On the one hand, they just announced another chintzy $400 rebate ($250 million a year) while on the other they want to implement draconian-sounding “hiring freezes”:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, responding to shrinking revenues from a cooling economy, imposed a hiring freeze for all agencies yesterday and directed commissioners to devise spending reductions of 2.5 percent this fiscal year and 5 percent in the next.

It is the first time officials have resorted to a citywide plan to make cuts since October 2002, when the budget was still reeling from the aftershocks of the Sept. 11 terror attack. Since then, the city’s superheated real estate market and fat payouts on Wall Street have led to surpluses, including a record $4.4 billion in the last fiscal year, which allowed the mayor to increase spending and services while cutting taxes and offering rebates.

. . .

Commissioners are to submit their plans for budget cuts by Nov. 19, and will not be permitted to fill any positions other than those directly related to public health or safety at least until the mayor decides which cuts to make. If they find they have additional expenses, Mr. Page wrote in bold type, “you should reprioritize your existing budget.”

Although the reductions would yield an estimated $500 million for this year and $1 billion for the next, Mr. Page wrote that the numbers were targets and did not mean that final decisions had been made about how much each particular agency would need to cut.

“A hurricane is much more likely than something, a terrible tragedy like 9/11″ will come in handy for the Clinton campaign should Bloomberg run for President, which is not to say that tapping into everyone’s deepest fears about Manhattan hurricanes is not a smart move:

A set of booklets designed to prepare the city’s students for a range of natural and manmade disasters is missing one obvious crisis scenario: a terrorist attack.

The Bloomberg administration is distributing 1.3 million children’s safety guides that make no mention of the attacks of September 11, 2001, or the possibility of a future terrorist attack. The city has produced a booklet for elementary school students and another for middle school and high school students.

The city’s guide for older students depicts a range of troubles on its cover, including a heat wave, power outage, hurricane, flood, fire, and explosion. “These Things Happen Here, Too,” it says. “New York, It’s Time To Get Ready.”

. . .

Speaking at P.S. 29 in Brooklyn yesterday to announce the new emergency preparedness campaign, Mayor Bloomberg said the city’s Office of Emergency Management, which worked to put out the booklets, should be preparing New Yorkers “for those things that are most likely.”

Referring to the photographs of six disaster scenarios on the pamphlet cover, Mr. Bloomberg said that all the situations are so likely that nearly all of them have happened during his time in office.

“A hurricane is much more likely than something, a terrible tragedy like 9/11,” he said. “When it really gets to be that scale, what you can count on is a bunch of dedicated people who have been training all the time, but you can’t plan for something like that.”

In case you were wondering, the last hurricane to hit the city was in 1938, and is generally considered to be a once-every-75-years occurrence, which isn’t to say that it’s not scary, just that Hizzoner is ridiculously (purposely?) tone deaf (hope that works out for you, Sheekey!).

Something that only seems to occur in the sticks with psychotic underemployed part-timers is happening here:

Two firefighters were arraigned yesterday on arson and reckless endangerment charges for allegedly torching a Hell’s Kitchen firehouse over the weekend.

Michael Izzo, 30, of Staten Island, and Richard Capece, 31, of Brooklyn, were arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on felony charges of second- and third-degree arson and reckless endangerment. Judge Abraham Clott set bail for both men at $20,000 cash or $30,000 bond and ordered them to return to court on Friday.

According to a criminal complaint, a surveillance camera captured Izzo and Capece buying a gallon of gasoline and a cigarette lighter at a gas station on 38th Street and Tenth Avenue, about two blocks from Engine 34/Ladder 21. Capece allegedly paid for the merchandise with his MasterCard debit card and then accompanied Izzo in a 2001 black Chevrolet Suburban to the firehouse at 440 W. 38th St., where its main door was doused with gasoline and set ablaze at 2:30 a.m. Saturday. No one was injured in the fire, which was quickly extinguished by five firefighters at the firehouse.

Because you know the (not $1 billion but $500 million) World Trade Center Sept. 11 memorial costs way to much money when the foundation funding it becomes one of the nation’s top nonprofits:

The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation has joined the annual honor roll of American nonprofits that received the most private support last year.

The organization, which raised $115 million in 2006, ranked no. 158 on a list of 400 entities compiled by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The list is published in the Chronicle’s November 1 issue.

At the top of the list was United Way of America in Alexandria, Va., with $4.1 billion raised. No. 400 was the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., in the midst of a $200 million capital campaign, with $42 million raised.

