Ed Skyler has internalized it:

The free ride is finally over for thousands of privileged parkers, with the city yanking more than 25,000 permits in a sweeping overhaul yesterday of a gilded system that for years has infuriated regular motorists.

Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler said 32 percent of the 80,770 official parking placards used by 68 different agencies had been withdrawn.

. . .

Skyler insisted that vehicles with expired permits and those bearing placards issued without authority by uniformed unions — the bane of many irate motorists trying to find a parking spot — would now be ticketed. “You might as well have Time magazine on your windshield [as an expired permit],” he said. “It’ll be just as effective.”

Because speaking of Time Magazine:

Mayor Bloomberg went out on a limb — and it got him named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.

The magazine posed him on a tree outside City Hall on April 18 to illustrate his commitment to environmental issues.

Happily, the mayor — who rode to his perch on a cherry picker — was safe from any dive-bombing birds. His security guard was planted firmly in a flower bed below him.

And that’s a commitment to environmental issues, not constitutional issues:

In a blow to Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign to get guns off the streets, a federal appeals court shot down a suit by the city that sought to make firearm makers responsible for the illegal sale of weapons.

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan tossed out the lawsuit in light of a 2005 law that Congress crafted in direct response to the city’s claims. The 2-to-1 split opinion overturned an earlier ruling by Brooklyn federal Judge Jack Weinstein, who was poised to start a trial in the case when Congress approved the law.

Bloomberg said he is “disappointed,” but vowed to continue his fight against illegal guns through another lawsuit targeting crooked dealers and pawnshops.

But really, when you throw around figures like $545 million for trees and $410 million for biometric punch clocks, $3 billion doesn’t seem like such a bad deal:

In a city of big projects, it ranks among the biggest. New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection is building one of the largest water filtration plants in the world in a 10-story-deep hole it blasted out of bedrock in the Bronx. When completed in 2012, the plant, capable of purifying 300 million gallons of water a day, will be buried there.

But the plant, which will filter water from the Croton watershed in Westchester County, is no Bronx treasure chest. Even as construction moves forward, questions about soaring costs and delays continue to plague the project.

The cost is now estimated at nearly $3 billion, a huge jump from the $660 million city officials estimated when they announced an audacious plan in 1998 to build the plant below the surface of Van Cortlandt Park. They vowed that the park would be made as good as new, even if that meant replacing whatever was lost during construction. They now plan to rebuild a driving range on top of the buried plant.

Some officials and others fear the final tab could climb even higher, and in the process push up water rates. On April 1, the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., announced that he was starting an independent audit to determine whether city officials understated the original price, to get the plant built in the Bronx rather than Westchester. Besides scrutinizing the complicated accounting, Mr. Thompson will have to sort through accusations by some residents and officials of deliberate distortions of costs, and intimations that the project has been tainted by mob influence, though nothing has been proved.

. . .

The city was forced to build the plant because water from the Croton watershed did not meet federal standards for safety and purity. Although the Croton system can supply nearly 30 percent of the city’s 1.1 billion gallons a day of drinking water, generally it supplies just 10 percent, mostly in the Bronx and northern Manhattan. The rest of the city’s water comes from the Catskill Mountains and the Delaware River, and is so clean that the city last year won a 10-year exemption from federal regulations requiring that all surface drinking water be filtered.

Opponents of the Bronx plant have also expressed concern about the federal indictment in February of a key manager for the Schiavone Construction Company, which was the principal contractor responsible for digging the pit and putting in the water tunnels. The company’s offices were raided by federal agents, who seized files, and the manager, Anthony Delvescovo, was charged with having committed extortion beginning in February 2005 — around the time that work was beginning on the Croton project.

Location Scout: Van Cortlandt Park.

But with congestion pricing . . .:

A shooting suspect blew his brains out after the Con Ed truck he had stolen to flee cops got caught in traffic outside Yankee Stadium just as last night’s game ended, sources said.

The unidentified man — who earlier had shot his girlfriend in the shoulder after a violent argument — killed himself as pursuing officers closed in on him.

The suspect had gotten into a fight with the woman near East 151st Street and Courtlandt Avenue, about 20 blocks from the Stadium, at about 10 p.m.

He suddenly drew a gun and shot her in the shoulder, a police source said.

. . .

The gunman then hopped into a Con Ed truck that was left with its engine running at a work site.

