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some other institution.” Because the city has been very generous, I think. I think the sum total of their capital and operating improvements as we calculate them over this five year period is in the range of seventy-five million or eighty million dollars, which is quite a lot. The reason the building looks the way it does now is in large part because of what the city has put up. Although we've matched it with a fair amount of private money, particularly for doing the rooms on the inside. They do the outside.

Then we went after the state. That was a bloody one. Ten years ago, twelve years ago, the city built the City University graduate school opposite the library, just so they wouldn't have to have a library. They'd save themselves that much money. The Library said, “Well that's fine, but you should pay us something for that. So the city agreed to pay a million dollars a year for that service. That was a pretty good buy because they didn't have to collect a great big library. Well they did it for two years and then the city went bust. Out went the million, and it never returned. The state took over the City University system. So I figured, “By God, if that's the case we will get the state to put up.”

So we did the preparatory work around Cuomo, and then I flew up to Albany. He was, as usual, running late. When my turn came I said, “Governor, I'm going to make my case in exactly eight minutes.” I said exactly what had happened. I said, “a million dollars is now worth two million because of inflation.” I stopped, and I said, “That's eight minutes.” Obviously he didn't believe I was going to do this in eight minutes. He finally turned to his aide, Neil Foley, and he said, “Neil, you should be able to tuck two million into the