Pol’s plea for Yonkers violence $ under fire (Part 2)
Yonkers Councilman John Murtagh’s (R-5th District) press release criticizing Assemblyman Mike Spano’s (D-Yonkers) letter to assembly speaker Sheldon Silver did not upload in a previous posting. Here it isMURTAGH CRITICIZES SPANO
FOR FEAR MONGERING AND EMPTY GESTURES
Yonkers City Councilman John Murtagh (R-5) today criticized as “dangerous grandstanding” a letter (copy attached) sent by Assemblyman Michael Spano to Assembly Majority Leader Sheldon Silver which describes Yonkers as facing a “dramatic increase in violent crime”, “shootings”, “rape” and “robbery”. The letter, dated October 7, seeks $200,000-$300,000 in unspecified state funding in order to “control the violence that has been plaguing [Yonkers]”.
“Yonkers, like every large city, is facing significant budgetary issues and is always concerned for its citizen’s safety”, Murtagh stated, “but that calls for serious people to make a real effort to address complicated issues. Assemblyman Spano’s letter is anything but a serious attempt to address the issues confronting Yonkers. In the first place, the notion that crime in Southwest Yonkers can be solved for $200,000 is laughable. If that were the solution I am confident that the Amicone Administration and the City Council could find $200,000 fairly easily somewhere in the City’s 900 million dollar budget. Worse still, Assemblyman Spano’s request for a mere $200,000 undermines the City’s real efforts in Albany to address long standing inequities in the way the State funds Yonkers’ budget.
If the Assemblyman were serious about addressing Yonkers’ budget and crime control issues, he would finally force the majority in Albany to solve these inequities and he would lead the fight for real relief for local government budgets by championing pension reform, mandate relief and other genuine fiscal reforms”.
Token gestures and fear mongering are not what the citizens of Yonkers need or want. Solving Yonkers budget shortfall and addressing crime in southwest Yonkers will take a concerted effort on multiple fronts and over many years. These are issues that the City Council and the Mayor have been hard at work on for a long time. If Assemblyman Spano wants to be a part of finding real solutions I know my colleagues and I would welcome him, but what is needed are real and creative solutions not easy gestures.
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No other person in gov’t grandstands like john murtagh, he is all hot air with no action, murtagh has sat idle on the city council for the last 7 years as SPENDING AND TAXES have skyrocketed. Thank god for term limits.
Mike Spano is trying to secure funds to help offset some of the crime in Yonkers. What is wrong with that? Murtagh has to be kidding with this one, talk about grandstanding. Mike Spano should be commended for trying to get some money for Yonkers in these hard economic times. Murtagh is a fool for putting a press release out on this issue.
Scorecard – Spano – 1
Mutagh – 0
I didn’t see any press whatsoever on Mike Spano’s letter so if he didn’t send it out to the press then how is it “grandstanding”?
I guess the Councilman doesn’t care about crime in SW Yonkers as long as it doesn’t happen on the east-side (where he lives and represents)—remember back in 2008 when he said “It proves that it doesn’t belong in a middle-class neighborhood,” referring to a 2008 shooting in a public housing site in Colonial Heights. This guy is a clown.
Tell Spano to whisper into Sheldon’s good ear and explain to him that the State is rapidly going bankrupt and that tens of thousands of patronage jobs and runaway unions have to be dealt with and dealt with pronto. Soon, if his dreams come true, he’ll be the mayor of Yonkers, and like every good Democrat, he’ll drive THAT city into the fiscal gutter even further than it already has been driven. Additionally, so far as Colonial Heights, Lawrence Park West, and the rest of northeast Yonkers goes, without them and the civility and hefty taxes they contribute statewide and locally to fund the government and the schools, the city would be completely bereft of both funding and beauty.