New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday that he hoped the federal government would provide financial assistance to the construction of a 9/11 memorial museum, just hours after the resolution of a dispute that had halted construction for months.
"Hopefully, we'll get the same kind of monies and support from the federal government that other memorials, national memorials around the country do," Bloomberg told CNN.
The mayor was responding to a question about whether visitors would need to pay to enter the museum at Ground Zero, a prospect Bloomberg said was likely an inevitability.
"We hopefully will be able to continue to raise money from generous corporations and private donors, individuals who believe, but we'll also have to charge money to go into the museum," Bloomberg said. "But in our lives we all understand somebody has to pay and it's not just going to be the other person. We all share in this together."
Bloomberg also dismissed criticism that the argument over costs between the foundation that will run the museum and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — the government agency responsible for building the project — had delayed the project by months.
"If you look back, it probably didn't take that long," Bloomberg said. "We've been working on this for, let's say, 11 years, and Sen. Inouye [D] from Hawaii said to me it took 40 years to build the museum and memorial for World War II. He thought it was amazing we got it done in this length of time. There was never any question we were going to finish the museum."
Bloomberg added that the delay would help ensure that the museum was built as safely and economically as possible.
"We want to build what's right so that generations from now it still stands and has the message that we want," the mayor said. "And then we want to do it as economically as possible. Not an unlimited amount of money for anything in our lives, as you know."
