Thomas Breen photos
Kelly Marshall, at Ives on Friday: If the libraries were open on Sundays, "I would be here."
City Librarian Maria Bernhey: Access to library services has grown, even if all five remain closed on Sundays.
Mayor Elicker: "We’re doing the best we can with the resources we have.”
Three years after Mayor Justin Elicker announced that the city’s public libraries would be open on Sundays, all five branches remain closed on that weekend day — with no plan in place to make that previously promised change a reality.
Such is the latest with a Sunday library hours vow that the mayor first made in March 2022, as he introduced his proposed budget for the fiscal year that ran from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023.
“The budget will allow us to ensure that libraries at every branch are open on Sundays,” he said during a City Hall press conference at the time. In a May 2022 email press release sent out after the Board of Alders voted on a final amended version of the $633.1 million budget, Elicker wrote that the newly approved budget would fund “expanded library hours so that all five branches will now be open on Sundays.”
The Fiscal Year 2022 – 23 (FY23) budget included $140,000 — including $100,000 for part-time library aides and $40,000 for library staff overtime — to help make that plan a reality. Securing city funding for Sunday hours at all five library branches was one of the top goals and final accomplishments of the late City Librarian John Jessen, who died from cancer in May 2022.
Despite Elicker’s budget vow, three years later, all five city libraries are still closed on Sundays — with the Fair Haven, Westville, Hill, and Dixwell neighborhood branches still closed on Fridays, as well.
Alders are currently reviewing Mayor Elicker’s FY26 proposed budget, with a general fund that totals $703.7 million. While the FY23, FY24, and FY25 budgets all include mentions of Sunday library hours as a soon-to-be reality or a goal to plan for, the newest FY26 budget doesn’t mention Sunday library hours at all.
Elicker pointed to staffing vacancies as a reason why the city hasn’t been able to open up libraries on Sundays.
“Our libraries are incredible centers of learning, inspiration, and empowerment for our residents, and also serve as important gathering places for New Haveners to connect with their neighbors and community programs,” Elicker said in a statement provided for this story. “We’re committed to making our libraries as accessible as possible for as many people as possible. Offering Sunday hours is something we’d still love to offer residents and that I’d welcome revisiting in the future, but current staffing vacancies continue to make that difficult to achieve.”
The New Haven Free Public Library (NHFPL) currently has 83 budgeted employee positions — including 49 full-time and 34 part-time roles.
City spokesperson Lenny Speiller said that there are currently seven vacancies, including in three full-time and four part-time positions. Click here to read about one such coming vacancy, with the resignation of the Hill library’s top librarian.
“The New Haven Free Public Library recognizes the importance of expanding service hours to better meet the needs of the community and remains committed to doing so,” City Librarian Maria Bernhey told the Independent. “However, the primary challenge to offering Sunday hours continues to be staffing shortages and limitations. While NHFPL continues to prioritize hiring and retention efforts and has made significant progress in addressing staffing gaps, until NHFPL can demonstrate the ability to be fully staffed for an extended period of time, we’re unable to offer reliable Sunday hours across our five branches.”
The Elicker administration also cited persistent staff vacancies at the library when asked for comment for this September 2022 story about why Sunday library hours hadn’t started yet. At the time, Speiller told the Independent there were 15 library-wide vacancies — including six full-time and nine part-time — among the library’s then budgeted staff of 68 positions (44 full-time and 24 part-time.) Even with those staffing challenges, Speiller said in September 2022, “NHFPL is eager to fill these vacancies as quickly as possible so that library staff can be hired and trained to offer Sunday hours at all our branches in [an] ongoing and sustainable way.”
Board Prez: Library Remains "Chronically Underfunded"
Library board President Andrew Giering.
For Andrew Giering, the current president of the NHFPL’s board of directors, the problem has more to do with the city not funding the public library system at the level it needs and deserves.
Giering said that expanding library service hours, including on Sundays, “was and still is a laudable goal that is worth pursuing.”
But, he continued, the NHFPL is “chronically underfunded and understaffed.”
He pointed back to the mayor’s transition team report from January 2020, which called for increasing New Haven’s annual funding of the public library system to 1 percent of the overall budget.
