Mission Branch Library

Branch library

Mission Branch Library (branch library, run by the Public Library): $187.4M budgeted for its department in FY2025, 985 employees on the payroll, 4 city documents at the Internet Archive, every figure linked to its source. The Mission branch's renovation is one of the better-documented small capital projects in the library system, largely because the Budget Committee kept trimming it. In the mid-1990s the committee considered releasing $584,250 of 1988 Library Improvement Bond interest for the renovation, pulled the item off the consent calendar, and approved it amended — reduced to $289,250. The Arts Commission's Civic Design Review took the renovation through Phase I with the Bureau of Architecture, whose presentation located the branch on 24th Street between Mission and Valencia, with Bartlett Street and Orange Alley as its cross streets. The project also had a staffing dimension the Finance Committee scrutinised: a coordinator post funded from bond money fell vacant in May 1997, and the library was told it could ask for bond funds again later if internal project coordination proved necessary for the renovation. While the work went on the branch needed somewhere to be — the Real Estate Department brought forward a resolution authorising the lease of 2601 Mission Street for the Mission Branch Library. Through all of it the branch kept running the programme that fills its calendar: homework help, family storytime, and storytime in Spanish. Source: SF Controller open data and the Internet Archive.