Annual Report 1999

Page 5

New York City is and always will be a work in progress. The City is constantly growing and changing, and its infrastructure must be expanded and maintained accordingly. Recent successes in such areas as job creation, retail growth and increased tourism, while positive for the overall economy, have created a host of new demands on the City's physical environment.

While opportunities to improve the City's infrastructure are endless, resources are limited and thus, priorities must be debated and established. To this end, the Building Congress asked several business, industry and civic leaders to discuss which infrastructure program or issue they consider to be most important in the coming year, and why.

	Reverend Dr. Floyd Flake Senior Pastor, Allen A.M.E. Church New York's greatest asset is its people and providing a quality education to the next generation of New York City residents is critical to its future prosperity. The City's school system must deliver better educational services and facilities, smaller class size, greater accountability, and the flexibility necessary to meet the needs of each student. Creating charter schools, operated by neighborhood-based organizations, will inject competition, innovation and choice into the system and is the best hope for our children's future. New York must move forward as quickly as possible in granting charters to responsible community organizations and by assisting them in attaining necessary startup costs.
	Alan G. Hevesi New York City Comptroller Half of New York City's public schools are more than 50 years old and nearly 82,000 children are without appropriate classroom space. Another serious problem is that the Board spends only one-tenth of what it should on building maintenance each year. As a result, the billions of dollars spent on repair and new construction just make up for continuing deterioration.Much could be saved through the implementation of the proper infrastructure program. Unfortunately, New York City cannot afford to spend all that is needed on each of the City's infrastructure problems, but we must begin to make the tough choices and find creative solutions that will help our children to compete in the 21st century.
	Edward J. Malloy President, Building & Construction Trades The most important infrastructure issue facing New Yorkers is not whether any particular project will be built, but how these projects will be built. Because too many suffer from deficiencies related to irresponsible contractors and unskilled labor, support from even reputable members of our industry for necessary investments has been harder to come by. That threatens the entire regional economy. Government officials must find the will to impose far stricter bidding standards that will restore excellence to public works projects and win the confidence of key constituencies in critical initiatives like repairing schools and improving transportation systems.
	H . Carl McCall New York State Comptroller Clearly, the most pressing need in New York City is school construction. The school buildings our children go to every day are crumbling and overcrowded. The City must continue to take steps to fix the management of the School Construction Authority, and then we have to move forward to rebuild New York's educational infrastructure. It won't be cheap, but every day of delay drives the cost up even more.
	Claire Shulman Queens Borough President I believe that one of the most important priorities for our borough and City is to develop a fast, quiet and reliable rail access system to our airports. Kennedy and LaGuardia Airports are critical to the economic well-being of the entire region. The airports provide tens of thousands of jobs and generate billions of dollars in economic activity. . At the same time, their operation and convenience plays a major role in how thousands of first time visitors, business travelers and new immigrants view our city.
	Robert R. Kiley President, New York City Partnership Long-term job growth in our city will be stymied unless we expand our early 20th Century transportation system and create a greater supply of affordable housing. These infrastructure limitations serve as constant barriers to job creation and help explain why New York City is dogged by unusually high unemployment, even in the best of economic times. There are plenty of good ideas for specific transportation expansion initiatives, but unless more creative energy is spent on analyzing possible funding schemes, these ideas will never materialize. On the housing side, we need to identify and change the cost and regulatory barriers to building affordable housing at all income levels.
	Lewis Rudin Chairman, Association for a Better New York Construction of a Second Avenue subway line from Lower Manhattan to the Bronx would benefit residents by easing overcrowding on the Lexington Avenue line. The line is vital if New York is to sustain and build upon the current economic revitalization of Midtown and Lower Manhattan. Finally, a Second Avenue subway would put in place the necessary infrastructure to expand economic activity to the Lower East Side, Harlem and the Bronx. The business and building community should form a dedicated coalition in support of this important investment. It's ironic that my father, Samuel Rudin, as a leader of a Northeast Bronx/Throgs Neck community group, was a proponent of the Second Avenue subway 70 years ago! I hope it will happen in my lifetime.