Mayor John Lindsays Time in the Office - Research Paper Example

? of the Mayor John Lindsay’s Time in the office Introduction: John Vliet Lindsay, an American politician became the mayor of New York City in 1966. He was the 103rd Mayor of the New York City. Before this he was a congressman in U.S House of Representative and served there for about 7 years starting from 1959 to 1965. But the real fame he earned was from the Mayor ship of the New York City. He remained Mayor for a term of eight years from 1966 to 1973 and his era remained in shackles all the time he remained in office. In 1965 he was elected as the Mayor of the New York City under the banner of Liberal party of New York. He was competing with two other political rivals also struggling for the office of Mayor. He defeated A.D. Beame, the then comptroller and W.F. Buckley, Jr who were contesting under the banner of Conservative party. When John Vliet Lindsay got the office, the condition of the city was not good as far as the commodities of life were concerned. The city was dumped in serious fiscal and economic upheavals that it was very difficult for any one holding the office of the Mayor to help the City out of this abyss. The outgoing Mayor, Mr. R.F.Wagner, Jr had left a deteriorated economy where the jobs, especially for the uneducated class were disappearing and the migration from the city was at peak. The people were in a very tough condition and the administration has nothing to heal up the problems of the people. The people were thus in coercion and were helpless and have no other option then to leave the city and settle somewhere else. The middle class families were moving to suburbs to live with contentment. The industrial sector was going down, the public sector was in skirmishes and the workers of the public sector had won the right to unionize. Keeping in mind all these aggravated problems it was very tough for John Vliet Lindsay to hold office and control. But somehow John Vliet Lindsay managed to keep the office for eight years. Mayor Lindsay’s time in office: According to Risen (2009), the time spent by the Mayor Lindsay in the office was a very poor time in the history of the New York City. The city was engulfed with several problems and the Mayor had no solution for the problems of the habitants of the city. The city was hit by crisis over crisis and this was not only due to the predecessors’ policies but the ill policies of Lindsay gave impetus to these crises which shook the walls of the city. Some of the issues relating to problematic concerns of the city are as under. Labor Issue: When Lindsay took the charge on his very first day, the transport workers staged a protest and shut down the whole city including the subways and bus services. They set an ultimatum of 9 days to meet their demands but the poor policies of the Mayor neglected the ultimatum and did not negotiate with the transport workers. The refusal of the Mayor resulted in three more days of strike and lasted for 12 days. Even then when the negotiations went successful, the leader of the transport workers Mike Quill in a press conference made mockery of the Mayor by saying that negotiating with the Mayor is not a hard task. After such an outrageous protest by the transport workers, Lindsay turned a deaf ear to such protests and in a press conference remarked that New York City is a fun city where nothing happens badly. This point of view was quoted by many newspapers in sarcastic and sardonic points. The country crept on moving in to the abyssal plash and the corporate headquarters started moving out of the city. Still the resonance of the debacle of the corporate sector was in sounds that the Mayor blasted the scene of New York City with another development (Pileggi, 1969). City’s School System Decentralization: According to Pileggi (1969), in the year 1968, the Mayor allowed the decentralization of the city’s school system granting three local school boards under the complete control over other schools. This was a thing of concern for the teachers as now they will have to keep in touch all the 33 boards in the city rather than a single body in the city. The United Federation of Teachers seeing their future bleak started staging protests in this regard. Their protests stretched over to seven months starting from May to November. The protest ultimately took the shape of riots and the protests became pictogram of the condition as well as the administration of the City showing the plight of unrest in the city. The protests became further intensified when the racial clashes entered in the protests. Jewish teachers and black teachers were on clashes with each other and the media at that time wrote that the Mayor made the bad situation worse due to his ill-practicing policies. The teachers were demanding for increase in the salaries and also they were demanding an abrupt increase in the salary as well as other incentives. Sanitation Strike: The same year saw another strike in the city. The nine day sanitation strike disturbed the quality life of the city up to greatest level. Heaps and mounds of garbage could be seen on the streets of New York City. The heaps were set on fire which made puffing air in the city difficult and whenever winds blew the heaps of garbage spread here and there in the streets making the streets stinky and filthy. The administration did nothing in this response and the heaps of garbage scattered all over the city diminished the beauty of the city as well as created problems for the citizens of the city. Massive strike: In 1971, the city witnessed another powerful strike by the workers. About 8000 workers left the work and started protesting on roads and streets about the policies of the Mayor of the city. They stopped the work for two days and in the strike the workers from all walks of life participated. This hampered the running the affairs of the city and the city seemed shut in those two days. The drawbridge workers also halted their work and as a consequence many vehicles could not cross the bridge and hundreds of gallons of oil. Tax Policy: According to Sam (2010), the mayor undertook a new tax policy for the city in 1966. The settlement was made with the transit strikers about the new tax policy and similarly the increased welfare cost was the idea behind the new tax policy. Thus the Mayor Lindsay lobbying with the New York State legislature issued a new municipal tax and commuter tax for those people who travelled from outside to work in the city and sis not live in the city. Snowstorm: In 1969 the New York City witnessed a heavy snowstorm which hit the city with 15 inches snow. This was one of the worst kinds of storms in the city which took the lives of many people and left many people injured. But the thing for the Mayor Lindsay was that he was being criticized by the media and newspapers that the Mayor was supporting a single part of the storm hit area at the expense of the areas of the Bronx and others. There were also instances collected that bribery is at its peak in the city for helping the needy in the time of despair of the public. The Mayor was the issue of concern even in the times of storm stricken situations. Assessment: The Mayor Lindsay left the office in 1973 and after his resignation he had another chance to contest for the Mayor of the city but he himself declined the offer for a third term. A report issued in 1972 by Gallup Poll stated that about 60% of the people thought that the performance of the Lindsay’s office is poor, only 9% rated the performance good and to astonishment there was not even a single percent who claimed that the performance has been going excellent. The critics were of the view that the mistakes made by the Mayor during his tenure were so huge that they played the part of declining the fiscal and economic set up of the city. All the problems erupting in the era of Lindsay played its role in economic meltdown of the city. Lindsay was believed to be sympathetic to the workers and laborers. He had allowed one in seven New Yorkers to work in the city which was the highest ratio ever permitted and for the welfare of the workers and laborers the city borrowed operating expenses. To get the support of the laborers and workers Lindsay offered Unions increase in salaries. For example the transit workers got an increase of 18% in their salary along with extra week vacations and full paid pensions. Similarly the District Council 37 got raise in salary and also retirement raise by 20 years. The teachers received an increase of more than 35% in their salaries. All these policies contributed to the upcoming administration of Beame in terms of economic and fiscal crisis. All the efforts made by Lindsay to get the support of the workers and laborers meant a burden on the successive administration of the city. The time Lindsay spent in the office as a Mayor of the New York City was full of clashes and unprecedented demands of the laborers and workers. Whenever they needed any increase or any incentive from the administration they jumped out in the streets and to make them happy the administration under the orders of the Mayor pleased them by fulfilling their demands. All such steps under the leadership of Lindsay traumatized the city and led to financial crisis under the successive Mayor, Mr. Abraham Beame. Works Cited Mahler, J., 2007, The Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, Publisher: Picador; 2nd Edition, ISBN-13: 978-0312427023 Sam Roberts, 2010, America's Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York, Columbia University Press, ISBN: 978-0231152617 Pileggi, Nicholas, 1969,"The More the Mario", New York Magazine Risen, Clay 2009, "April 4: U and Fourteenth". A nation on fire: America in the wake of the King assassination. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley& Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-17710-5 Read More