Today, Tuesday, November 4th, our members rallied outside City Hall to draw attention to cuts to the library system in the proposed 2026 budget. We then went inside City Hall, where AFSCME Council 31 hosted a press conference at which three Local 1215 members and two alders spoke on behalf of the library. Those three members, Nick, Carlynn and Fernando, then proceeded into City Council chambers and repeated their speeches as public comment.
We we are immensely grateful to all the members, patrons, and union siblings who showed up to rally in support of the library, and are extremely proud of these members for speaking up publicly. Their speeches are below:
Nick’s Speech
Carlynn’s Speech
Fernando’s Speech
Nick’s Speech
Good morning. My name is Nick. I am a librarian in the central district. I’ve worked at CPL for five years.
The library has 81 branches throughout the city, where, kids, teens, adults, seniors, families, community groups and more come to read, learn, study, borrow books and periodicals, access the internet, attend programs, take classes and more.
In a day and age where free, public spaces are a rarity, we served more than 5 million visitors last year alone.
But year after year, front line library employees are being asked to do more and more with less and less.
Staffing is down: before the pandemic, CPL had 1,242 staff. As of six months ago, it was 1,142 (just 805 of which are full-time). This year’s budget actually CUT 50 positions. The proposed budget for 2026 would cut 89 more.
The city has not kept its commitments under the 2019 agreement that restored Sunday hours. Management put in writing that they would add 115 part-time and 62 full-time employees to manage the increased workload. But instead of getting the staff we need, we’ve consistently lost them.
That leaves our workforce facing burnout and challenging conditions.
Even at Harold Washington Library, the crown jewel of the system, understaffing has direct effects on our patrons, and ripple effects system-wide:
- Where once we had specialized librarians on every floor—so staff could be expert in their subject area and work with the same collection and questions daily—we now have staff rotating throughout the building to cover gaps and keep floors open.
- Because of staff shortages, around this time last year, patrons at branches were waiting a month or more for books to be delivered. With adequate staff, books should take only a couple of days to reach almost any branch.
Library employees and the residents we serve need the city to do better. We need MORE—not fewer—workers to continue providing excellent service to all Chicago. Thank you.
Carlynn’s Speech
Hello, my name is Carlynn. I’m a librarian on the South side, and I have worked for the Chicago Public Library for 24 years.
Besides our need for adequate staff, we’re also concerned about our collections budget. This proposal would cut it from $10 million dollars a year to just $5 million.
Compared to the $5 BILLION dollars the city spends each year total, finding 5 million to prevent this cut is not a lot. In fact it is less than zero-point-one percent of the corporate fund budget.
And the harm this cut would do is much greater than its relatively minimal cost.
A 50 percent cut to our collections budget gives us only half the means to purchase new books, maintain our subscriptions to magazines and newspapers, to license audiobooks and digital media as well.
It’s a 50 percent cut to our ability to buy the special materials that our visually impaired patrons need. A 50 percent cut to the collections we can maintain for our seniors, our teen readers, our children and their parents who come for activities and story time.
And when there’s a 50 percent CUT to what we can buy, you can be sure that will create an INCREASE in wait times, making our residents less able to get the new books and periodicals they want and need in a timely fashion.
A collections budget of just $5 million dollars for a city the size of Chicago is just $1.83 per resident—way below other major cities like LA (which spends more than 5 dollars per resident) and New York (almost 8 dollars per resident), and far less than neighbors like Evanston, which spends 12 dollars per resident to maintain its collections.
That’s disrespectful to our patrons. The impact will be felt by everyone, especially those communities who are already underserved. We are calling on the city to do better. Thank you.
Fernando’s Speech
Hello, I’m Fernando. I’m a clerk on the Northwest side.
Our budget is already stretched thin. As a result, library staff face a cacophony of demands from different directions: patrons on the library floor, others at the circulation desk, all needing attention.
Yet as you’ve heard from my coworkers, we continually find ourselves with less and less to provide:
- Less of our time, because we’re understaffed;
- Fewer resources, because we don’t have the books and other materials they need;
- And less digital access, because we don’t have enough equipment for everyone.
We need to do better, and we CAN do better. But it requires the alders that were elected to improve lives to do better. We need alders to not just say they support libraries, but to stand up and vote for the revenue needed to fund us, along with all the other services the city provides.
Now more than ever, we can’t continue to accept cuts to the programs and services our residents rely on. I can’t tell you how many people have come to my branch to print out their immigration forms, or materials for work. We’re the only accessible location and resource that’s able to give them this, free of charge, in multiple languages, and in connection to other free programs to help improve their lives.
To give city residents the support they need, city services need to be adequately funded. This budget proposal has many good ideas to raise revenue. There are other ideas available as well. If there are revenue proposals in this budget that alders don’t support, they should say what they DO support instead. You can’t cut your way to better libraries—you have to invest in us. That means voting for the revenue required.