Apparently now that the election season has come and gone city ticket agents can go back to doing what they do best — cheap collars in Astoria:

Swarms of traffic agents patrol the jammed streets of Astoria’s commercial strips every day, writing tickets for expired meters and double-parked cars — even as drivers sit in their vehicles.

Earlier: We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Quotas — We Have Productivity Goals For That!; Countless Hovers Under Cover Of The Street, Or, The Gift Down Below.

Surveys show that animal owners live in a dreamland where their pets provide better companionship than humans:

New Yorkers said Monday that they can see why one in four Americans prefers spending Valentine’s Day with a pet rather than a partner, as a recent survey found.

. . .

“It’s different with a dog, more of an unconditional love,” [a 29-year-old dog owner] added after leaving a pet store with Valentine’s Day gifts — doggy treats and a toy — for her four-legged loved one.

“There is no love on this Earth like a dog’s love,” said [a 47-year-old dog owner] at the Union Square dog run.

The bad news is that the accelerating Toyota scare has apparently reached the five boroughs. The good news is that you can’t really get that far in New York City:

A Queens World War II veteran said he and his wife became the latest victims of Toyota accelerator woes when his 2009 Camry’s gas pedal jammed — sending the car careening into a synagogue.

In 2000, .8 percent of the city’s workforce made more than $100,000, a figure that by last year rose to 8.4 percent:

The number of city workers pulling down $100,000 or more jumped more than tenfold in the last decade, largely because of hefty raises won by schoolteachers and principals.

The Daily News’ Adam Lisberg shows what raising bonds for what could be the most expensive subway stop of all time means for this year’s city budget:

So next year’s budget includes $83.3 million to pay for the 7 train extension, even though it’s highly unlikely all of it will be spent.

At the same time, the budget closes four FDNY companies to save $5.6 million. It closes a center for the homeless to save $2.4 million. It closes four swimming pools and shuts the rest down two weeks early to save $1.4 million.

It also lays off 834 city workers.

The city can’t afford to pay their salaries anymore, but it can still afford to set aside money in reserve to impress the bond markets. It’s cold comfort to those workers, but the bankers will be happy.

The Observer quipped that New York was like The Wire the other day when they linked to the Times’ story about how the City intends to tear down some mid-rise housing project buildings in Brooklyn. But it even goes beyond that:

More than a hundred retired New York Police Department captains and higher-ranking officers said in a survey that the intense pressure to produce annual crime reductions led some supervisors and precinct commanders to manipulate crime statistics, according to two criminologists studying the department.

. . .

In interviews with the criminologists, other retired senior officers cited examples of what the researchers believe was a periodic practice among some precinct commanders and supervisors: checking eBay, other Web sites, catalogs or other sources to find prices for items that had been reported stolen that were lower than the value provided by the crime victim. They would then use the lower values to reduce reported grand larcenies — felony thefts valued at more than $1,000, which are recorded as index crimes under CompStat — to misdemeanors, which are not, the researchers said.

Meanwhile, the Daily News publishes a firsthand account of another way to fudge the numbers on New Year’s Eve:

People who came into the stationhouse couldn’t believe the precinct captain was there to greet them and take their crime report. The supervisors and cops looked at me like I was nuts, or more accurately, just pathetic. But there was no way I was going to be the only captain in Brooklyn South who couldn’t beat last year’s figures.

. . .

So what did I do that night? Did I fudge crime stats? Did I send crime victims on their way with no satisfaction? Absolutely not! I just . . . delayed.

I might have taken the complaints, but nothing was getting logged in the computer — and therefore would not “officially” count in Compstat — until after midnight. Until 1998.

The complainants were happy. They got personal service from the captain. The 124 room civilian personnel were happy. They got to relax that night because nothing was going into that computer until I said so. More importantly, the borough commander and, ultimately, the police commissioner, were happy because Bensonhurst came in one so-called “index” crime below the year before. CRIME WAS DOWN IN ALL OF BROOKLYN SOUTH!

Well, not really, because seven index crimes measured in Compstat were reported by victims from 2 p.m. to midnight, but since I prepared and reviewed the hand-written “scratch” copies, only five crimes could possibly be entered into the computer program by midnight. The other two were typed in sometime in the early hours of 1998 – a new year!

