Oil up the printing presses
I never understood on any public service spending (low income housing -public buildings) or infrastructure ---why does the financing have to go through the bond companies and Wall Street. So if you wanted to upgrade the BQE for 10 billion dollars –why couldn’t you borrow the monies from an efficient governmental agency -that charges no or nominal interest payments –for 50 or 100 years? I’d like to get the difference in financing cost from that.
Also why couldn’t we expand the money supply to the tune of the 10 billion dollars for a legitimate governmental infrastructure –oil up those printing presses.
I mean china has a huge stash of American dollars –that they are using it to finance their infrastructure projects –why can’t we do that?
mike
January 30, 2005
Fires Highlight Weaknesses New Yorkers Often Overlook
By SAM ROBERTS
wo major fires rudely reminded New Yorkers last week just how vulnerable they are to a nearly invisible threat: Inadequate government investment in maintenance and modernization and the surging population are overwhelming the city's aging public works and its lagging supply of housing.
One fire, initially thought to have been caused by a homeless person trying to keep warm, destroyed a Depression-era subway signal relay room in Lower Manhattan, disabling two lines and disrupting 580,000 daily riders for months. The other, in an overcrowded Bronx building that had been illegally carved into smaller apartments, killed two firefighters and left dozens of tenants homeless.
The fires suggest that despite cheerleading over declining crime and welfare rolls and a heralded economic rebound, some of the same problems that have historically bedeviled the city - a fragile infrastructure and vulnerable residents - may once again be out of sight and even out of mind, but they have not gone away.
The city's public works and the state-run mass transit system are in vastly better shape than they were a generation ago after years of neglect. Still, the subway system just celebrated its centennial, 7 percent of the city's water pipes are more than 100 years old - one, in Greenwich Village, dates to 1844 - and more than 400 bridges are rated in only fair condition. Repairs often cannot keep pace with normal wear and tear.
Panhandling and public encampments by homeless people that invited comparisons to Calcutta have all but vanished. But nearly half the city's households spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, and about 15 percent are rated as overcrowded. The city itself estimated last year that hundreds of people live in the subways, and the shelter system is housing more than 8,800 individuals - more than in any year since 1989 - and more than 8,700 families, including 15,000 children.
In one sense, the city's real estate boom has become part of the problem.
"As the city becomes more prosperous, places you could squat -in Tompkins Square Park or in abandoned buildings in the Bronx or Harlem - aren't there any more," said Kenneth T. Jackson, a Columbia history professor and editor of "The Encyclopedia of New York City." "And it's not just the homeless. Some people have shelter, but in conditions going back to the turn of the century."
In the Bronx, two firefighters died when they jumped five stories to escape a fire in a residential building. The top floor had been converted into a warren of illegal apartments that evoked Jacob Riis's 19th-century photographs of immigrant ghettos, and the fire itself was tentatively attributed to a thin extension cord that snaked from one partitioned bedroom to another, overheated and ignited a mattress.
Most illegally renovated apartments are believed to be in one-, two- and three-family homes that have been converted into boarding houses to accommodate the city's burgeoning population, particularly newly arrived immigrants. Housing construction, particularly in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, has surged
According to a Department of City Planning report released last week, about half of the apartments rented since 1990 were occupied by a foreign-born head of household. The census estimated that the city's population surpassed a record eight million in 2000. The census counted 2.9 million foreign born, but Joseph J. Salvo, director of the department's population division, estimates that the immigrant population is at least 300,000 higher.
A telephone survey of low-income families last year by the Community Service Society, an advocacy and research group, found that almost half were on the verge of eviction and that most had less than $100 in the bank. David R. Jones, the society's president, said that the number of apartments renting for less than $500 a month was dwindling, and that prospective tenants faced a nine-year wait for public housing. He said the city administration was "not ill-intentioned, but they're not looking at structural issues."
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has proposed spending $3 billion to build or renovate 65,000 apartments over five years. Last week, he proposed investing $60 billion on public works over the next decade, including $532 million in housing for the homeless.
But despite the economic rebound and real estate boom that enabled him to submit a balanced budget, overall, spending outpaces revenues. In addition, 15 cents of every tax dollar already goes to paying off past debt to build or repair 6,000 miles of water mains, 5,700 miles of streets and 1,000 school buildings, among other things. The mayor deferred $1.3 billion of the city's five-year, $13 billion school construction plan for at least a year, blaming Gov. George E. Pataki for not including the money in the state budget.
"The city has, in recent years, concentrated on maintenance," said Ronnie Lowenstein, director of the city's Independent Budget Office.
In 1998, Alan G. Hevesi, then the city comptroller, warned that the city needed to spend at least $40 billion more on public works over 10 years, but added, "While the need is enormous, the city's ability to meet all capital obligations is limited both by law and by insufficient funding capacity."
Mr. Hevesi, now the state comptroller, warned last year that according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's own estimates, stations and the signal system would not be in a "state of good repair" until 2024 and 2027, respectively. Despite fare increases and service cuts, Peter S. Kalikow, the chairman of the authority, said last month that without new taxes and fees from the state, the authority could afford either its $17 billion program to maintain the system or $16 billion to expand it, but not both.
Transit advocates said the governor's budget would cripple the expansion and even leave money for maintenance in doubt.
Last November, a report commissioned by the state warned of severe consequences - "the transportation infrastructure will deteriorate, the economy will falter, jobs will be lost and the quality of life in New York State will suffer dramatically" - unless tens of billions of dollars were invested in the next five years alone.
But when the system, whose cars date to 1963 and whose pumps were designed when the Panama Canal was being built, will be in good repair is arguable.
Last Sunday's subway fire disrupted service on the A and C lines. Transit officials had been warned for decades that the signal system was obsolete, but they spent most construction dollars elsewhere. The authority invested $288 million on its first computerized signaling system, scheduled to begin on the L line in July.
Repairs to the A and C line could be finished faster if the lines were shut entirely. But that is not considered feasible - just as it is not feasible to close one of the two existing tunnels for repairs or even inspections until a third water tunnel is completed.
In some cases, the delay has been in developing technology and finding suppliers. "If somebody gave us $50 billion tomorrow, we could not any faster upgrade these signals," Mr. Kalikow said Thursday.
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