The CityTime system, an effort to install fancy doodads (read: high-tech punch clocks) in municipal offices that was to have cost $68 million but now is up to $722 million, has been called a “disaster” by the mayor:

“It’s been a disaster. It is one of these massive computer projects that very seldom ever is successful,” said Bloomberg, who made his fortune with financial data systems.

Now imagine that sentence applied to congestion pricing had that been implemented (kind of amazing, by the way, that Bloomberg has kept plugging congestion pricing now that the MTA is having money trouble).

Now there are two aspects to CityTime — one is a paperless timekeeping system and the other is the aforementioned punch clock doodad. It would be interesting to know where the problem is. A paperless timekeeping system theoretically has some positive benefits: it is “green” in the sense that there are no more paper timecards and automating the timekeeping system theoretically means the city needs fewer timekeepers. On the other hand, the biometric punch clocks that unnecessarily agitated desk workers always seemed like a huge waste of money. You only need punch clocks if you’re worried workers are leaving early — instead of babysitting them why not just make sure there is enough actual work to do?

Another awesome tidbit about the punch clocks is that instead of using the actual time an employee punches in and out, the machines instead round up and down to the nearest fifteen-minute increment. So that, say, an employee punches in at 9:07 and leaves at 4:53, that employee will have “worked” a full seven-hour day. Over the course of a work week, that’s 70 minutes free. Brilliant! (And if the employee punches in at 8:52 and punches out at 4:53 the machine will give him or her fifteen minutes of comp time — love it!) The other unintended consequence is that employees are less likely to hang out after five to work on projects. We’ve heard of both scenarios occurring.

Not so long ago observers hailed the mayor’s foresight in updating the Jane Jacobs school of thought by both preserving a neighborhood’s character and allowing for smart redevelopment. Jane Jacobs herself seemed to disagree, but whatever — it became a useful campaign talking point. Contrarian voices questioned. Then they finally pooped in the punch bowl:

[Brooklyn College sociology professor Sharon] Zukin — whose own book, “Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places,” was published in December — peered through the window at rows of glass candleholders. “Tchotchkes!” she said. “Oh, the sheer ignominy.”

Ms. Jacobs’s continuing influence on the city is clear. As Amanda M. Burden, chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, wrote a few years back, “Projects may fail to live up to Jane Jacobs’s standards, but they are still judged by her rules.”

But if Ms. Jacobs is much hailed as an urban prophet, Ms. Zukin is a heretic on her canonization. She views Ms. Jacobs as a passionate and prescient writer, but also one who failed to reckon with steroidal gentrification and the pervasive hunger of the upper middle class for ever more homogenous neighborhoods.

The pattern in places like Williamsburg and Atlantic Yards, Ms. Zukin said, is dreary and inexorable: Middle-class “pioneers” buy brownstones and row houses. City officials rezone to allow luxury towers, which swell the value of the brownstones. And banks and real estate companies unleash a river of capital, flushing out the people who gave the neighborhoods character.

Ms. Jacobs viewed cities as self-regulating organisms, and placed her faith in local residents. But Ms. Zukin argues that without more aggressive government regulation of rents and zoning, neighborhoods will keep getting more stratified.

“Jacobs’s values — the small blocks, the cobblestone streets, the sense of local identity in old neighborhoods — became the gentrifiers’ ideal,” Ms. Zukin said. “But Jacobs’s social goals, the preservation of classes, have been lost.”

Observers also love — love! — irony, and any story about Jane Jacobs now carries with it requisite colorful there-goes-the-neighborhood details:

Ms. Jacobs, who died in 2006, waged heroic war against planners who dreamed of paving the Village’s cobblestone streets, demolishing its tenements and creating sterile superblocks. Her victory in that fight was complete, if freighted with unanticipated consequences. The cobblestone remains, but the high bourgeoisie has taken over; not many tailors can afford to live there anymore. Ms. Jacobs’s old home recently sold for more than $3 million, and the ground floor harbors a boutique glass store.

. . .

Ms. Zukin recently acted as tour guide on a stroll through Ms. Jacobs’s urban village, where Irish and Italian grandmothers once watched from windows as children played on the streets, and milkmen delivered bottles as chain-smoking playwrights typed in grotty flats. It began just north of Christopher and Bleecker Streets in the West Village, once a working-class haven, then the black-leather heart of Queerdom, and now something like the back lot in a Paramount Studios version of New York.

There’s the Magnolia Bakery, where perpetual lines snake out the door not so much because of its excellent cupcakes as because of its appearance on “Sex and the City.” There’s Marc Jacobs, where the lines are no less endless. A Ralph Lauren, a Madden, and a children’s store with the most adorable petite $250 pants. Ms. Zukin sighed.

“It’s another Madison Avenue, or the Short Hills mall,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “Really, did we need that?”

We sit back like they taught us. We keep quiet like they taught us. But we are all there. And we are all guilty:

Dog lovers across the borough remain on high alert after a creepy Craigslist post threatened to poison pooches with deadly dog treats.

“Too many dogs!” read the post, which has since been taken down by the Web site. “Too many pissing and s–ting everywhere. Kill them! Cull the herd! I am leaving poison in bits of meat and gravy dog food. Poison the dogs!!”

Someone should see if obesity rates have soared — literally soared! — around the area where no new parks have been built:

Three and a half years after Mayor Bloomberg closed huge portions of Mullaly and Macombs Dam parks to make way for the Yankees new $1.5 billion stadium, the replacement ballfields the city promised are nowhere to be seen.

. . .

Shea Stadium, in case anyone has forgotten, came tumbling down in fewer than eight months. It was leveled quickly because the Mets needed the land for parking.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

But it’s weird — he looks so much taller on TV:

A con man trying to impersonate Paul Simon was arrested for trying to take money out of the singer’s bank account — because the teller realized the 6-foot-1 crook looked absolutely nothing like the diminutive rock legend, police sources told The Post.

The city finds that traffic around Times Square doesn’t really move any faster or easier now that a five-block-long stretch of Broadway has been turned into a pedestrian mall:

The city is keeping its data under tight lock and key. But two officials briefed on the data characterized the results as disappointing, and one said that traffic flow did not meet the department’s goals. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the data had not been made public.

Those goals were outlined in February, when the program was announced. The city hoped that its changes would allow drivers to travel down Seventh Avenue, from 59th to 23rd Street, up to 17 percent faster than before. A comparable northbound trip up Avenue of the Americas was expected to take up to 37 percent less time. The idea, according to Mr. Bloomberg, was that eliminating the congestion where Broadway crosses the two avenues would smooth the way for cars, allowing them to spend less time at stoplights.

. . .

The stakes are high for the city’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, who has gained worldwide attention for the plan. Ms. Sadik-Khan has taken an aggressive approach toward remaking the New York streetscape to roll back the car-centric policies stemming from the Robert Moses era and create a metropolis more friendly to pedestrians and bicycles. Her actions have earned her accolades and anger in equal measure.

Traffic data will not be the only factor in Mr. Bloomberg’s assessment of whether to continue the program, which barred vehicular traffic from Broadway between 47th and 42nd Streets, and from 35th Street to 33rd Street, creating pedestrian plazas through the heart of Times and Herald Squares. Besides the extension of green lights to expedite traffic flow, other small modifications to lanes and the street grid were made and furniture was set up to accommodate tired and hungry tourists.

Grand schemes seldom seem to provide the results politicians promise — especially flashy schemes rolled out six months before an election. So when in doubt, back down:

“Does it solve all of the problems in the city?” he added. “No.”

In other words, what do you think we’re going to do with all that new lawn furniture?

Location Scout: Times Square Pedestrian Mall.

If you can’t moneymake a waterfront site into a money-making commercial property, try building dorms instead:

Developer Joe Sitt sent shockwaves through a monthly gathering of real estate executives on Tuesday by sharing news that he hoped to convert his waterfront land between the Ikea superstore and the Fairway supermarket into a student housing complex.

