Amid explanations of “NYS Base Broadeners”, the Administration for Children’s Services getting their message out, expected union reticence and media snipes at whoever else, a snappy pullout quote (“‘You can only get so much blood out of a stone’ with budget cuts and other measures, the mayor said”) and wildly optimistic revenue projections (“One . . . was the $100 million the city expects to rake in from charging people 5 cents for each plastic bag they use at stores . . . up from the $19 million they estimated it would bring in two month[s] ago . . . [a]n administration official said they simply looked deeper at the numbers, and discovered New York City residents use about 1 billion plastic bags annually”), the Mayor pulls out the threat of eliminating the proverbial school band (or cutting library hours — take your pick):

By law, Mayor Bloomberg was supposed to deliver a balanced budget Friday. What he submitted was a blueprint.

It matches the city’s spending and revenue to the penny, and is sprinkled with the sort of tough threats that grab headlines — like firing 14,000 teachers and hiking the sales tax.

. . .

The governor’s budget cuts $771 million from city school aid. Rather than spread that through different parts of the sprawling Education Department, Bloomberg said every dime of that loss will have to come out of a teacher’s hide, blamed on the governor.

That’s not budgeting — that’s bargaining.

Similarly, Bloomberg’s budget assumes that unions will give up $350 million in health benefits and $200 million in pension contributions.

“This is his starting point, and then there are negotiations,” said Gregory Floyd, head of Teamsters Local 237. Even the mayor’s plan to raise the sales tax by one-quarter point and remove the exemption for clothing is up for discussion.

“Bloomberg’s plan will be the basis for months of negotiations, all against a backdrop of an economy that continues to plummet.

For now, it’s balanced with phantom dollars. Those numbers need to be real by the end of June.

Everything but the kitchen sink, and then that, too:

Michael Bloomberg’s preliminary budget includes plans to lay off 13,930 teachers, and he’s putting the onus on state lawmakers to prevent it.

Here’s what he wants them to do.

The mayor said the state has taken away $770 million in education aid to the city. “What does $770 million translate to?” he asked. “Well, it translates to roughly 14,000 teachers.”

He went on, “I am sympathetic with the state. They don’t have any more extra money than we have.”

The solution, he said, is to have the state pass along the federal education aid they’re receiving from Washington.

The “state can send it to another county, or they can send it to our five counties. They are cutting us more than anybody else,” he said.

When asked what he’d say to parents and teachers worried about the cuts, the mayor said, “I’d call Albany, because that’s what I’m going to be doing.”

The letter-based restaurant inspection system, an idea floated at the state level about two years ago and which has perversely been turned into a badge of honor in places like Los Angeles is set to be tried in New York City:

For the first time, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will compel the city’s nearly 25,000 restaurants to publicly post inspectors’ cleanliness ratings, which have previously been available only online or at the department. Rating signs, to be supplied by the city, will be required to be visible from the street, either in a restaurant window or vestibule.

The agency also plans to switch to a letter-grade system similar to that used for years in Los Angeles (using the letters A, B and C for passing inspection grades). The new rules, which will be part of a broad revamping of inspections, will be put in place over the next two years, giving restaurant operators time to comply.

The department said that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed off on the program as part of the executive budget announced Friday. He has scheduled a Saturday news conference to announce the new procedures.

“We expect this will improve our inspection program,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city health commissioner. “It will encourage restaurants to be cleaner and inform people so they can make better choices about where to eat.”

Believe it or not, there are at least two Arizona Cardinals fans in the New York area:

It’s an island of red in a Big Blue ocean, an Arizona oasis amid fans Gang Green with envy.

Sidebar, in Union Square, is the Super Bowl Sunday hot spot for long-suffering local Arizona Cardinals fans — a place where Larry Fitzgerald jerseys are welcomed and Terrible Towels are used to clean dishes.