The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which began operations in May 2005, in 2006 reported donations totaling $115 million. By June 1 of this year, it had raised $300 million of its $350 million goal for the building of a memorial and museum at the World Trade Center site. The fund-raising feat is impressive, as the foundation’s president quit in May 2006 after criticism for rising costs and delays. Mayor Bloomberg then stepped in as chairman of the foundation.

“It is a big deal that it raised enough money to get on the list,” the editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Stacy Palmer, said of the new entrant from New York. “They put a lot of effort into bringing in a lot of very big gifts and saying, ‘We need to go ahead and move forward on this.’”

By way of contrast, the Staten Island Postcards memorial, a very nice memorial, only cost $2 million.

It’s the Metropolitan Diary editors who are a few weeks early. And the city’s haiku writers are jumping the gun:

This Daylight Saving

This hour gained, but empty, hushed

No one told the birds

A-Rod has always been the type of player who really comes through when it counts:

Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who had one of the best statistical seasons in the storied history of the Yankees, opted out of the final three years on his 10-year, $252 million contract Sunday, according to his agent. The move makes him a free agent and potentially ends his career with the team.

“We have put it in writing and sent it to the Yankees,” Rodriguez’s agent, Scott Boras, said in a telephone interview.

The Yankees had said they would not negotiate with Rodriguez if he opted out, so he might have played his final game with them. There is a chance that the Yankees could change their minds and negotiate with Boras toward a contract, but Rodriguez will be a free agent and will be able to negotiate with all 30 teams.

On the night their archrival, the Boston Red Sox, won the World Series for the second time in four seasons, the Yankees may have lost the player widely considered the best in the game. Rodriguez led the major leagues this season with 54 home runs, including the 500th of his career, and 156 runs batted in. He is expected to win his third Most Valuable Player award.

*

PlaNYC isn’t all about congestion pricing and the as-yet-unexplained 1 million new residents. There is also the part about the mussels:

The mayor wants to plant 20 cubic meters of ribbed mussel beds into Hendrix Creek next to the 26th Ward Wastewater Treatment Plant to naturally clean and filter nearby Jamaica Bay. “In the 19th Century, the natural way the harbor got cleaned was because it was full of mussels and clams,” said Rohit Aggarwala, the director of long-term planning and sustainability, the department the mayor created to oversee PlaNYC2030. “If it works there, we’ll try it in lots of different places.” Others are skeptical though. “I don’t how you’d ever find enough ribbed mussels to make much of a difference.,” said Ray Grizzle, a professor of Marine Sciences at the University of New Hampshire. Still, the city is set to give it a try next spring.

When you get to park for free, it makes it easy to commute:

The city’s largest public employees union, District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, is pressing the City Council to join Mayor Bloomberg in ending a residency rule that requires 45,000 of the union’s members to live in New York City.

But the proposal is facing fierce opposition from the usually labor-friendly City Council. Some council members say city jobs should be reserved for city residents.

Union leaders have argued it is unfair to force employees to stretch their salaries to pay for costly housing in the city when there are more affordable options available in the outlying areas. They propose that their members be allowed to leave the city and reside in the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, and Putnam and aren’t taking the council’s resistance lightly.

Oh, and by the way, about all that new parkland:

The Bloomberg administration has always claimed more parkland will be created by the new Yankee Stadium project, which swallowed the 102-year-old Macombs Dam Park.

In recent months, the city has upped the numbers, saying 27.6 acres of replacement parkland will be built here, a clear gain of several acres for the community.

Yet 45 percent of these new parks — or 12.5 acres — already exist, either as mapped parkland or, in one case, as a schoolyard. Two of the replacement fields will be more than a mile away.

The replacement plan’s reliance on existing park parcels was acknowledged by Parks Dept. spokesman Warner Johnston, but “just because property is mapped as parkland, or Parks property, does not mean that it is fully developed into a dedicated park,” he said.

“They’re passing off park land the public’s been using for at least 70 years,” said Geoffrey Croft of NYC Park Advocates.

. . .

Johnston explained the city’s plan will “transform” similar park property surrounding Yankee Stadium. “The replacement parks will reconstruct the parkland with new amenities and landscaping,” he said. A new artificial turf field at the West Bronx Recreation Center, for example, will go down on what was an “empty lot.”

That lot is 1.2 miles uphill from the former Macombs Dam Park. A mile southeast of the old park, another acre of artificial turf is being installed on the asphalt playground of P.S. 29, built 45 years ago.

