Could this become the world's silliest budget?

"AT RISK: The Landmarks Preservation Commission and Historic Buildings and Neighborhoods Throughout NYC!

Unless YOU act right now, the already miniscule budget of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) -- the only city agency with the authority to protect New York's historic buildings and neighborhoods -- YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD -- could be cut significantly in the coming weeks.

The City Council, now entering final budget negotiations, must hear from you. Immediately. Email/call/fax your local council member and members of the budget negotiating team TODAY. See contact information below.

Frustrated with the LPC? Their slowness to respond? The ever-quickening pace of development, eating away at the character of our communities? It will only get worse, unless the LPC has the resources it needs to carry out its vital mission. Landmark West! is part of a broad coalition advocating for a $1 million increase in the LPC budget on top of its current budget of just over $4 million -- a modest amount of money that could make a world of difference in the LPC's ability to protect the buildings and neighborhoods that matter to the people of our city. ACT NOW! Contact the Council, and forward this message to friends and colleagues.

Who is your council person? Go to Who Represents Me?"

... if you live in NYC or are concerned and find out who to write to, from the NYPIRG. I worked one summer in the early 1980s on water quality issues for the New York Public Interest Research Group out of a St. James, NY office, canvassing door-to-door selling "Public Citizen" subscriptions ($10 a year) and at the end of the summer we had a treat. At the Riverhead Theater - Pete Seeger and another gentleman gave a concert. It was with great pleasure I later saw the Grammy-award winning folk singer receive the National Medal of Arts from then President Clinton at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. He has also been honored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio and has received other awards.

Sent today:

I have worked within the Landmarks Preservation Commission's guidelines for archaeology on a number of occasions since it first hired an archaeologist, a teacher and associate from Staten Island. Her doctoral thesis, granted from Stony Brook University, was on the archaeology of the Prall Site in Richmondtown, Staten Island, a site in the "Williamsburg" of Staten Island, if you will, once the small "Tory capital" of Staten Island and then colony of New York. After many years of successful compliance that has benefited both the city, its inhabitants (its history and prehistory), I feel that, should its budget receive those recently rumoured cuts, it could result in a mockery of the processes it upholds, under US Federal law, in the United State's first capital, New York City.

I ask that you please keep the LPC budget at least as it is. I would suggest as others have, such as Landmarks West!, that since it now collects fees and is being asked to administer issues greater in number and larger in size, scope, and funds involved, that the budget be increased by $1 million, so as to keep up with the growing concerns and expectancies of the city's populace for preservation and due process in an often, what have been contentious and litigious issues mediated by the commission's dedicated staff and friends.