This is a machine-generated transcript. Text is unformatted and may contain errors.

Because fellow citizens the microphones of yours that inflation and I when the council chamber in historic city hall and Councilman shocking has just as crowded the mayor to the rostrum and here is the map. Right this problem. Members of the Council. Since I've been in office I have reported to the council. In great detail. On each year's accomplishments of the city government. The report which accompanies this message is a matter of fact the part of this message. Taken together with my replies for the proceeding it. Tells the story of what we've done in the past four years to extend rehabilitate and modernize the city's plant and revitalize its services. Many of you who are new to the council. For your convenience I have had copies of my prior years reports placed on you desks so that you will have before you a clear overall picture of the reason for that gentleman you were knew that heretofore all cried to Iraq taking over. The reports were generally verbal. Written on the backs of bombs memoranda of that kind consequently there was nothing of a personal recorded story. Such as we've had since one thousand nine hundred six. These reports every year printed documents have been very carefully Pat And now that some of you are new to bring you up to date subjects have a clear cut picture of the point at which we began the objectives that we hope to reach and that step by step. Achievement up to now will be before you just as if you'd been on the Council for the last four years. And those who have been returned after four year term that they know about However I felt that it was a would be of service to you to have. These reports as a part of this message and that has been done. Now as you may have seen from these reports a great deal has been done. But a great deal remains to be accomplished. Today I want to talk mainly about the future but the plans we have make and the plans that will carry out in the next four years to improve the lives of our citizens and broaden their opportunities. Scholes would be the first. Now if you read. The I had won the first page under schools that will save me the job from. Reading it to you are delaying your time or mine I know that you're busy and I know that. The Board of us women will be waiting for me in a few minutes and it is necessary for me to read all of the message merely to point out to you the first item is under schools. Now if you'll notice in the second paragraph more than one hundred fifty million dollars has been allocated for school construction and modernization since nineteen forty six. I like to Durham that figure clearly in your mind that since nine hundred forty six today we have spent in new schools in rehabilitation of a one hundred and fifty million dollars. That means that replaced under construction. Fifty new schools and school projects to it accommodate fifty one thousand pupils and we have model and eyes fifty six of the existing schools that badly need of that modernization. I bade third paragraph there indicates that we hope to surpass this record in the next four years. On my housing. Page six if you look at it. Modern housing for people. We're doing that will all of our resources of the largest public housing program ever undertaken by any municipality is well underway in the city. We have constructed and we are planning and building public housing at a non president scale. We best build housing despite the shortage of flu spiralling a price which many thought were insurmountable obstacles. By this gigantic public housing program which we have developed an expanded since nine hundred forty six and which will be completed in nineteen fifty eight. Will provide a total of more than one a third billion dollars worth of city state and federally financed public house of one of her billion dollars Well it will provide one hundred and thirty thousand modern the problems accommodating attendant population of a half a million people many of you might have remembered one of these some of these figures. Mentioned by the candidates of our party in the recent campaign that was not intended for our campaign consumption only now after the election now as we go into another four years term this is put in writing handed to you and I'm speaking to you in the Citizens general to give you and them the assurance that the program will be carried out to the letter. On a case of hospitals and health. On the same page paid six. I believe that adequate hospital and health facilities are the hallmark of progressive community will of cross. All hospitals which were in a state of shameful neglect when I ended office imported six have undergone a great change for the better how much forty two million dollars out actually in contracts completed or less for the improvement of our hospital plant in the first term. Of this is only the beginning. We must provide a hospital system second to none to make the means of a great city like ours. At the last election the people of the state approved an amendment to the Constitution of the city could spend one hundred fifty million dollars for hospitals outside the debt limit remember we talked about that during the campaign the people gave us now it's our job to make good. We have a well balanced program on which we will spend this money. It is in our core with the basic principles of planned for future development of hospital facilities in New York City presented by a hospital console of Greater New York and has been an doest by a representative group of the leading doctors and hospital experts of the city. And I hope you make a note of the persons that we went to. To find out where our greatest hospital needs work so that the priorities would meet the exact meet the existing needs and the expenditure of the hundred fifty million dollars on. The program and you can see what it is generally that. You have Hurst general hospital in Queens Queens General Hospital in the Bronx East Bronx General Hospital new East Bronx tuberculosis hospital seeking to burglarize hospital and in addition to the Meyerson hospital