New York seeks one-third of America’s security budget

The New York government is in need of money, a lot of money, but for good purposes: to protect the city from possible terrorist attacks. However, the city government is unable to solve this problem alone, which is why it was decided to address to the presidential administation.

The city government prepared a report in which it was said that ten billion dollars were needed for the prevention of new acts of terrorism and for guaranteeing the security of the citizens of New York. The New York Post wrote that five billion dollars are needed for guarding water reservoirs, water-supply systems; for installing chemical alarm sensors in the metro, tunnels, railway stations and other public places; and for equipping airports and ports with new detectors and other up-to-date observation devices.

Some five billion more dollars are needed for training the personnel of the Coast Guard, the customs service, and the immigration service and for stocking up on medicines in the event that there is a new act of terrorism, or a nuclear, bacteriological, chemical attack.

Nevertheless, the New York city government does not have to hope that the sum of ten billion dollars will be assigned to them this instant, not to mention the fact that the sum that is assigned by the White House for the internal security of the whole country is $37.7 billion. It could be possible, of course, to allot one-third of this sum to New York, but what about the security guarantee in other parts of the country? Terrorists could easily choose another large US cities as an object of their attack. They have a good choice in this respect: Los Angeles, Chicago, the list goes on and on, not to mention smaller towns, where they do not expect any attack at all. Will the budget be enough for them all?

In addition, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will try to solve the budget deficit problem at the expense of the funds that are assigned from the State Treasury (if they are assigned, of course). For the time being, he has not yet been successful in his attempts to improve the financial position of the New York treasury. The idea to sell the bridges of the city as private property has not found any support from investors.

It deems that the problems of the Big Apple becoming the problems of the federal government. It goes without saying that New York is one of America’s symbols, even after the tragedy of September 11th. That is why New York’s problems are something to deal with not only for Michael Bloomberg, but for the White House as well.

Vasily Bubnov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov