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After dozens car windows were smashed on Staten Island, police investigators are looking into the possibility that an auto repair shop was behind the vandalism:

Cops are investigating the possibility that a North Shore auto repair shop hired thugs to smash out almost 100 car windows in an attempt to beef up business.

Inspector Richard Bruno, commanding officer of the North Shore’s 120th Precinct, is so disgusted with the rash of vandalism last week that he has personally promised to go to any lengths necessary to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“This is either some fraternity or gang initiation, or some sort of operation for financial gain,” Bruno said.

He emphasized that his detectives are “leaning toward” the latter of those two theories.

“We will be visiting every auto glass repair shop on the North Shore. There are over 20 of them, and we will be running background checks on the owners to see if anyone is struggling financially,” said Bruno.

He added that his officers will be on the lookout for two to four white males last seen leaving some of the crime scenes in a black Kia Sportage, a four-wheel-drive sport-utility vehicle.

“We have the ability to check state Department of Motor Vehicle records for every black Kia [registered] on Staten Island,” said Bruno. “And we are going to do that. We’re going to shake some bushes.”

In total, Bruno said, 86 windows were damaged — 20 Tuesday night into Wednesday morning and 66 Friday night into Saturday morning.

The NYPD provided the following statistics: 30 car windows were smashed in Mariners Harbor; 17 in Port Richmond, near Heberton and Charles avenues; 15 in West Brighton, near Oakland, Pelton and Castleton avenues; 11 in Westerleigh; nine in New Brighton, near Tysens Street and Franklin Avenue, and four in Castleton Corners, near Knox Place and Governor Road.

“The damage was deliberate,” said Bruno. “There was one residence on Oakland Avenue where the suspect hopped into a fenced-in backyard, broke a window with a brick and hopped back out.”

On The Other Hand, A Dog Doesn’t Require A Graduation Fee

New York City private school tuition surpasses Harvard:

Tuition and fees at some New York City private high schools will cost more than $30,000 for the school year beginning in September 2006, breaking a new barrier in sticker shock for parents.

New York already boasts the highest private school tuitions in the country, but prices at some schools will now surpass even the cost of sending a child to Harvard. Many parents have been notified about the tuition increases over the past few weeks.

Riverdale Country School, located on a leafy oasis in the Bronx, will charge $31,200 for tuition, lunch, and books for grades six through 12. Bus service from Manhattan costs an additional couple of thousand dollars. At the Trinity School on the Upper West Side, tuition for seniors will reach $30,170, which includes a $400 “graduation fee.”

. . .

At $30,000 a year for kindergarten through 12th grade, parents are looking to spend about $400,000 before their children even get to college.

Undergraduate tuition at Harvard this year is $28,752, plus room and board.

“We’re so out of whack that we think that it’s okay to pay more for Riverdale than for Harvard — people around the country are laughing at us,” the founder of the Manhattan Private School Advisors, Amanda Uhry, said.

Ms. Uhry, who charges parents $6,000 to help get their children into private school, said the $30,000-a-year price tag won’t cause most of her clients even to blink.

“The reason they charge as much as they do is the same reason I charge as much as I do — because I can,” she said. [Emph. added because it’s obvious]

Sorry about what I said before, I didn’t mean to judge.

And What’s More, They Start Track Fires

The Post gladly reports how the MTA is pointing the finger at those free morning newspapers for the increased number of track fires during 2005:

All those thousands of free newspapers being handed out at subway stations are to blame for a huge jump in track fires, transit officials said yesterday.

“The papers get put down on the platforms and then, due to the vacuum effect of the trains, get pulled into the tracks,” said Michael Lombardi, MTA senior vice president for subways.

While they’ve all been minor blazes, the number of fires increased by almost 20 percent in 2005 to 1,673.

Although NYC Transit added 116 cleaners and the agency is cleaning the tracks more systematically, the volume of trash is hard to overcome.

The aggressive distribution of the free dailies, such as amNewYork and Metro New York, along with increasing ridership, have caused the daily garbage haul to grow by 15 tons, Lombardi said.

Discarded food and other trash is also to blame.

The newspapers say they do not deserve to be blamed for the fires, and transit advocates and elected officials agree.

Oy Vey, Vot A Power Broker!