Did that make me corrupt or unethical? Maybe. Who cares now? All I know is I didn’t get any nasty calls or threats from “downtown” on Jan. 2.

It’s funny — it wasn’t so long ago that when St. Vincent’s Hospital was talking about expanding, people in Greenwich Village seemed to question the appropriateness of having a hospital like that in the neighborhood. Now that the hospital may close, people can’t think of what life would be like without it:

So far, the hospital, which is $700 million in debt and in danger of bankruptcy, has not found a partner. Continuum Health Partners, a consortium of hospitals in Brooklyn and Manhattan, had offered to take over its outpatient facilities, but then withdrew that offer, in part because of community opposition to Continuum’s plan to shut down most emergency room functions and to send 911 ambulance calls to other hospitals.

Where to get more money was a major topic of Friday’s meeting, which was attended by the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn; Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried; and representatives of the hospital workers’ union, Local 1199 of the S.E.I.U.; the city comptroller’s office; the nurses’ association; and others, according to attendees.

Mr. Gottfried said that representatives of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development talked about providing mortgage insurance to refinance loans. One person at the table reportedly wondered whether the Department of Homeland Security might extend money to St. Vincent’s, which played a major role in treating survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

“There is no getting around it — the situation for St. Vincent’s Hospital is critical, and we are all extremely concerned,” Mr. Nadler said in a statement afterward. “At the moment, we are actively engaging federal agencies to provide resources.”

Location Scout: St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan.

Don’t worry, the Board of Education has a plan:

After Alexa scribbled her name, the date and a smiley face on her desk during a Spanish class on Monday, her teacher reported her to an assistant principal, who placed a call to cops, city officials said.

The cops arrested Alexa, escorting her out of the school with her hands behind her back in metal handcuffs, Camacho said.

City Department of Education spokeswoman Margie Feinberg called the episode a mistake. “The principal made a mistake and has lifted the suspension,” she said.

. . .

The NYPD is expected this month to start using Velcro handcuffs to subdue unruly kids following a pilot program in 22 schools in northern Queens.

Oh well that makes it better:

It was not clear what was more surprising initially to city officials: that one of the Department of Correction’s chaplains was accused of taking scissors and metal blades into a jail, or that the same chaplain had been convicted of murder.

Earlier: I’m Sure There’s A Perfectly Reasonable Explanation For This.

If Marty Markowitz didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him:

His State of the Borough address at the Park Slope Armory Wednesday night featured singing, dancing, lights and sirens — and even Markowitz’s head photoshopped onto newly-elected Sen. Scott Brown’s naked body from a 1982 Cosmo photo spread projected onto a big screen.

A judiciously placed file folder inscribed with “Fuhgeddaboutit” left a little something to the imagination.

“I don’t need Howard Wolfson, I’ve got my strategy all figured out,” said Markowitz, suggesting the beefcake photos could help him get elected mayor in 2013.

“I have four years to get in shape,” he told the crowd of about 1,600.

. . .

There was as much singing, dancing, and noshing as there was speechifying — though there was plenty of that — Markowitz’s speech clocked in at just under an hour and 15 minutes, more than triple Queens Borough President Helen Marshall’s 20-minute address.

The Venuto Brothers belted out Italian opera; the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir sang hymns; the Brooklyn Ballet put on a modernist dance, and six-year-old Michael Jackson impersonator Ikim Whitley of East Flatbush in a top hat and pleather jacket came up on stage mid-speech to do the moonwalk.

Markowitz himself briefly got into the act, swaying hand in hand with feathered bikini and headdress-clad performers from the award-winning Sesame Flyers dance troupe, famous for their performances at the West Indian Labor Day Parade. “I’m not staring, Jamie, I’m not staring,” he promised his wife.

The borough president even whipped out a police light and jokingly pledged never again to break out the lights and sirens that got him in hot water when he was caught using them to speed in his official car to a press conference last month.

But it’s weird — he looks so much taller on TV:

A con man trying to impersonate Paul Simon was arrested for trying to take money out of the singer’s bank account — because the teller realized the 6-foot-1 crook looked absolutely nothing like the diminutive rock legend, police sources told The Post.

