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Lauren ChecoMayor Rudy Giuliani 1999 State of the City AddressHaving grown up in New York during the Rudy Giuliani two mayoral terms, Giuliani almost seems like a distant family member. This feeling became even more prominent after the September 11th attacks. However, the speech I am examining took place over two years prior. In Giuliani’s 1999 State of the City address, there was much to celebrate. The speech took place in the City Council Chambers. The title of the address is “An Agenda to Prepare for the Next Century.” I think Giuliani is trying to show New Yorkers that we are ready and prepared for the millennium. Crime rates were the lowest in years and there was great economic growth for the city. It was a very positive speech overall as most State of the City addresses tend to be. I believe that Giuliani was also specially being positive to offset the anxiety most New Yorkers were feeling about the year 2000. I found the tone of Giuliani’s speech to be very casual overall. I have not been able to find audio or a recording of the speech, but there are times in his speech where I wondered if he had the speech completely written out or if he just had bullet points. The speech was not organized. Due to the way the speech is given and lack of any other evidence, there wasn’t a speech writer credited to this particular speech. After thanking his commissioners and other elected officials in New York in helping New York’s positive progress into the millennium. Giuliani’s first topic was crime. During Giuliani’s time as mayor he was famous for being tough on crime and bringing the crime rates down. Giuliani was on his second Police Commissioners at this point. Current Police Commissioner William Bratton was Rudy Giuliani’s first Police Commissioner in the early 90s. He was the first to introduce the “Broken Window’s” theory. “Broken Windows” is “a strategy based on the idea, proposed in 1982 by the sociologists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, that cracking down on ‘quality of life’ crimes and disorderly behavior—turnstile-jumping, squeegee men, public intoxication, aggressive panhandling—makes citizens feel safer and discourages more serious crime.” Although he had moved on to this second Police Commissioner at the time of this speech, Bratton’s influence can still be seen. He eventually goes on to other topics but eventually circles back to the topic of crime. He mentions other cities such as Chicago and Milwaukee as places both that the city can learn from and who want to learn from the city. Giuliani also later mentions the war on drugs and how they have also been reduced and ways he will continue to reduce drug crimes and how that will in turn help children born into horrible situations. He goes into other topics such as the economy of the city, and how many jobs and tourism had grown from 1998 to 1999. All of the stats showed to be the biggest jumps in many years. Another huge issue was education. He mentioned multiple achievements such as Project Read, adding seats in classrooms, and reinstituting arts eduction in New York City schools. He also briefly goes into technology in education, but Giuliani does not emphasize technology as much as the other accomplishments made in education. His biggest announcement in education would also have to be his address on the CUNY system. In 1970, the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York (CUNY) began an Open Admission policy. This meant that any New York City high school graduate can attend a senior CUNY college which was tuition free at the time. In 1999, the mayoral Task Force investigating the CUNY system found many faults in the Open Admissions policy. Their findings were displayed in the report, “CUNY: An Institution Adrift.” The Task Force concluded that Open Admissions did not help students succeed in college. The beginning of this task force was being formed in this speech. His mention of standardized tests is a step in stopping Open Policy in the CUNY system. The rest of Giuliani’s speech has many small comments about business, stocks and physical changes in the city. There was a large section in which he discusses transcription in the city including train stations, the airports, and even Port Authority. Although the majority of the speech is positive, he is very critical of the Port Authority. He also throws in small details such as a minor baseball league returning to New York City. Rudy Giuliani was an avid New York baseball fan, so it is not surprising that a significant portion of the speech was dedicated to the Yankees and the Mets. Giuliani ended his speech thanking our local heroes, the fire and police department. In 1999, Rudy Giuliani was in the middle of his second term as the Republican Mayor of New York City. In 1997, Giuliani won his second term as was the first Republican to do so since 1941. He did have a lot to prove in a city that was much more liberal than he was. The fact that he was able to give a positive State of the City address was great for his political career. In 1998, Mayor Giuliani did receive “The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award for his outstanding contributions to the City of New York.” This shows that Giuliani was respected in the world of New York Politics. I also believe that Giuliani mentions crime going down and the role of the NYPD in our lives because while Mayor Giuliani was mayor there was a shooting in Empire State Building in 1997. As stated earlier, I find this speech to be very casual. A reason that may be is because Giuliani has been around the New York political scene