I guess you're wondering why this is here [pointing to backdrop photo of Times Square on New Year's Eve, 1999]. It's here because, probably more than any other moment, it summarizes for me-and I think for the City-the culmination of all of the work that we've done to change the direction of New York City.
When the ball dropped on New Years' Eve, I have to tell you-I was elated and enormously pleased at the tremendous progress that the City has made, and at the fact that New York was the center of everything when the world entered the new millennium.
But I also have to admit to you that I was very nervous, and I was afraid. I was afraid that something would go wrong . . . that despite the great planning of the Police Department, and of emergency personnel, that some terrible thing would happen to harm people or hurt the City.
After the celebration occurred, and nothing bad had happened, I had a feeling of great relief. I hadn't noticed, however, during the celebration, these signs-otherwise I would have been more nervous: [pointing to billboards in the Times Square photo] "The End is Near." I didn't notice that one. Nor did I notice the one over here: "Revolution, Anarchy and Rebellion."
I want to show you, as a way of symbolizing what we have been able to accomplish, two different covers of Time Magazine. This one is from September 17, 1990, at the beginning of the decade. This is where our City was in the estimation, I think, of most people: [holding up cover] "The Rotting of the Big Apple": "I [broken heart instead of a heart] New York." And I think many of us had a broken heart.
The artwork on this cover is a picture of a City which our fellow Americans thought of as the crime capital and the welfare capital of America . . . a city which, if you read the article, had seen its best days and had no prospect of being in the shape it's in now, in the year 2000. Ten years later, this is the cover of Time Magazine. [Holds up cover showing Times Square at midnight, January 1, 2000.]
It's a lot better cover, right?
[Applause]
You and I may note the dramatic difference in the position of the City. But when I showed it to Joe Lhota and Bob Harding, they noted that Time used to cost $2.50 and now it cost $3.50. But that's how budget directors think.
[Laughter]
What I would like to talk to you about today is a little different, maybe, than what I talked about in the other State of the City speeches that I've given. This could be my last State of the City speech . . . it might not be my last State of the City speech. We don't know-but it could be. So today I'd like to discuss with you the ideas behind the changes in the City.
Because the changes from 1990 to 2000-the things that represent why the Time Magazine covers are so different-aren't about hype, and they're not about sound bites, or anything else. They're about real ideas that changed the way we did things.
We need to understand those changes and the ideas behind them. Otherwise, there's no question in my mind that the City will go back to the way it was before-with high crime, swelling welfare rolls, cyclical bankruptcy, fleeing jobs, and all the rest. After all, that's the way the City was for most of the last half-century. And human societies tend to recede to the way they usually operate, unless they can understand what caused their problems and also understand the philosophy that can change their direction.
Let me give you a couple of quick examples, and then I'll discuss this in more detail.
Crime. The reduction in crime has been dramatic . . . tremendous . . . greater than any other city in America. When that first Time cover was published, we were the crime capital of America. We were averaging 2,000 murders per year, and 550,000 serious crimes per year. Now we're averaging under 700 murders, we have 55 percent less crime, and we are unquestionably the safest large city in America.
That didn't happen by accident. It happened because new and better ideas replaced old ideas that weren't working.
Maybe the most important new idea is the "Broken Windows" theory, which says that you have to pay attention to small crimes, because if you don't, neighborhoods will get out of control and serious crimes will get even worse. That idea replaced the old notion that the Police Department and the City didn't have enough time for small crimes. We can't ever think like that again, because if we do crime will go up in the City and quality of life will deteriorate.
Another new idea is the CompStat program, and shifting the Police Department's emphasis from arresting people to reducing crime. That requires collecting crime statistics compulsively. It requires always coming up with new strategies to reduce crime. It requires responding to trends. And most of all, it requires holding the Police Department accountable. If we stop doing any of these things, crime is going to go up again.
And we have to support the Police-in the right way, in the appropriate way-but we have to support the Police. Not long ago, the politicians of this City would run out on the Police whenever things got tough. When that happens, then the Police hold back, because they see that doing what they are supposed to do puts their careers and lives at risk.
We saw that happen last year when Police Officers got involved in a terrible and tragic shooting-the final resolution of which is going be determined in a courtroom. However, one court came to the conclusion that "the carnival-like atmosphere" in our City created a threat to those officers' civil rights.
Let me show you something else that the "carnival-like atmosphere" in our City caused. Last year, crime went down 9% in New York City. Murder, however, went up 7%. But murder didn't go up 7% throughout the entire year.
[Holding up chart] Here is what happened last year with regard to murder-and this shows what the CompStat program can do for us. It allows us to make analyses like this, which enable the police to reasonably and rationally deploy resources where and how they're most needed to reduce crime.
In the first three months of last year, murder went up 15%. Actually, it wasn't the first three months. In the first month of last year, murder went down. In the next two months, in February and in March, murder went up. Then in April, May and June, murder went up dramatically, by 30%. Then it went up by only 7% in the third quarter. And finally, in the last three months of the year, murder went down by 14%-a considerable decrease.
[Pointing to the 2nd quarter figure] This is the period of time during which, to a large extent, the Police disengaged because they feared taking the kind of aggressive but appropriate action that is necessary to take guns out of our City and to save lives.
For any Mayor, this simple rule has to be followed in periods like that: the Police should be supported and given the benefit of the doubt. Because, overwhelmingly, the Police of our City are out there trying to protect people and save lives. And in the neighborhoods where crime is the highest, their activity is most important.
So supporting the police is not some political thing, in the cynical meaning of that word. Supporting the police is a way to save lives. But you have to be willing to withstand criticism and ignore public opinion polls that say you're unpopular when you're doing it. If we're going to continue to reduce crime and save lives, then the political leaders of the City have to understand this principle.
Now, what else can we do to reduce crime even more? For the last two years, I thought it was impossible to reduce crime anymore than we already had. But last year we reduced crime by 9%, and the year before we reduced it by 8%. So it's still possible to make even more progress.
There are a number of things that we are going to do this year, which hopefully will create big reductions for next year, and in years to come. Probably the most important of them is to put New York in the forefront of new technologies for investigating crimes-technologies that will help us solve more crimes, and clear innocent people.
One of the things we need in New York City is a major, state-of-the-art DNA laboratory. DNA is being used in England to solve crimes in a much higher percentage than here in America, and their example shows how well it can work. Let me describe one or two cases for you so you understand how we can use DNA, and what it can accomplish.
Last year, the Police arrested a man named Ahron Kee for larceny. He was also suspected of rape. When the Police got Ahron Kee into the Precinct and questioned him on the larceny charge, they gave him a cup of coffee. He drank the coffee. The Police went and booked him for the larceny, and they took the cup. They got his DNA from his saliva. And they matched his DNA to the DNA of a man who committed three murders and three rapes. Ahron Kee is now in the process of being prosecuted for all of those crimes. This illustrates DNA's potential for making us much more effective in catching criminals and reducing crime, particularly crimes of rape and sexual assault.
