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Thursday, September 18, 2003

New York Two Years On

Paul Krugman has been talking a lot about US public finances lately, and one of the points he tends to make concerns the parlous state of finance in New York. That, and the lack of generousity on the part of Washington post 09/11. I have readers in New York, so I thought I'd check out what one of them had to say on the topic. This came in the mailbox from Bill today:

Every city, town and municipality is in a major fiscal crunch. What gets me even more upset is the fact that NY State had to raise our property taxes a lot due to the 20 Billion loss in the States retirement funds due to the Wall Street Bubble. So my property taxes are going up $3,000. In January to a total of $13,000. This is just for 1/6 of an acre of land in the County of Westchester.

We, I think the Bush Admin. Should keep their promises and help NY with the money that was earmarked for NY. The City can't afford to keep many Fire Depts. Open not to mention enough security to help out with Home Land Defense. NYC Mayor Bloomberg is pulling out all of the stops he learned in the business world to raise revenues for the city. He even signed a contract with the Snapple beverage company to be the main supplier of soda machine drinks. The city will in return get a few million each year.

Living in NY 2 years after 9/11 seems no different than 2 years before with the exception of the occasional Yellow alerts which then cause the police to run patrols on certain highways and bridges which makes things a bit hectic during the normal NY traffic. Of Course the first 2 weeks after 9/11 people in NY were so kind in the road, one did not even hear a single car horn go off. But people are back to the normal routines. But more folks are finally starting to question why 9/11 happened as opposed to just a Rambo Type of attitude.

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