May 17, 2005

Upgrades to Turtle Bay: A High Price for New York

The United Nation headquarters in New York City are in sad shape. Major renovations are needed if the institution is to stay in its present location and, if the U.N. gets its way, New Yorkers might be footing the bill.

Of course, that's not what they say. According to the New York Post, they're asking for $650 million in bonds guaranteed by state taxpayers to cover a $1.2 billion renovation and expansion of U.N. headquarters.

The plan is that fees paid by member nations in the coming years will cover the cost of the bonds. But what if the U.N defaults on the bonds? New York state taxpayers will be the ones paying them back. State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno has posed an interesting question:

"How can we trust the U.N. nations to pay the fees to pay off this debt when they don't even pay their parking fines?" The city is owed $195 million.

Not only that, but 40 percent of the U.N.'s members are behind in their payments.

Then there's the question of why it's going to cost so much when others say the renovations can be made for less. Donald Trump, for example, claims he could do it for $500 million. That's nearly half of what the U.N. is estimating. Something smells fishy in Turtle Bay...and it isn't sea creatures.

Remember that movie The Money Pit? Tom Hanks and Shelly Long play a young couple who splits up as a result the rising costs and nasty experiences of renovating a "charming" fixer-upper.

New York and the rest of the United States are the young couple. The U.N. is the moldering heap they're throwing money at. And while in Hollywood we can expect happy endings, they happen with far less frequency in the real world. The U.N. has made its disdain for its host country eminently clear, and yet it expects us to dig deeper and deeper into our pockets to fund its increasingly grandiose plans.

Johan Fernandez of the European website The Star Online asked this question back in November:

It is hard to imagine how an institution that is regarded highly around the world can be treated with such disdain here.

Sure, if you're a European who looks down his nose at America daily. But we here in America are tired of the U.N. and European attitude that nothing we do is right unless it's opening our wallet...and then we get flak if we don't do it fast enough.

I hear there's plenty of great real estate in Paris, Berlin and Brussels. Perhaps the U.N. would be better off among its own.

Additional reading: Trouble at Turtle Bay

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