“They’re putting in artificial turf — that’s not replacing anything,” Croft said.

Earlier: That Was Fast.

Yes, there are times when it just might be better to get out and walk:

Riding the New York City Marathon on the city’s mass-transit system was almost as grueling as running it.

It took seven buses and three subway trains to trek through five boroughs along roughly the same 26.2-mile route some 40,000 runners will follow this Sunday.

My race began on the S53 bus in Staten Island, and like the start of the actual marathon, there was little space to breathe.

I had to duck errant elbows and fists, and thanks to one of my fellow riders, I was overcome by the odor of a thousand people sweating.

. . .

If I made every single connection, I could complete the marathon in three hours, 45 minutes — a respectable finish an hour quicker than my running time last year.

. . .

I crossed the finish line in Central Park in four hours, 57 minutes — two minutes slower than I ran the race in 2006.

Of that time, I spent three hours, 15 minutes riding buses and subways and another one hour, 42 minutes waiting for them.

Along the route that took me on seven buses and three subways, I swiped my MetroCard 10 times.

In case you were wondering how Citi Field and the new Yankee Stadium stack up:

A study of the two new baseball stadiums by feng shui expert Judith Wendell found the Yankees’ future home has good luck while the Mets’ Citi Field will be plagued by “a lot of disturbed energy.” Wendell visited the two sites, which are slated to open in 2009, exclusively for The Post.

There is one bright spot for Met followers: Citi Field’s color scheme of dark blue exposed steel with green seats and red brick are what Wendell calls a “power combination.” They are certainly “much better” than the team colors of blue and orange, which she deems “antagonistic.”

The Yanks broke ground on Babe Ruth’s birthday, Aug. 16, and are repeating many elements of the old stadium, including the angles for home plate and the positions of the dugouts. Cathedral arches and the entire façade will also recapture the old Yankee Stadium incarnations.

“In feng shui terms, they are taking the ‘predecessor chi’ and bringing it with them and graphing it on to the new stadium, which is very good for luck,” said Wendell . . .

Location Scout: Citi Field, New Yankee Stadium.

If there’s one thing we need, it’s more overweight 1980s sitcom stars in the role of Edna Turnblad in Hairspray:

[George] Wendt, who played Norm Peterson . . . on “Cheers” for a decade, fills out a cast that includes such other big names as former *NSYNC boy-band member Lance Bass and former “Hollywood Square” Jim J. Bullock.

Wendt follows in the footsteps of other heavyweights who played Edna, including John Travolta who starred in this year’s movie-musical version and legendary drag actor Divine, who starred in John Water’s original 1988 film.

(Since when did “Jim” J. Bullock start using vowels? Or am I just not a big enough Jim J. Bullock fan?)

*Sorry, dude — I didn’t realize how much weight you lost since the early ’90s — you look good, by the by!

Hey man, that’s that — the Port Authority plays the role of the shoe-throwing mean old man and leaves it to the imagination who the “proper authorities” may be:

To the alarm of cat rescue groups, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has started rounding up feral cats that live in a colony deep in the secured cargo areas of Kennedy International Airport. The several dozen cats have been tended for years by sympathetic airport employees.

The cats sleep in makeshift cubicles made of plastic packing containers nestled in cargo carts that once carried transcontinental luggage but have been long retired from Kennedy’s runways. They gather under and around a rusted old fuel tanker truck.

“It’s just a happy cat camp,” said Ashot Karamian, president of the Urban Cat League, which specializes in rescuing stray cats in New York and whose members had visited the site in the past.

But now the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages the airport, has blocked cat rescue groups from approaching the cats.

“The cats are being rounded up in the coming days, and will be held in a safe place until they’re turned over to the proper authorities,” Pasquale DiFulco, an authority spokesman, said yesterday.

. . .

Yesterday morning, there were piles of food on foam plates held down with stones next to an old British Airways cargo crane. Jet engines roared nearby and the AirTrain glided silently by.

A woman in an airline uniform appeared and began opening cans of food and dumping the contents onto paper plates. She refused to be photographed or to discuss the cats for fear of causing problems with her employer.

Scruffy cats dashed out of old cargo equipment, rusted snowplows and underbrush to eat the food.

Each year scores of dogs and cats are lost and found on Kennedy’s 5,000 acres. Some pets that are being transported may get loose. Also, people who live locally can easily drive onto airport property and get rid of their pets, and travelers facing exorbitant kennel costs may opt to simply abandon their pets before catching their planes. Some animals wander in from nearby.