When a utility worker confronted him, the suspect pointed a gun at his head and sped off.

Shortly after, he smashed into a police car, but got away.

As he approached the Stadium, at East 161st Street near the Macombs Dam Bridge, he got stuck in traffic. When cops approached the truck, they heard a gunshot and found the driver dead with a bullet wound to the head, authorities said.

As the City Council decides that the national and local economy can chug along nicely no matter how much you gouge truckers, drivers on the other side of the Hudson — that cartoon-like expanse of the country that lay just beyond the New Yorker’s view of the world — suggest a different sort of congestion pricing may be ahead:

Truckers protesting high fuel prices are clogging the New Jersey Turnpike.

Turnpike Authority spokesman Joe Orlando says trucks “as far as the eye can see” are driving about 20 mph and heading south near Exit 14 in Newark.

He says truckers are also chanting and protesting at the Vince Lombardi Service Area in Bergen County.

Orlando says the protest is backing up Turnpike traffic.

Truckers have been staging other protests throughout the country.

. . . to burnish your legacy somehow, somewhere:

With time running out on Mayor Bloomberg’s dream of rebuilding Coney Island, the city is now looking to bring a controversial developer back into the plan to build America’s largest amusement park, sources told The Post.

Only six months ago, when the term-limited mayor announced his grand 47-acre rezoning plan for Coney Island, city officials said developer Joe Sitt and other boardwalk property owners weren’t qualified to build the new 15-acre park the mayor envisions there.

But with the economy dwindling and deals to buy the 15 acres — including 11 Sitt controls — far from being reached, city officials said they are suddenly open to them playing a yet-to-be defined role in the park, even through the goal remains finding a world-class operator to run it.

How will the mayor build support for congestion pricing? Pick a pet project — high-cost, low-impact, no matter — and “negotiate” away:

One Staten Island politician has separated himself from borough colleagues who either oppose congestion pricing or look at it with raised eyebrows.

Meanwhile, the state Assembly, regarded as the biggest legislative hurdle for a proposal that requires city and state approval, said it will introduce a congestion pricing bill today.

Insisting that the plan is the borough’s best hope of getting substantial money for mass transit, state Sen. Andrew Lanza, a Republican who left the City Council for Albany last year, told the Advance yesterday he is endorsing Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ambitious, controversial proposal.

Lanza stepped into the pro-congestion pricing camp after a private meeting Tuesday with Bloomberg and his staff in City Hall, at which the senator said he was promised the Island will not be shortchanged when the projected revenue is doled out.

. . .

Bloomberg did not offer Lanza any new transportation promises, nor did he guarantee the borough would be given a specific percentage of the money pot — a proposal Oddo and Ignizio have floated to the mayor’s office. But throughout negotiations, Lanza said he has secured several assurances from the mayor’s office, such as completing a long-awaited private ferry line into Midtown Manhattan from the South Shore.

. . .

Island gains from congestion pricing so far include the expenditures laid out in the MTA plan, as well as 33 new express buses and a study of the dormant North Shore rail line, and Bloomberg is assuring the politicians that more gifts would be unwrapped if his plan is approved.

For the assignment desk: Cost-benefit analysis of ferry service . . . start here, for example.

If you gave me nice new trains like the ones on the L line — instead of these 40-plus-year-old dinosaurs — maybe I’d be less likely to chuck my chicken bones any which way:

Wet, sticky spots on the train floor, chicken bones, nut shells, spilled coffee, hot dogs and “lots and lots of rolling bottles” often greet subway passengers who travel on the E and the Q trains — rated the dirtiest lines in the New York City subway system in the latest survey by a rider advocacy group.

Riders on the L line, however, are getting the cleanest ride, according to the group, the Straphangers Campaign, which released its findings on Tuesday.

Gin up a controversy and lash out when people question it:

Mayor Bloomberg is stepping up the pressure in his push to convince state and city lawmakers to approve his congestion pricing plan before a federal deadline expires and the city loses its chance to receive $354 million in funding for the program.

Calling recent attempts in Albany to try to extend the deadline by a week “shenanigans,” the mayor is directly appealing to state and city lawmakers to make a decision on congestion pricing quickly.