“The current proposed budget has Library funding at 0.78% of the City budget. Compared to neighboring municipal libraries serving a similar constituent base, libraries in Bridgeport, Stamford and Hartford are receiving an average of 1.52% of general funds appropriation. A significant increase in library hours and services will require a commensurate, and long overdue, increase in the Library’s share of the City budget,” Giering wrote.
He continued: “In order to meaningfully expand Library hours, we need to significantly increase the number of budgeted Library positions, especially full-time positions.”
Elicker responded that his administration has increased funding for the city’s library system every year he’s been in office — “and by over 35 percent since 2020.”
His current proposed budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1 allocates $5,512,935 from the general fund and $500,000 from the capital fund to the library. That’s up from the current fiscal year’s $5,442,118 general fund and $189,020 special fund allocations. His first budget, for the fiscal year that started July 1, 2020, included a general fund allocation of $4,023,843 for the library.
The mayor’s current proposed budget includes $150,000 for overtime staffing at the library — which, Speiller noted, “could be applied to support Sunday hours.”
“We would always love to do more and invest more in our libraries, but it’s also a balancing act of the services we all want with our ability to pay for them and the tax burden we place on residents,” Elicker added. “My daughter and I were at the library just yesterday, and I would love to be able to have the option to bring her to the library every day of the week, but we’re doing the best we can with the resources we have.”
City Librarian: Access Expanding Thru "Library Of Things," Memory Lab
The downtown Ives library.
At the downtown Ives library on Friday, Bernhey agreed with both Elicker’s and Giering’s assessments. She said there are too many vacancies among existing budgeted positions for the libraries to open on Sundays. She also said the city does need to increase funding, especially for full-time positions, in order to get to a place where the public libraries can open on both weekend days.
She told the Independent on Friday that there is a relatively high rate of turn-over among the library’s part-time positions — employees who are critical to the operations of all five libraries today.
And, amidst staffing and funding challenges, she described how the city’s national award-winning library has continued to expand access to services.
That includes a “library of things” based out of the downtown Ives branch which has grown from offering primarily baking dishes to podcast equipment, projects, board games, and bike pumps and other tools.
It also includes the “Memory Lab,” soon to open at the downtown branch in partnership with Yale’s Beinecke Library, which will allow New Haveners to create “personal archives” of their lives in the city.
The library is also working on building out “equitable technology access,” including to maker space tools, at the Hill, Fair Haven, and Westville branch libraries, in addition to those offerings already at place downtown and in Dixwell.
Bernhey made clear that these expansions were not funded with the $150,000 set aside in the city budget for library overtime, which could be used for Sunday hours.
All the while, the library is working on its next five-year strategic plan — and, as Giering pointed out in his comments to the Independent, has made available many of its resources online, and thereby accessible 24/7.
“While the physical public library space itself is an essential community resource,” Giering concluded, “I am concerned that expectations for more hours to some extent reflect an over-reliance on the libraries as heating and cooling centers and as de facto shelters, part of a broader pattern of relying on our librarians to fill gaps in society’s safety net.”
On Friday, in the main reading room on the downtown library’s first floor, Kelly Marshall took a break from reading the Tudor-era historical novel “The Thistle and the Rose” to tell the Independent about how much the public library means to her.
She’s currently homeless, and spends every day she can — Monday through Saturday — at the downtown library. She goes not just because the library is a safe, warm, and quiet place. She also goes because “I’m an avid reader.”
Marshall said she’d love for the libraries to be open on Sundays. Right now, she spends her Sundays at Book Trader Cafe.
Marshall recognized that the downtown library is often a challenging environment, for staff and patrons alike. “There’s a lot of mental health” issues among people who use the library, she said.
That said, if the libraries were open on Sunday, “I would be here.”
For further context on this years-long debate around Sunday hours at the library, click here to read a November 2022 article in the Independent about a rally at City Hall that included city librarians who called for better pay, and said the Sunday hours plan wouldn’t do given the city’s staffing crunch. And click here for a March 2022 article in the Arts Paper about library patrons and advocates speaking up in support of Sunday hours.
Downtown's current library hours.