LEONARD GREENE: Mayor Adams should close the book on budget cuts to NYC’s libraries

This is not your parents’ library, with the fines for overdue books, or the Dewey Decimal System or the schoolmarmish librarian who shushes you for clearing your throat or unwrapping a Jolly Rancher.

Today’s library is a cooling center when it’s 98 degrees in Hunts Point, a place to get a vaccine during a pandemic, a food pantry in a needy neighborhood or a community center where immigrants can learn English as a second language.

And they have lots and lots of books you can borrow. For free.

Mayor Adams calls libraries the city’s Swiss Army knives.

But Adams has a different knife, a sharper knife, a more dangerous knife.

And he’s using it to cut the city’s library budget.

Adams said New York City’s migrant crisis has impacted money for essential services across the five boroughs.

But one of the first places asylum seekers go after getting set up in a hotel is the public library, where they can get an ID card — for free — and help with various government paperwork.

“We have lines that start at 6:30 a.m. for an opening that starts at 9:30,” said Melissa Davis, associate director of central Bronx neighborhood libraries for the New York Public Library.

“We were like,’Wow, what’s going on?’ We really didn’t know what was happening. Then we were able to put the pieces all together.”

Dennis Walcott saw the same thing going on at the Jamaica Central Library in Queens, where he works.

“When I get here early in the morning, there’s a line wrapped around the block,” said Walcott, president and CEO of the Queens Public Library.

“We’re always there. That’s our role in addition to our traditional programs.”

If we’re going to be all-in on asylum seekers — greeting them at Port Authority, getting them rooms in hotels, helping them find jobs — then we have to be all-in.

That means preserving the city services that will help them make better lives.

That means no library cuts.

Adams has already backed off a spending plan that would have left the New York Public Library, Queens Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library with a nearly $53 million budget gap.

The next chapter doesn’t read much better. Now, the cuts are down to about $36.2 million, which would still result in Saturday closures, restricted weekday hours, cuts to educational programs and a freeze on new branch openings.

The library cuts have emerged as an especially contentious provision of Adams’ blueprint, and City Council Democrats are expected to fight tooth and nail to reverse them before a final budget must be passed by July 1.

Last week, the New York Public Library, which covers Manhattan, Bronx and Staten Island branches, put out a petition urging Adams to back off the cuts.

“These cuts will hurt all New Yorkers, particularly those in vulnerable communities still reeling from the devastation of the pandemic,” the petition said. “Our public libraries are the beating hearts of New York City’s neighborhoods. They welcome all, from babies attending their first storytime to asylum seekers who are adjusting to the city. They connect us, whether through free computers and wifi, English-language classes, or simply offering a safe, free space to be, which is important for all New Yorkers, but our teens and youngsters in particular. Libraries expand our worlds — and transport us to new ones — through books, through author talks, through job support and tech classes. And they do all this for free.”

Walcott has seen the library budget fight from both sides of the bookshelf. Before running the libraries in Queens, Walcott was a deputy mayor under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city’s schools chancellor.

But the library system has turned a page even since then.

“The library I grew up with is not the library that exists nowadays,” Walcott said. “We’re an open city. We’re an open library system. Our doors are open to all, including asylum seekers.”