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NY mayor lambastes Ground Zero delays
2008-09-10
NEW YORK (AFP) - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday lambasted delays in rebuilding at the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center. "Progress on the redevelopment of the World Trade Center has been frustratingly slow, owing in large part to a multilayered governance structure that has undermined accountability from the get-go," Bloomberg wrote in the Wall Street Journal. This week, seven years after the attacks on Manhattan, the first steel beams were put into place for the planned Freedom Tower and memorial that will stand on Ground Zero. Bloomberg said city and state authorities, and the public authority that owns the site, must accelerate the work. "Most important, the memorial must be completed by the 10th anniversary. No more excuses, no more delays." He called for dismantlement of the agency currently in charge of planning development, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and said New York City should take over. New York State Governor David Paterson echoed the complaints, saying, "the mayor and I share a sense of disappointment and frustration at the unacceptable pace of the Ground Zero rebuilding." The work "has never had a realistic timeline or budget -- an absolute necessity for undertaking construction of this scale," he said in a statement.
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