Manager Zach Israel — a Phoenix native who wears Kurt Warner’s No. 13 — hangs his Cardinals flag inside the bar at 118 E. 15th St. More than 100 Arizona backers create an unlikely red sea of support in the city’s biggest (and perhaps only?) Cardinals outpost.

“It’s insane,” says the manager’s 23-year-old sister, Sasha, a Sidebar bartender. “Everybody’s just so happy.”

And why not? The Cardinals are making their first Super Bowl trip. The team’s last championship came before either Israel was born — back in 1947, when the Cardinals were still in Chicago.

Finding an Arizona outpost in the city was a chore — “Scarsdale is just more popular than Scottsdale,” says James Fletcher, editor of AOL’s Digital City site.

Because of course if you don’t build 80-story towers there then the terrorists will have won. I mean, everyone thinks so:

The last thing Ground Zero needs is a sorry-looking pair of stumpy low-slung buildings where chi-chi retail chains would peddle jewels, jeans and lingerie to tourists.

That was the emotionally charged verdict of 9/11 families Friday on a Port Authority plan to erect temporary stump-like structures in place of two of the towers long planned for the World Trade Center site.

“It’s a national embarrassment,” said Rosaleen Tallon, a biology teacher whose brother Sean, a 26-year-old probationary firefighter, died in the collapse of the north tower. “Rebuilding towers at the site was supposed to make a powerful statement of our grand resolve. Building chintzy, second-rate placeholders to sell retail goods makes a very different kind of statement.”

I don’t know — is it any worse than the 9/11-inspired video game? Develop your hand-eye coordination by practicing ditching a plane in the river. What can I say — people just love success stories:

It was only a matter of time before some clown made a video game about the Hudson River plane ditching.

Links are quickly being spread on the Internet of “Hero on the Hudson” — a game where you have to use your left and right arrow keys to land a jet onto the river.

The game is about as primitive as you can get, as many of the games are on Addictinggames.com. Of the 3,117 votes received, 75% give it a thumbs down. I’m not sure if it’s because the game is lame or if it’s in bad taste, or both.

New leading economic indicator — burying bad news on a Friday:

City Councilman David Weprin, chairman of the Finance Committee, is standing by his cell phone, waiting for word on what’s in the mayor’s preliminary executive budget.

“It’s the first time I remember in my eight years here that the mayor is releasing his budget on a Friday,” Weprin said in a brief conversation.

What does that tell you?

“That it’s not going to be a good-news budget,” he said.

For $500 million President Obama better get a nice looking plaque:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority expects to spend $497 million in federal economic stimulus money to complete the stalled and over-budget Fulton Street Transit Center in Lower Manhattan, the agency’s executive director said on Thursday.

The money would bring the project’s cost to as much as $1.4 billion, nearly double what was estimated when it was conceived in the wake of the terror attack of Sept. 11, 2001.

The additional financing would allow the authority to move ahead with plans to erect an architecturally dramatic glass building atop the transit hub, said Elliot G. Sander, the authority’s executive director. However, it was not clear if the final design would include the project’s signature feature, a conelike skylight, known as an oculus, that would channel daylight into the lower areas of the station. Mr. Sander said the oculus could add about $40 million to the cost.

“The pavilion has to be many things to many people,” Mr. Sander said, referring to the glass structure. “It has to be a building of vibrant design with as much new retail activity as possible.” He called it “a highly visible portal to a modern transportation complex.”

Mr. Sander, who spoke at a State Assembly hearing in Lower Manhattan, said that he estimated the authority would receive $1.5 billion to $2 billion from the economic stimulus bill that is working its way through Congress. He said he planned to spend $497 million of that to complete the downtown transit hub. He did not say how the remainder would be spent.

The Fulton Street project, which is a block from the World Trade Center site, was originally financed by the federal government with $750 million that was earmarked for the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan. The project was meant to simplify a tangle of subway stations, topping them off with an eye-catching building that would rival the iconic structures planned for the rebuilt trade center.

