Mayor Gloria’s State of the City address reinforced his commitment to invest in infrastructure, public safety, and mechanisms to address the homelessness crisis. All are critical areas for San Diego. Like these critical city services, San Diego’s libraries are in desperate need of additional investments to continue providing essential educational support, cultural programming, and economic and job development.
Libraries are an essential service that helps build strong, educated, and working communities. They can create pathways to economic development, health and safety, and often are on the front lines of the homelessness crisis.
In his coming budget, we call on the Mayor and City Council to address years of deferred maintenance and other branch needs. This can be achieved through a dedicated library maintenance budget, which has been a critical missing piece in past budgets. We also ask our elected leaders to bring our library’s materials and resources budget up to national standards.
We would also like to see the city invest in a full-time Youth Services Librarian for young people across San Diego’s vibrant communities.
The Library Foundation SD and our partners in LibrariesTransformSD look forward to working with the City to create a budget that can best support our libraries. Together, we can create a library system that fosters community, provides invaluable resources, and builds a stronger San Diego.
Library advocates watch and react to Mayor Gloria’s 2023 State of the City address
