Bloomberg on the snow: "deal with it"

[Hannah Bell]

Gotta love how easily the Mayor of Accountability passes the buck for why so much of the city remains unplowed and paralyzed 12 hours after the blizzard that wasn't a blizzard ended (winds in Manhattan never got above 36 MPH, therefore the storm was technically not a blizzard.)

Mayor "Deal With It" Bloomberg recently reacted to Blizzageddon 2010, which left many wondering just what city he thinks he's living in. He told reporters:

"The world has not come to an end. The city is going fine, Broadway shows were full last night. There are lots of tourists here enjoying themselves. Two people told me they went to the theater last night and afterwards tried to get into a restaurant and there was a waiting list. I think the message is, 'The city goes on.'" He added to the Daily News, "Many people are taking the day off. Most stores are open. There's no reason for anybody to panic."

Except with mass transit down and many neighborhoods remaining unplowed, there kind of is. One tipster wrote us from Avenue N and East 14th Street in Brooklyn: "What's happening to the local streets? Our street hasnt had a plow at all. We are 87 years old and cant get our car out for any emergency. How soon will they plow locally?"

Well, Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said they'd get to it when they get to it. "Some will be cleaned today, some tonight, some unfortunately not until tomorrow," he said. "When we clear your block, don't get out and start shoveling snow back out there."

But City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., who spent all morning shoveling snow in Astoria, said that's not soon enough. He said, "In that entire time, I haven't seen a single plow - except the one that crashed into a car and has been stuck, since before 6 a.m., at 21st Street and 21st Drive. In past snow storms, other plows would have come through by now." They were probably just blocked by all the stuck buses.

The Gothamist points out that of course Bloomberg thinks the city handled the storm well and the world didn't come to an end. Here's how his street looked today:



Here, on the other hand, is how another part of the city where people who do not regularly associate with Bloomberg at UES parties live looked today:



Ah, yes, accountability Bloomberg-style.

http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/



mayor moneybags tells people to take mass transit if they want to get somewhere: people get stuck for 7 hours.

http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2010/12/bloomberg-tells-people-to-take-mass.html


mayor moneybags wants an award for plowing the streets in the richest city in the country:

http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2010/12/daily-news-bloomberg-says-he-will-clean.html

[virgogal]

1. I find it astonishing that he thinks if the theater and restaurant crowd

are happy,the other 8 million or so residents are happy.

This guy is a complete ass.

[HockeyMom]

2. The blizzard of 1978 we lived in Queens

just off Woodhaven Blvd. Yes, Woodhaven was plowed, but our street wasn't a WEEK after the blizzard and we couldn't GET to Woodhaven Blvd., unless we WALKED. Koch was Mayor then. The homeowners on the street all chipped in and rented a private plow to remove the snow back then. Although I wasn't living there at the time, my husband told me horror stories of what Queens was like back in 1969 and the "Lindsay Blizzard" and how nothing was plowed in Queens then either. History says that cost him the next election.

It's nothing new and apparently Queens seems to the get the brunt of it, no matter who is mayor.

[Hannah Bell]

4. in both cases, the financiers had cut funding for services to use it as a gun

to get the concessions they wanted.

only difference is that bloomberg's in on the heist.

there was a bigger snowfall than this -- or lindsay's -- in 2006.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/nyregion/13snow.html

lindsay's = 15 inches in central park.

the difference = money being tight or loose

[eleny]

5. I grew up in Woodhaven!

We lived at the west end up 79th St on 85th Drive just two blocks down from the park.

I remember my sister in law telling how she waited forever for a Jamaica train that never arrived during the '78 storm. She was trying to get to work in Brooklyn.

I remember the storm of '69. I was in college at the time. And I bet your hubby remembers the first big blackout that was in 1965.

Btw, here's some pictures taken by my friend Ed and is wife of this current storm in "Wdhvn".
http://www.projectwoodhaven.com/2010/December/snowtime.html

:hi:

[aquart]

10. I walked from Flushing to Bayside three days after that storm.

Because, while the subway finally was able to take me from Brooklyn, where I'd been caught by the storm, nobody had mentioned that the buses still weren't running. At least, not to me.

