Bloomberg Skating on Thin Ice as He Casts Aside the Democratic Process

All over the city, local communities are rebelling over the government’s plans to place bicycle lanes in their streets. In a city where a diner owner can’t put a table in front of his or her establishment without a public hearing, it is amazing just how so much can be done by hizzoner, King Mike, without so much as a murmur of public participation.Bicycle lanes? Has anyone bothered to ask the public whether they really want them? I know there is a small cadre of cyclists who yearn for New York to morph into Copenhagen. But most New Yorkers I talk with, pedestrians and motorists alike, would dearly love to see the cyclists off the streets, and view them as a danger.And what of our beleaguered merchants, looking on as their most valuable business asset — parking — is taken from them to make room for the new bike lanes? My friend, Richard Lipsky of the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, commenting on a plan by Manhattan officials to “compromise” on the placement of concrete barriers to separate the lanes sees it a bit differently.“The real breakthrough would be breaking through the concrete barriers and selling them for scrap. Put simply, the lanes don’t belong, and the measures are purely palliative, an example of crackpot realism that leaves the underlying irrationality of the policy unchallenged.’”Now I may be wrong about bike lanes, or I might be right. But in Mr. Bloomberg’s benevolent dictatorship it doesn’t matter. The mayor has issued his decree from his Bermuda Palace, and has the Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, creating new bike lanes at the furious rate of 50 miles a year. This is all part of the mayor’s PlanNYC, a master plan right from our master, no public input required.Maybe that’s why opposition to the bike paths is becoming increasingly vocal. Opponents now include even Ms. Sadik-Khan’s predecessor, Iris Weinshall, who is fighting the Bloomberg imposed bikeway in her Prospect Park neighborhood. But so far the bike lanes to nowhere keep getting built despite the growing public skepticism.The bike lanes aren’t the only place where democracy takes a back seat in Mr. Bloomberg’s New York. Last week’s meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy to decide the fate of some 22 about-to-be-closed schools can best be described as the ultimate kangaroo court. Two thousand angry parents, students, and community residents came to influence the outcome, hundreds testifying in an attempt to save their neighborhood schools.Things turned ugly, as those attending realized that they were wasting their time. There is no public influence over the no-longer-public school system. The mayor controls the system, and the mayor appoints the panel charged with keeping the process honest and open, thus insuring that the process is anything but honest and open.If the attendees were less than respectful to the hapless chancellor, Cathleen Black, it was a result of the lack of respect that the system has for them. Everyone there knew that the fix was in, that there would be no deliberation or consideration for any point of view opposing that of the mayor. The meeting, held over two nights, might as well have been a meeting in communist Russia.When the legislature was considering changes to the mayoral control law two years ago, it sold the public short, and the mayor has taken full advantage of their weakness. You can’t give an inch to a dictator who takes full advantage of the weakness of the law and the fecklessness of the legislators. Consequently the Panel for Educational Policy has become a cruel joke on parents.This brings me to the latest Bloomberg project, a skating rink at Van Cortlandt Park in Riverdale, where I live and publish a local community newspaper. In the many years I have been covering the news here, I recall no instance of public demand to build such a facility. A private rink nearby closed years ago due to lack of business.Not that I necessarily think a skating rink a bad idea one way or another (it would take a thick slab of ice to support your correspondent, who for exercise studies the restaurant menu or jogs through Fairway and Zabar’s). But considering that the Bloomberg administration is way behind schedule on a list of more critical parks projects, including some in Van Cortlandt Park and vicinity, and that money is short (even so-called “private” money, coming with strings attached and no public oversight), I would prefer that priority be given to the real, demonstrated needs of hundreds of kids from the local Riverdale and Kingsbridge neighborhoods. It is time to get their long-delayed Little League fields completed, rather than start a new project that no one has asked for.The proposed skating rink will be built without a scintilla of public input. No public hearing, no environmental impact statement, no traffic study. It is a brazen giveaway of public parkland to a private group, the Van Cortlandt Park Conservancy, appointed by and answerable to Mayor Bloomberg, and Mayor Bloomberg only. It is led by a fellow who leads a nominally “Democratic” club, a club followed by so few Democrats that they haven’t elected so much as a single member out of hundreds on the local Democratic County Committee. When this fellow ran for City Council two years ago, he was creamed by a two-to-one margin. But he comes with one asset — he is the Mayor’s lone reliable Democratic supporter here.When a similar project was proposed for Pelham Bay Park a few years ago and hearings were held, residents said “thanks, but no thanks,” after it became clear that the proposed rink could become a traffic and parking nightmare.Why no public hearing on the skating rink or bike paths? Why no real hearing on school closures? The mayor and his nomenklatura are simply contemptuous of a public that might disagree with the programs of the dear leader. Democracy is not a treasured right, but an obstacle to “progress.”Bike paths, school closings, and skating rinks. You get the city that Michael Bloomberg wants you to have, like it or not — though, of course, you do get to pay the bill.

Bloomberg Skating on Thin Ice as He Casts Aside the Democratic Process

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