“Either you’re going to do it or you’re not. And if they’re not, then I think we don’t have a future,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

During a speech on congestion pricing, he attacked an opponent of the plan, Rep. Anthony Weiner of Queens, who has argued that the federal government would send less money to the city if it generated its own revenue through congestion pricing. The mayor described Mr. Weiner’s warnings as “insanity.”

“I have nothing against any one congressman, but that is one of the stupider things I’ve ever heard said. Forget the fact that he’s one of the congressmen who’s supposed to get the money for us, the Democrats control — his party — controls Congress.” Mr. Bloomberg said, raising his voice.

When enterprising Post reporters scour court filings and find this, for example:

In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, stockbroker Stephen Chang said his visit to the Hot Lap Dance Club on West 38th Street ended in agony when he took a heel in the eye from an acrobatic stripper.

Chang had gone to the members-only club — although a membership only costs 10 bucks - by himself last Nov. 2.

Chang, 32, “paid for and was receiving a lap dance from an employee” of the club when pleasure turned to pain, the suit says.

“During the course of said lap dance, the employee suddenly swung around, striking the plaintiff in the eye with the heel of her shoe,” the suit says.

The suit, which seeks unspecified money damages, says the club “and/or” its employee was “negligent” in “suddenly swinging around,” and caused Chang to “sustain serious injuries.”

For all that self-righteousness, this is what we get:

The lawyer who represented a Staten Island man nabbed four years ago as head of a prostitution ring said he will try to get his client’s conviction expunged, since the brothel was busted by then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Gov. Spitzer has announced his resignation, effective Monday, after the revelation that he allegedly paid $4,300 for the services of a 22-year-old prostitute in a Washington, D.C., hotel room, and amid reports that his hooker habit cost him as much as $80,000 over 10 years.

Vincent Romano, a Brooklyn attorney whose client, Richmond resident Frank Farella, spent two years in an upstate New York prison after Spitzer’s office broke up the prostitution ring, said he will “explore and investigate” the possibility of redress . . .

. . .

Romano characterized Spitzer’s office as “very aggressive, overzealous, mean-spirited” in its prosecution and insisted that overturning the conviction would be the only “proper remedy,” given Spitzer’s own alleged misconduct, which is under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.

Spitzer, in his brief resignation speech that stunned the political world, vaguely acknowledged illicit behavior but did not offer specifics.

“We offered multiple times to voluntarily surrender to the attorney general’s office, to avoid the public humiliation, the perp walk, to avoid public embarrassment, to being removed from your house in the early-morning hours, and all of that was rejected” by Spitzer’s office, Romano said. “They wanted their day in the sun. He wanted his time to shine.”

Throw up whatever you have and see what sticks:

Mayor Bloomberg is proposing a “residential parking permit program” that would restrict parking spots to neighborhood residents during certain hours. Drivers who did not display neighborhood-specific permits would be ticketed.

If approved by the City Council, the program would allow local community boards to designate their neighborhoods as restricted parking areas. Some see the parking program as a way to appease critics of Mr. Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing proposal, which would have drivers paying $8 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street. Residents of boroughs outside Manhattan have expressed concern that if congestion pricing were to pass, their streets would become congested with drivers looking for a parking space before traveling into the city on public transportation.

New Yorkers across the city react strongly to news that former Governor Eliot Spitzer overpaid for sex:

At 11:45 a.m. yesterday, New Yorkers were transfixed by their televisions during a stunning moment in state history — the resignation of disgraced Gov. Spitzer.

. . .

At Forlini’s restaurant downtown, owner Joe Forlini and his staff also gathered at their television and gaped that the spectacle.

“I never liked the guy,” Forlini said afterward. “The real people who are suffering are his family. The guy’s a bum.”

. . .

“My first reaction was, oh, my God. My second reaction was, what an a- - - - - -,” said Patricia Browne, 45, of Chelsea, who watched the resignation speech with a crowd of coworkers around a television in her Midtown office.

“I thought, you know, hey, you prosecuted people for this. And then you go to a prostitute yourself. It seems there’s a disconnect, buddy, and it’s sad. What he did was egregious and he should have resigned. He had no choice.”

