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The Pleasanton Public Library is set to lose about 15% of its total funding and will likely see some sort of reduced hours as part of the city’s overall cuts and reductions to its two-year operating budget following Tuesday’s City Council meeting where the dais refused to make any monetary concessions to the city’s final budget draft.
Despite hearing pleas from dozens of speakers — many of whom were high school students — for the city to reduce the roughly $1.74 million in cuts to the library, the council decided it was best to not go back on their past decisions and instead direct staff to come back with alternative library hours.
Many of the speakers who opposed the library cuts called out how closing the library earlier during the week and fully closing it on Sundays, as proposed by the budget reductions, would negatively affect students’ ability to study and fully utilize the library.
“I think we need to find a way to buffer the impacts,” Mayor Jack Balch said during Tuesday’s meeting. “I am grasping for solutions to help our community with this challenge.”
According to staff, the May 20 meeting was one of the last steps in the budget development process, allowing the council to provide feedback before it fully adopts the budget next month.
Every two years, the City Council adopts a balanced two-year Operating and Capital Budget, along with the five-year Capital Improvement Program.
Over the past year and a half, the city has been warning residents of a structural budget deficit that is projected to set the city back, on average, roughly $13 million each year over the next eight years — that number could go as high as $22 million if a recession hits. These projections came from a 10-year financial forecast that was previously found to be accurate by an independent accounting firm.
After residents failed to pass Measure PP in November — a half cent sales tax increase that was meant to alleviate the deficit — the city found itself in a difficult position of having to make several budget cuts and reductions in order to balance the upcoming budget.
“I wish you had the funds that Measure PP could have provided so that this budget … could have been smooth and easy,” former mayor Karla Brown said during public comment.
Specifically for the next two years, the city is facing a budget shortfall of about $10 to $12 million dollars, which is why staff have been working this past year to find ways to make cuts across all of the city’s departments and services. Some of the steps the city took to address the imbalance included deferring maintenance on parks, buildings, the city’s pool and roads.
But those efforts were not quite enough and staff said they had to make reductions to some city services, including the library.
In recent months the city conducted a town hall meeting, held a pop-up event, formed an advisory committee and launched an online tool to provide avenues for residents and community members to weigh in on what services and amenities they thought the city should cut or reduce. City Finance Director Susan Hsieh said the city received over 700 online responses and interacted with nearly 200 community members.
The result of all of that community engagement and work with the Budget Advisory Committee resulted in a balanced budget for the next two fiscal years.
The city’s 2025-26 expenditure budget across all operating funds totals $248.2 million — the expenditure budget for 2026-27 is projected to be $257.5 million, Hsieh said.
As for the General Fund operating expenditure budget, the city is projected to spend a total of $154.7 million and $160.7 million for fiscal years 2025-26 and 2026-27, respectively.
Hsieh said the overall General Fund expenditure budget is $165.2 million and $171.2 million for the next two years.
She also said the General Fund budget is anticipating modest revenue growth over the next two years with revenues totaling $162.9 million in the 2025-26 fiscal year and $169.3 million the following fiscal year. However, despite that projected growth, she said it will not be enough to address the structural deficit that projects expenditures to grow faster than the city’s revenues.
She also added that even with the millions of cost reductions that the council supported during the two April special council meetings, the long-term deficit will continue to loom over the city’s head during the coming years.
“The ultimate solution is really to identify new revenue sources,” Hsieh said.
While Hsieh and other city staff went over the drafted final budget, which will come back to the council for adoption on June 17 — as well as the CIP — one of the main focuses for the nearly 40 people in the council chamber on Tuesday was the proposed reductions to the library.
The council previously gave staff direction to make cuts to over a dozen services and amenities that would result in approximately $6.2 million in savings for the fiscal year 2025-26 and $6.6 million in the following fiscal year.
And while public safety accounts for 45% of the city’s budget expenditures, the library — which makes up just under 10% of the city’s costs — is getting hit the hardest with reductions.
According to staff, the reduction of library hours from 62 hours a week to 48 hours is one of the largest cost savings in the proposed budget.
Many who spoke during Tuesday’s council meeting pointed out that closing the facility earlier would impact student athletes who already have less time to study because they finish practice later in the day.
“As Foothill’s varsity girls golf captain, I can speak to the detriment that closing the library early would have on not just me but many other student athletes who are trying to manage balancing (sports) and academics,” Maya Viswanathan, a junior at Foothill High School, said during the May 20 meeting.
Jake Nguyen, another high school student, also spoke during public comment in support of the library. He had previously started a Change.org petition to save the library from cuts, which now has over 1,500 signatures.
Nguyen’s comments mainly focused on how slashing the library’s budget will have negative outcomes to the city’s future because of a lack of education for residents.
“Our public library’s value isn’t just measured in the books on its shelves, but in the success of its students, desirability of our community and stability of our economic future,” he said.
As Vice Mayor Jeff Nibert put it, “There’s not one of us that wants to make any of these cuts.” However, he also cautioned against backsliding on the council’s past decisions to make reductions to services and amenities such as the library.
Councilmember Matt Gaidos also agreed that the city had already done the bulk of work in developing the budget and that the final budget draft that was presented to the council on Tuesday should not be altered.
However, Councilmember Julie Testa — who said she was opposed to closing the library during weekends — said that while she does not agree with adding back more hours, the city should at least consider closing the library on Fridays instead of the proposed Sundays. She also said the city should look at closing the library later in the day so that students could still benefit from the later hours.
Director of Library and Recreation Heidi Murphy said shifting the hours around shouldn’t be a problem as long as they focus solely on the hours and not the dollars related to the proposed library cuts.
Other associated impacts from the proposed library cuts, after the council adopts the budget next month, include combining the library and recreation service desks; converting all adult sports to self-run programs; and reduced funding for future library materials — the library’s current book collection and materials will not be affected, according to staff.
