Snowstorm an early test for Bill de Blasio, New York City's new mayor
January 3, 2014 -- Updated 1902 GMT (0302 HKT)
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio shovels the sidewalk in front of his house in New York on Friday.
.
"I
had a great night; it was not the most sleep-filled night," de Blasio,
an admitted night owl, told reporters Friday morning during what's
seen as the first challenge for a new mayor pushing a progressive
agenda that promises to serve all of the city's 8 million residents.
.
"I must say I have never done a 4 a.m. conference call in my life."
For
the moment at least, de Blasio's vow to tackle a range of issues, from
economic inequality to police and community relations, was superseded
by a meteorological phenomenon that has famously haunted mayors in the
past.
.
"We
are working in all five boroughs equally," said de Blasio, surrounded
by a small army of sanitation workers at a garage in Queens.
.
"I
believe that that is not only a philosophical idea I believe in
strongly; it is also the fundamental belief of each member of this
department to help each and every neighborhood equally."
.
De
Blasio said sanitation crews were working 12-hour shifts to clear the
city's 6,200 miles of roadways with 2,500 plows from various
departments. He said 100% of primary roads and 92% of secondary roads
had been plowed. About 93% of tertiary roads were plowed with the help
of private contractors. Emergency response times were delayed about a minute because of snow and traffic, he said.
In
2010, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was heavily criticized for his handling
of a blizzard that shut down several subway lines for days. He was
accused of allowing snow to pile up in Queens and letting large parts
of Brooklyn go unplowed for days.
Bloomberg
defended city efforts to clear snow amid a swell of frustration by
some snowbound residents, particularly outside of Manhattan, who
wondered why their streets were still clogged days after the massive
holiday storm.
John
Doherty, sanitation commissioner since the administration of Mayor Ed
Koch in the early 1980s, said de Blasio has handled the storm no
differently from his previous bosses.
.
"He wants the job done, and he wants the streets clear," he said. "That's what we do."
"It
would have been nice to talk about how to handle a snowstorm in an
abstract exercise, but we didn't get to do that," de Blasio told
Doherty. "We got the real thing."
De
Blasio said the decision to close schools was made in the predawn
hours because of the deceptively cold temperatures. "With this kind of
bitter cold," he said, "we did not want children out there, exposed."
.
Friday
morning, de Blasio emerged from his row house in Park Slope, Brooklyn,
with a shovel to clear his own sidewalk, something he said he has done
for years. "I'm a proud Brooklynite," he told reporters later. "I'm an
outer borough homeowner."
A
virtual unknown nationally, despite 25 years in New York politics, de
Blasio defied critics who questioned whether his experience as a city
councilman from Brooklyn and, most recently, as a public advocate -- a
sort of civic watchdog -- sufficiently prepared him to run the Big
Apple. He also ran Hillary Clinton's first U.S. Senate campaign.
.
The
new mayor admitted that his son, Dante, a high school student, lobbied
heavily for closing the city's schools. On social media, Dante said
friends were asking him to pull strings to get the shutdown done.
.
But
de Blasio's wife, Chirlane McCray, tweeted a photo of a shovel and
snow salts Thursday night to illustrate "what Dante will be doing if he
does not go to school."
.
"If
Dante was not lobbying me, there would be something wrong with him,"
de Blasio said. "Of course, he's 16. But unfortunately the decision
takes more factors into account than Dante's opinion."
No comments:
Post a Comment