CARL GLASSMAN / TRIBECA TRIB

City Councilman Peter Vallone, Jr., speaks to reporters Monday with fellow Council members Margaret Chin and Vincent Gentile outside the federal court in Lower Manhattan. The Council members are co-sponsoring a resolution calling on the Justice Department to hold the trials outside of New York City or for the federal government to fully fund the cost of security.

Hoping its message from City Hall will clinch a decision in the White House, a joint committee of the City Council will hold a hearing Friday on moving the terror trials out of New York City.

The hearing, on a resolution opposing the trials in the city, is expected to bring out many residents who have been protesting against the trials in their neighborhood since November, when Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Moynihan Federal Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street as the intended venue.

Margaret Chin, chair of the Council’s Committee on Lower Manhattan Redevelopment and Peter Vallone, Jr., chair of the Public Safety Committee, are among the co-sponsors of the resolution. If passed, it would put the Council in line with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Sen. Charles Schumer and many other elected officials who recently have come out in opposition to holding the trials in the city.

“We need to protect the residents of New York City from increased risks, increased costs, increased burdens,” Vallone told reporters at a press conference on Monday. “We don’t need to have a political show trial here.”

The press briefing was across the street from the courthouse where, last Friday, a group of nearby residents held a press gathering of their own, speaking out on what they say will be danger and disruption to their lives if the trials go forward near their homes.

CARL GLASSMAN / TRIBECA TRIB

Chatham Towers resident Jeanie Chin, one of the organizers of a rally held last Friday, addresses reporters gathered outside Columbus Park, across the street from the courthouse.

“The true cost of the terror trials will be on the backs of people who live and work here,” said Jeanie Chin, a leader of the protest. Chin is among hundreds of residents living at Chatham Towers, the apartment complex next door to the courthouse.

Last month, responding to mounting pressure from local elected officials and community leaders, a Justice Department spokesman said the agency would consider alternate locations in the state for the trials. Reports that the Lower Manhattan site had been scrapped entirely were followed by comments by two top White Officials as well at the President himself on Sunday that no such determination had been made.

During a televised interview Sunday night, President Barack Obama said he had "not ruled it out, but I think it's important for us to take into account the practical, logistical issues involved."

"I mean, if you've got a city that is saying no, and a police department that's saying no, and a mayor that's saying no, that makes it difficult," Obama said during the interview with CBS' Katie Couric.

"I was hoping he would see the light," Margaret Chin said Monday. "But …everybody has been raising their voice and this is what democracy is all about. The President has to listen to the people. We are going to have this hearing and build the momentum, build the pressure, so he can finally do the right thing and move the trial."

Last month, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly laid out key elements of his department’s extensive, $200-million-a-year plan to safeguard Lower Manhattan against the threat of a terrorist attack during the trials. Police officials have devised a security plan for the terror trials that would place the apartment complexes of Chatham Towers and Chatham Green within a highly restricted “ hard zone,” bounded by Worth, Madison, Pearl and Centre Streets. The area to be surrounded on all sides by more than 2,000 metal barriers, restricting pedestrian and vehicle access. Sharpshooters would be placed on rooftops to guard against enemy snipers, while assault and canine teams would patrol the ground and police helicopters would constantly hover overhead.

Marc Ameruso, a Community Board 1 member and one of the first non-Chinatown residents to take up the cause of moving the trials, implored the President to side with the residents.

“There’s a human face to this,” Ameruso said at the Friday press conference. “Look at the people here. Look at the human face of this. Please, Mr. President, get these trials out of New York. Make a decision, already.”