Manhattan will have the new East Harlem General Hospital a reconstructed rehabilitated Bellevue and you will Holland tuberculosis hospital a new governor hosp a new school for nurses will be built on the grounds of build you and Jeff and if you want to ask any questions about that work take it up with me sometime and you will see that one of the greatest needs we had in our hospital system is that very last item a new school home for nurses connection with the. Brooklyn will have a new tuberculosis and tronic disease you're going to Kings County Hospital. And you call me on General Hospital. And you laundry for all of our hospitals a large laboratory facility for Kings County Hospital and consideration is being given to a hospital in the Bedford Stuyvesant Merrick. Additional accommodations will be provided in the nude bar closes in chronic disease hospital now being completed on welfare are in which people of all borrowers are treated just drive up the East River get up towards the operand look off at the end of the island and you see that two thousand bed hospital almost complete cold and. Since nine hundred forty six we had already expanded all our public health services in these fields tool we will move on to still greater accomplishment we plan to construct fourteen new health centers and substations to improve our clinical and outpatient facilities to west to diagnostic clinics for adults to expand our services to prematurely born entrance and to broaden existing facilities wherever the necessary. Next item is transit Jumma transit. Two hundred million dollars has been provided for a vast program of transit improvements. Seven hundred sixty new subway cars were bought thirty two subway station platforms were to link them to accommodate longer trains the Fulton Street Extension in Brooklyn has been finished on the Hillside Avenue extension in Queens is well on its way to completion two thousand buses and trolley coaches were purchased power plants were constructed and modernized. The nineteen fifty capital budget provides almost fifty one million dollars to carry forward our program to give the city a better transit system. Despite everything that has been done and prove the service for our existing subway lines and this I want to call especially to your attention despite everything that has been done to improve the service and our existing subway lines. Real relief from rush hour crowding and a substantial increase in service can mop com cannot be brought above up on till a new trunk line and connections with existing traffic transit facilities have been built. That I am referring to as the Second Avenue trunk line. With all of the connections in the various bar off we just cannot give any relief from overcrowding and rush hour until that is dot. You will notice that we have asked for our permission from the legislature to go to the people. To permit us to borrow five hundred million dollars outside the debt limit and not have to build this additional set of transit facilities. This year it has it's presented before the legislature we hope to have that passed. If we do we presented again next year before another legislature. And we expect to have that passed and if we don't then it comes for a volved over a year from next November and if the people of the state voted as a constitutional amendment. That ladies and gentlemen we have a beginning and next January year from next January we should be ready to go to work on that part of the. We are our not waiting for that we are going to start something else within the next year I'll talk to you later about that. Sewage disposal. Now you gentlemen who are new all of you ladies and. It must be understood that desire sitting room. At obviating beaches became most important to the help of our people. Especially in summer warm weather. It's also true that the constant pouring of raw sure agenta WOD tired Waters has had a bad effect on our bathing beaches and if not corrected now someday might create the kind of a health hazard that. Would be deplorable. Without that health hazard. The beaches are deplorable. What are we going to do about it what have we been doing what will we do about it. The first stage of a program to purify the water surrounding our city by the construction of sewage treatment plants is well underway ladies and gentlemen. By nineteen fifty four there will have been completed six new plants in the Bronx Brooklyn Queens and Richmond the capacity of the Bowery surge treatment plant will have been crippled. And its coverage extended to the Long Island City area in Queens. The completion of this stage of the program will for ever free our bathing beaches of pollution we talked about this in the campaign we pointed out what we have done. We're talking about it now after the campaign and we're putting we're saying precisely now if we sell them. We have worked at it for four years and we're going to continue. And then after the A program is finished we go on with the next program the BE program. Cleansing of the remaining waters running the city will be accomplished in one nine hundred fifty eight when the second stage will be finished the first stage includes projects costing about one hundred five million dollars almost half of which has been placed under contract. The second stage will cost about one hundred thirty three million dollars a grand total cost of two hundred thirty eight million dollars. I wish you'd just make a note of that let's jump in because. This is one where we may have to with time to time all work together and that the name for this improvement is a need that comes. From. The requirements of health and our city the requirements to make it possible for our masses of people to go to the beach hot weather joy themselves. Without I mean danger to the health. When this is done as we said so many times before even in one thousand nine hundred fifty four the city will enjoy the cleanest beaches along the Atlantic seaboard. Half of it is finished and the other half going ahead. The total cost for those first will be on five million dollars that will include of course the interceptor