Here is the other point about DNA that's just as important: two other men had been falsely arrested for two of those rapes. They were in prison because the criminal justice system, which is a human system, had made a terrible mistake. But they were let out, because of DNA. DNA investigation, so far in America-where it's only in its infant stages, remember-has already exonerated 62 people who were in federal or state prison for crimes that they didn't commit. So DNA also has the potential to make our criminal justice system exactly what it is supposed to be: a search for the truth.
Just one other story about DNA, because it shows something else that DNA can do: prevent crime. Isaac Jones was released from prison in 1993. He was released on parole-something, by the way, that we should do away with, completely and absolutely.
[Applause]
This is why we should do away with it. Between 1993 and 1999, Isaac Jones committed 51 rapes and sexual assaults-that we can prove. Fifty-one . . . that's a one-man crime wave. He alone could have an impact on the rape statistics or the crime statistics-and think of all of those people that he victimized and hurt. Do away with parole, and Isaac Jones is not on our streets and able to commit those crimes.
Now, at the very first rape committed by Isaac Jones, he left DNA evidence. But because we don't have a DNA databank, because we're not state-of-the-art, we were not able to link him to the crime. Ultimately, after 51 rapes and sexual assaults, Isaac Jones got arrested, because we were able to trace jewelry, which he was trying to pawn, back to several of the women who he had raped. When they arrested him, the Police took his DNA. They were able to match it to 17 cases in which DNA had been recovered from the woman who was raped. And then they were able to link Isaac Jones to additional rapes and sexual assaults, 51 in all.
If we had been doing in previous years what we are now going to do-namely, maintaining a state of the art DNA lab, increasing our databank, and taking DNA from people who are convicted of serious crimes-we could have arrested Isaac Jones after the first rape he committed. Fifty women would not have been raped. Fifty women would not have been sexually assaulted. And who knows-I would have to go back and check-how many people were falsely accused or falsely focused on, in the course of investigating those 51 rapes?
The opposition to DNA on the theory that this invades privacy-which comes mostly from the ACLU-is no more compelling than the opposition to fingerprinting when it first started. DNA allows us to more accurately catch predatory criminals, and it gives us more hope that we can make the criminal justice system honest and decent.
So I am going to ask the Police Commissioner, Medical Examiner Hirsh, and Steve Fishner, the Criminal Justice Coordinator, to work on establishing a state-of-the-art DNA laboratory for New York City. I'm going to work with Governor Pataki to make certain that the State Legislature passes his legislation, so that the Police can take DNA from people convicted of crimes. We should have that information.
In fact, we should ultimately take DNA from anybody that we take a fingerprint from. Just in case you are nervous about it, you should know that they don't poke you with anything. All they have to do is take a little bit of saliva out of your mouth, or a little bit of hair. It doesn't hurt.
DNA also will help in establishing paternity, which we darn well should do a better job of, given the outrageous way in which deadbeat dads avoid taking responsibility for the children they bring into the world.
We owe a lot of our knowledge of DNA evidence to Police Commissioner Safir, who has for several years been leading the charge for New York City to get out further ahead in this area.
This is all good and will move us in a very positive direction. And rather than New York City being behind, we should be in the forefront.
[Applause]
Among other things we are going to do this year is increase our efforts to better protect the people who are most vulnerable.
First and foremost, that means reducing crime, the risk of crime, and the fear of crime, among our young people. We're going to expand the School Safety Division, which the Police Department now runs, up to 4,000 agents. We're going to add 600-plus school safety agents to our schools, because now that the Police Department has had a year to analyze the School Safety Division, they believe that these additional School Safety Agents will make a huge difference in school safety.
The second thing that we're going to do, I really love. It shocked me when Commissioner Safir told me this-we have only 260 or so school safety patrols in New York City. We have 1,500 schools-1,200 or so public schools, plus private and parochial schools. But we have only 260 school safety patrols.
One of my proudest days when I was a kid . . . I was a kid once. Did you know that?
[Laughter]
No, I was-I was really a kid. Nobody knows that.
When I was a kid I was on my school's safety patrol. [Holding up badge] This is a school safety patrol badge. It says: "Captain: Safety Patrol." If you're on the Safety Patrol, you get to wear this. You put it on, and you direct traffic and you feel like you're a real big shot as a kid, right? This badge may have been the reason that I like cops so much. And it may be the reason I have a different view of the police you might get in another set of circumstances.
As I said, the City has only 260 of these school safety patrols-and only 180 in the public schools. We don't make a serious effort to organize them any more.
But the Police Department is going to start. They believe that if we can organize Safety Patrols, supervised by School Safety Agents, we can get a lot more kids into helping other kids . . . protecting other kids . . . making sure that their schools and the environments around them are safer. So we're going to expand the school safety patrol dramatically and use those 600 new School Safety Agents to help accomplish that.
We're also going to expand something called the TRACK Program. So far, we've done it in only five locations. Back in 1994, one of the very controversial things that I did early on as Mayor was direct the police to pick up truant students. And they've picked up a lot of kids.
But one of the things we haven't done so well is link truant students up with their parents. The TRACK program is going to do that. We'll set it up in 27 different locations. We'll have Police Officers, and also about 300 school safety agents, teachers, social workers, and other people at these locations. When we pick up a kid who's supposed to be in school but who isn't, we'll take him or her to one of these locations. We'll contact the parents, or legal guardian, and say, "You're kid isn't in school. Come and get your kid."
Because we want to make sure the parents know what's going on. Maybe it's just something minor-the kid took a day off, big deal, the parent can deal with that. But maybe it's something that's really serious that's starting to happen. Either way, the parents need to know about it. I think our truancy efforts will be a lot more effective if we make sure that parents are involved.
Through the Youth at Risk program, we will establish eight more gang-free school zones around the schools. We're going to try very hard to see if we can't help kids to better understand what it is that the police do, to appreciate them more, which is something I think the school safety patrols will also help accomplish.
We have to do more to protect our elderly. We're going to establish the Safe Corridors Program, which concentrates enforcement at times and places senior citizens frequent, so they can walk where they choose to and feel safe and comfortable.
Now, one of the things I feel the Police Department in New York City has done that puts them way ahead of any other department is their emphasis on domestic violence. We started in 1994, and each year we've expanded our efforts. We've trained our Police Officers in responding to domestic violence calls, we put domestic violence experts in our City hospitals, we've established the hotline, and we've put public awareness advertising on our subways and all throughout the City. We've been at the forefront of bringing this problem out from behind closed doors.
But there is still one very specific thing that we can do that will make all our efforts a lot more effective. We now have a domestic violence program in every precinct in the City. However, in 17 precincts-the ones with the most domestic violence-we have an enhanced program, which focuses many more Police Officers on the problem. In those 17 precincts, domestic violence has declined by 27%. So it's clear that the enhanced program has had a dramatic impact.