Mr. Karamian, 49, estimated that there were hundreds of feral cats across the airport. He said volunteers from his group had trapped and then spayed or neutered perhaps 30 cats from the colony in the past few months, but lately had been told they must stay off airport property.

“These cats reproduce and kill rodents,” he said. “But someone keeps trapping and killing them. We want to stop the slaughter.”

Buried lede: people actually abandon their cat at the airport before that big trip to Bermuda . . . wow.

Location Scout: JFK.

The super-resistant staph infection that recently crossed state lines is here:

New York City health officials said yesterday that a Brooklyn middle school student who died on Oct. 14 had become infected with a virulent, drug-resistant strain of bacteria that is primarily spread in hospitals but that in recent years has surfaced increasingly in schools, gyms and other nonhospital settings.

The health officials, who said they were investigating the circumstances of the case, were unable to confirm whether the student contracted the infection at the school, Intermediate School 211 in Canarsie. The school remained open yesterday, and the officials said that school health officials would make any decision to close it.

The “power problem” plaguing Lexington Avenue trains during rush hour last night was on account of this nitwit:

Subway service on the East Side was disrupted for nearly two hours yesterday after an above-ground thief turned tunnel rat to make his getaway.

The thug robbed a street-cart food vendor on 116th Street and Lexington Avenue and dashed into the nearby No. 6 station at about 3:45 p.m., sources said.

He then ran straight for tunnel and headed uptown, as cops ran toward him on the tracks from 125th Street, the sources said.

Local and express service was halted between 96th and 125th streets during a manhunt that included two K9 units.

Yet the perp still got away. There are at least three levels of tunnels in that stretch of subway, and he managed to “get lost” in them.

Service was restored a little before 6 p.m.

Opening given, gladly taken:

Celebrating her 60th birthday last night with a fund-raiser that netted $1.5 million, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton took a rare shot at an old New York rival and current Republican presidential candidate, Rudolph W. Giuliani, for saying he would root for the Red Sox in the World Series.

Mr. Giuliani, a Yankees fan, has mocked Mrs. Clinton over the years for professing allegiance to the Yankees, even though she grew up a Chicago Cubs fan and recently said she would split her loyalty between those teams if they met in the World Series.

But Mrs. Clinton smiled widely last night as she got in her dig at Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor. After the Yankees lost in the first round of the playoffs this month, Mr. Giuliani said he would rally behind the archrival Red Sox — an endorsement seen in some quarters as pandering to New Hampshire primary voters in Red Sox Nation.

Addressing a packed Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Mrs. Clinton noted that both she and the evening’s M.C., Billy Crystal, were devoted to the Yankees.

“I have been a fan, and I remain a fan of the New York Yankees — no changes, no looking to curry favor with anyone else,” she said to much laughter and applause from the audience of mostly New York Democrats.

After back, back, forth and forth about whether the Astroland amusement park will close to make way for a vacant lot while developer Joe Sitt and the city figure out what they can build on it, Sitt agrees to allow the Coney Island institution to stay open one more year:

Thor Equities, the real-estate giant that bought the land under the amusement park from owner Carol Albert in 2006 and gave Astroland one final season this summer, announced on Wednesday that it had reached an agreement with Albert to keep her rundown park’s 35 rides operating for one more season.

“Thor is fully committed to keeping amusements and games as part of the fabric of Coney Island for decades to come, and today’s agreement — reached after discussions with Albert and the community as a whole — represents the first step in that direction,” said Joe Sitt, Thor’s president, who would not reveal the financials of the deal.

After all, attendance was only up 30 percent last season! (Telling people you’re closing forever has a way of spurring that.) But what did we give away in the process?

Location Scout: Coney Island Amusement Core.

Just so you know, the Brooklyn Paper has no weird hangup about spelling out the “N-word” when talking about the suggested title of Nas’ new album. At least not like some people.

Hillary has an opening here to become the one true Yankees fan running for President:

As he moves about the country campaigning for the White House, Rudolph W. Giuliani is not always kind in describing where he comes from. New York City, he will say, is a tough town, hard to govern. It’s liberal to a fault and unruly as a child.

Now, however, there has come what is for many the true unpardonable insult: Mr. Giuliani has declared he will be rooting for the dreaded Boston Red Sox against the Colorado Rockies in the World Series, which began last night. From the Bronx to his childhood haunts in Brooklyn, there was a baffled anger bordering on rage.