“Ask any university, they’re starving for student housing,” Sitt, the CEO of Thor Equities, told the development big wigs at the Real Estate Roundtable at the Brooklyn Historical Society.

“[It could be] quasi-residential student housing if we can tempt a nearby university.”

Location Scout: Revere Sugar Refinery.

Huge cost overruns and corrupting influences from Bloomberg gadgets:

While he made $250,000 a year from the city to devise the payroll system, CityTime, Salamone was running a full-fledged lobbying business.

During the past four years alone, he was paid another $1.4million by firms such as Sun Microsystems, Symantec, Keane Inc. and Intergraph to lobby the Bloomberg administration for additional computer contracts, city records show.

And since he is a retired city employee, Salamone, 69, also collected more than $50,000 annually in a city pension.

So how did he find all that extra moonlighting time?

A spokesman for the city’s Office of Payroll Administration, when notified of the consulting business, said Salamone never disclosed his other interests to agency chief Joel Bondy.

“While Mr. Salamone was not a city employee and did not recommend any purchases or consultant hires for [the] project, we will be reviewing the matter,” the spokesman said.

The CityTime project has ballooned from an initial price tag of $63 million in 1998 to nearly $700 million today and has fallen years behind schedule, with only about 45,000 city workers using it.

Don’t underestimate Eli Manning’s ability to come back late in the game and definitely don’t overlook David Tyree’s incredible athletic prowess in case the two connect for a game-saving pass play during the Super Bowl:

Michael Terry, 40, said he invited three neighborhood drug dealers to his Belmont Ave. apartment to smoke pot, drink beer and watch the Giants beat the Patriots on Feb. 3, 2008.

The Giants won, the four toasted the victory, and his guests refused to leave. They stayed for three days and began selling drugs out of his living room, Terry told a Bronx Supreme Court jury.

We don’t condone it, but we understand it:

Cops are hunting for a suspect, possibly fed up over parking tickets, who may fancy himself a rubber Robin Hood.

He slashed the tires of three NYPD Parking Enforcement cars in broad daylight on Monday.

. . .

Westchester Square has gained an infamous reputation for ticket blitzes against shoppers.

Struggling merchants also complain the agents hog precious metered spots with both official vehicles and their personal ones, which never seem to get ticketed.

“I’m not surprised that frustration would run that high, and that people would attempt to lash back out at enforcement in an improper manner,” said John Bonizio, president of the Association of the Merchants and Business Professionals of Westchester Square.

“Parking violation issues are the No. 1 complaint across New York City that people have about enforcement. It’s fraud.”

Merchants said the constant ticketing is hurting their business.

“It’s killing us,” said Marco Rossetti, 33, co-owner of Frank and Joe’s Deli in Westchester Square. “It’s wrong, but I can understand his frustration.

“Truthfully, we’re not given a chance. Their office is located directly above us. The agents come down 10, 15 at a time, stand in front of my store. People that pull over don’t get a second to stop.”

Location Scout: Westchester Square.

. . . my guess is he won’t though:

Getting salt rubbed into his wounds, defeated mayoral candidate William Thompson faces $531,975 in potential fines for illegal posting of campaign signs, new Sanitation Department records show.

Thompson’s Democratic mayoral campaign plastered 8,665 signs on street poles and other city property, the records say, resulting in 7,093 separate summonses, each carrying a $75 fine.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Calorie counts:

Launched in July 2008, the rules require calorie listings at any chain with substantially similar menus and more than 15 locations nationwide.

That largely affects fast-food outlets such as McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts — but it also covers some high-priced steakhouses and other top-end eateries with just a handful of New York locations.

. . .

“These laws started in McDonald’s, and I think they should stay in McDonald’s,” said tourist Michelle Dedriazia, 49, of Pittsburgh, who likes visiting fancy steakhouses when she comes to New York.

“If you are going to a nice place, you should not be told this type of information. I don’t know why they do this in New York City. It doesn’t make sense.”

None of the upscale eateries contacted by the Daily News responded to requests for comment. But one California-based chain was so opposed to the requirement that it changed its name and menu just to get around the rules.