stores that have been built here and there to make this program work by water supply and. The current water shortage the matter of great concern to the government and people of the city this is pension of construction of the East branch of the city's Delaware waters live project during the war years seriously impaired the city's ability to meet the tremendously increased demand for water and the shortage caused by the drought of last summer up and. Let isn't just going on those listening in and the past four years everything possible has been done to make up. For time lost during the war. Since nineteen forty six the city has provided one hundred and seventy two million dollars to complete the east Delaware project. It will be capable of supplying one hundred five million gallons daily by nine hundred fifty two. And three hundred and thirty five million more by nineteen hundred and fifty six. Steps have been taken and this is a recent action steps have been taken to construct a plant block keepsake to tap the Hudson River to the extent of one hundred million gallons daily. This plant will be completed in about seven months but it will only be used in periods of emergency application has been made to the State Water Park Control Commission for permission to take an additional three hundred and twenty three million gallons daily from the west branch of the Delaware River and. I can't emphasize too strongly. That the most important weapon in the alleviation of the present water shortage is a vigorous unrelenting conservation effort by the people of the city. The splendid cooperative efforts of our citizens on an entirely voluntary basis reduced water consumption by more than three hundred eleven million gallons per day that achievement must be continued and it must be exceeded. I wonder where down to the bottom of page eight you find under the heading traffic. Well on the relief of traffic congestion depends upon many factors. The development of expressways provision for parking facilities the going to troll of the traffic flow no elimination of unnecessary parking cruising taxis on loading from tail ends of trucks and unloading during rush hour. Nature of these aspects of the problem is being dealt with. We're going ahead with a new program traffic signal re timing this system will shorten the running time on the avenues and important cross streets. Public and private resorts says I'm being utilized to bring about more off street parking facilities I have asked the legislature to create a Parking Authority empowered to construct and operate public garages and parking fields on a self-sustaining basis. New links are being added to the city's two hundred and fifty mile express highway and parkway system which joins the central areas of the city to its periphery and its suburbs and provides rapid access between sections of the city. This brain. The new eighteen million dollar Brooklyn Battery Tunnel will be opened. This will take a great burden off the bridges and knit together sections of the arterial highway system. When the arterial projects are completed traffic will sweep in and not an interrupted flow all up and down both sides of Manhattan through the battery the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and across the near and outlying areas of Brooklyn and Queens via the Gunners can at Parkway and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway the Van Wyck Expressway and other great traffic arteries. Traffic will move speedily through upper Manhattan and the Bronx along the Harlem River Drive on the Cross Bronx Expressway the Major Deegan Expressway the Bronx River Parkway in the Bronx River Expressway and the New England thruway and all the Highlands. I'm unhappy and Bronx Expressway system will be connected with tunnels providing convenient and speedy access to the George Washington Bridge there is a no way a program of bridge and bridge approach improvements which will greatly increase the capacity of Brooklyn Bridge Williamsburg Bridge and the Queensboro Bridge. I want to the heading of finances. I like to call to your attention. That between January first forty two and one thousand nine hundred fifty the American price structure went through one of its most violent up surges in the history of the country. This was a cup made by a tremendous increases in the cost of government at all levels. The national debt rose from seventy three billion to two hundred sixty billion euro in this period. An increase of about two hundred sixty percent. And the cost of running the state government in New York increased over one hundred percent. In the light of these figures. It's remarkable of the increase in the current operating costs in New York City government was held down to an increase of less than sixty percent. Which is about the equivalent of the cost of living increase. Ladies and gentlemen I do wish to call this I tend to your attention specifically I hope that. These figures paint a kind of a picture that reflects upon. The efforts of this administration to run and fission job on city government and at the same time hold down the costs as best we can. This was done despite the fact that since January nine hundred forty six we had to add great numbers of personnel a good return for military service. And new appointees to provide the expanded services the city is now under. For example thousands of additional employees that have been added to the police help hospitals Sanitation Department to bring these departments to a level where they can function effectively. I'm meeting these increased costs then difficult because a formula placed in the state constitution and one thousand nine hundred eighty four rigidly limits the city to the amount of taxes it may levying answer real estate so it is going to increase and that taxes other than real estate taxes to meet the increased cost of sales tax was double on the business tax was crippled and a paramilitary will tax low on a hotel wrong type slower inactive. Construction costs like other costs have risen a nun president of the MT in the last five years this is of course a seriously interfered with the