But costs kept rising, and last January the authority said that while work would continue on the underground portions of the project, it could no longer afford to move ahead with the above-ground structure. The announcement was met with dismay downtown, where residents and businesses feared they would be stuck with an unsightly hole, a site where several buildings had been torn down to make way for the transit work.

Earlier: Yet Another Reason Not To Extend The 7 Train To A Convention Center That Doesn’t Even Need It . . ., Between Simpler Transfer Or Fancy Roof, I Want The Roof!

Because if we don’t build low-slung two-story retail at Ground Zero then the terrorists will have won:

The long-planned skyscrapers at Ground Zero will have to wait, but two low-slung buildings that could one day serve as their bases may go up soon, officials disclosed Thursday.

The buildings would face each other along Church St., rising two to six stories and serving as stand-ins until towers can be built.

They could even house world-class retail shops if recessionary ravages force new construction delays.

“The last thing the Port Authority will do is to leave holes and pits in the ground downtown,” said Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward after a state Assembly hearing on the status of lower Manhattan redevelopment.

“To avoid that, we will either build pedestals, which will allow some form of retail options and permit long-term subsequent construction, or build to grade.”

Each would be engineered to support the immense towers that World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein intends to build on the 16-acre site.

They would be constructed later, when the real estate market recovers.

The pedestals would function as handsome, ultra-expensive stumps for the future buildings.

First the entire financial services industry collapses, then the skirt gets all uppity. These guys just can’t win:

They shared their sad stories the other night at an informal gathering of Dating a Banker Anonymous, a support group founded in November to help women cope with the inevitable relationship fallout from, say, the collapse of Lehman Brothers or the Dow’s shedding 777 points in a single day, as it did on Sept. 29.

In addition to meeting once or twice weekly for brunch or drinks at a bar or restaurant, the group has a blog, billed as “free from the scrutiny of feminists,” that invites women to join “if your monthly Bergdorf’s allowance has been halved and bottle service has all but disappeared from your life.”

. . .

Some women in the group said the men in their lives had gone from being aloof and unattainable to unattractively needy and clinging. Others complained of being ignored — one, who called herself A.P., wrote on the blog that three weeks had passed without her boyfriend “asking a single question” about her life. Another wrote, fearfully, that her beau had told her to make a list of their favorite New York restaurants before the bad market forced a move to the Midwest.

“Next time you are stressing over some finance guy, remember that he is just a math-club nerd,” one woman wrote after recounting a breakup. “This recession just bought everyone an extra two years of the single life.”

It’s simple:

With costs ballooning to replace two Bronx parks that were bulldozed for the new Yankee Stadium — the latest estimate is almost $195 million — the city’s Independent Budget Office said on Tuesday that more than $16 million of the higher expense “remains to be explained.”

The latest cost is almost $79 million over the 2005 estimate of $116 million, which itself was considerably more than the $96 million figure based on “conceptual designs” in an environmental impact statement using 2004 dollars.

The Yankees will be using their new $1.3 billion ballpark for opening day in April, but Little Leaguers, tennis players and picnickers are unlikely to have access to all eight replacement parks until the end of 2011, a year later than promised, the budget office said in a report.

Mistakes happen, you just hope it doesn’t matter:

A staggeringly basic blunder is delaying the grand opening of the MTA’s first new subway station in 20 years, the Daily News has learned.

The platform at the $530 million South Ferry station is a wee bit too far from the train tracks, officials confirmed Tuesday.

Recent inspections found gaps between the platform and No. 1 train cars up to 1 inch wider than federal rules allow, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority confirmed.

Riders will have to wait another three to four weeks before they can use the station while workers make some $200,000 in fixes, the MTA said yesterday.

Location Scout: South Ferry Station.

Maybe you wondered why the MTA would actually bother with like six separate public hearings about fare hikes and service cuts — how different could each hearing be? But the genius part of it is that this way they’ve gotten at least six different “hits” in the media about how indispensible the M8 or the B75 is. Who would want to cut transit subsidies now? Screw the zoos . . . and the school band:

For the past nine years, Carroll Gardens senior citizen Vida Ebrahim has relied on the B75 bus to get her to church, the supermarket and the occasional trip to the movies.

