New York is not such a wonderful town these days, with the ”city that never sleeps” suffering night sweats over a crippling budget deficit, terrorist fears and a general collapse in public morale.
Financially, the city is facing its worst crisis since the mid-1970s, which witnessed the near total collapse of public services.
At the core of the problem is New York’s roughly four-billion-dollar budget deficit, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg is intent on tackling with job layoffs, tax increases and service cuts.
The deficit is one that Bloomberg inherited, rather than of his own making, but his policy responses have proved immensely unpopular and seen his approval rating slump to just 24% — the lowest level since polls on mayoral performance began 30 years ago.
The efforts to reduce the seemingly bottomless deficit have impacted New Yorkers across the social spectrum. Property tax has gone up a whopping 18,5%, while a ride on the bus or subway now costs an extra 50 cents at two dollars.
The public sense of grievance was aggravated when it came to light that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had indulged in some creative accounting and painted an overly bleak picture of its finances to justify the fare hike.
Then came a newspaper campaign that claimed the city was trying to ease its fiscal worries by dredging up obscure laws to extract fines from the general public.
A man sitting on a milk crate was ticketed for ”unauthorised use of a crate” while a pregnant women resting on the subway steps was fined $50.
In fact, the overall number of tickets handed out in the city has not increased and, as the Bloomberg administration proved through old clippings, silly summonses can always be found and highlighted by the media.
But the fact that the campaign gained such traction with the public was indicative of the sense of frustration and general malaise in the city.
A New York Times poll published last week showed that 60% of New Yorkers thought life had become worse in the city in the past year, compared with 43% in a January poll.
Only 30% said they believed New York would be a better place to live in 10 to 15 years.
Many believe that the city has simply been unable to turn the corner from the economic and emotional trauma inflicted by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Centre.
Tourism is way down, small businesses in downtown Manhattan are going to the wall and New York City has been on a state of heightened terrorist alert for the past 21 months.
The fallout of the attack exacerbated a national economic downturn that has ravaged stock prices and all but wiped out memories of the Wall Street boom of the 1990s.
Marching in the annual Puerto Rican parade recently, Bloomberg was repeatedly booed by onlookers, berating him for everything from cuts in social services to the smoking ban he imposed on all New York bars and restaurants.
Bloomberg and his supporters insist that his policies, while unpopular, are the only way of averting a fiscal meltdown.
New York City employs 11 000 more people than it did six years ago and spends 50% more than the large-city average on its police department, and 12% more per capita on fire services.
Teacher pay has grown 36% since 1995, or double the rate of inflation, and the fringe benefits of city workers have risen 54% to $4,2-billion.
Bloomberg has said he is confident that history will prove his policies the right ones but, for the moment at least, even the elements seem to be conspiring against him.
New York has just recorded one of the wettest springs in decades, with torrential rains dampening any suggestion that sunnier days may lie ahead. – Sapa-AFP