This Week's Stories
GG's quick takes on recent NYC news


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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