Now we're going to double the number of precincts in which the enhanced program operates, so we can keep dramatically reducing the amount of domestic violence in the City. Every time we reduce and eliminate domestic violence, we save the City a problem 10 and 15 years from now, because this is a crime that tragically repeats itself. And the more we can prevent it, the more we can deal with it, the more we can learn about it, the safer the City is going to be in the future.
[Applause]
Another area that I know you've read about in the last couple of days is the whole area of aggressive driving. We've had some strange things happen last year, and if we focus on the strange things that happened, we can learn something.
Since February of last year, when we started seizing the automobiles of drunk drivers, there has been a 33% or so reduction in the number of people killed by drunk drivers, and a 14% reduction in the number of drunk driving accidents. Now this is why it's unusual. That same year there was a roughly 10% increase in the overall number of vehicle accidents in the City, and a 10% increase in the overall number of fatalities.
So that decrease in drunk driving fatalities did not come about because people are driving safer overall. It came about because of policy-a policy that caused people to change their behavior, and in the process saved lives.
So how should we deal with the fact that there's been a 10% increase in fatalities overall, and a 75% increase in bike-rider fatalities? Obviously, we have too many people driving aggressively in the City of New York. We need an aggressive driving program that's focused on those aggressive drivers, and also on cyclists and pedestrians. We need to stop them from driving aggressively, get them to pay attention to what they are doing, and make sure they're obeying all the traffic laws-which exist for their safety and the safety of us all.
So we're going to dedicate specific patrol cars to this effort. 25 of them will be outfitted with two cameras, back and front, so they can document instances of blatant aggressive and hazardous driving. We're going to focus on the areas in the City that have seen the most accidents.
And we're going to do what worked so well with drunk driving. If you get arrested for reckless, hazardous driving to the point where we charge you with a misdemeanor, we're going to take your vehicle from you. Misdemeanor violations give us the authority under the law, which has been upheld by the courts, to take an automobile.
That's a serious penalty for a serious crime. It'll remind people that driving is a privilege, and that when you exercise that privilege, you have the responsibility to do it safely.
Maybe I or someone else will stand here next year and be able to say that we've reduced the number of vehicle fatalities in general-not just for drunk driving. I hope so.
I think that the Police Department has gotten a tremendous amount of credit for the way in which it's reduced crime in the City of New York. But the Fire Department hasn't gotten as much credit as it deserves for the way it's reduced fire fatalities in the City.
Last year and this year have seen the two lowest fire fatality figures in the history of the City even though we've had a substantial number of fires. A lot of that has to do with the supreme professionalism of our Fire Department. Our firefighters are brave-the bravest-but they're also the most professional.
One of the things that I did that I will always be the proudest of when I retire to Staten Island-I'm going to explain that to you later-is provide bunker gear to the Fire Department. When I came into office, the City of New York had not given enough fire fighters bunker gear, because politicians thought it was too expensive. That was immoral and a tragedy, and we lost lives because of it. Now they've got bunker gear, and fire injuries to fire fighters have been reduced by 40% to 50%, and serious injuries by 60% to 70%. Firefighting is still an enormously dangerous job-it always will be-and that's why we owe them the best equipment possible . . . because they do something that most of us in this room could never do.
They put their lives at risk to save you, to save your children, to save your relatives, to save the people that you love. We see a fire and we run away. They see a fire and they run in and pull your child out. And they don't ask the questions that politicians fight about all the time. They don't ask questions like, rich, poor, Republican or Democrat, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, gay, lesbian, heterosexual-they don't ask questions like that. They don't know who's behind the fire. They go in and they take the risk of depriving their children of a father, in order to save your children.
I love them. You should love them, and I know you do. And they are entitled to all our support, and the best equipment we can give them.
[Applause]
[Holding infra-red camera] This is a camera, and I'm going to tell you how I found out about this camera. During a fire safety breakfast we had about a week-and-a-half ago, I learned that in New Jersey they're giving out infra-red cameras to all of their fire companies. So the Fire Commissioner and I looked into it, and we found that we have only 15 of these cameras in New York City, and only 7 of them that are modern. These cameras are enormously valuable. They're heat-seeking. [Pointing the camera at Speaker Vallone] Look at Peter Vallone. See how hot he is? That's because he's Italian.
[Laughter]
But seriously, what this does is it shows firefighters where the source of a fire is. You scan the wall. Let's say there are three areas where you can enter, [pointing] one over there, one over here, one over there. With the smoke and everything else you might not know where the flame is. This will show you where the flame is. Then you can say, "Well the flame is coming from there, so we'd better enter from the back . . . we can't enter directly, we have to put more water on it." It allows you to make evaluations about how to fight the fire that makes fighting it more safe for firefighters. It also helps firefighters find bodies, so they can save people trapped inside buildings.
What we're gonna do is put out a bid. [Looking at camera] I guess this company has a leg up on the bid because this thing really works very, very well. Oh man, I'm gonna go to jail for that. I can see The New York Times is dying for a scandal.
[Laughter/Applause]
We're going to buy about 150 to 200 of these, so that all our ladder companies have one. There's no reason why our firefighters shouldn't have state-of-the-art equipment, because they're the very best.
We've made tremendous strides in the Police Department, and the Fire Department. I'll talk about the terrific progress we've made with the Administration for Children's Services, the Human Resources Administration, and also economic development and taxes in a few minutes.
But one area where we haven't made the kind of change that we should be making is in education. This is really a shame. One of the things that makes me proudest as a New Yorker and as the Mayor is that people come to New York from all over to see how we do things. The things that we're doing really well, like reducing crime, people come here to learn our methods, so they can take them back to their City, their town, their country, or their village, and do the same things there. That was missing in New York in the early 1990s. It's one of the reasons I ran for Mayor of New York City: so that we'd be the City of innovation again-we'd be the City that others would copy, rather than being the City that other cities felt sorry for.
Nobody comes to New York to figure out how to improve their educational system. They come here to find out how to improve their policing, their fire fighting, how to reduce the welfare rolls, how to increase economic development . . . they come here for lots of reasons. But not to learn how to improve their schools.
People go to Milwaukee to see how to fix schools. They go to Chicago for that. They go to Cleveland. And they go to Florida. Because in those places, people are doing innovative and creative things that take real courage.
New York City is not, and our inaction is doing a horrible disservice to our children.
We're not doing these things because we have a decrepit, politicized educational system. And the politics of this system are even more complex than ordinary politics.
Here's what we have to do if we want to really improve education for our kids.
First of all, we have to understand that the power of an idea can be the single most important agent of change. I think I've demonstrated that with crime, and we'll talk about it in other areas.
With regard to education, here's the core idea that everything else must flow from: the purpose of our school system is to educate children more effectively each year. Let me say that again: the purpose of our school system is to educate our children more effectively each year.
That sounds obvious. But right now, in this City, it's not the core idea behind our educational system. Right now, the core idea is protecting jobs.