This spring, the MTA may eliminate Ebrahim’s route along with five others in Brooklyn to cut costs, a move that would leave commuters scrambling.

“They’ll cut my life,” said Ebrahim, 78, who collected 100 signatures to keep the B75 running. “The train is completely out of my reach. I can’t go up and down the steps. I get out breath and my knees and hips hurt.

“I’m hoping that they don’t harden their heart and take away the bus, because I’d be lost without the bus.”

The MTA is holding a public hearing Wednesday night at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Brooklyn from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., where riders are expected to sound off to transit officials about the proposed cuts.

And Mildew, Roaches and Bed Bugs!:

The Hotel Carter was named the dirtiest hotel in America Tuesday by TripAdvisor.com, marking the third time in four years that the W. 43rd St. dump has topped the list.

. . .

The hotel, used as a homeless shelter in the 1980s, gained infamy two years ago when a cleaning lady found a woman’s corpse stuffed under a bed.

A 17th-floor room rented by the Daily News was thankfully corpse-free. And while it was small and sparsely appointed, it wasn’t dirty. The bathroom was nearly spotless and the bed linens unstained.

The room’s most serious flaw was a lone picture frame, covered in a substance one can only hope was mildew. In the hallway outside, a garbage bag filled with used tissues, lay open on the dark-green carpet.

The hotel’s wretched reputation wasn’t news to one worker.

“Just Google ‘Carter and bed bugs.’ You’ll read all about it,” she said. “Roaches, bugs — you’ll find everything inside here.”

Hotel manager Erwin Lumanglas brushed aside its reputation.

“We are not bothered at all,” Lumanglas said. “Even when they tell us we’re the dirtiest hotel in the world, people are still interested in coming because of the price and the location.”

Location Scout: Hotel Carter.

Despite spreading around all that cash (“Mr. Bloomberg, the self-made billionaire founder of the Bloomberg financial information firm, donated $235 million in 2008, making him the leading individual living donor in the United States, according to a list released online on Monday by The Chronicle of Philanthropy”), the Mayor is kind of not in command of the mayoral election yet:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is starting off this election year in the lead, but it’s not as wide of a margin as one might expect for the popular incumbent.

According to an exclusive NY1 poll, Bloomberg beats City Comptroller Bill Thompson by 13 points in a hypothetical matchup, but only wins reelection against Congressman Anthony Weiner by seven points.

It’s a sign the mayor will have to wage an aggressive campaign.

“He does have his work cut out for him because he is not at the comfortable 50 percent,” said NY1 pollster Mickey Blum.

“Even if you’re working, you can still qualify for unemployment benefits. It may sound strange but it’s pefectly legal.”:

You’re considered underemployed and can “double dip” in unemployment benefits when:

• You work no more than three days a week
• Make less than $405 per week
• Are actively seeking full-time work

Talk about “moral hazards” . . . so basically the city can gamble on getting huge tax revenues from Wall Street in flush years and then get bailed out by the federal government when all that disappears:

President Obama’s economic stimulus package will send nearly $3.4 billion in aid to New York City.

According to Sen. Chuck Schumer, the funds — part of the $10 billion to $15 billion in federal stimulus money the state is expected to receive — should help the city offset its budget deficit and aid shortfalls in education funding.

Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he fought to include in the stimulus package a provision to send budget aid directly to cities — to ensure New York City gets its fair share.

“This is a lifeline. This is the biggest shot in the arm the federal government has given New York City in a long time,” he said.

The package includes about $1.8 billion in budget aid for New York and $1.6 billion for education, Schumer said.

Maybe you don’t consider the city’s workforce bloated — eh, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t — but a economic stimulus via unionized workers’ paychecks doesn’t quite strike me as the sort of “shovel ready” project we’ve been reading about . . . besides, what happened to all those green construction jobs?

