NEW YORK CITY-While reducing city-funded spending year-to-year by .2% and also out-year gaps, the mayor proposes record-high spending for cultural institutions and libraries. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani unveiled his Financial Plan for Fiscal Years 2001-2005 yesterday (Jan. 25), calling for a total of almost $55 billion to be spent on initiatives such as new school construction, the Brooklyn Academy of Music's plans and new housing. Pointing to the city's position as “the safest large city in America” and a national leader in job growth coupled with the new plans, the mayor noted it is poised to sustain its “renaissance” for “future generations.”
Giuliani has allotted $240 million for Lincoln Center, $67.8 million for the new Downtown Guggenheim (including land), $65 million for the Museum of Modern Art, $25 million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and $22 million for the Museum of Jewish History. For the Mid-Manhattan Central Circulation Branch of the New York City Public Library, on the southeast corner of 40th Street and Fifth Avenue, $19.2 million has been proposed. Under his plan the New York Botanical Garden would get $23.8 million.
He has also budgeted $19 million for Jazz at Lincoln Center, $18.7 million for the Library for the Performing Arts, $18.5 million for the Third Stage Theater at Carnegie Hall, $17.4 million for the Center for Humanities at the 42nd Street Research Library, $10 million for the Center for Jewish History and $13 for the New York Aquarium. The Brooklyn Academy of Music Cultural District is allotted $10 million, $50 million less than was mentioned in the mayor's State of the City Address.
The budget, according to the mayor's office, calls for a $1.2 billion “public/private partnership to rehabilitate and preserve housing by: completing the return of 1,200 vacant city-owned units to the private sector; transferring deteriorating buildings to new landlords to prevent them from falling into city ownership; and expanding the ANCHOR program to create new mixed use residential/commercial developments. This will include a total of 3,067 units and 875,000 sf of commercial space.”
In support of the city's educational system, Giuliani and his staff propose approximately $13.3 billion in school construction and reconstruction. He calls for the acceleration of $359 million in funding 12 new school buildings and another $300 million in repairs and reconstruction. Additionally, he seeks to sell 110 Livingston St. and move the Board of Education to a new building in Downtown Brooklyn. Take the Field would get $100 million to improve all 51 slated school fields and $31.5 million is slated to establish libraries in the 21,000 k-8 classrooms throughout the city.
The Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant would get nearly $2 billion in this budget for upgrades, one of many such infrastructure expenditures proposed. Reconstruction of East River bridges would see $1.1 billion.
Other expenses are: transit subsidy for subway and buses, $1.4 billion; constructing Croton Water Filtration Plant, $804 million; stage two of the Third Water Tunnel, $678 million; Brooklyn Court Complex, $598 million; Wards Island Wastewater Treatment Plant upgrade, $494 million; Belt Parkway bridges reconstruction, $433 million; Willis Avenue replacement bridge, $302 million; Bronx Criminal Court Complex, $283 million; Staten Island Ferry Terminals, $254 million; Pennsylvania and Fountain Avenues Landfill remediations, $234 million; compressed natural gas buses and facilities, $223 million; Flushing Bay combined sewer overflow, $178 million; Bellevue Hospital Ambulatory Care Center, $157 million; Alley Creek combined sewer overflow, $145 million; three new Staten Island Ferry boats, $130 million; Kings County Diagnostic Center, $128 million; 52 chambers in Tweed Courthouse, $125 million; and a replacement bridge on the Bronx side of the Shore Road/Hutchinson River, $110 million.
Also budgeted: streetlight upgrades and replacements, $82 million; Fulton Fish Market relocation to Hunts Point in the Bronx, $75 million; 8,200 intersections-worth of traffic signal upgrades, $51 million; Randall's Island Fire Training Facility, $45 million; Almeda Avenue-Arverne flooding problem, $32 million; Flushing Meadows Pool and Ice Skating Facility, $32 million; South West Brooklyn Waste Export Facility, $32 million; Fire Department renovation of the five communication dispatching offices, $30 million; Kingsbridge Armory, $30 million; Coney Island Sportsplex, $30 million; Staten Island Waste Export Facility, $28 million; Pelham Parkway reconstruction, $23 million; new 66th Precinct, $21 million; Biotech Initiatives facility, $18 million; Staten Island Conference House Park reconstruction, $14 million; and the Fifth Avenue reconstruction in Brooklyn, $11 million.
The plan projects a surplus for fiscal year 2001 of $2.2 billion. City Hall also notes it continues the policy of two-year Budget Stabilization Accounts for fiscal year 2002 and fiscal year 2003 in the event of a recession.
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