Hit The Bottle

On the heels of plastic bags, another plan that masquerades as an environmental initiative but is really a revenue-raising instrument:

Billed as an environmental measure, efforts to require a deposit for juice and water containers never got very far. Now, it’s being put forward, somewhat controversially, as an untapped revenue stream in a tight fiscal circumstance.

One nickel at a time.

Budget officials say those nickels would add up to $25 million this year, and $118 million in the next fiscal year. An expanded bottle bill is in David Paterson’s plan — granted, in the back — to bridge a $1.5 billion end-of-year budget deficit and cut spending for the next budget cycle.

“It may be that it takes an economic crisis to get the bigger better bottle bill passed,” said Laura Haight, senior environmental associate at the New York Public Interest Research Group, which has long advocated the bottle bill’s passage. She said it would bring in even more money than the budget office projected, and would reduce litter and increase recycling by giving consumers a financial incentive not to throw away their garbage.

Here’s the money trail now: you buy a six pack of Rheingold, and pay an additional 30 cents in deposits (5 cents times 6 bottles). If you’re a responsible citizen, you enjoy the Rheingold responsibly, rinse the bottles and return them to the nearest grocery store, which gives you back your 30 cents. The grocery store keeps 12 cents (2 cents per bottle) as a handling fee, and the same distributors that brought you your Rheingold take away the bottles.

If, however, the bottles end up with the rest of the garbage, or lost, or smashed, the beer distributors keep your 30 cents, and use it to offset what it costs them to cart away the responsible citizen’s bottles.

The new proposal would send the thirty cents to the state coffers. Additionally, it would put deposits on everything from Snapple to orange juice containers, increasing the amount of things New Yorkers can return to stores.

Beverage distributors . . . I hate those guys.

The Borough President’s Office Does What Exactly?

Not a sarcastic question — I’m genuinely curious:

Mayor Bloomberg’s budget axe is taking another big chunk out of Queens Borough President Helen Marshall’s office.

As the city’s economy continues to sink, Bloomberg has ordered Marshall to cut $117,000 and a minimum of two jobs from her $4.6 million payroll by the end of this fiscal year, which ends on June 30.

That’s on top of $1.4 million City Hall lopped off Marshall’s budget at the start of the fiscal year.

Marshall called the cuts “devastating” and told the Daily News she will likely have to pink-slip seven of her 57 staffers.

“It cuts to the bone,” she said of the mid-year budget revisions, announced last week.

Bloomberg’s edict also forces Marshall to lose $186,000 from her budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

Criticized in the press recently for having a $63,000-a-year chauffeur, Marshall is reeling at the thought of swallowing the bitter budget pill.

“We can’t really take any more cuts. We’re already at rock bottom,” she said, adding that she’s unsure how to meet the minimum layoff requirement, or when it would happen.

$16 Million Represents 3.5 Percent Of The Infrastructure Improvements The City Implemented In Connection With The Two New Baseball Stadiums*

Will the Department of Sanitation start picking up my trash if I put it in brown paper bags? Because those plastic ones come in handy, you know:

Call it a mixed bag.

Mayor Bloomberg has proposed slapping shoppers with a 5-cent surcharge for each plastic bag they get at stores — a move that left consumers sharply divided yesterday.

“Ugh, they’re going to start taxing everything now,” moaned Dora Capers, 47, of Brooklyn.

In a move intended to help the environment and the Big Apple as it faces a $4 billion deficit over the next two years, Bloomberg has recommended that the city impose a nickel surcharge for plastic bags.

Although the details of the plan are still being worked out, the surcharge could rake in upwards of $16 million — money that the Sanitation Department could use to offset the cost of collecting and disposing of plastic bags currently not recycled.

The plan — which may need approval from the state Legislature if it’s determined to be a tax — may include charging shoppers 6 cents, with a penny going to stores as incentive for collecting the new tax.

*Which is to say, you can push through a lot of unpopular ideas under the guise of finanical hardship.

Damn, Damn Yankees . . .

So not only did the Yankees use their planning money to lobby the city but they went ahead and deducted more than allowed from that $5 million credit so that now the city has to go after the team for what is, in effect, “back rent”:

The Yankees have agreed to fork over $11 million to the city in back rent — money the team probably would have preferred to spend on an ace starting pitcher for next season.

The team underpaid the city the equivalent of Mike Mussina’s salary between 2003 and 2006, according to an audit by City Comptroller William Thompson.

Under the team’s rental agreement, the Yankees pay the city a percentage of all revenue from tickets, parking and cable television, officials said.

During that three-year period, the team took in more than $1 billion and paid the city $17 million.

But according to the audit, the Yankees improperly deducted costs above and beyond the $5 million permitted for planning for the new stadium.

More than $9 million was improperly deducted for stadium planning in 2006.

The team also low-balled its gross revenue during the three years, costing the city another $2 million, the audit states.

So Either . . .

. . . this is the most important use of city money, and far, far outweighs incurring potential multi-gazillion-dollar deficits or the mayor is totally full of shit and there is not and will not be a crippling financial crisis (in which case, take a third term off the table!). Because it can’t be both:

The city has gobbled up another chunk of Willets Point in Queens as Mayor Bloomberg pushes his plan to transform the gritty industrial zone near Shea Stadium.

In the biggest land deal to date in the neighborhood, the city persuaded Indian food distributor House of Spices — the second-largest landowner at Willets Point — to sell its 4 acres, city officials told the Daily News.

The deal is expected to be announced Monday along with an agreement for a third of an acre owned by another company.

Combined with previously inked deals, the city now controls more than 40% of the 62-acre tangle of auto body shops and other businesses — and could soon have half the land.

Bloomberg wants to spend $3 billion to turn the area into a glitzy enclave of 5,500 residences, stores, a hotel and a convention center.

Location Scout: Iron Triangle.