Apparently most of the “budget aid” is intended for Medicaid. Medicaid spending is higher in New York — fine. But the stimulus package isn’t so much about Medicaid as it is about stimulating the economy, right? And if the city doesn’t have to spend that money on Medicaid then they’ll spend it on other stuff that cities spend money on — like labor costs — it’s not like they’re going to build a bunch of bus stops.

Another note — and it’s an honest question and not a lazy rhetorical trope of “raising questions,” because I honestly don’t know the answer — didn’t the governor just expand SCHIP or propose expanding it? So is the “stimulus” a back-door way of funding it?

Who is really at fault for Caroline Kennedy’s humiliating brush with Governor Paterson? It might be Mayor Bloomberg:

Round one of Kennedy’s media blitz went well — a December 26 Associated Press interview followed by an appearance on NY1’s Inside City Hall. But the mood changed quickly the next morning. Kennedy walked into a reserved back room of the Lenox Hill Grill, on Lexington near 78th, and sat down with two reporters from the Times. She’d earnestly studied briefing papers on issues like immigration, the economy, education, and gay rights, and she’d been tutored by Ranny Cooper, a PR executive and former aide to Ted Kennedy. Instead, she was greeted with a series of questions on her motivations for wanting to be a senator — and soon became rattled and annoyed, her responses riddled with you knows and ums, which the Times, devastatingly, included in a transcript of the interview. Some of Kennedy’s relatives blamed Isay for not being tougher in readying Caroline for the interview.

Kennedy also smacked headlong into a newly emboldened Times city staff. “We’ve grown a pair of balls, and I’m amazingly proud of the paper,” says a Times reporter. “The turning point was the editorial page’s rolling over for Bloomberg on erasing term limits. The reaction from the reporters and editors is that we’re the last line of defense — we’ve got to hold the line.” Not for or against any particular politician, that is, but to stand up for small-d democracy. After inflating her candidacy by making her simple declaration of interest in the job the lead story of the day, they compensated by hitting her hard.

It’s almost as funny sounding as graduate students joining the UAW:

The city’s horse-drawn carriages are rolling through Central Park with a new passenger aboard: the Teamsters.

A coalition of owners, drivers and stable workers voted last week to join the international union as they gear up for this Friday’s City Council committee hearing on a bill to ban the industry.

“This is not an animal rights issue for us,” said Colm McKeever, owner-operator of Shamrock Stables and a 20-year industry veteran. “This is a labor issue, which makes this a very natural fit with the union.”

Demos Demopoulos, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 553 in Manhattan, said the new members wanted some juice in the battle to keep their industry alive.

“What they’re really looking for is to be part of an organization that has some political power and represents working people,” said Demopoulos.

“They just want to have their voices heard down at City Hall.”

There’s a historical tie, too: Local 553 represented coal-delivering carriage drivers at the turn of the 20th century.

“They saw that kinship,” the union leader said. About 40 industry workers, including the stable owners, voted last Wednesday to join the Teamsters, according to McKeever.

Yes, you know New York is over when the city has to tell you what to see or where to go, but hipping everyone to the supposed joys of Mars 2112 is just plain negligent:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a blog entry on the official Google blog announcing a partnership with the Internet’s most important company to unveil a new city tourism site: nycgo.com.

Launched yesterday, the site “is the official resource on the web for all there is to see, do and experience in the City,” the mayor wrote. It features listings of events, dining, and entertainment recommendations. The site will be managed by NYC & Company, New York City’s official marketing, tourism and partnership organization.

Google chipped in with their Google Maps and Google Earth applications. Users can find recommended destinations from famous New Yorkers with the “Just Ask the Locals” feature (From Cynthia Nixon: “My kids are crazy about Mars 2112″), then get directions and send the info to their phones with Google Maps for mobile. Other partners like Travelocity will offer discounts and deals. Media outlets, including Time Out New York, Paper and, well, we here at The New York Observer, have partnered with the city to offer some of their favorite destinations.