. . . “Like Romeo to Juliet/Time and time, I’m gonna make you mine.” His friend scratches his head, because he was (is) a big Ratt fan, and knows that the very next line is “I’ve had enough, we’ve had enough/It’s all the same,” but no matter, since most people only internalize snippets of lyrics, and besides, he came to the sad conclusion long, long ago that Ratt were probably a bunch of high-school dropout goons with little sense of internal logic, but that’s all beside the point on this particular day, he thinks, because he understands his friend’s sentiment, which is something along the lines of “what comes around goes around,” etc., etc. or whatever:

Cheers erupted on trading floors around the city yesterday as word spread of the stunning downfall of Gov. Spitzer — who spent most of his term as attorney general torturing Wall Street with his witch hunt for financial wrongdoing.

An employee of a major investment bank, who requested anonymity, said the company chef had been instructed to break out bottles of champagne so that the staff could party and swap jokes about “client No. 9.”

Meanwhile, at another giant firm, Merrill Lynch, “everyone broke into cheering on the trading floor,” an employee said. Merrill got socked for hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties, thanks to Spitzer.

Traders were on such a high that stocks rallied for about a half-hour. Then the laughs wore off and the gloom returned for a down day.

A cab driver who knows he’s driving around the former transportation reporter for the Post and still refuses to take his credit card is basically an idiot:

I went to taxi court, won my case and still wound up feeling guilty.

My cabdriver, Surjit Singh, had been completely in the wrong, but as I watched him squirm on the hot seat three feet away from me as though he were being tried for high treason and not Taxi and Limousine Commission Violation No. 2-61A1, I began to regret ever calling the city to complain.

Back on Dec. 28, Singh took me from Kennedy Airport to Brooklyn.

I told him that I used to be the transportation reporter for The Post and well understood the concerns about the new GPS and credit-card systems that had sparked two strikes. We even talked about a slew of recent news stories about how drivers were being fined for refusing to allow passengers to pay by plastic.

Then, as I watched the meter tick off the fare, I realized I wasn’t going to have enough cash to also give him a tip. But when I asked if I could pay by credit card, he lied and said the system was broken. I told him that it was clearly working and that I would tip double, more than covering the 5 percent transaction fee, but he insisted I go to an ATM.

After the ride, I called the city, and they scheduled a hearing for six weeks later, by which time I was no longer the slightest bit upset about it. Due to this cooling-off period, as few as 20 percent of passengers actually end up following through on their complaints, officials said.

. . .

An hour later, the judge came back with her decision. Singh was fined $500 for refusing to let me pay by credit card and for fraud, violations that put four points on his hack license. Two more points within a 15-month period and he would be suspended for 30 days; six more and his hack license would be revoked.

The whole thing seemed so excessive that if I had had the $500 in my wallet, I might have handed it to him.

The Times checks the numbers and determines that congestion pricing is bogged down in the City Council:

It’s the signature policy item of his second term, but Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan may be in serious trouble, not only in Albany but in the New York City Council, which after two years of bowing to much of the mayor’s agenda seems suddenly emboldened to resist him.

A New York Times survey of the Council’s 51 members this week found opposition to the plan running at nearly a 2-1 ratio among those who have taken a position.

Mr. Bloomberg needs 26 votes for approval of the plan, which would charge drivers $8 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street.

Asked how they would vote if they had to decide today, 12 council members said they would vote yes, 20 said they would vote no, and 11 said they were undecided, but with serious concerns. The other eight did not respond.

The informal tally bodes poorly for the mayor, who must now split his attention between swaying undecided members of the State Assembly, where opposition up to now has been loudest, and assuaging concerns among council members. It also raises the question of whether council members are more willing to depart from the mayor’s agenda as they turn their focus to their next political campaigns.

And the City Council, known for its courage, seems set to do the right thing:

“It’s going to go down,” said Lewis A. Fidler, a Brooklyn Democrat who opposes congestion pricing. “I think the council members, recognizing it’s not going to pass in Albany, want to assert the integrity of this institution.”

The mayor’s plan must be approved by both the Council and the State Legislature by March 31 for New York to qualify for about $350 million in federal financing.

The mayor and his aides, along with Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, have started an effort to woo council members and legislators in recent weeks.

They stepped up their courtship Thursday night with a dinner at Gracie Mansion to which more than a dozen council members from Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island had been invited. Only six attended, and gathered around a table with the mayor and the speaker over grilled salmon and wine. In a cordial tone, Mr. Bloomberg made his pitch, warning them of the risk of losing federal money just as the city’s economy appears headed for bleak times, according to some members who attended.

