Report on Lower Manhattan and New York City's Progress Five Years After 9/11

MS. NISBET: Good morning. I'd like to welcome Mayor of the City of New York, the Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg. He's here to update us on Lower Manhattan and New York City five years after 9/11. It's a pleasure to have the Mayor here today with us. If you could, please state your name and affiliation when asking a question. We'll first start off with remarks. Thank you.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Kim, thank you. It’s a pleasure to welcome to New York so many journalists from so many nations; there are reporters here from something like 35 countries, as well as five boroughs. And I would urge those of you who do not live here to spend a little bit of time in all five boroughs, and you will find probably more people living in those boroughs from your country than live in the biggest city in your country. There are very few exceptions where that’s not true. I happen to be the mayor of the largest Irish city in the world, and the largest Jewish city in the world, and probably the largest Sri Lankan city in the world. It’s really quite amazing – the diversity of New York City.
And New York City continues to grow. This decade we will add something like 325,000 people to our population. It’s at a record high and continues to grow. So, and these people come from every place around the world and you’ll hear every language, you’ll find every cuisine, we practice every religion. Welcome to New York. You will find that our home is your home.
Anyway, a little more serious. For New Yorkers, the fifth anniversary of 9/11 does bring back a flood of memories – and this week you’ll see a lot of that on display. There are memories of sorrow, and also memories of extraordinary acts of courage and compassion that marked that day and the period after it.
We also vividly recall the outpouring of sympathy and support that we received from governments and from people around the globe.
We will never forget how the world came to our aid. And we have tried very hard, whenever there’s been a disaster elsewhere in the world, to have New Yorkers assist and try to say ‘thank you’ by doing the same for others that they came here and did for us.
The horror that took place here on 9/11 was felt by people everywhere and it was captured by the front page headlines. In one major Italian daily newspaper that described the events of 9/11 as ‘An Attack on America and an Attack on Civilization.’ And I think that really is true. The attack took place here, it took place in New York, but the values that we have that caused people to attack us were values that a lot of people in this world and a lot of countries have.
The terrorists were striking out against civilization, and their target here, the World Trade Center, just was a symbol of a globe increasingly united by the free movement of products, ideas, and people across oceans and borders.
That significance was more than symbolic; every day, men and women from many nations came to the World Trade Center to work and to do business.
And on 9/11, citizens of more than 80 different nations perished in the terrorist attack here.
We’ll be reminded of that on Monday morning when, once again, the loved ones read the names of the 9/11 victims at the World Trade Center site.
This anniversary is a time for people around the world to remember them, and to mourn the passing. 2,790-odd people were killed between what happened at the World Trade Center and Pennsylvania and in Washington, and there were another 11 killed in a bomb attack on the World Trade Center back in 1993. It’s a sad time. We’re here to mourn their passing, and it’s also a time for New York to take stock of how far we have come since that terrible day.
I think it’s fair to say our achievements have been remarkable. On 9/11, New York City was deeply wounded.
We experienced something that Americans thought they were immune to: massive assaults against innocent civilians, like those that the people of many other cities experienced over the course of World War Two, and like those that terrorists across the globe have inflicted in more recent years.
The attack on our defenseless city, and the loss of more than 2,700 lives in the space of a few brief hours, really was devastating. I think that’s the only word that you can use.
And that makes our recovery over the last five years all the more remarkable. Because instead of experiencing the post-9/11 economic collapse that Al-Qaeda envisioned and that many doomsayers feared, we are stronger and safer now than we have ever been before.
Today, as I said, our population is growing. More New Yorkers are working than any time in the history of our city. Fewer New Yorkers are on the welfare rolls than at any time since 1964.
Consider that in our first two years of office, we faced back-to-back budget shortfalls of $5 billion and $6.5 billion – a product of the national recession, and of the tremendous economic impact of 9/11.
But today, because of a surging economy and sound fiscal management at City Hall, we’ve closed the fiscal year that just ended in June with a $3.75 billion surplus.
So, far from collapsing, New York City today is infused with a new optimism, shown by our willingness to forge solutions to the most intractable problems.
Over the past four years, we have begun to turn around a public school system in which for far too long, too many schools were mired in failure. We really have made a difference and our school system is the future of our country and the future of the world.
Or take housing, another example: we have launched the most ambitious affordable housing program ever undertaken by an American city – one that will create or preserve housing for half a million New Yorkers by 2013. That’s equivalent to the population of Atlanta, Georgia, which is a pretty good sized city in this country.
And soon we will unveil a new, targeted effort to help more New Yorkers move out of poverty, and realize fully the American dream.
I think it’s fair to say the prospects for our city are bright at this time.
And that’s demonstrated by the fact that before this decade is up, this city’s population will be at something like 8.2 million people.
Recovery, I think, shows that Al-Qaeda’s deadly plot against New York failed. Now let me discuss that recovery a little more fully for those of you that don’t live here and don’t see the changes that have taken place in our city.
Our recovery’s cornerstone has been our remarkable success in enhancing public safety in the post-9/11 world.
All of you who were in New York five years ago remember that sense of dread that followed 9/11.
Our city’s economy in recession and our city hemorrhaging jobs – and with anxiety about further terrorist attacks hanging in the air – many people really did believe, and the newspapers were full of stories, that we would not be able to maintain the gains in safety that had been achieved during the 1990s.
But in short, people thought crime was going to go up. And the truth of the matter is we proved them wrong. Today, crime in New York is nearly 22% lower than it was at this time in 2001. Crime is down in every single major category. New York is safer than every other major city in the nation, and also safer than 9 out of every 10 smaller cities as well.
And we’ve accomplished that even though today there are some 4,000 fewer officers assigned to ordinary patrol duties than were back in 9/11. In part, that’s because of the attrition that reduced the Department’s headcount by 3,000 officers during the 2002 and 2003 years when we had our budget problems.
And it’s also in part due to the fact that we have assigned 1,000 of our police officers to duties in the NYPD’s nationally acclaimed counter-terrorism and intelligence division.
Today, we recognize that as New York’s population grows, our police force has to grow as well, and this year, we are adding 1,200 more police officers to the streets.
The bottom line is we have a mission today that we didn’t have before: intelligence and counter-terrorism. We have our own police officers around the world working with intelligent services in other cities. We have fewer police officers on the streets just because of the economics, and yet we’ve brought crime down in every single major category – overall, 22% in the last five years. And there was nobody who predicted that.