“They should burn his seat that he sat in at Yankee Stadium — how’s that?” said George Patsin, a Brooklyn restaurateur. “They should burn it on TV so I can watch.”

. . .

By way of explanation, Mr. Giuliani couched his shift in loyalty as support for the American League. (”I’m an American League fan and I go with the American League team,” he told reporters — not coincidentally — in the primary state and Boston neighbor of New Hampshire.) “I thought he was loyal to New York,” said Kebrae H. Scott, 30, a maintenance worker who wore a Yankees cap as he was heading to his home in the Ebbets Fields Apartments in Brooklyn near where Mr. Giuliani grew up.

. . .

Of course, his most revealing comment on the subject was perhaps the answer he provided to The Providence Journal in Rhode Island when asked, this June, if he would agree to be president if it hinged on his becoming a Red Sox fan.

“I have great respect for people who really are fans of the team they say they are fans of,” Mr. Giuliani said. “But probably that’s a deal I could not make.”

The Second Avenue Deli is now a bank and the site of an infamous 1950s mob hit is — what else? — now a Starbucks:

The barista stood stock still, her cold eyes glistening off the cool metal of the espresso machine. She grabbed the handle, and bang! bang! a few quick hits to the side, and before anyone knew what was happened, a Macchiato, double-shot, lay steaming on the counter.

Fifty years ago Thursday, in the same spot that very espresso machine sat coldly whipping nonfat mocha lattes, perhaps the most notorious mob hit in history happened.

Albert Anastasia, the powerful leader of Murder Inc., a man believed to be have personally killed 36 people, stopped in what was then a barber shop in the Park Sheraton Hotel’s lobby on West 57th Street. As he dozed in the chair, two gunmen walked in and fired a barrage of lead into the crime boss.

. . .

It is difficult today to stand on tiled floor of the Starbucks and imagine the pool of blood where the man nicknamed “The Executioner” once lay.

Those ghosts are all gone amid customers sipping Tazo teas and leaning over laptops, oblivious to the murder that captivated most of the country five decades ago. Back where the barber stood before the gunmen barged past him, a sign advertises the Starbucks song of the day: Dave Matthews’ “Grace is Gone.”

“You think people care?” says one barista, out on a smoke break and checking her Sidekick, and who, as per company policy, would not give her name. “That was 50 years ago. Trust me. They just want their coffee and they want to get on their way.”

If only they asked, a consultant would have told them how it looked:

City Council members spending thousands in taxpayer dollars to buy new garbage cans bearing their names should think twice about the stink such a move might make, branding and political image consultants say.

Linda Passante, the managing partner of a New York-based brand development agency, the Halo Group, said that if she were advising council members, she’d tell them to steer clear of promoting themselves on waste receptacles.

“I don’t subscribe to the idea that any publicity is good publicity,” she said. “If I’m walking by a garbage pail and I’m smelling garbage and seeing a name associated with it,” it wouldn’t leave “a positive impression.”

The CEO and founder of Political Capitol, Kathryn Mahoney, said the idea that politicians would mount their names on garbage cans has “that desperate, sort of used-car sale feel to it, as if they are doing everything they can” to get their name out there.

“It gives you that automatic, negative feeling,” Ms. Mahoney, who said she advises members of Congress, said. “It feels kind of slick. And that’s the last thing you want as a politician.”

The Department of Sanitation said 21 council members, two former members, and President Scott Stringer of Manhattan have spent about $811,914 in public funds to buy 2,025 garbage cans with their names on them.

Community groups have turned down help from Scores before, but even on the sexiest of holidays, volunteers from Scores still can’t catch a break:

Scores strippers set to help out at a Halloween festival held at a Brooklyn middle school have been told thanks, but no thanks.

Ladies from the jiggle club were scheduled to volunteer at the Puppetry Arts Theater’s Halloween Carnival Benefit at MS 51 in Park Slope on Saturday, but wouldn’t have worn their, uh, work uniforms.

“The benefit is not an appropriate venue for volunteers identified as adult dancers,” said Department of Education spokesman David Cantor.

As good a reason as any not to act like a moron — the tongue-clucking Staten Island Advance:

A 29-year-old man from Richmond Valley with numerous speeding convictions died last night after he was thrown from his speeding car as it tumbled down the West Shore Expressway’s grassy median.

The crash victim, Michael P. Lehmann, of Culotta Lane, lived alone and he died alone.