Subsequent mayors, however, did learn the Lindsay lesson and plowed their little hearts out in the outer boroughs.

I'm kinda fascinated how people are noticing what a lack of government services actually means.

But Bloomberg will not tax the rich. He'd rather raise parking fees to the roof.

[eleny]

3. A friend who lives in Queens wrote to say it's going to warm up in a few days

He said it might get up to 50 degrees. Hopefully that will help. He said that so far none of the streets in Woodhaven have been plowed.

I remember those NYC blizzards since I grew up in Queens. We had the el train in our neighborhood and when the tracks froze there wasn't anything a person could do to get to school or work.

I've live several miles west of Denver since 1976. We do get some big snows every few years. But we get nothing like the inconvenience people experience back east. The congestion and narrower streets make it pretty tough in the older cities.

[SoCalDem]

6. Snow melts.. people need to stay put and OUT of their cars

No city can ever have enough manpower & snow plows to get rid of that much snow that fell so quickly.

and in confined spaces, the dumping of the snow is also an issue in the short-term.. We lived in "snow-country" & they had enormous dump truck vehicles that followed a snow-snorkel-sucking thing ,but once the truck was full, it would have to go DUMP the load of snow.. Luckily we had lots of beachfront at Lake Michigan, but it took time..and there are soooo many streets..

and if it's just plowing, the huge piles of snow create new hazards too ..with visibility..

It sucks to be snowed in, but in a few days, most of it will be gone, and everything will be back to normal:) :hug:..really..it will :hug:

I am curious to see how Superman (Christie) fares with his constituents in New Jersey.. He has been noticeably AWOL..and he loves him some camera:)

[Missy Vixen]

7. Perhaps Mayor Bloomberg needs to take Greg Nickels' call

For those who don't recognize him, Greg Nickels is the former mayor of Seattle, one-eighth the size of New York City.

Seattle was brought to its knees by a Snowmageddon two years ago, and Mr. Nichols was swept out of office in the aftermath. He, too, did not order plowing or salting in a timely manner. The current mayor, Mike McGinn, had his own incident the week before Thanksgiving. People were trapped on I-5 in their cars for up to 11 hours that night because of ineffective snow removal.

People are willing to overlook or "deal" with a lot of things. Huge amounts of snow is not one of them.

[Smarmie Doofus]

8. Won't happen here. Bloomberg owns the media.

Or is majority stockholder, in effect.

The media in this media-drenched neck of the woods will tell people he did great regardless of the reality.

People here trust their $$$ media... bottom line. So much of life is organized around it. "News", shopping ,entertainment. etc.

It's getting harder and harder to sell Bloomberg but there are still plenty of willing takers.

[strategery blunder]

18. More entrenched example: Chicago

1979: Chicago political machine reacts to snow removal issues just as Bloomberg is now. Political machine gets replaced by angry voters. I'm sure the Chicago mayor had a lot more influence upon Chicago media than Greg Nichols did over Seattle media.

http://press.weather.com/press_archive_detail.asp?id=55

As the Daley Machine began to take shape, it paid attention--when I lived in Chicago a few years ago, whenever it snowed, the media would roll out stories of how hard the "snow command center" was working--and the city took snow removal issues seriously.

[Missy Vixen]

20. The media here is reporting New York City's woes on every broadcast

I was surprised at how much coverage there is. I'm thinking local media's talking about it because we have people staying overnight at Seattle's Sea-Tac Airport. Evidently, media reports flights will leave from here to NYC in the morning.

I'm curious what's being reported in NYC on every other channel besides FAUX News. One thing's for sure, Nickels was fairly popular here before Snowmageddon; it was shocking how quickly he lost his office over a snowstorm.

[ThomCat]

9. Anyone important in this city who dares to criticize Bloomberg

loses their career, or their business deals and contracts, or whatever it is that makes them important. Bloomberg is well known for holding grudges against anyone who doesn't toe his line.

So nobody will challenge him. Certainly not where he can hear it or find out about it.

Bloomberg is a corrupt schmuck, an asshole, and a bigot.

He really doesn't care if much of the city doesn't get services. If you aren't rich, and playing him game, you just don't matter to him. If you don't matter to him, you don't matter to the city.