And we’re doing that – we take these duties very seriously of protecting people on the streets from common crime as well as from terrorism. We have 17 New York City detectives assigned to the Federal-City-State Joint Terrorism Task Force. We had 17 back in 9/11. To show you where we are today, we have 120.
The bottom line is we live in a different world than we lived in back on 9/11, or at least than we thought we lived in on 9/11. And we have to keep the people of New York City safe from outside forces, as well as from those who live here.
In 2002, we also overhauled the NYPD’s intelligence division, transforming it primarily from a dignitary protection unit to a robust intelligence-gathering and analysis sector.
Over the past four and a half years, we have dispatched some of our best detectives to nine cities beyond our nation’s borders to improve our forward defense, as we call it, against terror. The NYPD now has officers posted in London, and Madrid, and Singapore, and Tel Aviv, and Amman, and other cities.
Here in New York, intelligence detectives regularly monitor the sale of services and products that might be useful to terrorists, and have established a closer relationship with corporate private security directors.
The NYPD’s ‘Operation Atlas’ has stepped up security in the Financial District as well as at our landmarks and at key parts of our infrastructure. And that includes the heavily armed and highly mobile Hercules teams, as we call them, that are rapidly deploy throughout the city.
We have also thoroughly revised the intelligence and counter-terrorism training of our officers in all boroughs, providing them with the latest and best equipment.
Our counter-terrorism efforts have also been enhanced by vastly improved coordination among our emergency response agencies.
One of the most important lessons learned from 9/11 was that our emergency responders require the best available access to inter-operable communications and information in the field.
And to that end, we have brought all of our first responder agencies onto a common radio frequency band, so that voice communication can take place when it’s needed among police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians.
And early on, we made it standard operating procedure for fire chiefs to be able to ride in police helicopters at major fires, so they can provide information and direction to firefighters on the ground – and that was something that didn’t exist five years ago.
We’ve also put in place a ‘Citywide Incident Management System’ – called ‘CIMS’ – and it clearly spells out the division of responsibility and chain of command for the FDNY and NYPD, and establishes joint command posts at major incidents where both must respond. Remember hundreds of times a day, both our police officers and firefighters show up at locations to protect this city, and they work together. It’s the big incidents that you want to make sure there is a clear chain of command. And by having this agreement in advance and training continuously in advance, we’ve shown time and again since 9/11 that the coordination that gets you the best safety and the quickest response really is in place.
Our Office of Emergency Management also has taken the lead in increasing our capacity to plan for and respond to any emergency – natural or man-made, accidental or intentional.
There are a whole variety of things that we have to be ready to respond to, and we try, to the extent possible, imagine what those would be, figure out what we would do if they occurred in different places, at different times of the day, different weather conditions, different times of the year, and make sure that we know what we do and talk about it in advance.
We have organized and managed dozens of inter-agency simulations and exercises that have, for example, tested responses to attacks using employing bio-terrorism and other weapons of mass destruction, or natural disasters – a hurricane or an enormous snowstorm – communications or power failure.
All of these exercises have been aimed at improving coordination across City, State and Federal lines, and with key private sector players as well.
To sum up: our achievements in fighting crime on the streets are measurable and incontrovertible. Our success in combating terrorism is, by definition, harder to quantify, but unmistakably clear. We know that the NYPD has succeeded in disrupting a number of possible attacks, including one aimed at the Brooklyn Bridge.
What we do know is that we have to remain vigilant and prepared to do whatever it takes to keep our city safe.
And we also appreciate that our commitment to safety has persuaded businesses to remain in New York or locate to New York, and it really has been a major factor in the city’s economic recovery, our city’s economic growth.
You can see that recovery, economic growth in virtually every sector of our city.
For example, tourism: if you go back to right after 9/11, nobody was going to come to New York ever again. Well last year, we welcomed more than 42 million visitors to our city – it was a new record. This year we expect to do even better. Our hotel occupancy and room rates are at historic highs and our airports are packed. If you tried to come through our airports, I’m sorry, but, all this traffic, that what it gets you.
Film and television production – another key industry – is experiencing robust growth. Last year, we hosted more than 350 film and television productions right here in New York City.
Construction is booming. Building permits have increased by nearly 30% since 2001, and are at an all-time high.
Our commercial real estate market is also hot – fueled in part by the increasing number of Fortune 500 companies now making their headquarters in New York, and that’s reversing a decades-long exodus from our city.
As the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, companies that after 9/11 were contemplating leaving New York once their leases were up today are clamoring for more space as the number of employees they have in the city continues to climb.
The perception of New York among these employers, the Journal wrote, has changed from our being ‘a place to fear to a place they have to be.’ And I think you couldn’t say that any better.
