N.Y. Faces Financial Crisis, Dinkins Warns
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NEW YORK — New York’s Central Park Zoo will close, thousands of workers will be fired and essential services will be slashed unless legislators and labor leaders come to the city’s aid, Mayor David N. Dinkins said Saturday.
“There is no adjective sufficient to describe the consequences New Yorkers will have to bear if New York is forced to go it alone,” Dinkins said after meeting with Gov. Mario M. Cuomo.
The mayor said if the city does not get help soon it will be forced to slash essential services by some $1.5 billion--turning off 25% of the crime-plagued city’s street lights--and lay off some 29,000 full- and part-time workers starting July 1.
Cuomo, who pledged to help, left his aides to spend the rest of the day studying the city’s plight with Dinkins, City Council members, state legislators and labor leaders.
The city faces a budget gap of some $465 million in the current fiscal year that ends June 30 and a gap of some $3.5 billion in the new fiscal year.
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