[HEyHEY]

11. Vancouver's mayor said the same thing a few years ago, I think they're right

It's the weather, stop whining, people, they're doing the best they can. And I also say that as a former city worker.

[JVS]

12. They're not doing the best they can do. They're doing the most they can do for the rich on the cheap

[HEyHEY]

13. Well, I'd have to see more evidence of that

Keep in mind most of the guys driving these plows and such are blue collar union guys as are their management, minus the "union" part.

I'm not shocked the business districts and areas close to them would be done first.

[JVS]

15. Explain "blue collar union guys as are their management, minus the "union" part."

Also, just because you aren't surprised by something doesn't mean that it's not a) corrupt, b) shitty, c) something to hold fuckwads in charge accountable for. So I don't really see where you get off thinking the people should just suck it up.

[HEyHEY]

16. Well, for starters, I'm not surprised because the main arteries....

For economic and car traffic tend to be in the same areas, so they will be used the most. Secondly, those who work in those areas will naturally be close to them and their areas will be cleared as the heart of the city is cleared so people can go about their lives. Do I think it's shitty? Yes, it sucks to be someone living in one of the non-cleared areas. But I also don't see the point of clearing roads that aren't as important to the city's ability to function after clearing secondary roads. Are you going to clear Pickleford Lane before Madison avenue?

As for blue collar but non union, I mean the guy in management operating the RPS department likely worked for RPS for years before getting the management role. (that's my experience anyway when I worked at the city, though not NYC) He's likely not some guy in a tuxedo laughing at all the poor people as he tells drivers to go shovel Donald Trump's walk.

[JVS]

17. The thing about NYC is that you need to have most of it working or none of it works. It's unlike...

many smaller cities. Your description of NYC doesn't really work, especially the "those who work in those areas will naturally be close to them and their areas will be cleared as the heart of the city is cleared so people can go about their lives." That's not how NYC function, and rather than viewing it as one city it might help to view it as 5 cities: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island. And Manhattan can even be broken down further into 3 cities. (Uptown, Midtown and the financial district). People who work the high end jobs in the big office districts commute in from outside the city, sometimes as far as Connecticut. People who work the low end jobs usually commute from Brooklyn, Queens, or the Bronx. Just how unimportant the area near wall street is for the city's traffic pattern can be seen by how after 9/11 they shut down the South end of the island without the city grinding to a halt. I'm not going to clear Madison avenue if park avenue is already clear and the arteries of whole other boroughs are blocked. Especially because nobody will be able to get to Madison avenue unless they are able to get out of their homes which are usually miles away.


" He's likely not some guy in a tuxedo laughing at all the poor people as he tells drivers to go shovel Donald Trump's walk."
It is Bloomberg. He sets policies, and this is a city that cannot afford politicians who cut the service levels down to the point where 5 million citizens who happen to live outside of the wealthiest borough get shitty service.

[HEyHEY]

19. If it is a horrendous fuck up or favourtism

I'd be interested to see if anyone does any proper investigation into it. Again, this is just where I worked, but management in the works yard set policies about work we did and where using their expertise, that's what they were paid for. The mayor or council had no say in such things. My dad is a councillor and I remember people calling him one year after a big snowstorm because their street hadn't been cleared. He handled it politely but would hang up and say, "What the fuck am I supposed to do about that?"

He never had to vote on a "snow clearing plan" for the city. Things like that are why we pay guys $120,000 a year to run the works yard. Other question, anyone know if NYC has recently made changes to such plans?

Also, Vancouver works the same as NYC in this respect of burroughs. It's actually a collection of about 15 cities all with their own snow clearing, so yes, areas should be attacked like that, I agree.

[Lucky Luciano]

14. This blizzard was pretty bad...and while it did not snow much today, the wind did

indeed gust to about 40 MPH which makes it hard to clean the mess up:
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KNYC/2010/12/27/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA

I could not get to work from the UES of Manhattan because the Metro North train to Connecticut was completely shut down. I had to remotely login. The roads were ok though all things considered. I can't say much about how Queens and Brooklyn were plowed or how it compared to other mayors during the big storms.