In fact, one of our most urgent needs is to increase New York City’s supply of modern office space. That’s why we’ve made a major priority of rezoning and redeveloping Downtown Brooklyn, Flushing in Queens, and the Hudson Yards area on Manhattan’s West Side.
That’s a major part of our strategy to bring jobs and opportunity to all five boroughs – and our success in doing so is demonstrated by the fact that New York City’s Gross City Product – our GCP as we call it – is expected to be more than $442 billion this year—a new all-time high. That’s $442 billion.
Lower Manhattan’s recovery is a key part of New York’s future. Today, five years after 9/11, that recovery is well underway.
It even began before the last fires at the World Trade Center site were extinguished. Then, it was conservatively estimated that the clean-up of the site – an unprecedented job – would take a year. In fact, it was completed in far less time, with the last rubble removed from the site in May 2002.
In the days immediately following 9/11, City, State, and Federal leaders came together with Downtown business leaders to create a framework for transforming Lower Manhattan into a true 21st century downtown – a vibrant and attractive commercial and residential community.
The process of implementing that plan has not always been smooth or seamless, or moved at the pace that we would like.
But the fact remains that today, more than $30 billion is being invested in public and private construction that is concentrated in one square mile from the World Trade Center site north to Canal Street.
It’s the largest concentration of construction activity in New York history – and it is completely consistent with the vision for Lower Manhattan that we articulated in December, 2002.
By the year 2011, nearly every street south of Chambers Street will have been rebuilt. Almost $10 billion worth of mass transit projects will have been completed or be nearing completion. They include new ferry terminals, a major new subway hub, and Santiago Calatrava’s spectacular new PATH station at the World Trade Center site, for which we broke ground a year ago.
We also expect Congressional approval this fall of $1.75 billion for a direct rail link from Lower Manhattan to Kennedy Airport.
Today, $1 billion is being invested in cultural institutions and museums, including the World Trade Center Memorial and Museum, which we broke ground for last month.
We are investing more than $300 million to create or enhance 20 Downtown parks and public spaces, as well as a beautiful new ring of green along the tip of Lower Manhattan, opening up the Hudson and East River waterfronts to the public.
Our Downtown residential population is booming. If you remember back, right after 9/11, there was nobody that was ever going to want to live Downtown. Well since 2002, 10,000 apartments have been created; and by 2011, there will be another 7,000 apartments build downtown.
That means five years from now nearly 70,000 people will live in Lower Manhattan – double the number that lives there today, and more than triple the number who lived there on 9/11.
To serve these new residents, and Downtown workers and visitors, by 2011 there will also be 800,000 square feet of new retail space.
Combined, all of these investments are making Lower Manhattan a more attractive place to live and do business – and as a result, businesses are expanding and relocating to New York’s historic birthplace. For those of you who don’t know, New York City started in Lower Manhattan. There were people that never thought anybody would live north of Canal Street. Today they do live north of Canal Street, but what’s happening is a resurgence of people wanting to live down right where New York was started.
Companies were going to leave Downtown. Well go down and take a look at Goldman Sach’s new building. They’re building a $2 billion new headquarters building at the World Financial Center. It’s the first new corporate headquarters to be built downtown in decades.
Today, the vacancy rate for office space in Lower Manhattan is 11.9% – compared to better than 20% just across the river in northern New Jersey. It’s really quite an amazing performance.
In five years from now, 12.5 million square feet of new Class "A" office space in Lower Manhattan will be completed or nearing completion. That will include the four towers to be built at the World Trade Center site – the designs for three of which were unveiled just yesterday. So take a look in the papers; there are three beautiful buildings which will make an enormous difference.
We are, in short, I think it’s fair to say well on our way to rebuilding and reinventing Lower Manhattan, so that it in the 21st century, it – and our entire city – will be a place that draws people from around the world to live, and to work, and to contribute to a better world.
Over the past five years, we’ve really have made extraordinary strides in realizing that vision – a vision of freedom and progress that the terrorists can never extinguish.
Today, every indication is that our city is moving in the right direction. Let me leave you with these contrasts:
In the dark months after 9/11, unemployment in our city climbed to, and eventually reached 8.6%. Today, because of our success in creating new jobs and opportunity, it’s at 6%.
Just four years ago, fewer than 40% of public students were performing at or above grade level in reading, writing, and math. Today, that’s more than 50% are performing at that level.
And five years ago, anxiety plagued our city. Today, we remain the undisputed safest big city in the United States.
Over the past five years, we’ve made the hard decisions, but I think history shows we’ve made the right ones. And because we have, New York’s best days are yet to come.
Over the next three years and three months while I remain in office, I look forward to helping make those best days a reality for all New Yorkers." I'd be happy to take some questions. I thought we would give the questions to the foreign journalists today. I think the first hand I saw going up was yours.

