USA: NEW YORK: RUDOLPH GIULIANI SWORN IN AS MAYOR FOR 2ND TERM

(1 Jan 1998) English/Nat

New York City woke up from it's New Year's hangover to another set of celebrations Thursday -- the inauguration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's second term in office.

Mayor Giuliani promised the residents of the `Big Apple' to continue keeping a tight control on the city's purse strings by moving people off welfare programmes and into work.

Rudolph Giuliani proudly stepped out of the shadows to take up the reins of power once again.

At the end of Thursday's swearing in ceremony, Giuliani was once again in control of the country's largest city.

In a speech short on specifics, Giuliani outlined the long-term aims of his second term in office.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"It will be part of our policy to continue to reduce taxes as we reduce the deficit and as we look for areas in which we can enhance the programmes of the City of New York. We will also advance key initiatives, like the Broadway initiative, designed to try to create more theatres and modernise them so that Broadway can expand. We will support the development of the Hudson River Park, the New York Coliseum sight, the freight rail tunnel and the Hub Port, which are long needed in the City of New York. And we will commit ourselves to keeping major city institutions like the Stock Exchange, right there where it belongs, in the financial capital of the world."
SUPER CAPTION: Rudolph Giuliani, New York City Mayor

Years of financial mismanagement left the city toying with bankruptcy only a few years ago.

Giuliani remains determined to ensure New York doesn't slip into bad habits again.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"We have moved 340-thousand people off welfare, many of them towards lives of self-sufficiency. But now we need to do things to make that permanent so we don't slip back to the dependency where we were before. What we will do first of all, is to chance welfare offices. In a few months, we will no longer have welfare offices in New York City. When someone comes in for help, the sign on the door will not say `Welfare', but `Job Centre."
SUPER CAPTION: Rudolph Giuliani, New York City Mayor

New Year's Day marked another milestone in New York's history.

100 years have now passed since the city's five distinct geographic and political entities consolidated into the huge metropolis that quickly overtook London as the biggest city in the world.

Yet again the motive was financial

In 1898, Brooklyn voted to become a borough of the `Big Apple because it could no longer pay its debts and needed the support of the moneyed princes over the East River in Manhattan.

Brooklynites voted for the consolidation by a margin of less than one percent and -- although it received wide approval elsewhere -- civic leaders lamented it as the `Great Mistake'.

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