Boston lawmakers in the Massachusetts House of Representatives are attempting to save condemned branches of the Boston Public Library by proposing amendments to the state budget plan for fiscal year 2011 fiscal year.
The BPL Board of Trustees voted on April 9 to close the Lower Mills, Faneuil, Orient Heights and Washington Village branches in order to eliminate a $3.6 million budget gap.
In an effort to keep the libraries open, 12 lawmakers filed amendments last Friday to the proposed state budget. If passed, the amendments would give $3 million to the BPL.
“The Trustees of the Boston Public Library and the Mayor of Boston have made clear their budget priorities,” said Rep. Michael Moran, D-Allston/Brookline, in a statement. “Today, as a united group of legislators from neighborhoods throughout Boston, we are standing together and clearly stating that our priorities are to keep every branch library open.”
The amendments are phrased so that the allocation of the $3 million is contingent upon all 26 current BPL branches remaining open in 2011.
Members of the House will be debating the budget through the last week of April. After it passes the House, the budget will move through the Senate.
“I want to applaud our colleagues in the House for the work they have done on this,” said Sen. Jack Hart, D-Suffolk, in a statement. “As the budget process moves forward in the Senate we are planning on filing similar amendments to ensure that all libraries in the Boston Public Library System remain open.”
Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry, D-Suffolk said in a statement that the BPL is an essential resource for Boston citizens.
“Libraries are centers of education and civic engagement and closing them is closing part of a community. No neighborhood should be deemed less worthy of a library, and, simply put, it is the wrong thing to do,” Forry said. “Boston is the intellectual capital of the world. We are a reading city and we must not lose track of who we are despite the economic times.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