QUESTION: Olli Herrala, Kauppalehti, Finnish Business Daily. It's like been 2,000 days, almost 2,000 days, since those strikes and the lot is still empty. I'm just wondering why the whole process is so painfully slow.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Well, I don’t know that the process is slow painfully slow. I think if you take a look downtown, there's been enormous growth, renovation, building in all of Lower Manhattan and throughout all five boroughs. The place that people generally think of when they think of slow progress is on the actual site which is 16 acres, a big chunk of which will be a memorial, a smaller part of which will be economic development. And in fact it just take time to work out the economics, to get designs that provide the kind of safety and security we want in this day and age. It takes a while to take a look at the economics and see what the demands will be.

We, like everybody -- like lots of other countries have a democracy, so there's always a lively debate as to what should be built and how it should be built and who should finance it. We have a very complex political situation on this particular site because there are a number of different state agencies, private insurance companies, private developers, all of whom have said and all of whom have different objectives.

And I think in all fairness Governor Pataki -- history will show -- did a pretty good job at getting them going. Five years is a long time, but if you realize that we're going to build buildings that are going to survive for 50 or 100 years, the most important thing is that you do it right, that you do it in a way that is economically viable, that helps the rest of downtown and the rest of New York City. And I think with the different plans and the evolution of those plans and the public discussion, the debate back and forth, in the end we've wound up with something that history will show is pretty much the right thing to do.

Miss.

QUESTION: Elena Molinari with the Italian Daily Avvenire. Mr. Bloomberg, it looks like anxiety lingers among New Yorkers. Recent polls show that two-thirds actually are still afraid of a terrorist attack. Did this surprise you? What's your best argument for New Yorkers?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: I think if you went to --

QUESTION: And sorry, one last thing. Does the city have the money to protect New Yorkers effectively?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Well, the first thing we're going to do is protect New Yorkers and then we'll figure out how to pay for it. Do you do it effectively? I can tell you, the numbers on crime in the streets are easy to measure. The numbers on terrorism are much harder to measure. Only history will show whether you were in the right place at the right time.

