Foreclosure Triggered Problems Dominate Mood of Mayor’s Conference

June 18th, 2009

Foreclosure triggered problems dominated the mood of the national Mayor’s conference in Providence recently in June 2009. The city leaders repeatedly focused on their struggle with mounting foreclosures, spiking unemployment and alarming decrease in revenue collections.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles said, “Every one of us are on the front lines of an historic and unprecedented economic crisis facing our cities, at least in our own lifetimes.” He noted that unemployment in Los Angeles had jumped from 8% in October 2008 to 12.5% in March 2009.

The 77th annual conference of Mayors started on Friday 5th June and was scheduled to continue till Monday. This is the first such meet since the recession kicked off. The focus is on the economic stimulus packages being offered by Washington. Mayors from 200 cities, including Miami, Boston, Philadelphia and Seattle participated in the conference.

The gathering was pale without the presence of Vice President Joe Biden and other top officials of the administration of Obama. Biden tactfully avoided the conference because he did not want to commit himself to an ongoing dispute between Mayor David Cicilline and the fire fighting union of Providence City. This made Cicilline comment that he was “disappointed by the decision of the Obama administration not to attend this meeting, when this nation and its cities are facing such extraordinarily serious economic challenges.”

Robert Gibbs, spokesperson of White House had previously announced that Washington was not taking any stand on this dispute and would remain aloof. Gibbs said, “We understand that this will prevent numerous administration officials from having a very useful and important dialogue with America’s mayors at this meeting, and we will redouble our efforts to continue the dialogue in other ways.”

Data collected and analyzed from over 90 cities indicated that there had been fewer applications for building permits, more snips in state assistance to the municipalities, lowering of property values and fall in income coming from investments.

The Mayor of Miami, Manny Diaz said that he and many others like him in similar position were being forced to lay off employees, cut down salaries and take akin unpalatable measures. He said, “We have to balance our budgets and we cannot print money every week.”

Firefighters in good numbers set up pickets in front of the conference venue – Providence Convention Center. They held up slogans and wore T-shirts reading “Cicilline (equals) DemoRat” and “Fire Cicilline.”