficit, projected at $27.3 million, looms for the following year.<\/p>\n The City Council is expected to hold public hearings<\/a> on the budget through the summer before a final vote in late September. You can find a schedule of hearings to attend here<\/a> or fill out an online survey<\/a> to share your priorities with the City Council, which must debate and pass the budget by Oct. 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city of Long Beach has proposed cutting library hours and laying off librarians to help balance its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-428382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}