What I can tell you is we are doing every single thing that we can think of to keep this city safe. And so far, thank God, after 9/11 we've not had further attacks. I can't promise you any more than any city in Italy or any place else can promise you. We live in a dangerous world. What we are doing is training and having equipment and using our eyes and ears and getting the police-community relations so good that people talk, and that's a very important part of policing of having the public be part of your eyes and your ears, and hopefully we have done exactly what's right.

In terms of anxiety, I think in this day and age if you go to any big city and you say, you know, are you anxious, you'd probably get a yes answer. But the bottom line is that we have a record population. More people are moving here. This decade we'll have more people moving to New York City than live in the city of Pittsburgh. That's net moving here. So, you know, the evidence is that people want to live here. I just told you, more corporate headquarters than we've had in a while, more building than we've ever had, a bigger economy than we've ever had.

Am I anxious about everything? You know, you have to say yes to that. Of course we're always anxious. That's why you prepare. That's why you go to school. That's why you worry about tomorrow, making sure you can feed your family. But when it comes to evidencing whether you really would prefer to live here or any place else, the numbers are the numbers and the numbers are clear. People want to live here. More people are coming to school here. More people are coming here for medical care. More people are coming here to work and to live and for vacations from not just the United States but from around the world. We had 42.7 million tourists.

QUESTION: Mr. Mayor, five years after 9/11 your city is facing a major health crisis. Mount Sinai has made clear that 70 percent of the workers at Ground Zero were chronical -- are chronically sick. Residents and the office people downtown are sick, too. You were quoted the same day that the Mount Sinai released their study saying I don't believe that you can say specifically a particular problem can come from this particular effect. What other proof do you need to acknowledge the 9/11 dust is making thousands of New Yorkers sick?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Well, there's an awful lot of evidence that people have had reactions to the air that they breathe. Nobody knows what the eventual consequences of those will be and that's why we have studies going on. Mount Sinai was one of them. The city has a whole bunch of studies. We have a registry of people who worked down there. We're tracking them very carefully. We at our public hospitals have all sorts of programs to help people monitor their health.

The trouble is with all of these things we don’t know down the road what the consequences of having been in and around the World Trade Center site, particularly those who worked there for long periods of time. And that's why the federal government set up an insurance company, a captive insurance company to make sure that we do have the resources down the road, because we're going to have to face this issue 10 and 20 years from now.

How severe will it be? Nobody knows that. These are studies that you do and you monitor and the technology gets better and medicine learns every day. And the only thing I can urge people to do, if they haven't registered, and 71,000 people already have registered, is you should go to our public hospitals and we'll make sure that you get the kind of care. But it is very much up in the air. Clearly, a lot of people are having problems, but nobody knows the magnitude of those or how long they will continue.

Sir.

QUESTION: Mr. Mayor, Cam Razavi, Global National News Canada. I just wanted to follow up on what this lady said here. How do you answer the critics who say that the city, the state, the federal government opened Lower Manhattan too quickly after the 9/11 attacks, for whatever reason, and that as a result of that move, people down there suffered serious health effects?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: I don't know that the facts that you stated are correct. My understanding is, and I was not in office at the time, but right after the 9/11 tragedy, the federal government, the Environmental Protection Agency looked at the air, they worked with the city. The city provided masks for people working down there. The city, I'm told, every single day, urged all workers to use those masks and that both the federal government and the city government at the time thought that the air was clean enough for people to go back. Now whether or not you've --

QUESTION: But they're saying that that was wrong.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Well, there's always people that say things. I'm just telling you what I -- what happened at the time was that the federal government said the air was safe and the city, I think, from what I have read, took the kind of appropriate precautions that they should have taken. Whether or not in retrospect it was or not, that's what the medical studies we're doing are set up to do. But -- you had your question, Miss, I'm sorry. We are -- you can't tell -- I can't go back and look and see exactly what they did. I know what I read and it sounds to me like they did what was appropriate at the time.