Tell me why — again — people think it’s OK to have dogs in apartments, because I really don’t get it:

The Marders had Nestlé’s vocal cords cut by a veterinary surgeon after a neighbor in the family’s apartment building on the Upper East Side threatened to complain to the co-op board about the noisy dog.

As the Governor announces that a $700 million deficit is now $8.2 billion (how exactly did that just sneak up on everyone?) and the MTA announces that they’re actually $400 million short of what they need for this year, the mayor is donning a hardhat to build his big one stop on the 7 train. Totally fucking unbelievable:

Mayor Bloomberg said he hopes the $2.1 billion subway extension — funded by city taxpayer money — will lead to a spate of economic development on Manhattan’s West Side.

If the mayor cared a little less about shit he can put his name on and more about fixing potholes or, god forbid, keeping the city’s budget balanced (or doing his part to ensure the financial well being of the state) maybe he’d really be a leader. But until then he’s just like the rest of the glory-hogging politicians that have come and gone and done their part to make living in New York really fucking onerous.

Please, please quit being such morons:

Two state lawmakers at opposite ends of the political spectrum united to bar a controversial proposal by Gov. David Paterson to permit the sale of wine in grocery stores, bodegas, delis, mini-marts and gas stations statewide.

Controversial? Only in New York, kids . . .

Right? Right:

An imam with the city Department of Correction was busted trying to smuggle razors and a pair of scissors into the Tombs on Wednesday morning, sources said.

The city finds that traffic around Times Square doesn’t really move any faster or easier now that a five-block-long stretch of Broadway has been turned into a pedestrian mall:

The city is keeping its data under tight lock and key. But two officials briefed on the data characterized the results as disappointing, and one said that traffic flow did not meet the department’s goals. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the data had not been made public.

Those goals were outlined in February, when the program was announced. The city hoped that its changes would allow drivers to travel down Seventh Avenue, from 59th to 23rd Street, up to 17 percent faster than before. A comparable northbound trip up Avenue of the Americas was expected to take up to 37 percent less time. The idea, according to Mr. Bloomberg, was that eliminating the congestion where Broadway crosses the two avenues would smooth the way for cars, allowing them to spend less time at stoplights.

. . .

The stakes are high for the city’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, who has gained worldwide attention for the plan. Ms. Sadik-Khan has taken an aggressive approach toward remaking the New York streetscape to roll back the car-centric policies stemming from the Robert Moses era and create a metropolis more friendly to pedestrians and bicycles. Her actions have earned her accolades and anger in equal measure.

Traffic data will not be the only factor in Mr. Bloomberg’s assessment of whether to continue the program, which barred vehicular traffic from Broadway between 47th and 42nd Streets, and from 35th Street to 33rd Street, creating pedestrian plazas through the heart of Times and Herald Squares. Besides the extension of green lights to expedite traffic flow, other small modifications to lanes and the street grid were made and furniture was set up to accommodate tired and hungry tourists.

Grand schemes seldom seem to provide the results politicians promise — especially flashy schemes rolled out six months before an election. So when in doubt, back down:

“Does it solve all of the problems in the city?” he added. “No.”

In other words, what do you think we’re going to do with all that new lawn furniture?

Location Scout: Times Square Pedestrian Mall.

If you can’t moneymake a waterfront site into a money-making commercial property, try building dorms instead:

Developer Joe Sitt sent shockwaves through a monthly gathering of real estate executives on Tuesday by sharing news that he hoped to convert his waterfront land between the Ikea superstore and the Fairway supermarket into a student housing complex.

“Ask any university, they’re starving for student housing,” Sitt, the CEO of Thor Equities, told the development big wigs at the Real Estate Roundtable at the Brooklyn Historical Society.

“[It could be] quasi-residential student housing if we can tempt a nearby university.”

Location Scout: Revere Sugar Refinery.

Interesting theory, not sure if I buy it though:

Manhattan shops are less likely to have candies, chips, sodas and other munchies at the checkout than stores elsewhere in the country, according to researchers at the Tulane University School of Public Health.

