Letters To the Editor
Questions for the Mayor

To the Editor:

(The following open letter to Mayor Bloomberg is printed here at the request of its author.)

Dear Mr. Mayor:

I have three questions for you.

1) How can you order that New York City municipal workplaces be smoke-free and spend over $100 million of your own (considerable) assets to fund health research on second-hand smoke, but make statements that raise doubt as to the exposure to the toxic cloud of dust and smoke, known to have contained numerous harmful substances, and its detrimental effect on the survivors/rescue/recovery workers of the World Trade Center?

2) With a $5.5 billion surplus in the city budget, how can it be possible that a new Police Officer or Firefighter starts at $25,100, the lowest of any major U.S. city by far? Where in metro New York's real-estate market are these rookies going to find affordable housing on $345-a-week take-home?

3) In the wake of the '93 bombing of the World Trade Center, an FDNY in-house study stressed the need for its own helicopter. In the eight years between this first attack and the second one on Sept. 11, 2001, no helicopter was provided. Following the 9/11 tragedy, a private firm was hired to examine, among other things, how the FDNY lost 343 members compared to the 23 lives the NYPD lost that day. The McKinsey Report reached the same conclusion as the FDNY nine years earlier: FDNY must have its own air-support capability. Relying on the Police Department to provide one of theirs has proven to be a nonfunctional policy.

The numbers on that terrible day show the difference: the cops in their P.D. chopper were able to see the danger looming from their lofty vantage point and quickly radio this vital warning to other cops several crucial minutes earlier than any F.D. radio message went out to evacuate. Our FDNY leaders just didn't have the big picture available early enough from their ground-level vantage point, and the F.D.'s grunts were left as we always are: pounding the dirt and taking a beating.

Since then, the P.D. has added four new choppers to its small air force, which leaves them with about 14 and the F.D. with 0.

God help us.

RICHARD PATTERSON, Captain, FDNY