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CORTLANDT, N.Y. Planners of the Buchanan-Cortlandt-Croton 9/11 Memorial are asking the three municipalities to pay for the bulk of the memorial after they say fundraising has been slow and inconsistent.
At a meeting of the Cortlandt Town Board Monday evening, project coordinator Janet Mainiero said fundraising has been, basically knocking on peoples doors, but that the donations were just not there.
Mainiero said the foundation has about $15,000 it can contribute toward the project, and that the remaining $5,000 in the foundations savings will have to go toward expenses related to running the nonprofit.
Organizers managed to reduce the cost of the project by half, to about $100,000, after finding they were only able to raise about $20,000 through nearly a dozen different fundraisers.
The project was originally slated to cost about $200,000, be mounted at the far end of Croton Landing, and feature a bronze statue of a woman stretching to touch the 1-ton piece of steel from the World Trade Center. The steel would be mounted on a boulder, and double as a sun dial.
Not only locally, but nationally, it seems as a society were walking away from this, said Mainiero. She has dedicated nearly two years to the project. As a former project director for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, Mainiero was in Grand Central Station on Sept. 11 when people began arriving from Ground Zero, covered in soot and looking for trains out of New York City.
Members of the board, excluding Supervisor Linda Puglisi, seemed reluctant to give their blessing for the projects funding without more detailed financials. Organizers of the memorial split the payment burden among the three municipalities based on populations. Cortlandt would pay roughly $65,000, Croton would pay $16,500 and Buchanan would pay $4,500.
Council member Ann Lindau was the most vocal about receiving more of the memorials financials. The public has not gathered around this, she said. My concern is if the money isnt there from private sources, then youre asking our taxpayers to pay in a way they havent chosen, she said.
The numbers have seemed kind of squishy, said Council member Frank Farrell. Id like to see a good, hard, proper budget.
There are generations of people who have to understand this could happen again, said Mainiero, asking the board members to think of future generations who will enjoy the memorial. The Cortlandt Town Board has not set a date for when the project will be discussed again.
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