Our school system today-with a few slight exceptions that we fought for-protects jobs before it educates children. It's essentially a job protection system, not a school system. Kids are an afterthought. Before we can make any lasting changes, we have to have the courage to stand up, look each other in the eye, and admit that.
Here's an example that illustrates that. In our 1,200 or so schools, the teachers who do a great job are paid the same as the teachers who do a bad job. When we give a raise of 2%, 3%, 4%, or whatever it is, everybody gets the same raise-even though not everybody is doing the same job for our kids.
A teacher who is doing heroic work year after year-with reading scores improving, math scores improving, kids graduating and kids being motivated-gets paid the same as a teacher who hasn't seen scores improve for his or her students in 10 years. And if that teacher commits a crime, it takes years to remove him or her. Commits a crime! That's job protection at its worst, and we have to have the courage to reverse it.
That means we have to do what we did with regard to principals-which took four years to do-for teachers. We now finally have a system in which principal tenure no longer exists, and we can give merit pay to principals. We can give different levels of raises depending on how good they are as principals. We have to be able to do that throughout the entire system.
Just to be more specific-the next contract with teachers should not have a single pay raise. In fact, there should be no such thing as a single pay-raise any more. There should be different levels: high, medium, below medium, none, and remove. The "remove" is for a teacher that doesn't belong there. In other words, we should end tenure.
The really good teachers should be getting raises, the average teachers should get average raises, and below-average teachers should get only modest raises. The teachers that are ineffective shouldn't get any raise at all. And the ones that really stink should be removed.
That's the way this system would work if it were designed to put children first, and not protect jobs.
[Applause]
We also have to follow up on the very strong agreement that exists in this City and State-among Governor Pataki, Speaker Vallone, myself, and many others, including mayors in just about every part of the State of New York-to end the Boards of Education. The reason people go to Chicago and not New York to see innovations in education is that the legislature in Illinois, three years ago, did away with the Board of Education in Chicago.
Our Board of Education and the 32 local Boards of Education have not added one point to anyone's reading score, ever. They are vestiges of a prior era that today serve only to burden our school system and create all kinds of irrelevancies and politics and backroom deals-things that have nothing to do with educating children.
We don't need a Board of Education. We don't need Boards of Education. We need schools. We need teachers. We need principals. We need standards of accountability. We need to get parents more involved. We need more books. We need more computers. These are the things we need. We don't need Boards. They distract, and they do even worse than that.
[Applause]
We should fight to get rid of the Boards of Education. Some of these battles that I've fought-like school safety under the Police-took three or four years. School governance reform took two years, but we achieved it, so that now the Chancellor can hold superintendents accountable. Principal tenure took four years to change, but we changed it this December. So some of these things don't happen in a day, or even in a year, and I expect it will take a long time to replace the Boards of Education.
But here's one way in which we could make quick progress on this issue: sell 110 Livingston Street.
[Laughter/Applause]
We're going to sell it.
This is part of my development. Last year I advocated blowing it up. Alright, well, I'm softening up. I'm becoming an easier guy. We're not going to blow it up-we're going to sell it. We'll sell the building. We have a couple of sites already where we can move the Board.
We're going to give them a more modern building-one of these "smart" buildings, so that they can plug their computers in better, and take advantage of all the latest technology. But here's the catch: the new building is only going to be 25% of the size of the present building.
[Applause]
They're going to have to get rid of 75% of the personnel that sit around there doing nothing to help a kid to read, add, subtract, or learn. This new building will require them, if they want to expand in the future, to put tents out in front of it. If we see tents, we'll know that they're increasing the size of the bureaucracy.
But, seriously, we're going to sell the building. I think that that'll help to illustrate the need to end the Board of Education. This system doesn't work. It hasn't worked in a very long time. It's about time that we move on to a more accountable system.
[Applause]
We did fight very hard, and together we ended social promotion for the fourth and seventh grades. Now we should end social promotion completely and we should push the Board of Education to accomplish that.
We also should push the Board of Education to privatize summer school. They're going to have a major job this year administering summer school. We should privatize a lot of the summer school programs, since the Board clearly can't do the job. They tried last year, and they failed, and the ones who suffered were the children. We had kids that went to summer school last year, who had higher reading scores at the beginning of summer school than at the end of summer school.
[Laughter]
I know, it sounds funny. But it isn't a joke. It's a tragedy. It's a tragedy! If a child starts summer school and ends summer school with a lower reading score, and we as adults can't do anything about it, it's a tragedy. It isn't a joke, it isn't politics. You only get one chance to educate a child, and if you screw it up, then it's very hard to correct it later. We shouldn't be proud of ourselves for that . . . we should be ashamed of ourselves, that we don't have the political courage to take on the unions, the special interests, and everything else that are holding our children back! We should be ashamed of ourselves!
[Standing Ovation]
So, privatize summer school. There are organizations that do a very good job of educating children. We should welcome the competition instead of fearing it.
We achieved a great advance, due to the courage and the fight that Governor Pataki waged in Albany, in getting charter schools, which are a great way to create competition. But since the charter school legislation has been in effect, our Board of Education has created only two charter schools, and the Board of Regents has created only one. That is very poor performance. That's an "F." And it indicates that the political fight against charter schools, which was defeated in Albany, is actually resurfacing in the Board of Education, which is trying to block charter schools because they create too much competition. We want the competition for the good of our kids, and we've got to push for more and more charter schools.
[Applause]
I am also going to continue to point out, and continue to fight for a voucher program in New York City. Because I believe that the experiment in Milwaukee is something that should be tried in New York.
Let me try to explain to you my thinking about this: I think our school system is in such bad shape that we do not have the room to exclude any experiment that might help our children, and that is proven to work somewhere else. Our children are entitled to all the good ideas, all the innovative ideas, and every new thing that is helping education elsewhere.
In Milwaukee, the poorest 15% of the parents have the same choice that the richest 15% have. They can select the school they want for their child. From every report that I get, the children who have the opportunity for that education are doing terrifically.
I believe that we should try that in a district in New York City. We should try it for three or four years and see if it improves the education of children. If it does improve the education of children, then who cares about all the theories of the voucher opponents? If it doesn't improve the education of children, then we'll move on to something else.
That's what an innovative, creative society does. It embraces new ideas. It doesn't let all kinds of irrational fears keep us from taking up experiments that have worked elsewhere.
Parents want this. They want this experiment. If you want evidence of that, consider this: Ted Forstmann sponsors a scholarship program that last year offered 2,000 scholarships to public school parents in New York City, so that they could send their child to a private or parochial school. Only 2000 scholarships. Do you know how many applications there were? 165,000! 165,000 New York City residents, New York City citizens, New York City parents, tried to get those 2000 scholarships.
The people of this City are saying something to the leadership of this City. But the leadership of the City isn't listening to them. It's too busy listening to the unions. It should be listening to the people of the City of New York.