Not only does New York have about 60 gazillion guidebooks already devoted to it but there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of web content about it, either. So yeah, maybe it is duplicative for the city to reinvent Fodor’s but hey, then you might not have learned about Mars 2112 . . .

And you wonder why we’re in debt.

The delivery van driver who left his vehicle in gear while double parked on East Broadway has not been charged in an accident that killed two small children:

Chao Fu, 52, was driving the van for the China Chalet restaurant and catering service and double-parked the vehicle on the east side of E. Broadway near Catherine St., police said.

Fu thought the van was in park when he stepped out to make a delivery, he told cops, but it was actually in reverse and began to creep backwards on the busy street lined with shops and restaurants, police said.

The children, gathered on the sidewalk with two chaperones outside the Chatham Square branch of the New York Public Library, were about to walk back to the nearby Red Apple Day Care on Market St.

They were lined up against the wall, their arms linked, when the 9,400-pound van hit them, surveillance video shows.

Fu, who had a clean driving record and valid license, was not charged, police said.

Given that special elections are so complicated and prohibitively expensive, especially in this economically fraught time, we could just go a year without a Bronx Borough President. It might prove instructive:

The Bronx borough president’s chair is still warm, and the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club is trying to figure out who’s going to sit in it next.

The Riverdale-Kingsbridge-area political club hosted beep hopefuls Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. and City Council Majority Leader Joel Rivera at a meeting last week. Both men explained their qualifications for current Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión Jr.’s job and didn’t debate directly, according to people who attended the meeting.

Ever since Mr. Carrión’s slip of the tongue at a speaking engagement at Yale last year, it’s been widely rumored that he will go to Washington, D.C. to head the Office of Urban Policy under President Barack Obama.

. . .

If Mr. Carrión leaves, Mayor Michael Bloomberg would have to call a special election — but since no announcement has been made, Ben Franklin leaders have postponed any endorsement until their annual meeting at the end of this month.

I mean, it’s already the case that the Office of the Borough President has no real authority — a fact that even leads some legislators to look into the possibility of creating a sort of shadow borough presidency:

The leadership deal that resulted in the Democratic Party taking a majority in the state Senate for the first time in decades included a little discussed agreement that gave Riverdale and Kingsbridge lawmaker Pedro Espada Jr. leeway to lead a legislative coalition on Bronx economic development.

Mr. Espada describes it as “an active coordinating council that will really work to do the things that the borough president can’t do by statute.”

He says it will include the Bronx delegations to the City Council, Assembly, state Senate, and Congress, and will be funded by the state Senate’s Democratic majority. A spokesman for state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith deferred questions about the plan’s details to Mr. Espada.

“Its ultimate goal and mantra would be to remove the designation of the poorest county in the state,” Mr. Espada said.

Borough presidents have a degree of oversight over all aspects of city government in their county, but long-term strategic planning for economic development is a special part of the job description. Mr. Espada has long coveted the borough presidency.

Among the policy ideas Mr. Espada has for the post is creating an authority, similar to the city’s Industrial Development Agency, to issue bonds for public works exclusively in the Bronx. The IDA issues bonds for big capital projects like Yankee Stadium — a controversial deal itself — and is overseen by the city Economic Development Corporation.

“Simply put, a borough president should have the bully pulpit, and that will continue to be their main job description,” Mr. Espada said. “They don’t really have any legislative authority.”

Riverdale and Kingsbridge politicians familiar with the deal aren’t sure why it’s been a stealth program. Mr. Smith’s office hasn’t made any official announcements about it and it’s still unclear whether the plan will stick.

New York Post freakout coming in 5, 4, 3, 2 . . . blammo:

It was those damned geese!

A feather from a bird and “organic material” has been found on the engine, wings and fuselage of the US Airways airliner that crash-landed in the Hudson River, federal authorities said yesterday.

Investigators also have found that fan blades in the Airbus A320’s right engine “revealed evidence of soft-body impact damage.”

. . .