Houston’s renamed its two Manhattan locations “Hillstone” late last year and changed the recipes of several items after the rules took effect. When Health Department officials charged the chain with violating the law, Houston’s successfully brought in cooks and executives to prove the offerings at its Park Ave. South and E. 53rd St. locations are different.

“We, after meeting with them, withdrew the violation,” said Tom Merrill, general counsel for the Health Department.

Bloomberg’s grand campaign promise to install Coca-Cola in the city’s drinking fountains meets reality, and the newly minted third termer reverts to vague pledges to use “technology” in some shape or form to fix stuff:

A day after winning reelection, Mayor Bloomberg on Thursday seemed to step back from a campaign proposal to have free crosstown bus service.

The “real issue” at the core of the no-fare proposal was speeding bus travel by reducing time spent boarding passengers, Bloomberg noted.

That goal might be achieved through technology, Bloomberg said after touring the city’s 311 call center with MTA Chairman Jay Walder.

. . . when it comes to the shocking rise in Santeria sacrifices in the city over the past year. It seems everyone is resorting to whatever means necessary to rid the city of this tremendous curse:

An emaciated goat wandering Pelham Bay Park. A pig’s head placed on a desolate street near the Green-Wood Cemetery. A dead rooster lying near a tree in Forest Park in Queens.

These bizarre discoveries have popped up with shocking frequency this year, making Big Apple parks look like makeshift sacrificial altars and grazing grounds for livestock left over from religious rituals.

In the last few months, four goats have been found in public places in The Bronx. And a total of six were found in the city in the last year, according to Animal Care and Control. That’s on top of 19 reported incidents of animal remains found in parkland, according to the Parks Department.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

By shifting the narrative toward the ameliorative effect of trees on the cityscape, the mayor has opened up a new line of argument for people throughout the five boroughs:

A Bronx strip club owner is under fire from Long Island City community leaders for his plans to open a gentleman’s club that could feature all-nude girls near the Queensboro Bridge.

Gus Drakopoulos, who operates Sin City in the Bronx, plans to open a club featuring full nudity if the local community board tries to block his liquor license. By law, a club that serves liquor can have only topless women.

“He’s a thoroughly disingenuous guy with a total disrespect for this community,” said attorney Pat O’Brien, a member of Community Board 2. “It’s totally polarized the community. We’ve been trying for decades to make this a better place.”

Drakopoulos said his Bronx club, next to the Major Deegan Expressway, has made the community a better place by illuminating the block and planting trees on the desolate street.

“We took a concrete, deserted neighborhood and brought life to it,” he said. “There were weeds 5 feet high, car parts and tires everywhere.”

. . . you could be an “arrogant” mayor in New York. Maybe no longer. This criticism seems to be a trend, what with the congestion pricing debacle, that third term thingy, mayoral control of schools and now apparently the DC37 Thompson endorsement:

“He’s arrogant, too arrogant,” said Robert Ajaye, president of Local 2627, which represents data processors, some of whom are facing possible layoffs.

Like a big outdoor state fair pavilion with pitchmen hawking all sorts of great stuff — paint, for example:

. . . [T]he plazas have also found a role that was never publicly trumpeted by the administration: They make money for the city.

All or any of them can be rented by private companies, which pay substantial fees to the city — the highest is $38,500. Commercial requests that have been approved have included a Glidden Paint promotion, as well as promotions for “Top Chef,” the cooking competition on the Bravo network, and “The Great Debate,” a series on VH1. The car-free streets have also been the scene of Hula-Hooping classes and a simulcast of the Tony Awards.

. . .

The fees go to the city’s general fund. Street permits, which are also charged for the use of sidewalks and open streets, bring in “a significant amount” of revenue, said Evelyn Erskine, a spokeswoman for Mayor Bloomberg.

City officials would not say whether they considered the plazas’ moneymaking potential while planning the changes to Broadway.

. . .

At 23rd and Broadway last weekend, one public space was focused on paint. Just behind the planters that separate the plaza from traffic stood four large purple cylinders, each stocked with brochures and color swatches from Glidden Paint. Three young men and women in bright T-shirts stopped passers-by to hand out paint chips and chat about colors.