Nationwide, 41 percent of non-food stores stock the treats, but in Manhattan, just 32 percent do.

The upside is that Manhattan’s obesity rate is 16 percent, compared with 33 percent in the rest of the country.

See how Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro defends the usefulness of his position:

Staffers with civil service-protected jobs would also have to be retained on the city payroll, even if they were transferred to other agencies or boroughs. The Borough Hall building, he said, would remain open, meaning that the city would still have to pay for heat, electricity and phone service.

Oh wait, they do blood drives, too:

Borough Hall also gets local businesses to sponsor concerts and other activities that don’t cost the city any money but improve the quality of life for Islanders. His office also sponsors blood drives, and food and coat giveaways that benefit the needy.

Somehow the Hotel Carter avoided the list this year. No worries, there’s another NYC-area contender:

The Times Square inn — voted the nation’s sixth-filthiest hotel and worst in the Big Apple last week by travelers on Tripadvisor.com — is a throwback to the dirty old days of the 1970s, when hotels like this one rented rooms by the hour, not the week.

. . .

In Room 307, The Post found orange mold in the shower, a chipped toilet seat, ill-fitting ceiling tiles stained with water and piles of dust behind the headboard.

. . .

The front-desk clerk told The Post the that Tripadvisor is always asking the New York Inn for money for better placement on its site — which the hotel has refused to pay.

People being creative with their SSID handle:

The signs say 82nd and Broadway, but a quick look on the Web reveals it’s the heart of a wireless Internet network dubbed “dontstalkus.”

Keep walking north on Broadway and that network gives way to another named “Turndownyourmusic” which, at 110th St., becomes the “wehaveroaches” network.

Welcome to the wild wild world of Wi-Fi.

. . .

The names of the networks pop up on the user’s computer. Sometimes they have generic handles — like 05B7754 — but others are more clever.

Some Wi-Fi users on the East Side display their political stripes by dubbing their networks “killhealthcare,” “betterthanbush” and “Palinsux.”

Up in the Bronx, Wi-Fi users with a religious — or anti-religious — bent have taken to giving their networks names like “jesussaves,” “godisfake” and “endofdays.”

In the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the networks take a more carnal direction with monikers like “singleandluvinit,” “needaman” and “nudist.”

“Welcome to the wild wild world of Wi-Fi” — what is this, 1999?

Street money? Are you kidding me? Was he watching that Cory Booker movie or something? That’s what some are suggesting after details of a mysterious campaign expenditure emerged in the Post:

A $750,000 personal campaign contribution that Mayor Bloomberg channeled through the state Independence Party during last year’s mayoral election landed in the hands of a top aide, The Post has learned.

The aide, John Haggerty Jr., served as a Bloomberg “volunteer involved in some of the activities” of Special Election Operations LLC, a hastily formed company that hired 200 to 300 workers to do poll watching on Election Day, according to Ken Gross, counsel to the campaign.

. . .

One veteran GOP consultant said he believed Special Election Operations was designed to dispense “street money” — cash that’s spread around on Election Day to volunteers and for such incidentals as lunch.

But Howard Wolfson, the mayor’s campaign spokesman, insisted the $750,000 — part of a $1.2 million personal contribution Bloomberg made to the state Independence Party right before the election — didn’t go for that purpose.

“The [Independence Party] made the same Election Day expenses that all party committees make every election for Election Day workers,” he said in an e-mail.

“Because the IP does not have the infrastructure to handle this kind of activity in-house, it used Special Election Operations to handle the payroll payments to all these individuals.”

Wolfson’s “explanation” even sounds like it’s street money. And $750,000? That’s not even close to what was suggested Obama would have to spend to get elected in Philadelphia. We’re taking a lot of pizza parties!

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

If I saw a fire, I don’t think I would ever think to look for one of those things, much less know how to use it:

Since 85% of calls made through the street boxes are false alarms, Bloomberg said, “In the days where everybody has cell phones … the city would be just as safe without them.”

Only 140 structural fires last year out of 26,666 were first called in through an alarm box – and phone calls on those fires came in after the boxes were pulled, according to the FDNY.

(Wow, I’m scared that I actually agree with the mayor on this . . .)

