Wash Heights Library Hours, Kids' Storytime Slashed In NYC Budget Cuts

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NY - If you’re looking to check out a new novel, use research databases or attend a children's storytime hour on a Sunday at the New York Public Library’s Washington Heights branch, you better do it soon.

Two more weekends of Sunday service remain at virtually every New York City library that are open on Sundays following sweeping budget cuts announced Thursday. The last day of Sunday service at libraries in Manhattan and the Bronx will be Nov. 26, city officials said.

After Dec. 17, only one public library in the city — the Queens Public Library Kew Gardens Hills branch in Queens — is expected to be open on Sundays.

“Brooklyn Public Library, Queens Public Library and The New York Public Library regret to announce that as a result of mid-year budget cuts, we must eliminate seven-day service across the city, including ending Sunday service at the vast majority of branches that currently offer it,” the three library systems said in a joint statement. “We also will be reducing spending on library materials, programming, and building maintenance and repairs.”

"Without sufficient funding, we cannot sustain our current levels of service," library officials added.

In Washington Heights, the branch at 1000 St Nicholas Ave. will be nixing its Sunday hours, as well as its weekly Sunday Family Storytime.

The library cuts are expected to total more than $90 million over the next four years, the New York Daily News reported.

Sweeping budget cuts are poised to hit other city services hard, including the city's education department, which is set to reduce its budget by over $1 billion over the next two fiscal years by cutting fringe benefits, community school allocations and early childhood spending. The city's sanitation department will also tighten its belt, most notably by removing some litter baskets from city streets and delaying the rollout of the curbside organics collection in the Bronx, city hall officials said.

A hiring freeze for the NYPD could send the department plummeting to its lowest number since the mid-1990s, eliminating the next five classes, according to city hall officials. Cost-cutting adjustments to the NYPD totaled $132 million in the 2024 fiscal year and $429 in 2025.

City hall officials and Mayor Eric Adams continue to attribute much of the city's financial strife to spending on services for asylum seekers, reporting an unexpected $11 billion in added expenditures over the next two fiscal years.

Adams was recently in Washington D.C. to discuss possible financial help from the federal government to help the city through a crisis that he has repeatedly said "will destroy New York City," but before any meetings took place, he hopped back on a plane to return to New York City when a crisis of his own unfolded, regarding a FBI probe into his 2021 mayoral campaign.

In a Thursday statement, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander said he found the mayor's characterization of recent asylum seekers as untrue and unfair when it comes to the numbers.

"City Hall should stop suggesting that asylum seekers are the reason for imposing severe cuts when they are only contributing to a portion of these budget gaps, much of which already existed," Lander said.

The New York Working Families Party also took issue with Adams attributing the painful cuts to asylum seekers, emphasizing the strain such sweeping cuts could have on New York City families.

"Mayor Adams is pursuing an agenda of death by a thousand cuts," said Jasmine Gripper and Ana María Archila, co-directors of the party.

"At a time when half of NYC households can't afford the cost of living, we should be stepping up our investments in working communities, not defunding the services they rely on."

-With reporting by Emily Rahhal.