“Paint usually gets a good response,” said Kristina Hurlburt, a Glidden representative who said she had sold all types of products. About one in every 15 pedestrians stopped to talk or glance through brochures filled with steel blue and deepest aqua.

The company paid about $2,600 per day for the right to erect its barrel-shaped displays.

First Haberman, now Patrice O’Shaughnessy:

Yes, 10 years from now, we’ll be looking back at former Mayor Bloomberg’s absurd remaking of a city of unique character to one big homogenized mall, where the tourists feel right at home because it is exactly the same as their hometown.

Oh, wait. Bloomberg will probably still be in office, trying to close off E. Tremont Ave. to all but tourists in horse-drawn carriages.

Let’s get it all out now before it starts eating away at us later . . .

Wow people with Frank Gehry designs, thus building support — either explicit or tacit (i.e., “looks nice . . . maybe that eminent domain battle is worth it”) — then pull out the rug from under everyone only after you start tearing stuff down, thus making Nicolai Ouroussoff cry:

The recent news that the developer Forest City Ratner had scrapped Frank Gehry’s design for a Nets arena in central Brooklyn is not just a blow to the art of architecture. It is a shameful betrayal of the public trust, one that should enrage all those who care about this city.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.

Push through a crazy new media-ready initiative and not anticipate what work would need to go into it:

The cheapo tables and chairs set up in the pedestrian-only sections of Times Square have become a magnet for nightcrawler slobs who carelessly toss hot-dog wrappers, empty soda bottles and McDonald’s bags on the street.

“Especially speaking of weekends, like Saturday and Sunday morning, it looks like a bomb hit,” said Tim Tompkins, the president of Times Square Alliance, the group responsible for keeping the plazas clean.

Officials said they were caught off-guard by the crowds drawn to the newly car-free section of Broadway, and that the trash is one of the growing pains of the setup.

On Saturday night, the Department of Sanitation was called in to do an additional garbage-truck run just to clean out overflowing trash cans, Tompkins said.

The alliance, which gets its funding from business owners to keep the area spruced up, is revamping its cleaning staff’s hours to fill a late-night gap in service from 10 p.m. to 5:30 a.m.

I’m sure the BID is excited about that . . .

. . . people just assume that you’re probably doing a politically staged photo-op:

For a vast majority of New Yorkers, a daily cab ride is simply too expensive. But beyond that, mass transit is so much a part of the fabric of city life that many subway and bus riders waxed defiant over Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s advice (quickly retracted) not to take the subway.

“See, I didn’t listen to Joe Biden,” City Councilman Eric N. Gioia said with a grin as he hopped on the No. 7 train to Queens at Grand Central — not in a politically staged photo op; he had just happened by.

Or perhaps it’s just 50 percent less greatness:

Twelve days after opening their new stadium, the Yankees on Tuesday bowed to the sour economy and the specter of empty seats by slashing in half some of their top-end, $2,500-a-game prices.

. . .

Over all, the new policy represents a dramatic retreat from the team’s initial luxury-sales strategy for the new stadium, which was underlined in advertisements that crowed “Own the Greatness” and “Select the Greatest Seats in the World.”

Last week, team officials said they would no longer discuss ticket prices or the many empty seats behind home plate and the two dugouts that were painfully visible at Yankee Stadium and on television during the team’s first homestand from April 16-22.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

If you’re going to control the schools, go whole-hog — control them! But don’t waste everyone’s time with neutered advisory boards that, little by little, chip away at democracy by poisoning minds with cynicism:

In designing the mayoral takeover, lawmakers viewed the panel as critical to maintaining a “balance of authority,” and promised it would have a “meaningful role” on citywide education policy and approve major contracts, according to the authorizing language that accompanied the bill.

But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — who controls 8 of the panel’s 13 seats — made plain during the negotiations that he preferred no panel at all, and over the past seven years, he and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who doubles as the panel’s chairman, have eased it into irrelevance.

