Transformation From Post and Base To Public Benefit
In October 1995 the United States Coast Guard announced it would close its largest base, at Governors Island, as a cost savings measure. The Coast Guard had established the base on the island in 1966 after the U.S. Army closed Fort Jay, an Army post since 1794. Thirty years later, in 1996, the Coast Guard closed the base and conveyed it as surplus property to the federal government's General Services Administration for disposal through transfer or sale.
The closure was at the initiative of the Coast Guard, then a bureau of the U.S. Department of Transportation, which was seeking to close a $400 million budget gap. The closure of the base represented an estimated 30 million dollar savings. Since the closure was an initiated action by the Coast Guard, it was not subject to the Base Realignment and Closure process.
At the time of the closure announcement in October 1995, President Bill Clinton and New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan reached an informal agreement to convey the island to the city and state of New York for 1 dollar if a plan for public benefit could be developed.
In August 1997, as part of legislation to balance the budget, Congress directed that the entire island be sold with a right of first offer to the State and City of New York.
Read more about this topic: Governors Island National Monument
Famous quotes containing the words post, base, public and/or benefit:
“My business is stanching blood and feeding fainting men; my post the open field between the bullet and the hospital. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing and merits of a political movement. I make gruel—not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“And all the popular statesmen say
That purity built up the State
And after kept it from decay;
Admonish us to cling to that
And let all base ambition be,
For intellect would make us proud....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“[Rutherford B. Hayes] was a patriotic citizen, a lover of the flag and of our free institutions, an industrious and conscientious civil officer, a soldier of dauntless courage, a loyal comrade and friend, a sympathetic and helpful neighbor, and the honored head of a happy Christian home. He has steadily grown in the public esteem, and the impartial historian will not fail to recognize the conscientiousness, the manliness, and the courage that so strongly characterized his whole public career.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962)