The number of free parking permits for city employees is much bigger than once thought:

The number of government-issued parking permits provided to employees of city agencies is significantly higher than had been estimated by city officials, according to a citywide inventory.

Ordered by Mayor Bloomberg earlier this year as part of a citywide initiative to cut down on the sought-after permits by 20%, the inventory found that city agencies gave out about 142,000 parking permits last year.

“If you had asked me to guess when we started this analysis, I would have said there were between 70 and 80,000,” Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler said. “Placards and permits are necessary for the government to do business, but it has gotten out of hand.”

. . . people physically attack each other over boxes filled with tomatoes and $29:

A money giveaway in Union Square by a company called Cashtomato.com turned rotten Friday when the impatient crowd bum-rushed the costumed organizers and ran off with the loot. One person was injured in the free-for-all.

“Make it rain!” and “Give me my money!” passersby shouted as the clock ticked down to the scheduled 2:29 p.m. publicity stunt, timed to mark Leap Day.

With five minutes to go, the antsy mob of 100 surged toward three workers dressed to resemble tomatoes and holding sacks and boxes of prizes up to $29.

“People grabbed and pulled on the bag,” said Jason Buzi, an executive at the fledgling video-sharing Internet company.

“I didn’t feel safe, so I let it go.”

As he fled across the street, his colleagues dropped their sacks and scattered across the park - and a wild grab for the booty ensued.

Scavengers dove to the ground and elbowed each other out of the way to get at cash-stuffed envelopes and balloons and flyers and fresh tomatoes with bills attached.

“I got pushed down and trampled, but instead of money, all I got were tomatoes,” said a dejected 29-year-old homeless woman who gave her name as Christine.

. . .

Buzi, who said he has organized giveaways in five other cities without incident, seemed dazed by the debacle.

“They grabbed all the bags and the money from us,” he said.

“I expected maybe a few homeless people, but it turned out to be a lot of aggressive people,” Buzi said.

Now that Sheekey’s Machine is safely out of commission, the mayor can go back to his true colors — protecting landlord’s rights (”Mr. Bloomberg said the bill, while well-intentioned, prohibited landlords from making sound business decisions and required them to enter into contracts with government agencies that they might otherwise avoid”) and helping State Senate Republicans:

While declaring his commitment to nonpartisanship, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is quietly injecting himself — and his money — into one of the most explosive partisan battles in decades in New York.

Several weeks ago, the mayor wrote a $500,000 check to help keep the dwindling and increasingly imperiled State Senate Republicans from losing their grip on power, according to an official with direct knowledge of the donation.

The Democrats are seeking to gain control of the Senate for the first time in 40 years, and the race is growing personal and bitter.

. . . the rest, not so much. So now that it’s no longer necessary to keep up appearances of “successful security consultant,” they realize it’s safe to start to wrap things up at the home office:

Rudy Giuliani’s consulting firm has laid off staffers as the business is reshaped after his failed presidential campaign, The Post has learned.

The layoffs last week involved administrative staffers working for Giuliani Partners, several sources told The Post.

It was unclear exactly how many departed last week, but the sources said it was at least five staffers.

First employees to go were those assigned to the Qatar account . . .

Now that he’s a lame duck, other initiatives seem to be stalling:

A growing number of Assembly members say it’s extremely unlikely their house will support a revised congestion plan backed by Mayor Bloomberg, with at least two dozen now backing a different alternative that doesn’t charge to drive into parts of Manhattan.

“It’s not going to happen,” said Assemblyman Mark Weprin (D-Queens) of the Bloomberg-backed congestion pricing plan.

Assemblyman Joseph Lentol (D-Brooklyn) added, “I never say never, but I think it’s pretty unlikely given the feeling of the [Democratic] conference.”

Either that or apparently women don’t take to beauty pageants like they used to:

The Miss Brooklyn pageant — a stepping stone to the Miss America crown — reappeared after a 16-year absence last week and was plunged immediately into controversy because the winner is a queen who’s not from Kings.

Leigh-Taylor Smith, 22, captured the sparkling tiara Saturday afternoon and promptly whisked it across the East River, forcing the borough to wait at least another year before it can crown one of its daughters with top honors.

. . .

. . . Smith, whose main qualification for being Miss Brooklyn — other than her looks, talent and charm — is that she is a parishioner at the Brooklyn Tabernacle on the Fulton Mall in Downtown.