The volunteer panelists — an investment banker, a lingerie store owner and an expert on electromagnetics among them — rarely engage in discussions with those who rise to address them. They do not debate the educational issues of the day, but spend most sessions applauding packaged presentations by staff. Some have barely uttered a public word during their tenures.

Buried lede — the rush hour commute on the F train from Brooklyn is really fucking long:

[Peter] Brett, 36, tapped out most of “The Warded Man,” which hit U.S. bookshelves last month, on his smartphone on daily trips from the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop near his Kensington home to his job in Times Square.

“I started out just trying to take notes. I’d sit on the subway, I’d get a good idea and I’d jot something down,” said Brett, who works in medical publishing.

“I got very fast at writing with my thumbs. I found myself writing more and more.”

Soon, he was averaging 400 words each morning and evening.

“I trained myself that at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. every day when I got on the train, that was my writing time,” he said.

“I had about 45 minutes each way, and everyone who takes the F knows that 45 minutes can turn into an hour and a half.”

Brett went armed with an iPod to block out distractions, and he was prepared to fight for a seat.

“There’s no way to write with your thumbs when you’re standing up,” he said.

“I was raised to give up my seat to just about everyone. [Now] unless you’re really old or pregnant, I’m getting that seat.”

And may the Post’s New-Yankee-Stadium-Sucks stories never end, for they are too much fun to read. First, either no one is buying, or at least sitting in, $2600 seats (“Maybe the reason the best tickets at the new Yankee Stadium are called ‘Legends’ seats is that fans willing to fork over $2,625 a game are mostly mythical. . . . At Sunday’s game, nearly 7,000 seats at the stadium were empty, the large majority of them at field level”) and then the 84-year-old longtime superfan is shut out of the place:

Freddy “Sez” Schuman, the one-eyed, cookware-clanking octogenarian who’s been an unofficial pinstripe mascot for 22 seasons, was forced to panhandle for tickets at the new Yankee Stadium over the weekend.

In years past, Schuman, who, like Yogi Berra, turns 84 next month, received free season tickets from sponsors such as Modell’s, or was simply let through the press gate with a wink from a Stadium official.

On Opening Day, he had no trouble getting into the new ballpark for free through the press gate, but on Friday, Saturday and Sunday he had to depend on the kindness of fellow Yankee fans for free seats.

On Sunday, he stood outside the Stadium holding his frying pan and a sign that read, “Freddy ‘Sez’ Yankees say, ‘I can’t go in; must buy ticket!!’”

. . .

He cannot afford the seats at the new Stadium, and doesn’t really need one, since he spends his time in the Stadium walking around and letting fans clank his pan with a spoon for good luck.

“Frankly, I don’t know how some fans are going to afford these new prices,” he said.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

When the head of the MTA overturns term limits and spends $100 million to run for mayor, then we can talk about “fairness”, but until then, it just doesn’t seem like the same situation:

The MTA cash crunch — already blasting straphangers with planned fare hikes and service cuts — may put the squeeze on transit workers next, experts said.

Bus and subway workers face three grim possibilities: no raise this year, a one-time payment that doesn’t carry over into next year or a pay hike of approximately 1.5% or less, experts said.

. . .

Union leader Roger Toussaint issued a terse statement last night through a spokesman: “There’s no getting around the fairness issue.”

Toussaint suggested it would be unfair if transit workers didn’t get raises similar to those doled out by the Bloomberg administration last year to various unions.

Police officers, firefighters, sanitation workers, correction officers and clerical workers got annual raises of about 4%.

Which is to say, just when you start to root for Charles Barron, he goes and ruins it:

City Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn, who opposed the extension of term limits, said he’ll formally announce on Sunday that he plans to run for a third term.

Referring to his colleagues who joined him in voting against the extension, Barron said, “We were not against 12 years, we were against the process.”

In a brief telephone interview, Barron said he thinks only the 22 City Council members who did not “suck up” to the mayor and Speaker Christine Quinn on term limits deserve to be re-elected.

“Personally,” Barron added, “I don’t even want to run again, but the people around me think it is the best thing for me to do.”

