NEW YORK - An agreement that paves the way for the completion of the Sept. 11 museum at ground zero was reached Monday, the eve of the 11th anniversary of the terror attacks.
The museum was supposed to open this month, but construction all but ceased a year ago because of a funding squabble between the museum foundation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the World Trade Center site.
The agreement between the Port Authority and the foundation that controls the National September 11 Memorial & Museum was announced Monday evening.
"By ensuring that no additional public funds are spent to complete the Memorial and Museum," New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said, "today's agreement puts in place a critical and long overdue safeguard to finally protect toll payers and taxpayers from bearing further costs, and, at the same time, put the project on a path for completion."
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the agreement "ensures that it will be restarted very soon and will not stop until the museum is completed."
"The museum is important to the families of those who died on 9/11 - they've contributed photos and memories of their lost loved ones, who deserve a thoughtful tribute," he said.
The memorandum of understanding announced Monday addresses issues including coordination of the site and financial terms. The agreement outlines how much capital the memorial will have on hand and that it will give the Port Authority a security deposit equal to six months' utility expenses.
The underground museum, which will lie underneath the memorial, is to house such artifacts as the staircase workers used to escape the attacks. Visitors also will be able to see portraits of the nearly 3,000 victims and hear oral histories of Sept. 11.
The memorial, which opened last year, includes a plaza, where waterfalls fill the fallen towers' footprints. Almost 4.5 million people have visited it since it opened last September.
Meanwhile, for the first time, elected officials won't speak today at the anniversary commemoration, an occasion that has allowed them a solemn turn in the spotlight.
Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon. feels politicians' involvement can lend gravity to the remembrances, but she empathizes with the reasons for silencing officeholders at the ceremony this year.
"It is the one day, out of 365 days a year, where, when we invoke the term '9/11,' we mean the people who died and the events that happened," rather than the political and cultural layers the phrase has accumulated, said Burlingame, who's on the board of the organization that announced the change in plans this year.
In July, the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum - led by Bloomberg as its board chairman - announced that this year's remembrance would include only relatives reading victims' names. Politicians still may attend.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania on Monday and called it "the final resting place of American patriots."
Panetta was making his first visit to the site where 40 passengers and crew members aboard the United Airlines plane died during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. He said he came "to extend our nation's deepest gratitude to the heroes of Flight 93."
Flight 93 was traveling from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco when it was hijacked by four terrorists. The 9/11 Commission said the terrorists likely wanted to crash the plane into the White House or the U.S. Capitol, but the jet went down in a field near Shanksville, Pa., after passengers and crew fought back.
Panetta said the people on the plane "responded with selflessness, determination, and tremendous courage. And at the cost of their own lives, made the fateful decision to fight back, and in so doing, they successfully prevented an attack on the United States Capitol."
The park is in a rural area about 75 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, but some visitors find it so moving that they have made repeat visits.
"I've been here in the dead of winter before," said Sue George, of Ridgeley, W.Va.
George also noted that the 2,200-acre site, which was once a strip mine, is now filled with beautiful views, hills covered in wildflowers and trees.
"It still feels almost wild. Which I think is the best thing ever," she said. "It's not a sad place anymore. It's our way of saying 'thank you.'"