Neighbors from the Hill were at the library Saturday afternoon learning how to become active citizens by using SeeClickFix. Now, thanks to a city budget crisis, they have a concern they can post on that website: The fact that they can no longer gather at the library on weekends.
It was a typical Saturday at the Wilson branch on Daggett Street. And it wasn’t typical, but rather the last day of its kind for the foreseeable future.
As usual, kids and adults alike passed in and out of the library all day, borrowing books, gathering for community events.
Volunteers were helping people fill out their income tax returns so they can qualify for rebates. Separately, Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team chair Doug Hausladen and Connecticut Data Haven’s Mark Abraham set up shop in the community room to help people learn how to use SeeClickFix and other tools for improving the neighborhood. A teacher, Madeleine Janover, brought her Common Ground High School environmental justice class to take part. Neighborhood activist Helen Martin-Dawson (pictured) took part too. She’s used to coming to events at the library.
“It’s the only free public space in the neighborhood,” she said.
In an area that over the decades has been pretty much denuded of clubs and free community spaces, the library’s community room remains just about the only location available for such gatherings.
That’s changing now. To close a $5.5 million gap in the remaining fiscal year’s budget, the city will no longer keep neighborhood branches open on weekends. Saturday was the last day.
The city laid off 82 workers to help close this year’s gap. That included eliminating 12 library positions citywide. That’s why branches are closing on the weekends. More layoffs loom next fiscal year.
Systemwide the layoffs mean the total number of hours that the main library branch opens will be reduced from 185 hours per month to 148. The branches are taking the brunt of the reductions, with monthly hours reduced from 136 to 96. The downtown main branch will remain open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays.
With the elimination of three part-time librarians, eight library aides and one student intern, each of the branches will be open three days a week, including one with evening hours.
Martin-Dawson and Alderwoman Dolores Colon expressed the hope at Saturday’s event in the Hill that people will take what they learned to bring pressure on city officials.
“We need to focus on how we can get them not to cut,” Martin said.
Groups from the Alliance Theater Company to Yalies helping to bring a green market to the Hill to those organizing rallies against alleged police brutality historically have used the community room to assemble, often on Saturdays. One of the area cooperatives, Liberty Square Homes, on whose board Helen Martin-Dawson sits, holds its annual meeting and its monthly meeting every third Saturday at the library.
A security guard who sat at the door estimated that between 300 to 400 people have used the Wilson branch on any given Saturday.
Again, no longer.
“Now we need to figure out where to meet.” Martin-Dawson said. She said Clemente school closes on Saturdays, and the two nearby police substations are too small and not the right kind of setting.
Volunteers in Tax Preparation Assistance or VITA has also for a number of years provided free tax preparation on Saturday. One of its members Dan Hennig (pictured with volunteer Sue Finn) said that at the Wilson Branch they do some 70 returns each tax season. Due to the slashing of Saturday hours, they plan to switch to providing the service on Tuesday nights.
Allan Appel Photo
When library assistant Joyce Files told a regular Saturday library user and her two kids that the Wilson branch in the Hill will be closed Saturdays for the foreseeable future, Jeannette Morales responded succinctly, “That sucks.”
Morales, who lives on Daggett Street across from the Wilson branch in the Hill, said her daughter Haylee is a devoted and regular library user.
She said her family takes out about ten to 15 books at a time. That includes many from the series Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a favorite of Haylee, a Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy fourth grader. The list also includes the Scooby Doo series, the current favorite of Morales’s younger child David (pictured), although he is expanding from canines into fish books, added his mom.
Morales herself was returning and re-borrowing City of Bones by Cassandra Clare and Trickster’s Girl by Hilari Bell.
Why can’t Haylee use the Clemente library? The school is closed on weekends, mom said, and it doesn’t have the books her daughter wants.
Morales uses the branch for more than books. She said Haylee uses the computers and works with the library staff on homework and school projects. Haylee also recently helped set up a green bin at the branch for environmentally wise disposal of papers.
City Librarian Christopher Korenowsky said in a release about the reduced hours, “I am disheartened beyond belief that the state of the city budget can no longer sustain the current structure of public library services.”
He added that he looks forward to brighter days.
In addition to reduced hours, the NHFPL is terminating interlibrary loan service from other libraries, although the usual transfer of books branch to branch will continue throughout the system.