How about health care for every uninsured New Yorker? Just asking! Because now you have a lame duck mayor spending his waning political capital on a subway stop:

Over the next nine months the Bloomberg administration will likely press the state for an additional $450 million in funding for the no. 7 subway line extension, as cost overruns have left the 1.5-mile project with only one planned station stop.

The city has put up the full $2 billion required for the project. Though with the major tunneling contract slated for approval tomorrow, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has dropped plans for constructing the shell of a station at Tenth Avenue and 41st Street.

The extension has been billed as an essential driver of development for the area west of Midtown, which is one of the Bloomberg administration’s key initiatives.

“The city is coming up with a couple of billion out of the taxpayer’s money — I would argue that it’s the MTA’s responsibility” to fund the station, Mayor Bloomberg told reporters yesterday.

While the city is anxious to have the MTA come up with the money, the state agency has said it is facing major budget deficits and is prioritizing other projects such as the Second Avenue Subway.

Again, that’s a $2 billion investment for a) a convention center that is fully booked to begin with and b) infrastructure for waterfront housing for rich people that doesn’t even exist yet. Oh, and probably an artificial-turf ballfield named for Dan Doctoroff forty years down the line. That would be worth it.

The landlord-tenant dispute that will only die when one of them does:

For nearly a quarter century, since Ronald Reagan was in the Oval Office, Lascelle Wright, 49, and his neighbors have been locked in a dispute with their landlord.

Even by the standards of New York City, where such disputes are blood sport, their face-off has become a long, strange war of attrition.

Mr. Wright is one of seven holdout tenants, most of them poor, elderly and in ill health. They want to remain in the Windermere, an echoing, ruined beauty of a building that was designated a city landmark in 2005. The alternative, they say, is the street.

Mr. Wright’s rent is $100 a month, but the landlord has provided no mailing address for his checks, so Mr. Wright has not paid even that.

A grand apartment house in the Romanesque Revival style, the Windermere is an eight-story building at West 57th Street and Ninth Avenue. It was famed in its late-19th-century heyday for its marble fireplaces, its uniformed “hall boys” and the latest in technological wonders, the hydraulic elevator and the telephone.

. . .

Nearly 7,000 miles away in Tokyo is [Masako] Yamagata. The head of the Toa Construction Company, he is 89 years old and hospitalized.

Last week, Mr. Yamagata did not respond to a list of questions. A woman who described herself as an employee supplied his age and the status of his health and said she would notify Mr. Yamagata of the inquiry. But she added, “I cannot tell you when he will or if he will answer at all.”

Last year, one of many housing activists who have tried to help the holdout tenants, Roseanne Haggerty, was finally granted a meeting with Mr. Yamagata in Tokyo after six years of entreaties.

She described him as white-haired and charming, if enigmatic. In a wood-paneled office that reminded Ms. Haggerty of an American recreation room from the 1970s, Mr. Yamagata had many American souvenirs, including a small Statue of Liberty and an ashtray with a New York logo.

In an informal gesture, he rolled up the sleeves of his white business shirt and showed Ms. Haggerty small scars on his arms from kidney dialysis. He could no longer visit New York because of his illness, he told her.

. . .

When Mr. Wright became a tenant in 1980, the Windermere was about half full, with about 80 families, he recalled.

By 1982, a previous landlord was offering incentives of up to $5,000 an apartment to vacate the building. Many left. By 1986, when Mr. Yamagata’s Toa Construction bought the building, Mr. Wright counted only a dozen or so families remaining, most protected from eviction under the city’s housing laws.

For the next two decades, the tenants and their advocates, in and out of housing court, attempted to resolve the standoff.

On Sept. 19, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, using reports from fire inspectors, cited Toa for 209 violations, including fire safety problems like exposed wiring, “the accumulation of refuse and/or rubbish” and “no electrical supply entire building.”

At the contempt hearing today, Mr. Yamagata could agree to the repairs.

If he does not, the city could perform the repairs and send him the bill.

Or some form of long-term alternative housing might be sought for the tenants until the building is habitable, according to Housing Conservation Coordinators.

Mr. Wright said he remained calm throughout the fight.

“I don’t curse, I don’t yell,” he said.

“The landlord is waiting for us to die,” he said. “But I’m 49, and he’s, what, almost 90?”

Some fear a shortage of kindergarten openings at the city’s elite schools:

Concerns that too many families are applying for a scarce number of kindergarten spots come every year — and then usually pass by February as most children find places. This time around, the anxiety may be warranted, school leaders said.