There's a way, however, I think we can crack through some of the resistance. We should have public school choice all throughout the City of New York. The people who believe that religious schools shouldn't be involved, and that private schools shouldn't be involved, can't have any objection to public school choice-unless they're just against competition of any kind. So we should allow parents to choose which public school they want their child to attend. Then maybe those 100 or 110 failing schools-the list of which grew again last week-will be voted out of existence by parents.
And that's another thing that we can do: privatize some of those failing schools. The Board of Education has been trying to turn them around for five years, and in some cases ten years. It should admit that it's failed, and it should bring in others who will educate the children.
Now I can move on to an area where we have made tremendous progress, and that can serve as a model for how to reform education, or any other area.
The Daily News recently ran an editorial that I agreed with. It contrasted the changes made in the Administration for Children's Services with the changes that need to be made at the Board of Education. And I thought it made a lot of points that can help us figure out where we need to go on education. It's important to note, by the way, that we have no board for ACS. We have a Commissioner, Nick Scopetta who built this agency, and who does a superb job and is not afraid to try new things.
Why is the City doing a much better job of protecting children than is was five or six years ago? It's simple: the creation of the Administration for Children's Services and a whole new philosophy of what the new agency should do.
Previously, HRA handled child protection, and its guiding philosophy placed family reunification over child protection. In stark contrast, ACS's philosophy puts the protection of children above all else. Because, sadly, not all families should be reunited; not all families work, and some families put children at tremendous risk. Reuniting families should always be secondary to protecting children.
These days, people from all over the country visit ACS to find out how they should run their agency. This is the exact opposite of the Board of Education. In the case of ACS, we took on the union-because the children are more important than the union-we went to court, and won the right to give merit pay and merit pay increases so that we can treat the employees depending on how well they do their job. The Commissioner had the guts to carry out that fight.
[Applause]
He has totally revamped the delivery of services, now we have a neighborhood-based method of contracting, that keeps children in their neighborhoods whenever possible, so that they're not removed from their friends, their schools, and a familiar environment.
Commissioner Scopetta has also been compulsive and obsessional about getting children adopted. We realize that for a child who's been abused or neglected, and has to be taken away from the parent permanently, foster care is not the right answer permanently for that child. The right answer is a permanent home in which the child can have someone that loves and cares for him or her. Last year, ACS finalized more adoptions than the entire state of California. In some years, we've done more than two or three times the number of adoptions than this City has ever done in a single year. We've done about 12,000 adoptions since the time that we started, and now we've got about 12,000 fewer children in foster care.
Of course, we can't protect all children. We realize that. But ACS is an agency that's moving in the right direction. It's moving in the right direction because its philosophy and leadership have totally changed. That's the model that we should have for the Board of Education and for other agencies that protect children. For all Commissioner Scopetta has accomplished, I want to congratulate him.
[Applause]
[Holding ACS chart] I love charts. I love charts because they take the sometimes amorphous job that a government does, and they focus things so that you can evaluate people and agencies, and so that you can establish real accountability.
This chart shows one of the ways Nick has turned things around. [Pointing] This is the number of fatalities of children in New York City, and these are the number of children monitored by the Administration for Children's Services. You can see that fatalities are down to record lows. Last year saw the lowest number of fatalities that we've had since we began monitoring fatalities in 1983. That's a dramatic reduction. It's still too many, of course-we shouldn't have any. But we're moving in the right direction. ACS is doing the job that we asked it to do when we first established it-protecting the children most at risk.
Another area where New York City has made a total change is with regard to welfare. And that's reflected both in the way people look at us and the way we look at ourselves.
We used to be the welfare capital of America, and now we're the welfare reform capital of America. We've moved more people to work from welfare than any city in America-more than many of the states that have gotten great credit for their welfare reforms. We've done five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten times what they've done. A recent Rockefeller Institute study documents these accomplishments.
And all this, too, is because of the power of an idea-in this case, the idea of the social contract. We've worked at every level to restore the social contract in New York City, which says that for every right a person has, there is a corresponding obligation; and for every benefit received, there is a corresponding duty.
For years, the social contract had been allowed to dissolve in New York City, or was even encouraged to dissolve. Instead, we glorified dependency. We adopted a philosophy that essentially said, "Let's make as many people dependent as we can, and let's do it as fast as we can." Maybe some of this emerged from a misguided desire to help people. It may speak to a certain kind of guilt that makes people fell better when they have a million people dependent on them-or 50 people dependent on them.
Whatever was the case then, now we're moving in the direction of reestablishing the work ethic in New York City. Work is a good thing. It's a wonderful thing. It's the reason that people have come to America in large, large numbers-to work, to create a better opportunity for themselves and their children. It's what immigration is all about. And work is what allows you to take care of yourself and your family, and to achieve your dreams.
So we've changed 16 of our 32 welfare offices into Job Centers. If it weren't for a federal court, whose ruling we will hopefully satisfy in the next month or two, we would have all 32 changed right now. But 16 of them have on the door "Job Center."
When you walk through the door and you ask for welfare, out of concern for you the first thing we ask you is, "What work have you done in the past? What kind of jobs have you had? What kind of work can you do?" As you start filling in answers to that, we find work for you. As you say, "I was a clerk. I worked in a store. I've worked with computers," we say, "Well, we've got three or four jobs like that for you down the street. We have three or four jobs for you maybe in Manhattan." We have a group of jobs to keep you in the workforce.
If you haven't worked before, then we get you into a program where we can create a work history for you. And if we can't match you up with a job, then we put you in the Work Experience Program, which requires you get up in the morning and go to work. In other words, what we're doing is fighting to keep you in the workforce rather than assisting you in dropping out-which is what we were doing in the past.
It's an enormously effective thing to do. It's a really beautiful thing to do for someone, because it shows respect for them. It respects their dignity. It tells them that they're not going to get something for nothing; that they're going to work for what they get. And it tells them that they're capable of taking care of themselves and their families, and functioning within society. You've got to reinforce that at every level of society if you want a society ultimately that makes progress.
[Applause]
Don't turn this back. Don't let the City go back to glorifying dependency and undermining the work ethic. The people who would be hurt by that the most are the poorest people.
The genius of America, the thing that makes this country the greatest country in the history of the world-with all of its flaws and all of its problems-is the idea that you can be anything you want to be if you work hard enough to get there. That ideal can't be realized in everyone's life. But America is growing when that ideal is realized for ever-increasing numbers of people . . . as opposed to the idea of dependence on government, which comes out of a different philosophy. America sinks when we increase dependency on government. America soars when we have the genius of America working for the poorest people in America
One of the tragedies of New York, and of American urban areas, is that we actually blocked the genius of America from working for the poorest people in America. We blocked that special, wonderful, beautiful thing that happens in America-that has brought millions of people here, that has people dying in order to get here-we blocked it from happening in what used to be known as our inner cities. We blocked it by promoting dependency and reliance on government.
Now we're moving in the other direction. We're saying, "Yes, you can take care of yourself. Yes, you can work. No, you don't have to be dependent on the government. No, it isn't particularly good to be dependent on the government."
