Mayor Bloomberg won’t allow 311 operators internet access because he’s afraid they’d shop at work.

The 311 non-emergency government information system is a program Mayor Bloomberg loves to brag about, touting it as among his greatest accomplishments during the 05 campaign.

311 operators’ mission is to help citizens navigate the often confusing government agency maze. Theoretically, 311 could duplicate much of what the Public Advocate’s office is charged with doing as the people’s ombudsman. But that’s theory. In reality, 311 is not much more useful than 411 directory assistance operators, with 311 often referring callers back to the agency whose non-responsiveness or unavailability, if the problem arises after the agency is closed, prompted the 311 call to begin with. One reason for the department’s relative uselessness, is their lack of internet access.

It blows my mid, that in 2007, 14 years after the web became a mainstream information resource, that New York City won’t allow people whose primary responsibility is to provide information, internet access.

If you wanted to buy some land to develop for your own profit, would you expect taxpayers to pay the entire bill for you? Well, if you are a law school buddy of Pataki, that is exactly the sweet deal you could get while Pataki was Governor...and the exact deal Bruce Ratner seems to have gotten with you and me footing the bill.

This comes via Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.

According to the March 9th 2007 Daily News New York City is spending $100 million to buy the property on or near the 22-acre Atlantic Yards site for developer Forest City Ratner.

Of the $205 million proposed to support the project in the Mayor's preliminary budget, $100 million is slated for land acquisition costs and $105 million for roads, utilities and other infrastructure needs, according to EDC officials.

The state is chipping in an additional $100 million.

David Yassky was pretty angry upon hearing this:

"There's no justification to spend public money like this," said Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights). "Government money should be spent on transportation infrastructure, schools and traffic calming - not subsidies for a private company.

I love the snow. Absolutely love it. Grew up in Southern California, so I went camping in the snow but never LIVED with snow.

My first experience with LIVING with snow was, ironically, a White Christmas in Kyoto Japan. GORGEOUS! Japanese architecture seems designed to look gorgeous in the snow. Walked all over snow covered Kyoto that first snowfall in a place I lived.

Most New Yorkers I know hate it when it snows. They say the snow gets dirty too fast and it becomes impossible to walk and all the people who refuse to clean up their dog's shit leave frozen little presents for pedestrians to step on weeks later when the snow melts. All true, but by and large I love looking up at the snow falling through the light of the street lamps, love hearing the snow hitting the window as I sleep and love seeing the snow on the ground before anyone steps on it.

But today, NYC SUCKED in the snow, culminated in iced over stairs at train stations that no one was willing to deal with despite the fact that it made the stairs almost impassable.

First off, in NYC the corners of intersections get all the snow from the streets piled up, making it hard to cross the street. Fine, the road is clear, but the drains are now covered, so the street floods, and pedestrians can't cross without great effort. I used to see that as a minor irritant, but you try pushing a stroller through NYC city streets after a snow. It is terrible! I can only imagine what it is like for someone in a wheelchair or an elderly person. What's with NYC? Can't they figure out how to clear the corners? It's not like no one walks here. I understand that after one day you can't expect them to be cleared. But there are times they don't get cleared away for weeks, except for that tiny path hordes of people have to squeeze past that are formed by the pedestrians wading through themselves.

Are you are like me, constantly irritated that subway service declines even as rate hikes pile up...and the MTA keeps two sets of books, one to plead poverty so they can increase our fares, one to plead plenty so they can pat themselves on the back, and who knows which is true? Well, your perception of the declining subways may be true.

According to the Straphangers Campaign, subways have gotten dirtier for the second year in a row.

The number of clean subway cars decreased for the second year in a row, according to the eighth annual “subway shmutz” survey by the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign, released today. The survey was conducted on 2,200 subway cars on 22 subway lines between September 2, 2005 and January 5, 2006.

Campaign surveyors rated 47% of subway cars as “clean” down from 61% of cars rated clean in a survey released in the spring 2005. This continued to reverse an earlier trend of improvement found between 2000 and 2004, with the percentage of clean cars going from 32% in the campaign’s 2000 survey, to 47% in 2001, to 59% in 2003, to 66% in the 2004 survey.

Cars on 15 of 22 subway lines saw significant deterioration since last year’s survey (2, 7, A, B, C, D, E, G, J/Z, L ,M, N, R, V and W), while cars on only three lines grew better (1, 3 and 4). Cars on the remaining four lines were largely unchanged (5, 6, F and Q.)

