The city of Orange is reducing hours at its main library and two branches amid ongoing budget woes and cuts to community services. 

The two branches, now closed only on Sundays, will be open only on afternoons Mondays through Thursdays starting next week.  

Even after making extensive cuts to every city department last summer, Orange is still on pace to run a deficit this year totaling several million dollars, officials have said.

The City Council hoped to breach the gap between spending and income by raising a half-cent sales tax. But, voters narrowly rejected the sales tax proposal on November’s ballot — leaving Orange with another fiscal predicament heading into 2025. 

Orange has faced an escalating structural budget deficit for more than a decade. By last summer, the deficit had grown to $19.1 million, officials said, and was projected to get even larger in the current fiscal year. Instead, the city froze unfilled public safety positions, cut spending on public events and denied cost of living adjustments to staff.

Officials say Orange also has a growing backlog of street maintenance and street lighting projects. 

In a strategic plan update unveiled after the tax proposal’s failure, city leaders emphasized their desire to run Orange with better resourcefulness. 

“The bottom line is that we need to run the city, as an organization, more efficiently,” Councilmember John Gyllenhammer said at the time.

That includes, the councilmember said, updating fee studies, considering paid parking in Old Towne and reducing staffing levels in various departments without residents noticing service cutbacks.

The library department is the latest to take a hit. 

Starting next week, each location will offer reduced hours. The El Modena and Taft branches are making the biggest cutbacks. 

Those branches had been open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Starting Jan. 20, they will only be open from 2  to 6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. 

The main library in Old Towne will see reduced hours on Mondays. It will now open on Mondays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Thursdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Leslie Hardy, the city’s community services director who in that position also — as of this month — helms library services, said reduced library hours will save the city about $286,000 for the remainder of fiscal year 2024-25.

Most of the cost reduction corresponds to reduced hours for part-time library staff, Hardy said. No full-time library positions were cut, she added. 

But, to Gyllenhammer’s point about making cuts without residents noticing service cutbacks, the Community Services Department made sure not to cut any library programming despite reduced hours, Hardy said.  

“There were programs that were either relocated to a different branch or had their hours changed, but nothing was cut,” she said. Hardy said the city chose which hours to eliminate based on library user data.

“We looked at when the library is being utilized, and that’s how we determined new library hours,” she said. 

Thus, the branches will remain open during popular after-school hours four days a week. 

Nevertheless, more cuts could loom on the horizon for Orange city services. 

“We’re just starting the fiscal year ‘26 planning, so I would imagine that there’s going to be a lot more public conversations about that,” Hardy said. “But, at this point, there are no further cuts to library services planned.”

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