Random City Council Embezzlement Allegation Of The Day

The details don’t even matter anymore. All that counts is the City’s antiquated method of discretionary spending.

You Say You Don’t Want It But Then You Slip It On In

But when you have to cram in trees everywhere, there may be some resistance:

Some Mott Haven residents are fuming over city plans to plant trees on their block.

The problem, they say, is that the tree roots eventually crack their sidewalks, leaving them stuck with the repair bill.

“If they want a green Bronx, just look in our backyards,” said Marion Rivas of 434 E. 144th St. “We already have trees there. We don’t need them out in front.”

The trees are part of Mayor Bloomberg’s MillionTrees campaign to plant 1 million trees in the city by 2030.

The Department of Parks and Recreation is planning to plant 12 street trees along E. 144th St. between Brook and Willis Aves.

But residents there point to city trees planted across the street that already have ripped up their neighbors’ sidewalks.

“This used to be flat,” said Shawn Ramos, of 443 E. 144th St., pointing to his broken sidewalk. “I’ve seen people trip over this. If someone gets hurt, then we’re the ones in trouble.”

Residents on the south side of the street said it’s only a matter of time before the same thing happens to their sidewalks.

Homeowners also fear that because their sidewalk is 2-feet narrower, fully-grown trees will damage their homes, clog sewer drains and entangle power lines.

Most of all, they worry about footing the bill to fix inevitable upheavals in the sidewalks.

“I spent $1,200 fixing my sidewalk already, because it was old,” said Polivio Hernandez of 428 E. 144th St. “Now they want to put these trees here? What happens if, in a couple of years, the sidewalk is all destroyed again? I don’t want to spend more money.”

Parks officials did not respond directly to neighbors’ concerns about out-of-pocket expenses, instead saying that careful thought goes into each tree planting.

New York Post Sez: New Yankee Stadium Still Sucks This Week!

And may the Post’s New-Yankee-Stadium-Sucks stories never end, for they are too much fun to read. First, either no one is buying, or at least sitting in, $2600 seats (“Maybe the reason the best tickets at the new Yankee Stadium are called ‘Legends’ seats is that fans willing to fork over $2,625 a game are mostly mythical. . . . At Sunday’s game, nearly 7,000 seats at the stadium were empty, the large majority of them at field level”) and then the 84-year-old longtime superfan is shut out of the place:

Freddy “Sez” Schuman, the one-eyed, cookware-clanking octogenarian who’s been an unofficial pinstripe mascot for 22 seasons, was forced to panhandle for tickets at the new Yankee Stadium over the weekend.

In years past, Schuman, who, like Yogi Berra, turns 84 next month, received free season tickets from sponsors such as Modell’s, or was simply let through the press gate with a wink from a Stadium official.

On Opening Day, he had no trouble getting into the new ballpark for free through the press gate, but on Friday, Saturday and Sunday he had to depend on the kindness of fellow Yankee fans for free seats.

On Sunday, he stood outside the Stadium holding his frying pan and a sign that read, “Freddy ‘Sez’ Yankees say, ‘I can’t go in; must buy ticket!!'”

. . .

He cannot afford the seats at the new Stadium, and doesn’t really need one, since he spends his time in the Stadium walking around and letting fans clank his pan with a spoon for good luck.

“Frankly, I don’t know how some fans are going to afford these new prices,” he said.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

Less Confident Than Crazy*

Mayor Bloomberg wants $45 million to retrain employees who are probably the least likely to trust government job training programs:

Just as Michigan is scrambling to retrain laid-off auto workers, New York City officials have come up with a plan to find new work for the unemployed from one of its core industries: financial services.

Under a program unveiled on Wednesday by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the city wants to invest $45 million in government money to retrain investment bankers, traders and others who have lost jobs on Wall Street, as well as provide seed capital and office space for new businesses those laid-off bankers might create.

The plan is intended to stem a potential exodus of banking professionals from the city during the restructuring of the financial services industry, which has been the city’s economic engine for decades, and to speed the industry’s recovery, which will take at least several years, officials said.

. . .

The mayor announced the 11-part program at a building at 160 Varick Street that will house an incubator for start-up companies that might employ laid-off professionals. Trinity Real Estate donated the space for three years and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University will select the entrepreneurs who will occupy the space, beginning in April. A second business incubator is scheduled to open in Lower Manhattan later in the year, said Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation.

The agency plans to put $3 million into funds to make small investments in start-up companies, Mr. Pinsky said. He said that he hoped to attract twice as much money from private investors and that $9 million would be enough to help start hundreds of new businesses.

All told, city officials plan to spend about $15 million on the program, in addition to the $30 million of federal money. They estimate that over 10 years, it could stimulate the creation of at least 25,000 jobs and contribute $750 million to the local economy, but Mr. Bloomberg referred to those projections as a “guess.”

*And think of how many housing project roofs or elevators that could be fixed with $45 million . . .

All You Need To Know

It’s simple:

With costs ballooning to replace two Bronx parks that were bulldozed for the new Yankee Stadium — the latest estimate is almost $195 million — the city’s Independent Budget Office said on Tuesday that more than $16 million of the higher expense “remains to be explained.”

The latest cost is almost $79 million over the 2005 estimate of $116 million, which itself was considerably more than the $96 million figure based on “conceptual designs” in an environmental impact statement using 2004 dollars.

The Yankees will be using their new $1.3 billion ballpark for opening day in April, but Little Leaguers, tennis players and picnickers are unlikely to have access to all eight replacement parks until the end of 2011, a year later than promised, the budget office said in a report.