ent engineers.

At the outset the committee has been compelled to recognize the
situation of Brooklyn and its relation to Manhattan and Greater New
York. Brooklyn has always labored under the disadvantage that,
although its residents have helped create the great assessed
valuations in lower Manhattan, it did not before consolidation receive
any benefit from the taxation of those values. In this respect
Brooklyn was not and even now is not like independent cities such as
Buffalo, Cleveland or Chicago, where both residences and office
buildings contribute alike to support the same municipal government.
Prior to consolidation on January 1st, 1898, Brooklyn had reached the
limit of her constitutional borrowing capacity. The city needed many
new schools and more bridges and tunnels across the East River. Along
with many disadvantages that flowed from consolidation, there came
the great advantage that Brooklyn at last received a portion of the
tax money raised on the real estate in lower Manhattan, to which
Brooklyn people had helped to give a high value. It must, however, be
recognized that Manhattan is the central borough, and that as the
business and municipal center of Greater New York she is entitled to
pre-eminence in buildings to transact the city's business. Now that
the boroughs constitute one city, Manhattan must help to give the
outlying boroughs those utilities that their growth reasonably
requires, and the outlying boroughs must recognize Manhattan as the
business and official center.

For the last twenty years the industrial population in Brooklyn has
been greatly increasing. Officials and loyal citizens who desire that
the historic character of Brooklyn should be preserved cannot afford
to wait ten years before a beginning is made to brighten up the
downtown district. Continued migrations of home owners from Brooklyn
to New Jersey and to counties outside of Greater New York may weaken
the ability of the borough to preserve its entity and character. If it
should once become a somewhat neglected industrial annex of Manhattan,
the result would be injurious both to Brooklyn and Manhattan. No
greater calamity could happen to every part of Brooklyn than to have
the borough lose its civic pride.

When we add to the foregoing considerations the fact that Greater New
York has nearly reached the constitutional limit of its borrowing
capacity, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that persistent
and long-conti