Hopefully, by the time I leave office, all the welfare offices will be Job Centers, and they'll all be finding work for people. When people go into welfare offices, they won't even recognize them anymore as welfare offices. They'll look like employment offices. That's what they should be. Because that's how you empower people.
We're trying to do the same thing with homelessness. I think there's probably nothing that frustrates me more than some of the coverage of how we're dealing with homeless people. If you listen only to that coverage, you'd think that we are indiscriminately arresting the homeless and being cruel to them. The reality is that in this City, we should all be very proud of the fact that we do more for homeless people than any city in America-and much, much more than the City used to do. And we're doing things to really help the homeless, whereas what the City used to do was a mixture of pandering and ignoring the problem, which only made it worse.
Let me see if I can describe my philosophy to you directly, as opposed to through the filter of The New York Times or some other news organization.
If a man or a woman is lying on the street and wants to sleep there tonight, that man or woman has a serious problem. Now, the left-wing advocates would make you think that everyone on the street just needs a place to live, and is something like St. Francis of Assisi. The right-wing advocates would make you think that everyone lying on the street is some kind of a predatory criminal that wants to harm everyone and hurt everyone. There may be a few people laying on the street in either category. But the truth is that most people lying on the street fall somewhere in between what the advocates for the poverty industry and the right-wingers would have you believe.
Most of the people lying on the street have a problem. Their problems vary. They run a spectrum. In most cases, they're much more complex than simply lack of a home. Some of the people lying on the street do only need a place to live, and we help find them a place to live. But some of the people lying on the street are drug addicts in need of drug rehabilitation. Some of the people living on the street are alcoholics and need to be in alcohol rehabilitation programs. Many of the people lying on the streets are mentally ill: 40 percent, 50 percent, 60 percent-I don't know what the percentages are. Doctors have given me all different estimates ranging from 40 to 75% of the homeless population as suffering from schizophrenia. They need to be treated.
Finally, some of the people lying on the streets are predatory criminals who kill other people lying on the streets, rape them, rob them, or try to kill you. We cannot refrain from arresting the homeless people who commit crimes, just to pander to the advocates. We don't do that for people who have homes-for you or I-and we shouldn't give a free pass to the homeless.
Whatever the case, letting people lie there so that they're problems get worse is not the answer. It's not compassionate, and it's not humane. We need to reach out to these people and help them address their problem. That's what a compassionate society does. It doesn't let people lie deteriorating on the streets and say, like we did in the 1980s and much of the 1990s, "People have a right to sleep on the streets."
Where does the right to sleep on the streets come from? It doesn't come from anywhere. It isn't in the Constitution of the United States. It certainly isn't a right you would invoke if one of your relatives were sleeping on the streets. You wouldn't want your relative to sleep on the streets. If one of your relatives were sleeping on the streets you'd do something about it. But if it's some person you don't know, it's easier to just pass by and think to yourself, "Well, they have a right to sleep on the streets."
Now I know some people think this comes only from my deranged thinking.
[Laughter]
However, I've found there are other people who agree. [Holding up a book] This is a book called A Nation in Denial. The denial they're referring to is denying that homeless people have problems more serious than just lack of a home. People living on the streets have serious problems which need to be dealt with in very different ways. These problems include substance abuse, mental illness and serious violent criminality. All of those issues must be addressed.
Here is a quote from the American Psychiatric Institute: "Can you imagine an ambulance driver or policeman responding to a heart attack emergency and looking down at the victim, shaking his head and saying, 'Well, there's nothing we can do. It's no crime to have a heart attack, you know. This person has smoked too much, is overweight, has not exercised, and there is nothing I can do. If he wants treatment, he will have to voluntarily agree to go to the hospital. Because he's unconscious, we cannot provide any assistance.' And then leave."
That's essentially what the advocates are saying we should do about the homeless.
But we think differently. When the Police-because they are the people the City has out on the streets every day-see someone lying on the street, they should engage that person and try to help them. Despite the propaganda you've been hearing, that is precisely what they're doing. Your Police Department is doing for homeless people what this City should have been doing for homeless people in the 1980s and in the early 1990s, and for a long time before.
Since we started Operation Homeless, we've contacted 6,270 homeless people. We have transported 1,173 of them to shelters. We've transported 197 of them to hospitals. And we've arrested only 212, which is only 3%. Only 3% of the people that we've contacted on the street have needed to be arrested. Most of the people contacted have been moved to places where they get serious, critical assistance.
That brings me to another fallacy that I have to deal with. When I was talking to my friend Elliot Cuker the other day, I kept using the word, "shelter, shelter, shelter, shelter." He said, "Well, tell me what goes on in the shelters." And I did.
We realized that we're hurting ourselves in describing shelters this way. We say the word "shelter," but we don't have shelters anymore. Shelters used to exist in the 1980s. Back in 1987, New York City had only 26 shelters. These facilities had no services for people and had miles of cots on the floor. They had you lay on the cot, and they had a few guards that watched you, and those places were more dangerous than prisons.
Now, every place that we take people-and we have over 103 of these centers-every place that we take the homeless has services to help them. 90% of them are run by the private sector, not by the City of New York. They're run by charitable groups and religious groups-groups committed to taking care of people, and that know how to do it. We take the homeless to these places, where there's help for alcoholism, drug addiction and mental illness. Furthermore, we try to help people get jobs. This is a far cry from the huge armory shelters of the 80s.
So, just as we did with Job Centers, we're going to change the name of homeless facilities. We're not going to call them "shelters" anymore, because that feeds into a false notion about what goes on in them. We're going to call them "New START Centers." [Holding up sign] And "New START" stands for is Self-sufficiency, Treatment, Addiction-control, Rehabilitation, and Training.
[Applause]
This is where we're taking homeless people. We're not taking them to the Armory in Washington Heights like the City did in the '80s. Back then people went to huge facilities where they ran the risk of being raped or beaten. They slept on the floor along with 1,000 others. The City should have been ashamed of itself for having places like that.
Now, homeless people are taken to a place where we honestly, and in good faith, attempt to engage them, and help them solve their problems. It's a terrible thing to create the misimpression that this City isn't dealing with the problem of homelessness in a compassionate, generous way. And it's terrible to oversimplify our efforts to effectively deal with this complex problem.
Before talking about the economic development projects that we're going to do in the City, there are a few issues I'd like to discuss.
First of all, I want to talk about healthcare. We want to expand coverage for as many people as possible. An important thing that we can do over the next year few years is to get more health insurance for the people of New York City. But we want to do it through the private sector, wherever possible. We want healthcare to be as private as it can possibly be, and as competitive as it can possibly be, because private institutions do a better job than government does of dealing with healthcare needs. So the more private we can make it, the better.
We have right now 1.8 million people who do not have health insurance in New York City. 1.4 of those 1.8 million people work. Think about that. People who are on welfare, or coming off welfare, and people who are in that one-year transition period, all have health insurance. Mostly, the people who don't have health insurance in this City are people who are working-1.4 million of them. About 400,000 of those actually are eligible for Medicaid.
