The Urban Crisis Lives

At the 41st annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco last week, the chiefs of the nation's cities had one topic uppermost in their minds: Nixon Administration proposals for special revenue sharing and the inevitable setbacks they pose for the cities. Slated to become effective in July 1974, the Nixon measures would spread existing federally funded programs--including Model Cities and urban renewal--into seven broad areas, with virtually no guidelines from Washington on how money allotted to the cities is to be spent.

Such unrestricted use of funds is one of the things city governments have been clamoring for all along, but the mayors fear that Administration proposals will thin out the amount of money available by sharing it among smaller communities as well, many of them well-heeled suburbs. Still smarting from presidential cutbacks of existing programs, vetoes of new projects and the scuttling of programs like summer jobs for ghetto youngsters, the majority of the 320 mayors in attendance opposed the President's current plan. The conference then issued carefully worded counterproposals and passed a flurry of resolutions condemning further federal cutbacks. "Nixon has simply declared that the urban crisis is over," says John De Luca, an aide to San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto. "We are telling him it still exists."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.