MESSAGE. Gentlemen of the Common Council: The City Charter requires an Annual Message from the Mayor and Reports from the City Departments. The intention of the requirement is to furnish information to our constituents, as well as to afford material for the practical co-operation of city officials. Copies of these Annual Reports are hereto annexed. They end as nearly to the close of the municipal year (1870-71, April) as it is possible to conform their narrative or statistics to a period which best agrees with the system of work established by each Department for its own convenience. They are thorough in information, and do not need elucidation or explanation. Two hundred and ninety-one Before proceeding to general comments, a few statistics should be premised. New York island lias an area of twenty-two square miles and twenty-nine miles of water front, about three fourths of which stretches along the Hudson and East rivers and the remaining one fourth upon the Harlem river and Spuyten Duyvil creek. The streets, roads, and avenues measure four hundred and sixty miles. miles of these are paved; one hundred and sixty-nine miles are unpaved. Nineteen thousand gas-lights are burned every night at the public expense to light this area, water front, and extent of streets. Beneath the surface of the city there are three hundred and forty miles of Croton water pipes and two hundred and seventy five miles of sewers. If we accept the last Federal census, the number of our constituents is nine hundred and forty-two thousand two hundred and fifty-two. thousand horse railway cars, two hundred and sixty-seven om1 about twelve thousand licensed vehicles, and quite as many more ( vehicles continually traverse the thoroughfares, and subject them to increasing wear. It is claimed that forty thousand horses are constantly stabled or used within the city limits. On the 26th day of May last, relieving officers of the ordinance squad, stationed on Broadway, opposite the City Hall, were instructed to report the number of vehicles that from seven o'clock A.M. until seven o'clock P.M. passed and repassed; and they reported 16,246, exclusive of omnibuses. These specimen statistics imply how great a city we have to care for, keep in repair, sustain by taxation, protect by policemen, firemen, or sanitary regulations, and make provision for in respect to its more important future. During the ten months preceding May 1, 1871, two hundred and eighty-four million dollars' worth of foreign merchandise, exclusive of specie, was imported into this city. During the same period, New York City paid the Government one hundred and twenty millions of dollars for duties on imports, and the value of exports, exclusive of specie, was two hundred and fifty-one millions. Certain peculiarities of the city and its people may be serviceably recalled. New York is the cosmopolitan city of the globe. People of all nationalities, many jealousies, and diverse creeds, inhabit it. Every good and bad habit of human nature is illustrated within its limits. Every development of misfortune, poverty, vice, and crime is here to be found. To the evil manifestations as well as the excellent ones of our city life every clime contributes. It is a misfortune to New York population that, contributed to, as it is, by all parts of the world, local pride develops within our city under increasing difficulty. Every other city seems to have its pulpit and its citizens more prone from motives of local loyalty, if not to apologize for, or screen, at least to act kindly towards, the defects and faults of fellow-citizens and rulers. Topographically our city is peculiar, because it is long and narrow and lacks circumference of immediate rural suburbs. The suburbs are really tributary cities divided from New York by wide rivers. Nearly sixty per cent. of the daily business inhabitants of New York own or rent their residences in the adjoining country, and while their wives and chil dren are practically under the government of other cities and counties and even States, the business interests and security of person and property of the family men are practically under, the government of New York city, and they are more impressed to blame where they have no domestic interests. Thus, while the city possesses, as will be inferred from many of the foregoing references, great advantages for development of commerce and wealth, other references imply how difficult it is to frame, and how vexatious it is for rulers to try and develop, a perfect or universally acceptable municipal government. After a quarter-century of legislative experiments upon the government of this city-all of which have been from time to time complained about and referred to in annual messages of mayors of both parties-the existing municipal system went into operation one year ago. We simply returned then to the original form of our city government. Its system is almost identical with that which prevails in four fifths of the cities in the Union. But we had been so long accustomed to something else that this return has been actually received in some quarters as an innovation. It has become in some partisau directions common cant to call the government of New York a despotism. What is this system? The Commonalty elect the Mayor. Executive duties are distributed and classified among many departments. The Mayor appoints the heads of departments. These heads appoint their subordinates. The Common Council or legislative department is filled by election. The oldest legal tribunal -the Court of Common Pleas-is a Court of Impeachment, before which the Common Council may prefer charges against the Mayor, or the Mayor in his turn prepare charges against the city departments. How these departments operate, and what subjects they appropriately take charge of, will be discovered in the reports. Some of these departments are controlled by Boards and Commissioners, and comment continues to be made upon the alleged inconsistency of maintaining Boards and Commissions after, as is averred, the advocates for independent City government denounced them. But no one ever did denounce Boards and Commissions per se. They have always existed within our local government. The opposition was only to the centralized mode of appointing at Albany Boards and Commissions of local control, and without any voice whatever from local officers or constituency in the appointment. |