The good news is that the city’s 14 sewage plants are finally meeting Clean Water Act standards. The bad news is that it’s really, really expensive to upgrade sewage treatment plants. And that’s part of the reason it’s so expensive to live here:

New DEP Commissioner Cas Holloway said the performance will further improve once ongoing projects like the $5 billion upgrade of Brooklyn’s Newtown Creek plant are completed.

$5 billion! Is that a typo? Jeez . . .

Location Scout: Newtown Creek.

I don’t know who actually wins, but Katz’s comes out looking quite bad:

As an experiment, I picked up some signature dishes at popular New York spots. I got the works at Shake Shack. A New York strip steak with creamed spinach at Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse. From Ollie’s, the Chinese chain, cumin-flavored lamb (“I eat that and need to consume about a gallon of water afterward,” one foodie warned me). A slice of candy bar pie from Momofuku Milk Bar, because a sprinkle of salt gives desserts there an edge. House-made saffron pappardelle with braised rabbit at the Standard Grill, because it looked so luscious. The corned beef at Katz’s Delicatessen, because, well, how could you not?

. . .

The Food and Drug Administration recommends a maximum of 2,400 milligrams of sodium per day, 1,500 for people who have hypertension, are African-American (who are at higher risk of hypertension) or are beyond an unspecified middle age.

. . .

A large take-out container of Manhattan clam chowder at the Oyster Bar weighed in at a scary 3,100 milligrams (without the little crackers). And Katz’s?

Katz’s justifiably famous corned beef sandwich, with mustard but only two of the six pickles the counter guy gave me (along with his number), came to a truly remarkable 4,490 milligrams of sodium. That’s two whole days’ worth in one sandwich, nearly the equivalent of 10 McDonald’s hamburgers.

Location Scout: Katz’s Delicatessen.

It’s a genius plan — taxing jet fuel will raise millions and mean that fewer of us will leave the city, leading to even more spending at home:

He proposed a sales tax on airplane fuel yesterday as part of his spending plan for the 2011 fiscal year, a move that could mean the cost of flying will soar.

. . .

By extending the 8.875% sales tax to jet fuel at airports, he expects to raise $169 million. Airline executives wouldn’t say how the tax would spill over to customers – but they are against the plan.

New York’s Bravest seem to spend a lot of time cleaning up insurance scams:

From the time he purchased the American Diner in 2006 to the moment his Norwood-area restaurant went up in smoke six weeks ago, Mohammed Quadir tried everything to keep his business afloat. He changed the name, focused on cleanliness, tweaked the menu and introduced new specials and discounts. He even hosted play readings and a gothic-style wedding.

He often solicited his customers’ advice, looking for any way to bring back the crowds that once packed the East 204th Street diner, a popular neighborhood gathering spot since it was the Chariot Diner under different owners in the 1990s.

Nothing seemed to work.

This winter, according to city fire marshals and the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, in a final attempt to recoup something from his flailing business venture, Quadir hired a man to set fire to the American Diner — a fire that destroyed not only the restaurant but also the sole neighborhood supermarket and a dentist’s office — and then filed a hefty insurance claim.

The make-work plan for the department busy with quota-driven ticketing (and more ticketing) and busting people for candy hits a snag when both Bloomberg and then the White House wimp out:

The White House ordered the Justice Department Thursday night to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan.

The dramatic turnabout came hours after Mayor Bloomberg said he would “prefer that they did it elsewhere” and then spoke to Attorney General Eric Holder.

“It would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that’s too mild a word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the neighborhood,” Bloomberg told reporters.

“There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive for New York City.”

No, never:

A bizarre video hit the Web on Wednesday of a man rolling around the floor of an uptown 6 train playing with a chicken.

Unpainted speed bumps in Astoria are keeping up the neighbors, and providing new thrills for drivers:

“My house is rumbling,” said John Warren, 45, a father of three who lives on 49th St. near the speed bumps.

. . .

Before the bumps were installed in 2005, the street used to be a “raceway” for speeding vehicles, residents said.

But the speed bumps haven’t slowed everyone down.

“People [speed] purposefully because they want to see how airborne they can get,” Warren said.