Mayor Mamdani Breaks His Promise to NYC Public Libraries

The Struggle Against Defunding Libraries Continues...

Libraries, like most public institutions, perpetually deal with budget constraints. Mayors propose or threaten to cut library budgets and then, after public mobilization and outcry, sometimes restore funding at levels that do not keep up with inflation. This is a regular “budget dance.” In late 2023, for example, former NYC Mayor Eric Adams proposed a $58 million budget cut to public libraries. A budget deal reached in late June 2024 averted this cut. This destructive dance has long been a source of public frustration. But frustration is never enough to change anything.

Over the past 20 months, the NYC Public Library Action Network (PLAN), of which I am a member, has been strategizing and organizing to stop the destructive budget dance. Our main demand is that the city allocate 0.5% (half of 1 percent) of the expense budget to our public libraries annually. This demand has been amplified by the NYC Public Library system as well.

Zohran Mamdani included our demand in his platform during his campaign for Mayor. After he won, he reiterated his support at an event at Greenpoint Library in December 2025. Yesterday, Mayor Mamdani released his FY 27 preliminary budget. In it, he allocated 0.39% of the city’s expense budget to NYC public libraries for FY 27 which starts on July 1, 2026. This amount is well below the 0.5% of the city’s expense budget that he promised during the campaign and reaffirmed after his election.

In fact, at 0.39% of the expense budget, he has actually allocated LESS than Eric Adams did in his FY 26 preliminary budget proposal (0.42%). This is completely unacceptable and detrimental to our public libraries. It’s deeply disappointing that Mayor Mamdani did not follow through on his commitment.

However, NYC PLAN will fight to ensure that he honors his promise. I’ve been part of many issue-based organizing campaigns in my life and we lose more than we win. But I have learned from all of them that you can’t win if you don’t try and that persistence matters.

The library is a public good, and it is free as a public service. It is an essential component of a 21st-century left political project as an example of both what is already available to us and what can be improved upon in the future. Workers tell stories of people who come to the library and ask to “rent” books. Others inquire about a “monthly subscription fee.” For some people in this country, it is inconceivable that they can access anything without paying for it out of pocket. “What’s the catch? How is this not a scam?” People wonder.

We are not customers at the public library, and many in the U.S. simply cannot fathom any other way of relating to institutions or to the government. The public library is therefore a basis for reclaiming a grammar of the commons for the average person in the 21st century. It is not as Ursula Le Guin has written “a privilege for the already privileged.” Those of us on the left(s) must lean into this. It matters that we take part in library governance and that we incorporate public libraries in our budget fights. More generally, we must actively organize against the defunding of public goods.

We live in a time of pervasive disillusionment. People are rightly mistrustful of most institutions. The library can serve as one way to show that public goods are actually GOOD and that institutions aren’t meaningless. Left politicians should adopt a platform that includes fully funding existing public libraries and building thousands of new ones. People want to rally FOR something. This is something that I thought Mayor Mamdani understood well. He still has a chance to do the right thing with respect to NYC public libraries.

So what’s next?

Now the City Council will facilitate preliminary budget hearings beginning late this month or in early March. The City Council will review the mayor’s proposal and craft their preliminary budget response. Then the mayor will present an updated proposal, the executive budget, which will trigger another round of hearings by the council, before negotiating an adopted budget that the council will vote to pass. There are a lot of steps left to go. Here’s a video by the Mayor himself laying out those steps.

NYC PLAN has been and continues to work to secure support for our 0.5% budget demand from City Council members. We invite NYC residents to join us in reaching out to their council members. We also encourage NYC residents to let Mayor Mamdani know that we expect him to stick to his commitment to increase and stabilize funding for our libraries.

As Rita Dove wrote: “The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.” New York is a city of possibility and it deserves fully funded libraries.

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Public Library Related Actions You Can Take

Send a letter to your NYC Council Member to increase and stabilize library funding. It takes 30 seconds. Follow up by calling your member.

Join NYC PLAN for our Queens People’s Assembly on March 21st.

If you are interested in public library issues nationally, follow For the People Leftist Library Project’s (FTP) work. You can read the January newsletter and February newsletter here.

Join FTP virtually for a Friends of the Library Open House on February 19.