With decisions looming for next year’s kindergarten classes, placements that often determine the location of a child’s academic career, several schools are reporting historic rises in applications, as many as double the number they received last year. Overwhelmed, some schools have already shut their admissions processes, turning away families who handed in applications weeks before the ordinary deadline, December 1. The Dwight School on the Upper West Side announced its changed deadline, to October 19, on its Web site with one week’s notice; Calhoun, which accepts only a set number of applications each year, reached the maximum days after applications became available, forcing admissions to close two weeks earlier than last year.

The result, observers said, is a stock of distraught parents who now face a dwindling list of schools where their 4-year-olds might be considered.

. . .

Emily Glickman, the president of a private firm that helps families apply to kindergartens, Abacus Guide Educational Consulting, called the early shutouts, reported to her by parents in frantic phone messages, unprecedented. “I’ve been doing this since 1999. I’ve never gotten messages like this year,” Ms. Glickman said.

. . .

An increase in the number of applications handed in earlier in the year does not necessarily mean increased competition. Panic can breed panic, creating an illusion of heightened competition as nervous families send in more applications per child and rush to send them in earlier, Cynthia Bing of the Parents League, a resource group for parents at independent schools, said.

Indeed, nursery school directors have been recommending that families apply to more schools, closer to 10 versus five or six several years ago, and families are following suit.

. . .

That does not mean a crisis, Ms. Bing said. “We’re not hearing an uproar in the streets yet,” she said. “And the good news is — frankly, as it has been in the past — everyone has a place.”

. . .

Consultants and school leaders said another way to calm parents is to change the admissions process. Admissions directors are reconsidering an old idea of making the kindergarten process more like admission to medical school, with students and schools simply listing their top choices for more efficient sorting, Ms. Lynch at the Buckley School said.

Ms. Glickman said her preference is a lottery that would sort children automatically — eliminating measures such as play observations, applications, and parent interviews, which she called a “farce.” “If you remember that the whole point of this is that they’re ranking and sorting 4-year-olds openly — and secretly judging parents’ wealth connections and likeliness to give — it really becomes apparent what a disgusting process this is,” she said.

Reminded that an end to the traditional application process could hurt her professionally, Ms. Glickman maintained the position. “I also have a conscious,” she said.

The experiment in legalization known as “dog runs,” those canine red-light districts, have in the long run failed. Today, dog owners feel more entitled than ever to appropriate valuable public space for the sole purpose of letting their animals poop:

Seravalli Playground is a half-block of concrete just off Hudson Street between Gansevoort and Horatio Streets, planted with a dozen skinny trees. For the most part, the playground is a model of coexistence. Older children race around the fenced-in yard, toddlers clamber around a brightly painted play set, and homeless people occasionally slumber on the benches. In the mornings and evenings, people walk their dogs.

But now the playground is due for a $2 million redesign, a prospect that has exposed sharp divisions among its users. In particular, dog owners who want a dog run in the playground have sparred with toddlers’ parents who say the dog run will take up needed play space and possibly endanger children. The Parks Department will draft a plan this winter and plans to start work next summer; in the meantime, both camps have been feverishly recruiting supporters.

Both sides showed up in force at a community meeting Monday, where the tone was set by a neon-green hand-lettered poster that read, “Keep Our Park Dog-Free.”

. . .

. . . [A] cluster of people, most of whom appeared to be in their 20s, had formed toward the front. Some wore buttons from an organization called the New York City Council of Dog Owner Groups (motto: “At the Tail of Every Leash is a Voter”).

Dog owners who spoke during the meeting complained that no dog runs were located nearby, and said that many other city parks combined dog runs with play areas.

“The reason we want this is to get out of your space,” said Tod Wohlfarth, a board member of the dog owners’ group. And a woman who said she owned three dogs announced to the assembled parents, “These animals are as important to my life as your children are to your life.”

Parents, in turn, spoke of children who were scared of dogs, children who compulsively embraced dogs, and toddlers who ate whatever they found on the ground, a potential problem if dogs were nearby. A local parent named Kevin McKiernan was greeted by wild applause when he said, “My kids are a higher priority to me than pets and their exercise.”

It may not be the killer bee, but it has the potential to be a lot more annoying:

They’re aggressive, often attack in packs and, unlike most mosquitoes, bite during the day.

And they’re carriers for such debilitating tropical diseases as chikungunya, yellow and dengue fever. They can carry dog heartworm and different types of encephalitis.

