Mayor: Trade center attack cost city budget $1 billion; spending cuts ordered

By LARRY McSHANE The Associated Press 10/9/01 4:56 PM

NEW YORK (AP) -- Mayor Rudolph Giuliani ordered a 15 percent cut in spending by most city departments Tuesday, predicting the World Trade Center attack will cost $1 billion in revenue this fiscal year and 100,000 jobs.

Separately, Gov. George Pataki said it will take $54 billion in federal money for New York to recover. He said New York is requesting $34 billion to rebuild lower Manhattan and $20 billion to reinvigorate New York's economy.

Giuliani spared only the police and fire departments and school system from double-digit budget cuts. Those departments face a 2.5 percent cutback. A citywide hiring freeze went into effect after the Sept. 11 attack, he said.

Despite the dire estimates, an upbeat Giuliani said the city is well-positioned to absorb the fiscal woes caused by the attack that turned the lower Manhattan financial district into a graveyard for some 5,000 victims.

"There's no question our budget problems are real and substantial, but they are significantly less than the problems we've already encountered and overcome," said Giuliani, referring to the fiscal crisis of the 1970s.

Congress has already approved $20 billion to help New York rebuild and recover, and the city has a $550 million reserve.

"People who bet against New York have always lost," Pataki said at a news conference Tuesday. "We're going to come through this."

The mayor, who leaves office at the end of December, offered some advice to his eventual successor: Do not raise taxes.

"It would be a dumb, stupid, idiotic and moronic thing to do," he said.

Giuliani warned that the $1 billion estimate was a "soft" number of the loss of revenue -- including lost taxes from hotels, restaurants and retail sales, which suffered business losses of up to 70 percent in the weeks immediately after the attack, he said. The $1 billion figure applied to the fiscal year that began July 1, and its $40 billion budget.

It is unclear, Giuliani said, if the job losses will be permanent.

Earlier in the day, some of New York City's best students walked back into school for the first time since they looked out their classroom windows to see the hijacked planes slam into the nearby twin towers.

The ruins were still smoldering Tuesday morning. "I'll just try not to look out the windows," said Alice Chan, a 15-year-old junior who was in her psychology class on the eighth floor of Stuyvesant High School when the planes hit. Stuyvesant is one of the city's most selective high schools.

After the attacks, the school was turned into a triage center until it became clear there were few survivors to treat. It then had to be thoroughly tested for asbestos and cleaned. The students had spent a month at another school.

The reopening of Stuyvesant came as National Guardsmen took up positions at transportation hubs across the city. The guard presence expanded Tuesday to include posts at Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. The troops had already been assigned to airports, bridges and tunnels.

Returning students found the neighborhood transformed: heavy police patrols, National Guardsmen in camouflage, dump trucks filled with debris rumbling past -- and the gap in the skyline where the Trade Center had been.

"It's terrible," said junior William Barnard, 16. "When I first got here I looked around. It's just not there."

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., accompanied his daughter Jessica as she returned to the school. Asked if he was worried, the senator said, "They've done all the testing. The school is safe."

The number of people reported missing dropped Monday to 4,815. There have been 417 confirmed deaths, including 366 victims who have been identified.

The Fire Department, which lost 343 members in the attack, was given an exception to the hiring freeze. The freeze will apply only to civilian workers at the department, said Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen.

According to a poll released Tuesday, New Yorkers are still concerned about the chances of a follow-up terrorist attack. Seventy-three percent were either "very worried" or "worried" about another attack, up 3 points from mid-September, said the poll by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. The poll of 1,275 New Yorkers, conducted Oct. 2-4, had a margin of error of three percentage points.

-- Anonymous, October 09, 2001