The Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Councillor Ben Weber (District Six), held a hearing on May 19, 2026, at 2:00 PM to review the Fiscal Year 2027 operating budget for the Boston Public Library (BPL), covering docket numbers 0733 to 0740. The proposed budget is $50.724 million, a flat budget that is $1.5 million below the maintenance level, achieved by holding vacancies and small trims. No layoffs or hour reductions are planned. The panel included BPL President David Leonard, Chief Financial Officer Emily To Karzik, Director of Library Services Michael Colford, and Director of Neighborhood Services Priscilla Foley. The hearing included a presentation, councilor questions, and public testimony.
Good afternoon. My name is Ben Weber. I'm the Boston City Councillor for District Six, and I'm the chair of the Ways and Means Committee. For the record, uh, today is May nineteenth, two thousand twenty-six, and the exact time is still two. M. Uh, this hearing is being recorded. It's also being live streamed at Boston.gov slash city dash council dash TV at broadcast on Xfinity Channel eight, RCN channel eighty two, and file channel nine sixty-four. Uh, just I have a couple preliminary things and then we'll we'll get to the panel. Um, the council's budget review process encompasses a series of public hearings beginning in April running through June. We strongly encourage residents to take a moment to engage in this process by giving testimony for the record. You can do uh this in several ways. Uh you can give testimony at one of our public hearings, or all of them if you uh if you can. Um, you can do so in a couple ways. One, you can show up in person to a hearing, uh sign in on the sign in sheet near the door, and you'll be called on uh for the public testimony portion. You can also testify virtually at any hearing uh for virtual testimony, sign up using our online form on our council budget review website, or by emailing the committee at ccc.gov or by emailing our uh our budget analyst right here, Karish Machon at K-A-R ISHMA.CHO U H A N at Boston.gov, and you'll get a Zoom link to testify. You can also uh come to the last or fourth of four listening sessions, which, and I've been saying, I've been reading the script and saying it's on Thursday, May twenty-sixth, but May 26 is a Tuesday, so it's Tuesday, May twenty sixth at 6 pm, right here in the chamber. Uh anyone in the public, please come and counselors will be here to hear your testimony about what you want to see in the budget. Again, at that listening session, you can testify in person or virtually. So follow the same steps to get a Zoom link if you can't make it in person. In addition to testifying and hearing virtually in person, you can email written testimony to the committee at ccc.wm at Boston.gov. Lastly, you can uh supply your testimony by submitting a two-minute video of your testimony through the form on our website. For more information on the council budget process and how to testify, please visit the council budget's budget, city council's budget website at boston.gov slash city-sorry, that was wrong. Boston.gov slash council-budget. We will have in-person testimony following a presentation from the panel and our first round of counselor questions. Again, you'll be called on in the order you've arrived, or you signed up in, or um get a zoom link from our uh legislative budget analyst, Karishma at K-A-R-I-S-H-M-A.CHO-U-H-A-N at Boston.gov for the zoom link, and your name will be added to the list. This afternoon's hearing is on docket numbers 0733 to 0740, an overview of the fiscal year 2027 operating budget for the Boston Public Library. This is one in a series of hearings to review the fiscal year 2027 budget. These matters were sponsored by Michelle Mayor Michelle Wu and referred to the committee on April 8th, 2026. I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, Councillor Flynn, Councilor Murphy. I've received letters of absence from Councillor Louis Jan and Councilor Culpeper. Now I'm just going to introduce the panel and then you can give a presentation if you have one. We're joined today by the president of the Boston Public Library, David Leonard, the Chief Financial Officer of Emily To Karzik. Great. Okay. The Director of Library Services, Michael Colford, and our director of neighborhood services of the Boston Public Library, Priscilla Foley. Okay, so that's that's it for me. I'm gonna hand it over to the panel and then we'll go to questions from our the counselors over here. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh it's a pleasure to be back with the council once again. I believe this may be my tenth time uh presenting on our budget for the library. Uh and it remains uh although we are a complicated institution with our own challenges, uh, it remains a joy and privilege to lead this institution uh for all of the residents of Boston and and beyond. Um we have a number of slides to present on, but I'm just gonna pick off a couple of highlights from the slides so we can get to your questions uh in particular, uh, and which will also lead us into the budget picture. Uh aha, you warned me about this, not to be too aggressive with the clicker, right? So let me start right here. And um you have all of this information in your packet, uh, but the BPL 2025 calendar year snapshot of performance. Um, a few highlights that I want to um point out just to give context to the work of our staff and the institution system-wide. So in 2025, we had over 3.2 million visits to the central library and all of our branches. Um, our circulation numbers, i.e., the books borrowed, um, 1.9 million items in uh physical items, actual books, um, uh, which is actually an increase over the previous year, and 5.4 million um items downloaded as ebooks or e-audio books. Uh the other number I want to point out is the sign-up of new library card holders at 129,000, which is uh which is kind of the norm for us uh from year to year.