Some 60 library supporters attended a March 20 budget hearing of the Washington D.C. city council to protest proposed budget cuts for the library on the same day that Mayor Anthony A. Williams and council Chairman Linda Cropp made a bid to bring a Major League Baseball franchise to Washington. Williams has slashed $1 million from the District of Columbia Public Library system’s operating budget, leaving it with only $25.8 million for fiscal 2004, which begins October 1. Capital improvement funds could also be cut, according to the March 21 Washington Post.
Budget cuts have already led to neglected buildings and collections, and all of the District’s public libraries, except the downtown Martin Luther King Jr. branch, are operating under reduced hours in an effort to deal with budget shortfalls.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader—who has started the D.C. Library Renaissance Project as a private fundraising effort on behalf of the library—told the assembled activists, “We’re going to tell the chief financial officer that if he tries to spend one dollar of taxpayers money on a baseball stadium, he’ll have to face all the people in the District who want that money for libraries.”
According to a March 20 Associated Press report, Washington has offered to pay 50–80% of the cost of a new ballpark, which could run to hundreds of millions of dollars.
“This is the first time in a long time the council will see the rank-and-file citizens come to say, ‘We believe the library should be fully funded,’” DCPL library board member Alexander M. Padro said during the hearing. “The council has not heard that from the public in a long time.”
Posted March 24, 2003.