HEADLINE: Call for Job Creation; Group lobbies LMDC to help employ 60,000

BYLINE: By Katia Hetter. STAFF WRITER


Despite completing a year-long welfare-to-work program eight months ago and searching for a job every day since, Marilyn Bezear of the Bronx hasn't found any work.

So yesterday, she went to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s board meeting with about 25 other workers and activists, silently holding signs demanding that some of the remaining $1.3 billion in development funds be spent to create 60,000 jobs.

"The funding that has been received by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. that has been used to subsidize corporations should be used to create jobs so that other people like me - mothers with families and other unemployed New Yorkers - have the opportunity to support their families in the manner that they should," said Bezear, a member of Community Voices Heard, a group for unemployed workers, speaking before the meeting. "We need jobs to keep New York strong."

The workers are lobbying for a more jobs-oriented approach proposed by the Labor Community Advocacy Network to Rebuild New York, a coalition of labor unions, community groups and service organizations. It was created after the Sept. 11 attack to lobby for more worker participation in downtown development decisions.

After LMDC's board of directors voted yesterday to authorize $42 million for downtown projects, Lorraine Speights wanted to know what that would mean for employment. "How many jobs do you believe will be created by all the money you gave away?" she asked the board during its question and answer period.

The number of jobs created by construction at the World Trade Center site would be tracked "as we go forward," said agency president Kevin Rampe. Rampe said he couldn't provide Speights with the specific job numbers she requested, but he said community opinions about how to spend the remaining money will be collected at six lower Manhattan neighborhood workshops being held over the next month.

In other news, Anthoula Katsimatides, a former aide to Gov. George Pataki, was named LMDC assistant vice president for community affairs, replacing Tara Snow, who became finance director for the National Republican Congressional Committee in Washington, D.C.

Katsimatides' brother, John, died at the trade center. He worked as a bond broker for Cantor Fitzgerald. Anthoula had previously worked as Pataki's liaison to the victims' families.