Week of 12 November 2001:
The Cost of Disaster
The economic impact of the September 11 attacks could total $83 billion for
the local economy, according to a report by the New York City Partnership
and Chamber of Commerce. Even after payment of insurance claims and federal
reimbursement for rescue, cleanup, and infrastructure repair, the net damage
to the economy is likely to be at least $16 billion. The study also
estimates 125,000 jobs will be lost by the end of the year. The financial
services, tourism, and retail felt the greatest impact, while small
businesses were the hardest hit. The full report and the group's
recommendations for how private companies and the city government can deal
with the crisis can be obtained on their web site.
Mr. Bloomberg Goes To Washington
Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg made his first trip to Washington as a
representative of the city. He urged the White House to reconsider its
opposition to a plan that would immediately provide billions of dollars to
help New York City rebuild. Opposition from the Bush administration was a
factor in the defeat of the measure, which would have provided more than $9
billion to help New York recover from the terrorist attack. The House
Appropriations Committee defeated the measure on Wednesday in a 33-to-31
vote.
Aid Blocked
New York will not be receiving all of its promised disaster aid from the
federal government any time soon. A House committee yesterday narrowly
defeated a plan by New York lawmakers to provide the city with almost $10
billion. The White House opposed the measure.
The New York legislators were trying to force Washington to make good on
President Bush's pledge, made shortly after September 11, to give New York
$20 billion to rebuild. So far, the city has received only $3.2 billion.
Bush has said another $6.3 billion will be on its way soon, but the
remainder will have to wait until at least March. Members of Congress from
New York fear the money might never materialize because of the faltering
economy and increased federal expenditures for anti-terrorism
measures and the war in Afghanistan.
Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg is expected to discuss the aid situation when
he visits Washington today to meet with Vice President Cheney and top
congressional leaders.
Crash Investigation
Federal investigators probing the crash Monday of an American Airlines plane
in the Rockaways are focusing on the tail section of the jet, apparently the
first piece of the aircraft to fall off, and on possible turbulence from a
Japan Airlines 747 that took off less than two minutes before the American
Airlines flight. Officials have not ruled out any cause for the crash, which
killed 265 people, but say that they have not found any evidence of criminal
acts, including terrorism.
Searching For Answers
On the second day of the investigation into the crash of American Airlines
Flight 587, officials said they were beginning to piece together clues as to
why the plane went down on Monday morning. Investigators said that the
cockpit voice recorder picked up sounds of the jet's frame rattling shortly
before the pilots lost control of the plane, which gave more evidence to the
theory that it was an accident, rather than an act of terrorism. The flight
data recorder, which could provide more information, was also recovered
yesterday. The plane crash killed all 260 people on board and at least 5
people on the ground.
Two neighborhoods, that until now have had little in common, have been hit
particularly hard by the tragedy. In Belle Harbor, Queens, three houses on
Beach 131st Street were completely destroyed. Senator Hillary Clinton said
she would seek federal disaster relief for the area. Washington Heights in
northern Manhattan, where a quarter of the city's 500,000 Dominicans live,
has been the site of vigils, prayer services, and press conferences where
officials have promised that relatives coming from the Dominican Republic
will receive special attention in obtaining visas. "Our community is
completely devastated," said Manhattan City Councilmember Guillermo Linares.
"This is a plane that takes Dominicans on a daily basis to visit their loved
ones, and to have such a huge loss - there is no way to comprehend it."
Crash
An American Airlines jet headed for the Dominican Republic with 260
passengers aboard crashed yesterday morning into the Queens neighborhood of
Belle Harbor on the Rockaway Peninsula three minutes after taking off from
John F. Kennedy International Airport. No passengers survived. Nine people
are missing in Belle Harbor, a neighborhood already mourning the loss of
dozens of residents in the World Trade Center attack. While officials
investigating the cause of the crash are not ruling out terrorism, they said
it is more likely to have been an accident due to a mechanical failure.
Already on high alert because of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the
city reacted to the crash with dispatch. Fighter jets patrolled the skies;
bridges, tunnels and all three major airports were closed briefly; the
Empire State Building was evacuated.
''People should remain calm,'' said Mayor Rudy Giuliani. ''We're just being
tested one more time, and we're going to pass this test, too.''
New (And Old) Commish
Though it is not yet official, Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg has reportedly
appointed Raymond Kelly, who was police commissioner under former Mayor
David Dinkins, to return to the job.
See details of this, and various analyses of election results, in
"Transition Trail" on Gotham Gazette's Searchlight. Also on Searchlight:
political consultants for Bloomberg, Green, Ferrer, and Badillo explain (and
debate) their campaign strategies.
Culture Counts
Few people would dispute that New York City is the cultural capital of the
world. The arts play a unique role in the life of the city, and have for
more than a century. Nobody appreciates that better than the average New
Yorker. In a year's time ending last April, 49 percent of all New Yorkers
attended musical performances, 43 percent went to art exhibitions or
museums, and 36 percent went to the theater. All the cultural activity is
good for the economy as well. In 1995, the last year figures are available,
the arts employed more than 130,000 New Yorkers, and they continue to draw
countless tourists and businesses here as well.
Yet, for all the tangible benefits the arts bring to the city, City Hall has
no clear, comprehensive cultural policy, according to a report just released
called "Culture Counts" (available online) from a
coalition of leading culture figures in the city called the Cultural
Blueprint Project, under the auspices of the New York Foundation for the
Arts. Though the city's Department of Cultural Affairs is the single largest
arts funding agency in the country (with a budget larger than that of the
National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities), it gives little or no
funds to seventy-two percent of all cultural groups in the city, and, the
report charges, it has no clearcut guidelines for who gets funding and who
does not. It is also not doing enough to help struggling artists and art
groups overcome such increasing problems as a shortage of affordable space
to rehearse or perform. "The impending change in city government.opens a
rare window of opportunity to develop a more expansive, cohesive cultural
policy for the new New York," the report says optimistically, "and to better
equip arts and culture to play their critical role."
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