QUESTION: It hurts you, though, when they say that the city lied to us? Because that's what they said last time in a town hall forum (inaudible). And they said the city -- the city especially lied to us, that they said --

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Well, I don't -- you know, I don't know what was said at the time. My understanding -- my knowledge of the people who are working for the city at that time is that they did anything but lie. They were honest. They did, given the knowledge that they had and the time, they've tried to do the best they could and the people that ran the city at the time, everyone that I know is a pretty honest person and was trying very hard under circumstances that were very difficult. Nobody understood the magnitude, nobody knew whether there would be health issues down the road. And they made the decisions that they thought were right at the time.

Sir.

QUESTION: Alfonso Diaz with RCN Radio Colombia. We've heard stories like that of Will Jimeno, the police officer from Colombia who luckily survived the attacks. Five years after, what is the local government doing for the families of the victims, the Latino families of the victims of 9/11?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: For the families of 9/11, we had a program administered by a gentleman, Ken Feinberg, who tried to work out, given the monies that -- there was really unlimited monies, fair compensation depending on the economic circumstances and the size of the families and what happened to them. And I just can't comment on an individual case. I just don't know. Ken Feinberg, by everything I've read, did a spectacular job in trying to -- the one thing I can't -- he couldn't do. He can't compensate people for loved ones that they lost. That's just not possible. But he did try, with federal monies, to ameliorate the pain and to make the suffering more tolerable, at least to remove a big part of the economic fears that people had while they grieved.

See all the way back there, just to --

QUESTION: In the back here.

QUESTION: Diego Senior from Caracol Radio in Latin America. It's about the illegal immigrants that were involved in the 9/11 attacks. I talked to them yesterday and most of them say that they're still suffering and they haven't received any help because they're illegal immigrants. What can you tell them, you know, five years after that happened? And another question, Mayor. We understand that you're learning Spanish from a Colombian. Can you tell us about that? Also, how good is your Spanish?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: (Speaking in Spanish.) (Laughter.) Let me try this in English, only because most of them wouldn't understand Spanish as well as you and I do. (Laughter.) I just came from my Spanish lesson, as a matter of fact.

We have a policy in the city that for city services, which include our 11 public hospitals, we do not ask documentation status. I have issued an executive order that prohibits city employees from asking status with the exception of if you're arrested and charged with a crime. I don't know that -- I think any undocumented person going to our public hospitals will get the best care that medicine knows how to provide. They should not feel afraid to go to those hospitals. We won't ask their documentation status.

As you know, I have spoken out quite forcefully, saying that America should give permanent status to all the estimated 12 million undocumented that live here. These are people that are here with the complicity of our government and they are an integral part of our economy and our culture. And I think that America should issue visas for -- I will, Miss, you can put your hand down, don't -- we should issue visas for three or 400,000 people. This is a country that thrives on immigrants, couldn't live without immigrants. But there shouldn't be any one -- anything different about a documented or undocumented person in terms of the impact on 9/11.

Miss.

QUESTION: I'm Maya Mirchandani from New Delhi Television. In the days immediately after 9/11, we'd covered a lot of stories about South Asians, particularly the Sikhs, the Muslims who were persecuted, in fact, alienated. Many Sikhs were attacked. They were called names. The Muslims have continued to feel that sense of alienation, both the South Asians as well as Arab Muslims. What is New York City doing to make them feel less alienated and part of the system?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Well, I can tell you two things, I think. One is we have no tolerance for discrimination against anybody, based on your religion or how you dress or your ethnicity or your orientation or gender or marital status. We try to treat everybody exactly the same. And we have laws that try to, in the strongest possible terms, prosecute anybody that discriminates against somebody else by attacking them or racial ethnic crimes are just not tolerated in this city. And our police department is a very diverse police department. It pretty much reflects the community that they serve. If you take a look at our police department, and you'll see if you try to match up different groups, you'll be surprised at just how close it does mirror the city.

I also have tried to speak out that -- on discrimination particularly. I think it is fair to say that not everybody in New York or anyplace acts -- not everybody is perfect. And sometimes people do things which I think are a disgrace and I've tried to speak out against that. We will not tolerate discrimination. If you are a Muslim, you have a right to practice your religion in the same ways that if you were -- had practiced any other religion or no religion.

I'll take a question from the gentlemen right in front of you, if he hands you the -- there you go.

