NILES, Ill. (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The Niles-Maine District Library Board unanimously passed a controversial budget Wednesday night, with a few key changes.
According to information provided by library officials in June, the budget originally called for a 20 percent cut in staff salaries, materials, and the library’s operating hours totaling about $1.5 million.
Over the last several weeks, community members rallied together to ‘save the library’.
Organizers gathered at Nico Park earlier this week and marched to a public budget hearing to voice their disapproval.
“People like libraries,” said one Niles resident. “You start making cuts to a library and clearly, people wake up and take notice and I hope that some of you will really think about the negative attention you have brought to our village all because of a library.”
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At the final budget hearing, the Niles Journal reported library trustees made an amendment to not cut any current staff and to restore the library’s operating hours closer to its pre-pandemic levels of 66 hours a week.
Trustees later appointed Assistant Library Director Cyndi Rademacher as Library Director with a salary of $120,000 per year with standard benefits.