Plus, she’s made the hajj to Junior’s and the Coney Island Boardwalk since moving to New York after graduating from the University of Virginia last year.

“Living in Manhattan, it’s nice to come to a low-key place like Brooklyn,” she told The Brooklyn Paper.

Before Brooklynites take umbrage at Smith’s victory, partisans should remember that it might never have happened had more genuine Brooklynites signed up.

“We only had a few committed girls from Brooklyn,” said Kim Thomas, executive director of the Miss Brooklyn Scholarship Program. “We couldn’t have a contest with only three girls.”

Gone to the races:

The board of directors of the New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation is set to vote today to shut down the gambling franchise, which could result in about 1,500 layoffs and the closure of more than 70 outlets across the five boroughs as early as June.

Sources say the OTB board of directors is poised to adopt a closing plan proposed by the president of the Off-Track Betting Corporation, Raymond Casey. Accounts differ as to the financial condition of the corporation, which has been famously described as the only bookie in the world that loses money. Mayor Bloomberg, who controls the OTB board through appointees, is set to shut down the corporation because he says the city has no interest in subsidizing its losses.

If the closure goes ahead, it could mark the end of the often seedy storefronts that dot the streets of the five boroughs, and it could deepen the financial troubles of New York State’s horse racing industry, which depends in part on funds from New York’s government-operated betting parlors.

See also: Off-Track Betting Parlors.

Potential thieves, take note — clubs are out on account of being just too loud:

Nicholas Williams, 31, who told cops he was from North Carolina, pulled out a gun inside the club and tried to hold up two men, but he had trouble getting their attention because the music was so loud, a law enforcement source said.

Williams yanked some gold chains and medallions off one victim, but as he was trying to stuff the gun and jewelry into his jacket pocket, accidentally squeezed the trigger and shot himself, the source said.

Then “panic ensued in the club,” the source said.

After being strong-armed out of Greenwich Village, NYU begins to look for other places to colonize:

New York University wants to build a 1-million-square-foot campus on Governors Island, school officials said yesterday.

The NYU plan would call for a mix of student and faculty housing and space for academic programs, officials said. It’s part of a 25-year, 6-million-square-foot expansion plan that also targets other parts of the Big Apple, including Downtown Brooklyn.

“NYU sees the potential of Governors Island as a place where we can grow,” said NYU spokesman John Beckman.

The state-city Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation says the university is a good fit, but the agency has yet to determine when it will seek proposals from prospective tenants.

When the only people who can afford to live in Manhattan are those in the financial sector* and students, you’re of course going to get more dorms:

Columbia’s brand-new 17-acre campus in Harlem. Six million square feet of additional space for NYU dorms and classrooms, stretching from Washington Square to the outer boroughs. A Fordham “fortress” springing up on the Upper West Side.

Colleges and universities are forecasting unprecedented growth in the coming years, adding as much as 17 million square feet of space — or more than either the World Trade Center or the controversial Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn — and may begin to exert an even greater influence on the ebb and flow of life in the city.

“Our fear is that the neighborhood could be overwhelmed by these institutions that they have played host to for 150 years,” said Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation.

Berman and other neighborhood advocates fear that the low-rise character of the neighborhood could become overrun by packs of college students and tall dorms to house them.

“It becomes a stage set instead of a real urban neighborhood, or company town where everything around you is run by a single entity,” Berman said.

*Whoops — sorry about that recession, guys . . .

Oh wait . . . I get it now:

A top executive with the construction firm managing the problem-plagued demolition of the former Deutsche Bank building said yesterday that the so-called “toxic tower” may not be as contaminated as the public has been led to believe.

“It is our belief there are not nearly [that] level of contaminants and the fear that is out there may or may not be justified,” said Mark Melson, vice president of Bovis Lend Lease, which is in charge of dismantling the eyesore overlooking Ground Zero.

With predecessors like these of course Al Sharpton will see you as a friend:

The Reverend Al Sharpton, who has not endorsed a candidate for president, is heaping praise on Mayor Bloomberg and, in turn, criticizing the legacy of Mayor Giuliani.

Mr. Bloomberg changed the “tone of ugliness” in the city, Rev. Sharpton said, so that even when there is disagreement, those on conflicting sides still speak to each other.