QUESTION: Mayor, Jamie McShane, WNBC-TV. We interviewed Joe Lhota, former Deputy Mayor. He tells us he's seriously ill and he believes his illness was caused by 9/11. He says that there's been pushback from the city on paying for the healthcare of city workers and he says that that needs to end and that the budget -- as a budget director, he would know that these claims would not bankrupt the city and he says that the budget decisions should be made with a human heart.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Well, we try to make all our budget decisions with a human heart. The bottom line is that we have uniform services where some of those -- the uniform services worked at Ground Zero and there may or may not have been damage done to any one person. We've got to make sure that we have the money so that if they do become sick, we can take care of them. We had construction workers, thousands of them over the period of the recovery and that -- to work downtown, we have to find out some ways to make sure that if they were injured, they get compensated. We have people who lived in the area and have similar problems.

What we're trying to do is to make sure that we understand what has happened, that's the reason for a lot of the studies, and make sure that we have monies not only today to help people, but if 10 and 15 years and 20 years down the road, people turn out to have a problem that was caused by what happened on 9/11, we've got to make sure that we have monies to take care of them. And I think that in terms of compassion, this administration has as much compassion as you can. We have to deal in the practical aspects of making sure that we get the best care money can buy and that the care gets to those that can -- that need it and at the same time, we have to provide care for people who have lots of other problems in this city. We have problems with drug addiction, we have problems with people getting injured that don't have insurance, of getting sick and don't have insurance. It's not just an either-or thing.

We'll take this gentleman with his pen up in the air.

QUESTION: Jose De Haro, Cadena Cope, Barcelona. Mr. Bloomberg, you said that your city is safer than ever before. You seem to be quite satisfied with the security measures taken in the city. What about the United States as a country? Are you, sir, satisfied with what the U.S. as a country is doing to prevent another 9/11, as far as Homeland Security policy is concerned, as far as foreign policy is concerned?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Foreign policy, I can't address. You'll have to go to address your questions in Washington on the international stage. My job is to work in this city. I have not been happy with the amount of Homeland Security money that we've gotten. I've been very vocal about that. Unfortunately, the politics of democracy say that every state in this union wants to get some of those monies or, I would argue, that there are a handful of cities, New York, Washington and Chicago, Los Angeles, a few of the cities where they're much more likely to be a target. You know, when you catch a terrorist, they have map of New York in their pocket, not a map of a cornfield someplace. Agricultural aid should go to the cornfields and Homeland Security money should come here. I feel very strongly about that.

But we have done everything that we think we have to do at a local level regardless of cost. And then the taxpayers of New York City are going to pay for that if we can't get monies from Washington. But we don't make security decisions based on the economics. We make security decisions based on our intelligence, based on our studying of terrorist attacks elsewhere, based on every expert that we can talk to and we try to distill it all. And you have to make a practical balance between providing security and allowing people to go about living their lives.

It would be terribly tragic if al-Qaida got us to stay locked in our homes. They would have won without firing a shot. That's exactly what they want. They want to destroy our freedoms and we're not going to let them do that.

Yes, the gentleman in the white shirt.

QUESTION: Vinicius Galvao, Folha de Sao Paulo, Brazil. What was the main change in the world after September 11th? And do you think the United States are politically stronger or weaker after the attacks?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: I can't speak on a global stage in terms of relations with others. I can tell you my perception. Certainly in New York and I think it's true for America, what 9/11 did is it brought -- it crystallized in our minds how valuable our freedoms are and how threatened we are continuously by people who want to take them away. So it was a terrible price to pay for it, but it really pulled together Americans, whether you see that in more patriotism or I would argue it's in terms of working together.

One of the reasons that New York continues to bring crime down is people want to live here and want to work together and respect each other. And some of that probably does come out of 9/11. Tragedies always focus your mind and I think that's the main message.

The other message is that we do remember in New York City how much other people from other cities in America helped us and around the world. And I've always thought we have a special obligation, whether it's a tsunami in one part of the world or a terrorist attack in the subway in another part of the world, if New Yorkers can help we will do that. We had a terrible hurricane, as you know, that really destroyed a very big part of New Orleans, one of the great cities in this country. And within a few days we had 300 police officers, 300 firefighters, we had 75 correction officers to go down and help them run their jails. We sent down equipment and volunteers. And I think that the instincts to do that maybe you can attribute some of it to 9/11.

Miss, you had a question.

QUESTION: Helen (inaudible) Glover (ph) regular newspaper. From the point of view of civil rights, how do you think that daily life in New York has changed?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Point of view of civil rights. We've worked hard to make sure that nobody's civil rights are taken away. I have, for example, the young lady that asked about discrimination against Muslims and the Sikhs and I've worked very hard to try to reach out to those communities. I've had breakfast -- we now have an annual breakfast at the Gracie Mansion for the Muslim community. We have at Ramadan at Police Plaza -- One Police Plaza review asking clergy from all of the different Muslim communities, for example, to come to make sure that they're satisfied with the security protections we take during Ramadan, the same way as we do with the Jewish community during the Jewish holidays or Christians for Christian holidays. So we're trying to make sure that people have their security.