The Times profiles Hizzoner’s Karl Rove, and the shady unchecked world of backroom horsetrading that goes on in the upper reaches of city government:

In September, a new sign went up on the Williamsburg Bridge, and it won national notice as another example of New York City’s singularly abrasive charm: “Leaving Brooklyn, Oy Vey!” The sign, the brainchild of the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, gained attention in newspapers as far away as Pittsburgh and Kansas City.

But in the intricate dance of New York City politics, the sign was as notable for the timing of its appearance as for what it said. It arrived after two years of resistance from the city’s transportation commissioner, Iris Weinshall, but just shortly before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was to face re-election. And just after it went up, Mr. Markowitz, a Democrat, crossed party lines to endorse the re-election of Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican.

Though City Hall said the close timing of Ms. Weinshall’s reversal and Mr. Markowitz’s endorsement was coincidental, someone intimately involved in the matter said one person played a crucial role in paving the way for the sign’s placement: Kevin Sheekey, Mr. Bloomberg’s top political strategist.

It was just the sort of finesse — some say deal-making — that Mr. Sheekey, 39, quietly put to work in helping to get the mayor re-elected in a landslide victory in November. And now with that election behind him, Mr. Sheekey has moved over to City Hall, and has quickly gone on a virtual war footing to make sure Mr. Bloomberg pushes through his agenda before the mayor is forced to leave office in 2009 by term limits.

The triangulation! The Rovian brilliance!

Mr. Markowitz acknowledged that he told Mr. Sheekey of his displeasure at not getting his “Oy Vey” sign put up. But he said he had no knowledge that the resolution of the fight was politically motivated, and that it did not prompt his endorsement.

“It wasn’t exactly happening and then it happened,” Mr. Markowitz said of the sign.

Such maneuvering seems distinctly out of character for an administration that had prided itself in shying from raw power politics — or what Mr. Bloomberg had derisively called “horse trading.” But Mr. Sheekey’s tactics have impressed some who worked to defeat the mayor.

“I think they ran a flawless campaign,” said Howard Wolfson, a strategist with the New York State Democratic Committee. Though he said he could not discount the more than $80 million Mr. Bloomberg spent on his campaign, he said he considered Mr. Sheekey “probably the best political operator” of Mr. Sheekey’s generation, citing “pure politics, cutting deals and making things happen.” [Emph. added to underscore a wonderfully backhanded compliment]

No Local Bands From New Jersey But Boy That Plasma Television Has A Great Picture!

Those proud photos of the Spin Doctors performing there may have been a bad omen:

C.B.G.B. won’t be the only East Village music venue to close this year. Continental, the punk club where Joey Ramone, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, D-Generation and the Dictators once took the stage, will no longer host live music after Aug. 26, said Trigger, the club’s owner.

A little after 6:30 p.m. on Valentine’s Day, Trigger sat in the club’s basement greenroom and talked about his decision to stop hosting bands after 15 years. Wearing a winter hat with earflaps, snow boots and a black zip-up sweater, his deep voice echoed in the empty room. “There’s not much of a scene anymore,” he said. “We have a few great nights a month here, but nothing like the old days.” The club currently books four to five bands a night, seven days a week.

Back when the club opened, there wasn’t a Kmart on Eighth St. or even a single Starbucks on Astor Pl., and the late Joey Ramone, who lived a block away from the club, was a regular. The first year Continental was open, Iggy Pop came in and asked Trigger if he could book a show. “I told Iggy to bring in a demo,” Trigger said. Pop took him seriously — for a minute — before Trigger told him he was joking, he said.

The neighborhood has changed since then. Continental, which is near the corner of St. Mark’s Pl. and Third Ave., is now sandwiched between a McDonald’s and a kosher falafel restaurant named Chickpea. “A punk rock club on a corner like this — it’s just impossible,” Trigger said. Band members who used to live in the neighborhood have been priced out of the East Village. “Rents have really changed the complexion and energy of the city,” he said.

A little after 10 p.m. on a recent Sunday, about 40 people filled the long, narrow club space. T-shirts, baseball caps and various laminated signs advertising drink specials hung above the bar. Black-and-white photos taken at the club of various musicians, including Iggy Pop, Dee Dee Ramone, the Spin Doctors and the Wallflowers, decorated the black walls.

. . .

The renovations will not be dramatic, and the overall look and feel of the club will remain relatively similar, Trigger said. He plans to install a jukebox and a flat-screen plasma television screen upstairs and a pool table in the basement greenroom. The greenroom’s benches, red-and-black-checkered floor and sticker-covered walls will stay completely intact, he said.