As promised, the end of term limits has brought more choices, more debate and definitely more democracy:

“He was coming to protest and disrupt the event,” said Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg. “Anytime there is intelligence that an individual wants to disrupt an event, that information is circulated and appropriate measures are taken.”

What was this intelligence?

Several days earlier, Mr. Esposito had sent an e-mail message to the other 58 community board managers in the city, the last bastion of local government. The boards have yearly budgets of $189,000 each, but they face the same cuts of 5 percent as most city agencies.

All community board managers had been invited to the mayor’s presentation in the Fort Washington Armory, but Mr. Esposito said he suspected that more than a few would skip making the trip to Upper Manhattan.

“Perhaps we should attend to let our voices be heard about the cuts!” he wrote in his e-mail message. “What do people think?”

That is the entire text of the message that the mayor’s office took to be a signal of his plans to disrupt the event.