“It is important that even when we disagree that we not have a climate of disagreeability,” Rev. Sharpton said yesterday at an annual rally held in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. at the headquarters of Rev. Sharpton’s National Action Network in Harlem.

“Michael Bloomberg has torn down the curtain of polarized dialogue in the city and he has done it in an effective way,” he said.

If I wanted to give you my number, believe me, I would have:

Are you the one I kissed New Year’s Eve?

That’s the question haunting dozens of New Yorkers desperately trying to track down the virtual stranger they hooked up with — or tried to hook up with — as the ball dropped.

“I am looking for the identity of the man I kissed New Year’s Eve night/morning,” wrote one lovelorn Upper East Side woman in an ad on Craigslist.

“You were wearing a black and white checkered/flannelish shirt. You decided not to stay because of the disorganized chaos. I love you! Find me!” wrote a guy from the Lower East Side.

“You were wearing a gold dress. Your friend dragged you out before I could get your number,” wrote another poster.

While most New Yorkers nursed hangovers, nearly 100 romantics posted heartfelt “missed connections” messages on the Web site.

“Mike - you kissed me at a house party on 96th and 3rd on New Years. From the moment I saw you . . . I wanted you,” wrote Anne Huynh, 22.

The actress said she was on the prowl in a hot purple dress at a party on the Upper West Side when she spotted Mike in a neighboring apartment.

She crashed the neighbor’s party to meet him, a “hot hybrid between Jake Gyllenhaal and Freddie Prinze Jr.” in a tux, strumming on his guitar.

They sneaked away for the first kiss of 2008. “I had butterflies in my stomach,” she said.

But she left him shortly after without giving or getting a last name or phone number.

“I just want to see him again, and tell him how much I like him,” she sighed.

At a restaurant in Brooklyn, Robby Hecker, 30, spotted a “beautiful” woman chatting with her parents. It wasn’t long before he was invited over to the table. But shortly after, the girl disappeared without leaving a name or a number.

Really though, it’s rare that you catch a doctor around here throwing around words like “miraculous”:

Alcides Moreno plunged 47 stories that morning last month, clinging to his 3-foot-wide window washer’s platform as it shot down the dark glass face of an Upper East Side apartment building. His brother Edgar, who had been working with him on the platform, was killed.

Somehow, Alcides Moreno survived.

He was given roughly 24 pints of blood and 19 pints of plasma and underwent an operation to open his abdomen in the emergency room because, his doctor said, they did not want to risk moving him to an operating room. As December went on, he endured nine orthopedic operations.

Yet somehow, Alcides Moreno, the man who fell from the sky, survived.

In his hospital room, amid all the machines that helped keep him alive, his wife, Rosario, lifted his hand again and again to stroke her face and her hair, hoping against hope that a simple tactile sensation would remind him, would help bring him back.

Then on Christmas Day, Alcides Moreno reached out — and stroked the wrong face.

“Apparently he tried to do it to one of the nurses,” Rosario Moreno said on Thursday, describing how she chided him, gently, when she was told what had happened. “I looked at him and said, ‘You’re not supposed to do that. I’m your wife, you touch your wife.’”

. . .

Surrounded by doctors who had helped save her husband, Mrs. Moreno told her story at a press conference at which medical professionals with long years of experience in treating traumatic injuries used words like “miraculous” and “unprecedented” to describe something that seems remarkable: a man who fell nearly 500 feet into a Manhattan alleyway is now talking and, with a little more luck, a few more operations and some rehabilitation therapy, may well walk again.

“If you are a believer in miracles, this would be one,” said Dr. Philip S. Barie, the chief of the division of critical care at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, where Mr. Moreno, 37, is being treated.

Maybe the mayor should return from all that campaigning to get this straightened out*:

The Department of Education appears to be taking a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to its ban on students bringing cellphones into the classroom.

Administrators at public middle and high schools have loosened the city’s ban on cellphones — as long as the gadgets are hidden, students and principals told The Post.

Principals said that even before a City Council bill that prohibits interfering with a student’s right to carry a cellphone to and from school recently went into effect, it was “close to impossible” to enforce the ban.

One Queens middle school principal, who asked for anonymity because she was bucking the ban, said her students can bring their phones as long as they’re turned off.

*It obviously undermines his earlier hardline position — not good for a presidential candidate who needs to appear tough!