Here's what we're going to do. We're going to establish an office within the Mayor's Office to increase access to health insurance. We're going to try to sign up as many of the people on Medicaid who are working as are eligible for it. If we accomplish this, 200,000 to 300,000 more people should be covered.
The second thing we're going to do is expand the HealthPass program. The HealthPass program takes small businesses, lumps them together, and allows them to buy health insurance as if they were a big business, with a 20 or 30% discount and with tax credits. Businesses will have at least 20 to 25 different insurance carriers to choose from, which will create a tremendous amount of competition.
Now, I want to say something about homeownership. Creating more home ownership in the City of New York would do great things for us. I learned this way back when I was United States Attorney and I first heard about the Nehemiah program, which did tremendous work during a period of time when the City was enduring a huge crime wave. They understand that the more people who own their homes, and who have a real stake in the community, the better off a city is-not just in terms of crime, but in terms of many things.
Right now in New York City, only about 30% of the population own their homes. In most communities in America, about 66% of people own their own home, and in most cities it's about 50%. But in New York City, it's only 30%. So we want to increase home ownership.
We actually had a good year last year. There was a 26% increase in home ownership last year in New York City, and only a 3% increase nationally. Hopefully we can build on that and a lot more people will have stakes in their community.
I just mentioned the Nehemiah program. Let me tell you what the Nehemiah program does-and this doesn't always happen with social services, or any services. They honestly deliver for the people that they're representing. That is a great thing when you're trying to empower poor people. I don't always agree with them, but I respect them very much.
[Applause]
Dealing with them is good for my character development.
[Laughter]
So the first thing I'd like to do is recommit ourselves to the Nehemiah program and make sure that this year, we get the units at Spring Creek constructed and accelerate the allocation of $58 million already budgeted to build these units.
We'll also set up a greatly expanded home ownership program in HPD under Commissioner Roberts. We will set up Home Ownership Zones in at least three new parts of the City-Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Morrissania, and East Harlem.
And we'll work with the City Planning Commission in order to rezone the City to make a lot more property available for home building, particularly in areas of the City that used to be industrial areas but that are now underutilized.
Now, economic development.
One of the most rewarding things for me as Mayor has been to see a city that wasn't growing, and had unemployment of 30 to 40 percent in the construction industry, turn into a city that is growing up all over again. Our job growth rate is ahead of the rest of America. Last year, New York City enjoyed a 5 percent gain while the rest of America's was only 3%. In the construction industry alone, we had an 8% employment increase while the rest of the country only had a 3% increase. And we're building some really beautiful things, and leaving them behind for future generations.
[Pointing to map] This is a little map of New York and New Jersey. What we're going to do next year, is compliment the development of the Hudson River Park along Manhattan, with the development of an East River Park. This way the East River will get the same attention that Hudson River is getting. After all, they meet each other, eventually, here and there [pointing].
[Applause]
We're going to implement a waterfront development for Brooklyn and Queens on the other side of the East River, so that we can develop both sides of the River.
And to make sure we follow up on our initiative of two years ago, we're going to push ahead with the freight rail tunnel. Our major impact study comes back in May, and it will describe how we can build a freight rail tunnel from New Jersey to New York. As I think many of you know, New York City has to truck in almost all of its freight. Only 3% of our freight comes in by rail. In most cities, it's 30, 40, or 50%. But for us it's only 3%.
This hurts us in many ways. It hurts us environmentally; it hurts our roads; it hurts our highways; and it does tremendous damage as well to Nassau and Suffolk counties, and to the entire region. So we should build this tunnel. And when the freight rail impact study comes back in May, we're going to work together to find the funding for it.
We have, I think, a very good idea on how to accomplish this. DEP is building a water tunnel between Staten Island and Brooklyn. We're going to have to build a tunnel next to the water tunnel in order to build the water tunnel. Maybe, we can marry the two things together, and save a lot of money.
Altogether, this is a $2 billion project. This is something we have to work on, and something we have to try to accomplish because it really is worthwhile.
One of the very successful things we did in 1994 and 1995, was create the Downtown Revitalization Plan. Downtown Manhattan has turned around. Where we once had heavy vacancies, we now have heavy occupancy. We also have lots of "smart" buildings . . . Silicon Alley . . . modern media . . . there are lots of new things happening in Downtown Manhattan.
So we're going to take that program, and now we're going to utilize it in Brooklyn, and in Queens, and in Fordham Road in the Bronx . . .
[Applause]
As businesses experience the need to expand-and it's getting to be expensive to expand in Manhattan-they'll be expanding in Brooklyn, Queens, and in the Bronx, as opposed to going to [whispers] New Jersey.
I'm going to tell you another good thing we did-and I see Randy Mastro here. With the reduction in crime, one of the most effective things that we did was to reduce the influence of the Mafia. We have taken about $750 to $800 million out of the hands of the mob influenced carting industry and returned it directly to people who run businesses in the City . . . from pharmacies and restaurants to big office buildings. $750 million to $800 million is bigger than most tax reductions. We like to call it the "mob tax." By reducing the cost of carting, we've handed this money back to businesses, and they can now employ more people. We think it has something to do with the increase in employment in the City. It certainly has something to do with the improvement in the way people feel about the City. We did the same thing with the Fulton Fish Market . . . removing the influence of the Mafia in the Fulton Fish Market.
In fact, we've done such a good job with the Mafia-Randy and I, and the people that have worked together on this [applause]-we've done such a good job in getting rid of the Mafia, they go to psychiatrists now.
[Laughter/Applause]
We got 'em going to psychiatrists, saying things like, "Is that right, is that wrong?" "Did my mother cause me to do this?" "Was it my father?" "How did it happen?" We have them actually reflecting on what's right and what's wrong.
And not only that, we've reduced the influence of the Mafia so much, now when they do mob shows, they don't even set them in New York any more. They put them in New Jersey. They do The Sopranos in New Jersey. See? We can accomplish something.
Another project that is very exciting, and one that will help a lot is the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx. How many people know the Kingsbridge Armory?
[Applause]
The Kingsbridge Armory is a great site. We are going to redevelop it into commercial space, and a sportsplex, and a lot of other things. There will be basketball courts, movie theaters, a community center, and a community performing arts center. It's about a $110 million project. About $80 to $90 million of that is private investment, which is absolutely terrific. It'll produce a lot of jobs. More pictures of it are outside, but this is a rendering of it [holds rendering]: multi-plex movie theater, professional office space, areas for retail tenants . . . It's a great space, and it should do a tremendous amount to anchor-along with the Downtown Revitalization program-the whole Fordham Road area of the Bronx.
[Applause]
[Pointing to picture of St. George Development Project] This is where I'm going to retire. Staten Island. One of the things that keeps getting confused in the description of this, is the claim that we're spending $80 million to build a baseball stadium in Staten Island. Not true. The fact is we're spending $80 million to rebuild the entire St. George area of Staten Island, not just the baseball stadium, as some people would have you believe.