*Michael Ochs’ liner notes from “There And Now,” the live album recorded in late 1968 and released by Rhino Records in 1990, explain that “Phil had just returned from the Chicago Democratic convention, where he had witnessed the death of democracy as he had known it.”

It makes sense that the Mets and Yankees (especially the Yankees!) would have a bigger carbon footprint in their new stadia; no one would expect any less from two teams that are known for sucking up all available resources:

Yankee Stadium and Citi Field combined use enough electricity to power 20,000 homes, twice as much as the old ballparks, Con Ed says.

Citi Field, the smaller of the two, has the higher peak capacity — 11 megawatts, enough to power 11,000 homes. That’s 120 percent more than Shea’s maximum 5-megawatt draw.

The new Yankee Stadium has access to 9 megawatts, enough for 9,000 homes. That’s about twice the power draw of the old Stadium.

Blame the stadiums’ big potential power use on what makes them great — hi-def TV screens, huge scoreboards and extra elevators, escalators and lighting, said Con Ed spokesman Bob McGee.

The Yankees’ new main scoreboard, at nearly 6,000 square feet, is seven times bigger than the lower-tech scoreboard in the old Stadium.

And both new stadiums have plenty more elevators. Citi Field has 11; at Shea there were just four. The new Yankee Stadium has 16 elevators, compared to three in the old park.

. . .

The standard for green ballparks has been set by the Washington Nationals’ stadium, which opened last year and won a silver rating from the US Green Building Council — the first major pro stadium to earn such certification.

Nationals Park uses about 15 percent less power than the old RFK Stadium did, thanks in part to energy-saving lighting that reduced peak power usage from 1,293 kilowatts to just 1,011 — a savings worth about $440,000 over 25 years.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, Nationals Park.

. . . they’re generally too small for 40-foot-tall Charlie Brown balloons:

From Felix the Cat in 1927 to Bolt the dog in 2008, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has adapted, over the years, to changing times and cartoon fashions.

But one thing has always been constant: the final stretch of the parade route, down Broadway from Columbus Circle to Herald Square, through crowds lining the Great White Way.

That tradition appears to be doomed. The main culprit is the plan, unveiled last month by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, to turn Broadway into a pedestrian-only zone around Times Square and Herald Square this spring. If you can’t drive a car down Broadway, you can’t drive a float down it either

And so the city has begun the process of figuring out where the cat might hang his hat in November. Crain’s New York Business, in its most recent issue, reported that the city was considering shifting the parade to Avenue of the Americas.

Scott Gastel, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, confirmed on Sunday that “a working group has been assembled on this matter, and recommendations will be made.”

Earlier: “Traffic Calming . . .By Drowning Traffic In The Bathtub Or Shanking Traffic With A Rusty Shiv”.

See Also: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

So not only will we have pulled-pork on brioche and $19 cheap seats but fewer little leaguers as well, an obvious plot to gentrify baseball by slowly de-yobbing it. We snobs like that:

For the past four years, Little Leagues throughout the borough have participated in a special day at Shea Stadium where they purchased 1,200 discounted tickets from the Mets and got to lead a parade on the warning track of the field prior to the game.

This year, however, the Mets have told league officials including Bayside Little League President Bob Reid, that the teams may only be able purchase 500 (or less) tickets at full price, and they can’t guarantee they will be able to have the parade on the field prior to the game.

“The Mets organization is telling me that unfortunately we have 15,000 fewer seats, and we can’t do what we have done in the past,” said Reid, who is a longtime Mets fan that recently had the opportunity to tour Citi Field and thinks it’s great. “I think they are just forgetting the little guy.”

This is the first year the Mets will play in Citi Field, which will have a capacity of approximately 42,000 compared to Shea Stadium’s roughly 57,000, so it is more challenging to accommodate large groups for different games. In addition, the club is still working on logistics of the new stadium including field access points, which would factor into the parade that the Little League has each year.

Soon — soon! — Major League Baseball will resemble the opera! Bwahahaha!

Location Scout: Citi Field.