“What appears to be organic material was found in the right engine and on the wings and fuselage,” said the NTSB in a press release. Samples of that material have been sent to the US Agriculture Department for DNA analysis.

“A single feather was found attached to a flap track on the wing,” said the release, adding that the feather “is being sent to bird-identification experts” at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

It was the evidence of the old bird’s feather! It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage!

Wow, that’s really cool. Who knew you could do so much with a web-based mapping application? Technology is neat:

Google’s technological expertise helped turn New York City’s main visitor center from a place to collect brochures into an interactive hub for planning a day — or a week — in the city. But the related Web site — NYCGo — proved so popular that it crashed almost as soon as it was unveiled and continued to operate slowly through Wednesday afternoon.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other city officials showed off the Official NYC Information Center, at 810 Seventh Avenue and West 53rd Street in Midtown, on Wednesday morning. At a cost of $1.8 million in private financing, the center was outfitted with video tabletop touch-screens equipped with Google Maps that allow users to assemble itineraries.

Mr. Bloomberg emphasized that the center was not just for tourists. “By extending these new travel resources to our residents, we are giving New Yorkers the chance to more actively take advantage of the city’s diverse and exciting neighborhoods,” he said.

The city’s tourism-promotion arm, NYC & Company, also officially unveiled a revamped Web site, linked to Travelocity’s reservations system, so that prospective visitors can immediately purchase airline tickets or hotel rooms.

Apparently NYC & Company gets 40% of its financing — and the obvious official stamp of approval — from the city. So it seems not kind of but actually really fishy that the Maps section of the site features the “7 Karaoke Bars Worth Singing About”, for example, with detailed directions how to get to each one. If I were a competing karaoke bar owner, I’d be pissed. Or a hotelier. Or a restauranteur. Or the proprietor of an “environmentally conscious watering hole” that wasn’t picked by the site’s editors. Or anyone who could benefit from the use of taxpayer money to stir up business.

The first rule of graft is never being improbably flashy with your loot:

An NYC Transit supervisor allegedly “living large” with luxury cars and five flat-screen televisions in her house is suspected of looting the cash-strapped agency with a bogus billing and kickback scheme, the Daily News has learned.

The MTA inspector general and the Brooklyn district attorney’s office are investigating whether Jacqueline Jackson, 50, inflated bills submitted by a Brooklyn company and then shared in the ill-gotten gains, law enforcement sources said.

The scope of the suspected fraud isn’t yet known but the early signs are alarming, sources said.

NYC Transit is believed to have used the company, AJI Records Retrieval, to do pre-trial tasks for at least a decade, paying the firm about $1.5 million, sources said.

. . .

Jackson earned $83,000 a year as director of legal support for the tort division in NYC Transit’s legal department.

Yet, Jackson had a flat-screen television in just about every room — including the bathroom — of her two-story brick house on E. 46th St. in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn, a source said.

She also had five or so fur coats in her closets, according to the source.

Outside, a Mercedes-Benz S430 luxury sedan was in the driveway. Jackson also drives a Lincoln Navigator.

. . .

“She’s living large,” one of Jackson’s neighbors said. “Inside the house is so beautiful.”

The Post treads a dangerousely Hearst-like line by inflaming the anti-geese passions of at least three middle-aged men in Queens:

New Yorkers clamored yesterday for flocks of geese near area airports to be killed to prevent them from taking out another plane like the US Airways carrier forced to crash-land in the Hudson.

“These geese are a blight,” said William Santos, 50, as he walked the World’s Fair Marina near La Guardia Airport, where more than 100 geese gathered. “The city has to get them out of here, just for our own safety, never mind the mess they leave behind.”

Another marina visitor, Jack Riley, 43, was more blunt: “They should have a hunting season here on these geese. Let the criminals shoot the geese instead of people.”

A collision with a flock of geese is being blamed for the engine failure of the US Airways flight.

It almost makes up for his shameful sucking up to Scientologists . . . a firm stand to finally take care of our geese problem:

Geese have a new enemy: embattled state Sen. Hiram Monserrate.