The project includes building a beautiful new terminal for the Staten Island Ferry, and, I believe, two new museums-a lighthouse museum and another new museum. . . . a park . . . an esplanade . . . and all of them are independent of the baseball field. This is a wonderful redevelopment for Staten Island.
Then I want you to consider the baseball field. Here's home plate. Okay? Here's the Statue of Liberty. If you pull the ball, you'll hit it to the Statue of Liberty. Can you imagine? If you hit the ball to the opposite field, you'll be heading for the World Trade Center. Can you imagine a young kid like 19-years-old at the plate here, wearing the Staten Island Yankees uniform, trying to pull the ball to the Statue of Liberty? Man! I wish I were 19 again.
[Applause]
But economic development is not just building new things. Part of the art of economic development is preserving what you have. Sometimes the City has not done a good job of preserving what it has. Throughout the last century, we have not consistently preserved our subways, our highways, and our bridges. In the last ten or fifteen years, we've paid the price for that in the form of huge capital budgets and expenditures for the cost of finance in our capital budgets. We pulled that money out of maintenance in 1975, until about 1988, to deal with the financial crisis. That's one of the big mistakes that we made. We should learn from that mistake and not repeat it.
We're the Capital of the World-no question about it. We're the Crossroads of the World. We're the most important city in the world. [Pointing to backdrop] This is an illustration of it. One of the reasons for that is, we're the Cultural Capital of the World. We're the place where the performing arts, the visual arts-all of the arts-have been developed to a stage that's defining our civilization.
Probably there's no place that symbolizes that more than Lincoln Center. Lincoln Center transformed the entire West Side of Manhattan, and it's the place that people come to from all over the world to see opera, listen to music, and watch great drama. One of my great moments last year was going to see the new production of Tristan und Isolde. It was almost as great as watching the Yankees win the World Series.
We have to make sure we preserve Lincoln Center and keep it a modern place. One of the ways to accomplish this is to expand it and give it the facilities necessary for growth. We helped this when we required, in the sale of the Coliseum, the building of a new performing arts center as part of the development of a whole new office tower. There will be jazz at Lincoln Center in the new building where the Coliseum now exists, and Lincoln Center will be extended by 3 or 4 blocks to West 59th or 60th Street.
Now what we have to do is join with Lincoln Center and reinvest in a capital redevelopment for the Metropolitan Opera, Avery Fisher Hall, the New York State Theater and the Julliard School. These are all world-class institutions that uplift the reputation of New York City. The City is going to be Lincoln Center's partner in maintaining that legacy . . .
[Applause]
I think this is one of the most wonderful things that we can do. In 20 or 30 years from now, Lincoln Center will be just as important, and just as much at the center of the arts world as it is today.
The second thing we can do is make the same thing happen on the lower part of the West Side that has happened on the upper part of the West Side as a result of Lincoln Center. Last year, we talked about trying to build a stadium next to the Javits convention center, and linking that stadium together with the Convention Center. We going to try to convince Madison Square Garden to move a few blocks, so they can have a new Madison Square Garden. And together with a new stadium, that will create a sports center on the West Side of Manhattan from about 40th Street down. That's an area of Manhattan that's underdeveloped and is not producing jobs and economic opportunity on a par with the rest of Manhattan. It offers a wonderful opportunity for us.
Outside there's a picture of the West Side of Manhattan before Lincoln Center and a picture of the West Side of Manhattan after Lincoln Center was built. As someone who opposed moving the Metropolitan Opera, as I did when I was a kid, I can say now that admittedly, I was wrong. It's the best thing that happened to the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
This is what could happen to the Lower West Side of Manhattan. [Showing picture] That's what it could look like, if we put a stadium here, sports facilities here . . . you'd have 8-10 more hotels, 40 or 50 more restaurants . . . all in all a beautiful new area. What's this all about? Producing jobs and work for the people of our City-and reinforcing New York as the Capital of the World.
There's something else we should do that will help accomplish this, and also help assure that 12 years from now we'll have a City that is in the same excellent, dominant position that it's in today. We should join with Dan Doctoroff and all of the people who have organized the committee to get the 2012 Olympics in New York City. And we should work with them and help fund it. It's a terrific plan. We have a real opportunity to get the Olympics for New York City in 2012. I've talked to Governor Pataki about this and he wants to help us in this endeavor.
The core of the proposal is to build a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan that could be used as an Olympic stadium. We could make a naming rights deal. We'd get a lot of money for that-maybe $200 million, maybe $250 million. I don't know, we could come up with a name like . . . "Johnson and Johnson Stadium"
[Applause]
I just picked one out. We could have the Jets play there.
These are the things we have to do. This is the way in which you turn a city of despair into a city of optimism. These are the things that change that despairing cover of Time Magazine into one of hope and optimism. This could keep the City moving in the right direction for a very long time. It would also mean a lot of economic development, because if we get the Olympics in NYC in 2012, they would not only use Manhattan, they would use Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, Nassau, possibly Suffolk, northern New Jersey and Westchester. The whole metropolitan area would be used as a venue for an Olympic Games.
This job, being Mayor of New York City, is the best job in the world. I'm never going to have a better job. I've loved it tremendously. All the progress indicated in the charts, and all the other things, all of the changes I've talked about-in crime, welfare, health care, and for child protection-they're all wonderfully important. But the best thing, the most rewarding thing, is the way the spirit of the city has changed.
I lived in the City of New York most of my life. I was born here. Not long ago, this was a city in which people had their heads down, and didn't believe in themselves anymore.
Now this is a city in which you can believe in yourself again. That's what we have to keep growing in the City. We have to keep growing the spirit of optimism. We should never give in-and please, God-we should never turn back to the way we were.
Thank you very much.
[Applause]
When I give the speech this way I always leave things out.
Peter Vallone said "you don't want to mention the tax cuts?" Yes, I do want to mention the tax cuts. We want to do tax cuts. So far, together, we've done $2.2 billion as a partnership. We believe that over the next four years we should do another $2 billion in tax cuts.
[Applause]
We should reduce the Hotel Occupancy Tax-that's where we all started. We turned around the old tax philosophy in New York City by cutting the Hotel Occupancy Tax. Now we should cut it again. And we should cut the unincorporated business tax . . . and end the double taxation on sub-chapter "S" corporations.
Then we should look at every tax, and over the next four years try to achieve another $2 billion in tax cuts. Maybe if we do another $2 billion in tax cuts, we'll set even better job growth records over the next four years than the records we set in the last four.
That's optimism, optimism, optimism. Always try new things, and don't be afraid of new ideas. The thing in this City that people say all the time-and you have to have the right reaction to this-is, "Oh, it can't be done." There's a cynicism and despair that seems to grow up right out of the streets.
The art of leadership in this City is saying, "Yes, it can be done in the greatest City in the world."
Thank you.