Library restores hours, 3 jobs

Prior to the June 30 City Council vote on the overall city budget, Mayor James J. Fiorentini added $15,500 he had previously proposed for the library. Of that money, $9,800 came from a fund left to the city for library use. The rest came from a larger-than-expected state aid allotment to the city, money that would otherwise have been placed in the stabilization fund.

With Fiorentini’s consent, councilors later added another $50,000 to the library budget, also taken from unexpected aid money that would have gone to the stabilization fund.

The move came after about 3,000 library patrons signed a petition seeking a restoration of the $150,000, or 12.9 percent, cut in library spending.

“I’m delighted,’’ said library director Carol Verny. “It’s a significant help to the library.’’

Due to the budget cuts that were then pending, library officials last month laid off six employees, five of them part time. They also decided to close the library on Saturdays during the summer, close the children’s area early three days a week, and reduce public computer hours.

Verny said the additional $65,000 is enough to restore three to four of those jobs and for the library to reopen Saturdays. She is also hopeful the library can restore hours for the children’s area and the computers.

She said it would also help ensure the library can remain open Saturdays after the summer. Libraries that close on Saturdays during the school year are stripped of their state certification, which means a loss of state aid and the ability of their patrons to borrow books from other libraries.

Prior to last Tuesday’s budget vote, Verny had described the library’s pending budget cuts as severe, noting that they came on top of three layoffs in fiscal 2009. She said those nine layoffs had reduced the library to 27 staff members, half the number it had in fiscal 2003.

“If the number of people in the building every day is going up and staffing has decreased 50 percent, something is wrong,’’ she said, prior to Tuesday.

City Councilor Mary Ellen Daly O’Brien sponsored the motion adding $50,000 to the library budget.

“I realized they were cut back as far as they can cut. I didn’t want them to have to cut back anymore,’’ O’Brien said, calling the library the heart of the community.

She said she advocated for the additional funds even though she was perturbed the library director prompted patrons to contact councilors about the proposed library cuts three weeks before the council received the budget.

At the time she was contacted, “I didn’t even have the numbers. I had no idea what the budget would be like,’’ she said.

“Advocacy is part of what public libraries do,’’ Verny said, in response. “It wasn’t in any way meant to intimidate but to make the council aware that we felt the cuts to the library were disproportionate.’’

Interviewed after the council meeting, Fiorentini said that O’Brien “indicated and I agreed that there’s tremendous public support of the library. It was a relatively small amount of money for a great public service. She asked at the meeting if I would support it and I said I would.’’

Fiorentini said before the June 30 meeting that he sympathized with the library’s concerns, but that all departments were facing cuts in the face of the city’s steep state aid reductions.

“Everyone knows the economic reality,’’ he said.

As one way to generate additional dollars for the library, Fiorentini had arranged for a voluntary check-off box to be included on the city’s just-mailed third quarter property tax bills for people to donate to the library.

Haverhill is not alone among public libraries in feeling the effect of budget cuts.

The Beverly public library laid off four part-time employees effective July 1, and is not filling the job of a full-time staff member who took advantage of the city’s recent retirement incentive program. The jobs of five other part-time employees were reduced, according to the city’s library director, Patricia Cirone.

Cirone said the extent of the cuts would have been more severe had Mayor William F. Scanlon and the City Council not restored $40,000 to the library budget.

While those funds enabled the library to maintain its current hours, Cirone said the library will need to cut most of its programs for adults this year.

Nadine M. Mitchell, Lynn’s chief librarian, said she had to lay off a full-time staff member July 1 and is not filling another post vacated through retirement in March.

“We won’t be able to do the programming we have been doing the last few years,’’ Mitchell said.