The Queens Democrat and Sen. Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn) called on the Port Authority Monday to completely eradicate the threat of geese at area airports. The birds were blamed for last week’s US Airways crash.

The lawmakers said they would introduce legislation to force the PA to act if it doesn’t do so voluntarily.

Another gentlemen’s club is reborn in the space formerly occupied by Scores:

“It’s like Yankee Stadium,” Antony, a security guard, said over his shoulder, leading the way through the thumping entrance of what used to be the original East Side location of Scores strip club.

Scores lost its battle with the state over its liquor license last year. Since then, the Las Vegas-based empire, Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club, has moved in, and last night was their official opening in New York.

Sapphire made sure to bring yards of neon sapphire blue back-lighting, a fluorescent, engraved pompadour-shaped ice-sculpture, plushier (much plush-ier, according to the dancers) leather chairs, new carpeting, a concierge service, and a new chef — Jayson Margulies from Robert’s Steak House at the Penthouse Executive Club.

Antony, like other security guards on Thursday night, wore a dark suit with an aquarium blue skinny-tie.

“Yankee Stadium,” he continued dreamily. “That’s what it’s like with this particular venue. This is the granddaddy of gentleman’s clubs, For years when I was growing up they were called strip bars or something else, some less politically correct kind of word, you know what I mean. But you walk in here and you are called ’sir’ or ‘ma’am,’ and you get the white-glove treatment from the minute you walk in the door. That’s how this franchise does the thing.”

Sapphire’s main room looks largely identical to the old Scores, largely because there were no actual construction renovations done. The layout, too, is similar: bar to the left, mirrored wall and couches on the right, the stage front and center.

Man, I bet this guy’s wife is pissed:

Nick Gamache, 32, a software salesman, had moments earlier sent his wife a text message that read, “Planes on fire love you and the kids,” so he was naturally in a hurry to update her. But he paused as the pilot told him to carefully step into the raft.

And now that Canadian Geese have attracted the attention of the Post editorial board, it’s a bad time to be one:

It’s time to kill the geese.

It’s especially time to kill those geese most likely to wreck another jet airliner, much as a gaggle of Canada geese seems to have brought down US Airways Flight 1549 Thursday.

This time, all 155 passengers and crew were lifted from the icy Hudson River — an extraordinarily exceptional outcome.

Next time? Who knows.

Canada geese are a serious threat to human life and property — not to mention a major pain to pedestrians, motorists and folks who just like to spread a picnic blanket in a park.

Obviously, the official cause of the crash won’t be declared for a while. But nobody doubts that it was what pilots call a “bird strike” — just as nobody doubts that the guilty birds were Canada geese.

That’s because Canada geese are everywhere — and they’re out of control.

. . .

Beyond airport vicinities, it’s even harder to tamper with geese (let alone kill them) — even as they coat parks and playgrounds everywhere in layers of disgusting goose poop.

This is unsightly, unsanitary — and totally unacceptable.

Something needs to be done.

We have a way of chewing up our heroes with effusive mayoral proclamations, Letterman appearances, State of the Union speeches and boatloads of swag until they’re finally fleeced for all they’re worth by sycophants and hangers on.

That said, ABC News aviation consultant John Nance is looking like he’s lost a step or two and should probably think about making the way for someone with a little more cred:

After hero Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III turned the Hudson from a river into a runway, his co-pilot beamed.

“No one has ever pulled this off,” Jeff Skiles said as they floated in a rescue boat, according to passenger Billy Campbell, 49. “You’ve done something amazing!”

Sullenberger did not seem all that impressed, Campbell told The Post.

But when Campbell thanked the pilot for saving their lives, he did say, “You’re welcome.”

Such humility is not surprising to friends and colleagues of the US Airways pilot.

NTSB board member Kitty Higgins said Thursday’s feat “has to go down the most successful ditching in aviation history.” But to Sullenberger and his brother pilots, it’s just another day’s work.