A survey conducted by the Straphanger's Campaign shows that as the MTA slowly does technology upgrades on various subway lines, announcements on subway cars become more frequent and intelligable. Some of the key findings:

For all lines combined, adequate basic announcements increased from 73% in 2004 to 77% in 2005, a statistically significant improvement. Of the 23% rated inadequate, no basic announcement was made at all 36% of the time and announcements were inaudible or garbled 64% of the time.

In 65% of delays and disruptions experienced by our raters, there was either no announcement - or an inaudible, garbled or incorrect one. Of the 65% inadequate delay or disruption announcements, 45% were not made at all; 13% were inaudible or garbled; and 42% were rated “incorrect,

The Strike continues and as more and more comes out about the MTA's culpability in this strike my sympathy for the TWU grows. SOMEONE has to take a stand against the corrupt MTA and so far the mayor, governor and even NYC as a whole has failed to call the MTA to account. If the TWU can do it, more power to them.

Here is the Working Families Party take on the strike:

The Transport Workers are taking a beating in the press. They are an easy target for right-wing editorialists. And the Governor and the Mayor get to act macho and denounce Roger Toussaint and his members.

It’s true that the strike is a huge inconvenience. That’s the point of a strike. But you have to ask yourself – why would 38,000 men and women take the extreme step of walking off the job. The answer is, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is a really lousy employer.

The press reports that the strike is about wages and pensions. And of course it is about both. But it’s also about the intangible quality of respect. If you talk to a bus driver or subway motorman, you constantly hear about how disregarded they feel by their employer. Had the MTA built a culture of respect and cooperation these last years, the atmosphere at the bargaining table might well have allowed for a settlement.

For the WFP, the choice is clear. However much we wish the subways and buses were running, we also know that sometimes people have to take a stand. Call the MTA, join a picket (see below), push back against the “they should be satisfied with what they’ve got

Seriously.

Can someone please tell me why it would be illegal for them to strike? Is this based on laws introduced during the 1980s after the air traffick controllers strike or have these laws always been on the books but they just were never enforced before the country turned republican?

I feel like we are back to the 1920s.

New York City area commuters are all too familiar with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's disrespect for its riders: the MTA hid its budget surpluses to justify a fare increase and, in a time of growing concern about security, has reduced the presence of knowledgeable personnel in trains, stations, and elevators.

Likewise, taxpayers throughout New York State are acquainted with the MTA's lack of consideration for the public's money as the MTA tried to sell publicly-owned real estate it controls for hundreds of millions less than its true value.

Now we see that the MTA has no more regard for its employees than it does for riders or taxpayers. Members of the Transport Workers Union, whose last contract was negotiated in the depths of recession, have asked for things like negotiable wage increases, more reasonable leave policies, and the right to take bathroom breaks without receiving a citation.

But the MTA has been intransigent. Knowing its employees would face tremendous penalties if they were to exercise their most effective bargaining tool and refuse to continue working, it has demanded concessions on pension and health benefits and refused to budge.

But part of this picture is missing. The MTA is a state public authority, primarily controlled by NY Governor George Pataki. Governor Pataki starved the MTA's budget, appointed real estate developer/GOP donor Peter Kalikow to head the MTA and selected the majority of the board that runs the Authority.

Yet Governor Pataki gets let off the hook. We let him dodge accountability, and say: "This is not something where politicians at the last minute ride in on a white horse." That's an unacceptable response from the man who has been the official ultimately in charge of the MTA for the last ten years.

If the MTA continues to stonewall its employees and we all find ourselves unable to get to work one morning -- an outcome that looks likely at this moment of "partial strikes" -- Governor Pataki is the one to call with our complaints.

www.dmiblog.com

[via NY1: Top Stories]:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is pressuring the MTA to follow through on its promise to install more subway surveillance cameras.

He says after the bombings in Madrid and London, he met with the MTA's chairman to put the cameras on the fast track:

"It's up to the MTA to put cameras in and as you may remember, I had a meeting with Peter Kalokow and Ray Kelly and I did, they committed to putting in a whole bunch of cameras, expeditiously, and we're going to hold them to that commitment."

The agency plans to spend $250 million on the project, but isn't saying how many cameras will be installed, or what stations will get them.

But whom am I to chide Mr. Bloomberg? He, after all, has been awfully busy being CEO of New York City.