city's ability to carry on essential building programmes since the state cost CHURCHER by a formula dating back to eight hundred eighty four also limits the amount of debt the city meant car. Steps had to be taken to expand the city's debt incurring powers at my request the state legislature passed and the people approved an amendment to the constitution making available one hundred fifty million dollars for hospital construction I mentioned that before or earlier in the talk and another constitutional change was voted making sixty five million dollars of debt incurring power available for general construction perhaps. For the past three years state control of Frank Moore has headed a statewide Committee which has been inquiring into state city and school fiscal problems. I have been represented on the committee by Mr William Reid now a deputy man and then laid before read my recommendations and the facts and figures concerning New York City's financial problems. The committee has just submitted to the legislature report off making important recommendations for the benefit of the city. It has recommended that the legislature submit to the people a proposal to exempt five hundred million dollars available for the city to improve the rapid transit system by building a new trunk line in Manhattan with connections in Brooklyn Queens and the Bronx. It has recommended to the legislature that the city's ten percent debt limit be measured by the full valuation of the real estate rather than assessed valuations This will give the city approximately forty five million dollars or more debt incurring power it has recommended that the city be empowered to exempt so much of its school debt as can be supported by two million five hundred thousand dollars of the state aid money paid annually this would make another forty million dollars available for school construction. If the both of them are coming here adopted by the legislature at two successive session and approved by the people at the nine hundred fifty want to lection the city will be in a good position by January the first nine hundred fifty two to carry on many needed projects with particular emphasis upon school and transit construction. I want Page eleven religious just one there is that I didn't headed management survey. The continuous growth of the city expansion of municipal services have steadily multiplied and the complexity of the city government. The city continues to grow at a rapid pace and it seems to me to be prudent that we call or. Take stock of our position and determine just where we are headed. A short time ago I concluded that an exhaustive thorough going and end partial study on the entire fabric of city government including the Board of Education and the board of Transportation should now OWN be made. I had in mind the possibility of streamlining the city government promoting economy and reexamining the city's fiscal relations with the state. Such a study should be carried out by a non partisan non political body of experts in public administration. Carney White appointed a representative group of outstanding citizens to a committee of which comptroller Lazarus Joseph is the chairman. Of the committee has recommended the Board of Estimate has approved engaging a higher run government to act as executive director of the committee and coordinator of its activities. Not inclusion Listen Jeff and I have touched upon the highlights of our program for the next four years as it now appears to me on the out of the way new and other problems will come up and have to be met we will deal with them as they arise. To you the members of the council and to my colleagues on the Board of Estimate I offer my heartfelt thanks for the cooperation and support that has been given me without that help and the help of the loyal and able and diligent city officers and employees of every rant. The very substantial progress of the last four years could not have been me. In the past four years we have given the city as best we can your main and progressive government we will continue to do this with your aid and support we can look forward to even greater progress and sheepman in the next four years that ladies and gentlemen is the end of my remarks the report begins on page twelve and it's in grown up in detail. Even though it's document of approximately eighty eight pages in nine be exact. And. It contains statistics for your information that are basically importance this has not been gotten up with a view to selling anybody anything the purpose behind this was to prepare the actual state of our city as far as you should know in the public should know the matter of fact as far as it is without handing anything rosy a picture without changing a single figure a small easy. Unless you're always on top of it and then with good men good health it's not easy to be able to provide a document that is basically correct is this. That it is basically correct. In proof of that I submit. That we've done it in writing we've encountered documents for four years that were available to. A large number of people who had a right to have replaced this administration very recent past and they never once pointed out to a doctor was single statistical figure and this these documents and said they were not true. They were very wise and saying that they were not doing that because we could prove that they're true it's because they're authentic they're reduced to writing their permanent documents and now I have the honor to present them to you members of the city council for your guidance in the great work that confronts you in the next four years. On which I pray that God will give his blessings to you. In your official deliberations and in your personal lives thank you very much and I heard the mayor of the city of New York out of a William old wire and his formal address to the city council on the hopes and aspirations of the city of New York for the next four years and his address particularly to the new members of the council since the recent election that's all from the council chamber and City Hall this is the municipal Broadcasting System.