for so long that New Yorkers know who is and what he is about. He was never really known for being an eloquent speaker. The phrases used such as “very, very” and his usage of lastly for finally a few times either tells me that he was not prepped before the speech or there were sections of the speech that he repeated himself in certain ways. Toward the end of his speech, he says, “ One last thing” and “I’d like to end” on two separate paragraphs which are also not the last paragraph. There are also points where he paused for a significant enough time that ellipsis were used and he sometimes seems to interrupt himself, such as when he discusses Catholic versus Protestant work ethic. Although this speech is more casual than other State of City speech, I still feel like this is a speech about a triumph of leadership by Giuliani and the success of the City of New York.There was definitely sections that made some people uncomfortable during his speech. Mainly his address on transportation. The repercussions for the Mayor was very light. In the New York Times, it seems as though the author agrees with the Mayor and his issue with the Port Authority. “Such tension was immediately apparent yesterday when Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has often complained that the Port Authority favors New Jersey over New York in areas like its subsidies of the New Jersey Path system and improvements to Newark International Airport.” He also mentions in his speech about the state of disrepair LaGuardia Airport and Kennedy Airport are in. Overall beside maybe his personal life and his bluntness, I do not believe journalists had many complaints with Giuliani. While running in his second term, he was endorsed by the all the local papers, so it makes sense that there would not be any major backlash or spin in his State of the City Address. Passages-“That brings me to one other subject about education, which is CUNY. The performance at CUNY has really not materially improved. We're still looking at a graduation rate after two years of 1.3 percent in the community colleges, an on-time graduation rate of less than 8 percent in the four-year colleges. I mean this is really sad.” The CUNY passage is probably the most prominent passage that needs explanation. As stated earlier, when this speech was made CUNY had an Open Admission Policy, which was going to change by the end of 1999. “I see Rabbi Hecht here and, just looking at him and thinking about Crown Heights - in Crown Heights in five years there's been a reduction of murder of 89 percent.” This was the beginning of Brooklyn’s change from crime capital of New York to a hipster haven. Crown Heights was an area of great crime and saw a great reduction in 1999. Now it has changed even further as most of Brooklyn has in 2016.It's the Broken Windows theory, which has assisted greatly in making New York City the safest large City in the country. It's the CompStat program that won an award from the Kennedy School of Government. It's strategies like the gun strategy that we put in effect five years ago. As I mentioned earlier, Commissioner Bratton was the first to bring this theory to New York. This statement shows that Mayor Giuliani still very much believed in the theory.We have a whole program and strategy to taking guns out of the City of New York. We'll work with the Governor to do away with parole for people who are convicted of crimes in New York, expanding Jenna's Law beyond violent crime, because right now drug dealers are excluded from having no parole. “The Sentencing Reform Act of 1998 - also known as Jenna's Law - was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor George Pataki in August 1998.” As a result of these laws, all violent felony offenders sentenced to state prison serve a shorter sentence before being released. There is no discretionary release for these individuals.New York City is committed - and you only accomplish this through negotiation - to keeping the Yankees and building a new stadium for them… and to keeping the Mets and building a new stadium for them. This was about the discussion to create the new Yankee Stadium and Citifield. There was some talk of the teams looking at other locations outside of New York, but the City was committed to keeping them.People-Robert Wagner, Jr.- served three terms as the mayor of New York City from 1954 through 1965Frank Macchiarole- The former New York City schools chancellor under Mayor Ed KochEd Koch- Held three terms as mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989Phil Rizzuto- He spent his entire 13-year baseball career with the New York YankeesPlacesChicago- Giuliani looked at the Chicago school system while they were looking at our crime rates.Milwaukee- Parental Choice Program. Giuliani was looking at this system as well for the New York City educational systemI believe that these two quotes convey the casualness and tone of the speech. Also the quotes show the positivity of the speech.“I guess the best way to describe the State of the City of New York as we begin 1999 is that it's in very, very good shape. It's doing very well. It's doing about as well as it's done in recent memory or anyone's memory.”“We use every excuse that we can to take guns out of the City. Let me give you a statistic. Statistics are boring, but enormously important to restoring accountability.”Key terms: The next MillenniumStrong TeamBroken Glass TheoryFurther reading:Leadership by Rudolph W. GiulianiThe Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life by Fred Siegel“Person of the Year 2001” by Eric Pooley in Time Magazine

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