Results tagged “stateofthecity”

Yesterday, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn gave her State of the City address, trying to set an optimistic tone, "We may be in the worst fiscal crisis in decades, but New Yorkers know better than anyone that no crisis has ever stopped our city from moving forward."

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn will be giving her State of the City address at noon today. NY1, which will be carrying the speech, reports that she'll be discussing taxes: "The Speaker will propose eliminating personal income taxes for low and moderate income households that don't pay state or federal income taxes. Quinn also plans to propose a tax increase on New Yorkers earning more than $300,000 a year." She will voice her opposition to Mayor Bloomberg's proposal to raise the sales tax. It's unclear how much this speech is costing; last year, the Daily News found Quinn paid $12,000 to an outside consultant to write the speech (at the time, her spokesperson said it was common for elected officials to hire speechwriters, because it allows them and their staffs to focus on their work).

While conceding that the city is reeling from the economic crisis, Mayor Bloomberg stressed the sunny side last night during his annual State of the City address at Brooklyn College, telling the assembled audience that "dwelling on the bad news won’t make it any better." So buck up, New York, it's a new year—an election year—and Hizzoner has a nine point plan to create 400,000 new jobs by 2015, assuming he wins another term. Here are some of the highlights outlined by the Mayor's office:
• Continuing to make investments that diversify our economy with initiatives like a $100 million investment towards the modernization of the Hunts Point produce terminal.
• Growing New York City’s "green economy" by identifying the best places in the five boroughs to generate wind power and doubling the production of solar power.
• Keeping crime down by continuing to emphasize "quality of life" crimes and introducing a new State law: commit six or more quality of life crimes within two years, and the next one will be a felony.
• Asking the State Legislature to require all guns sold in New York to include micro-stamping technology.
• The opening of more than 50 new schools, providing seats for nearly 15,000 students throughout the five boroughs.
• Push the Port Authority to keep the Freedom Tower and memorial on schedule. (Snicker.)

Of course, Bloomberg's nine point panacea of alternately vague and specific ideas was met with skepticism in some circles, who viewed the address as more of a campaign stump speech than a sober diagnosis of the city's ill health. (NYC faces a budget deficit of over $4 billion next year.) Reacting to the speech, Brooklyn Councilman Lewis Fidler told NY1: "I would love to hear how some of these things are going to get done and at the same time we are going to be downsizing government in so many ways. Great platitudes, like I said, lots of mom, heaps of apple pie. Let's see how we're going to do it."

Mayor Bloomberg is scheduled to give his State of the City address today, but details have already been leaked to the press.

Photograph of Mayor Bloomberg speaking at the State of the City address by Mary Altaffer/AP