The Asian Tiger mosquito has landed on Staten Island. And although the 2007 season is winding down (the first frost will kill most remaining bugs), its presence could be felt even stronger after eggs from this year’s mosquitoes hatch come spring, experts say.

First spotted here in 1997, the white-striped insect scientifically known as Aedes albopictus, has become increasingly prevalent in the borough, causing experts to fear consequences more severe than from West Nile virus.

. . .

Typically, mosquitoes belonging to the Culex family are found in the New York area. The Culex salinarius and Culex restuans, which carry the feared West Nile virus, generally bite around dusk and after dark.

But the Asian Tiger mosquito bites in the middle of the day and, often, several will bite humans at the same time, leaving welts the size of dimes. Besides having disease-carrying potential, the pests can affect quality of life for people who like to be outdoors, Gaugler said. The Asian Tiger mosquito is ranked among the 100 most invasive species on the planet.

Hate crime charges dropped in Staten Island case:

Hate-crime charges were dropped yesterday against two white men accused of attacking a black man in Mariners Harbor earlier this week, as several black teenagers appeared in Stapleton Criminal Court to vouch for the suspects.

Police arrested Daniel Avissato, 24, of Westerleigh and Mark Vincent Maleto, 21, of Elm Park on a slew of charges, including assault as a hate crime, but the men were arraigned only on second-degree gang assault charges yesterday.

. . .

Attorney John Murphy, in his defense of Avissato, called on several black teens in the courtroom to vouch for Avissato’s character.

“The accused young man I represent is not a racist,” Murphy said in a prepared statement he distributed outside the courthouse. “The anecdotal evidence of his living and working in harmony with diversity is overwhelming.”

Murphy called upon a 14-year-old boy, who declined to give his name, to recount a time when Avissato offered the teen a ride during bad weather.

Opposition is organizing in and around Queens’ Iron Triangle in the next great eminent domain battle:

. . . 10 businesses have taken a stand and formed the Willets Point Industry and Realty Association, intent on fighting tooth and nail for their rights.

The City plans to relocate all the businesses from the area adjacent to Shea Stadium and start fresh with 5,500 residential units, 1.7 million square feet of retail and entertainment space, nearly 1 million square feet of office and convention center space, a 650-pupil school, a hotel, a park and eight acres of green space.

This is the last thing Dan Feinstein, of Feinstein Steel Works, wants to see happen.

“We’ll use every means under the law to protect ourselves,” he said. “We’ll do whatever we have to, to make sure the city doesn’t screw us.”

This City has said on record that it is looking out for the Willets Point businesses and is in negotiations to relocate them. However, Daniel Sambucci Jr., of Sambucci Bros. Salvage Yards, said this is misleading.

“We’ve had meetings and they’ve shown me properties for $40 million,” he said. “But the city doesn’t own the property and they don’t know how they’re going to get it.”

Sambucci said he is worried there is not enough property in the city zoned for heavy industrial to accommodate all the businesses.

“They don’t have a final development plan, a developer — they don’t know how much it’s going to cost and they don’t know where they can move us,” he said.

. . .

In 1991, a study conducted by the City’s Economic Development Corporation found Willets Point would flourish once sewers and basic services were provided, however, this has yet to happen.

“This place would look completely different by now if they had done what the study suggested,” Dan Scully, of Tully Environmental, said. “But [former Borough President] Claire Shulman ignored it.”

Anthony J. Fodera, president Fodera Foods, said the problems of Willets Point is a story of purposeful neglect.

“We call the police or 311 and once we tell them were we are they say ‘oh you’re in that area,’ and never come,” he said.

Feinstein said the business owners are not so stubborn that they would impede the public good but the redevelopment plans do not serve the public good more than his company does.

“If they were planning on building an airport or needed a state highway here, we’re not happy but we understand,” he said. “But don’t say you don’t like my house and your friend’s going to build another one.”

*But most parents don’t — and that’s saying nothing of the idea of staying at a hotel in the flightpath, or attending a concert in the flightpath (is any soundproofing that good?), much less actually living in the flightpath.

Backstory: “Trendy” Willets Point?; Willets Point Junkyards Threatened!; If By “Vibrant And Attractive New Urban Community” You Mean A Superfund Site In A Flood Plain In The Flight Path To LaGuardia, Then I’m Right There With Ya!; First You Tap That Ass, Then You Tax It; Don’t Worry — That’s Just 20 Minutes Of War In Iraq.

Location Scout: Iron Triangle.