We do live in a world where there's more technology. There are security cameras every place. Is that taking away your civil rights? I don't really think so. I would argue that Americans today and New Yorkers, in particular, have the ability to speak out and express themselves as much as they've ever had. You know, we have in our federal laws there's something called the First Amendment. It was an amendment to the original Constitution. And it was designed to -- not to give you the right to criticize a movie. It was designed to give you the right to criticize your government and not be thrown in jail or hung, which was probably the practice before this country was founded and in lots of places in the world and maybe still is. But here you can go and you can criticize your government. You just pick up the newspapers every day -- there are pros and cons on everything. There are people who are protesting in front of city hall, pro and con everything. There are people that march.

We had the Republican Convention here, hundreds of thousands of people marched. They marched right by the hall where the convention was taking place. They had a right to express themselves and we gave them that right. We made sure we protected that right and they have exercised it.

At the same time, we made sure that people who did not want to protest were free to go about their business without being harassed because their civil rights are just as important as those who protest. I think on balance, New York City has done a pretty good job of protecting civil rights. You know, there are activists who will never like any controls on freedom of speech. But standing up in the middle of the theater and yelling fire as a joke is not something we're going to permit. And we do live in a dangerous world where we want the police to be vigilant and we want them to go and to prevent terrorism.

The question I got of, you know, are you doing enough to prevent terrorism? Well, part of that is listening, part of that is shifting through information, part of that is being out there actively looking. We live in a world where to say we're not going to do that until we get struck is not a viable thing.

Okay. These two right in the front row in either order. Right here. Get close to the microphone.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My name is Olaolu Akande. I work with the Guardian of Nigeria. Considering the fact that New York is a very diverse city, will you consider (inaudible) sister city relationship with any African country? And then I'd like to know what are your views about the Nigerian community in New York?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Well, the Nigerian community in New York is a big one. As a matter of fact, I was at a friend of mine who's Nigeria who went with me to Africa this last year looking for the Olympics, which we unfortunately didn't get. And he happened to have a very big party the other night. It was a nice party as a matter of fact. If he's listening, thank you for inviting Bio (ph). Our Sister City Program is one -- there's lots of sister cities that we'd like to have and we just can't manage any more than we have. We can put you in touch with our -- the department which happens to be run pro bono by my sister -- good luck in getting an answer. Marjorie gets deluged all the time with requests for sister cities. I don't -- it would be great if we could add some more.

Sir.

QUESTION: Thank you. Gabe Pleasea from Romania Libera. Your honor, I was wondering what you said or thought upon hearing the Mayor of New Orleans comments on (inaudible) the ground? Thank you.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: For those of you that don't know, the Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin said -- he was being criticized for slow progress in the recovery efforts and -- rebuilding efforts, I guess is fair -- in New Orleans. And I'm told -- I didn't hear it -- something, well, New York's got similar problems. I have a little bit of sympathy for him. I think when everybody's beating you up, you might try to say, well, you know, we're not the only ones. I think he probably regrets having said it. He's come here. He said nothing but nice things about New Orleans.

I think the important thing is New York should try to help New Orleans doing -- in every ways we can to rebuild. People from New Orleans came to New York to help us in our time of need and we should help them. You know, it's good theater to focus on what he said, but the most important thing is how this country can get New Orleans back again and bring back its glory days. We want more cities like New Orleans. I haven't been to New Orleans in a while, but I used to -- had some great memories of the great times in New Orleans and we wish all of the people well.

And I think at the same time, one of the things you might want to think about, we have a city not too far from New Orleans -- Houston. And Houston, Texas took in and I think still has something like 150,000 people who were driven out of their homes in New Orleans and the people of Houston have opened their doors and their hearts. And here it is a year later and they are doing everything they can to help. And I think it's just a good example of one city helping another. We here in New York didn't get anywhere near that many of people moving here after New Orleans, but we certainly were willing to take them. And I remember Governor Pataki calling me and saying let's make phone calls because we're going to take them in. He had some good plans but just not that many people wanted to come this far north. They wanted to stay close because I think they thought -- they wanted to be able to get back home as soon as it was possible.