GIULIANI says goodbye to NYC

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http://www.boston.com/news/daily/27/giuliani.htm

Giuliani delivers farewell address at Episcopal chapel near WTC

By Timothy Williams, Associated Press, 12/27/01

NEW YORK -- Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, standing on an altar one block east of ground zero, said goodbye Thursday to the city where he battled crime, his critics and the Sept. 11 crisis during eight years in City Hall.

"Although I have to leave you as mayor soon, I resume the much more honorable title of citizen of New York, and citizen of the United States," Giuliani said in his address.

Giuliani, 57, leaves on the highest note of his administration: his acclaimed handling of the city following the terrorist attacks that collapsed the World Trade Center and killed more than 2,900 people.

Giuliani, near the end of his 55-minute address, said he believed the site of the collapsed towers should be turned into a "soaring, beautiful memorial" to the victims of the attack.

"We shouldn't think of this site as a site for economic development," he said.

A memorial, the mayor said, should drive plans for the 16-acre lower Manhattan location. "If we do that right, then economic development will happen," he said.

"This place has to be sanctified. It has to become a place, when anybody comes, that they immediately feel the power, strength and emotion of what it means to become an American. ... This is too important a place."

The mayor explained that when he took office, he was determined to take a different approach than his predecessors -- even though he knew it would cause "hostility and anger" among his critics.

"When I became mayor of New York City in 1993, it seemed to me that I had to do something different than other mayors," Giuliani said. "It seemed I had to totally change the direction and course of New York City."

In some ways, he did. During his time in office, Giuliani helped drastically slash the city's murder and crime rates, renovated Times Square and made New York a tourist attraction once again.

But his relationship with the city's minority communities was strained, particularly after the fatal police shooting of Amadou Diallo and a brutal attack by police on Abner Louima. In both cases, the victims were black.

Giuliani, just four days away from leaving office, praised his administration -- and by extension, himself -- for its handling of the war on crime, the homeless and the city budget.

But he also lobbed some shots at his opponents -- at a federal judge who ruled that the homless can sleep on a church sidewalk, The New York Times editorial board, and his predecessors at City Hall.

Giuliani, comfortable in front of a friendly crowd, took a hand-held microphone and walked out from behind the podium as he spoke. He joked with the audience and Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik in between reminiscing about his career in office.

He spoke at St. Paul's Chapel in lower Manhattan, a pre-Revolutionary War Episcopal church one block east of the ruins of the trade center. Among its past parishioners were George Washington and former New York Gov. DeWitt Clinton.

The mayor described the church as "hallowed ground," noting that Washington prayed there following his inauguration in 1789. He also pointed out that the church emerged unscathed from the Sept. 11 attacks, without even a single window broken.

Giuliani, a Republican, was barred by term limits law from seeking a third consecutive term. His last day in City Hall will be Dec. 31, with the man he endorsed -- billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg -- taking over on New Year's Day.

Giuliani was expected to swear his fellow Republican into office at a brief ceremony around midnight in Times Square.

-- Anonymous, December 27, 2001


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