311 Finally Begins To Pay For Itself

Putting the eye on the street to good use:

When a city paving contractor caused minor damage this spring to the sidewalk in front of his Great Kills home, [a Staten Island man] and his wife [ . . .], dialed 311 to start the repair process.

What they got was a visit from an inspector — and then a summons and an order to fix it.

To their disbelief, a similar story played out among their East Brandis Avenue neighbors, all of whom say the situation stinks like hot asphalt. “They rammed it with the machine and all of this buckled up,” [the wife] said, pointing to a slightly raised concrete slab in front of her driveway. “The point is that what they’re saying we have to now fix is exactly what they did.”

Then Again, We Could Also Get Rid Of The Lame Deposit And Put Them Out For Recycling Like They Do In Normal States Where The Bottle Industry Doesn’t Control The Legislature, Because Recycling Is The Law Anyway Now And Besides There’s No Reason To Have To Muck Up The Trunk Of Your Corolla

What New York State’s antiquated bottle return law does to people:

By 7 most mornings, a line has started to form at Thrifty Redemption Center. At first, it is hard to pick out any human form as each nimbus of cans and bottles floats along the sidewalk, driven by hidden pistons of legs.

The grocery carts are packed with cases of empty glass bottles, and these are topped by stacks of bags of plastic bottles, like a bubble bath that rises over the edge of the tub but somehow does not spill onto the floor. The aluminum cans swing in bags from out-riggings on the sides of the cart, broomsticks or drapery rods salvaged from the street.

Among the first to arrive most mornings is a young Chinese woman, her hand curled into a hitch on the front bar of the cart as she steers it toward a curb cut. Luis, an older Ecuadorean immigrant, waves to her. In a few minutes, Frank arrives in a Toyota Corolla that is the automotive equivalent of the shopping carts: he drives with the trunk open so the bags of bottles can froth out.

Retired from the phone company, Frank works a few nights in a restaurant and brings the empties home to his garage in Bay Ridge. Once a week, he drives them to Thrifty Redemption. No full name and no pictures, he said, with an eye on the tax man. “This will be $50 to me,” he said. “Fishing money. I go out of Sheepshead Bay, half-day.”

And John A. Catsimatidis’ editorial still relevant.

And Yet There’s Something Even More Surprising . . .

What’s surprising isn’t so much that MTA Chairman Jay Walder is leaving after only two years but rather that there exists a privately run railway company that is actually profitable:

The MTA released a statement saying Walder has been hired to be chief executive officer of the MTR Corp. in Hong Kong, which owns and operates rail lines in Asia and Europe. It also is involved in property development and consulting.

The publicly traded company, which doesn’t receive or rely on public subsidies, reported $3.8 billion in revenue last year with a $1.1 billion profit.

Doesn’t every opinion person always say that rail systems are never profitable and that’s why we all have to suck up huge losses?

And I agree with NY Mag’s Daily Intel that the automated countdown clocks he put in are cool — they’re far more useful, even on the few lines that have them (none of which include a train I live on), than, say, that dopey 7 train extension . . .

Things Not Worth One One-Millionth Of Mental Space Include . . .

. . . Smurf Week, especially if we’re talking about anyone remotely involved in municipal government:

City officials announced on Wednesday that next week would be Smurfs Week in New York City and that the Smurfs had been chosen as this year’s Get More NYC family ambassadors.

. . .

Although there will also be Smurfs Week events in the Bronx and Brooklyn, there will be none in Staten Island or Queens, according to a map posted on NYC & Company’s Web site. That omission was deemed “distressing” by Dan Andrews, a spokesman for the Queens borough president, Helen Marshall.

When Ms. Marshall was notified, she lapsed into a bit of verse, saying: “Though only three apples high,/ the Smurfs have left us high and dry./ The animators drew,/ created a movie that almost seems true,/ but have left us all blue.”

Don’t borough presidents have more important things to think about? Oh wait . . .

You Say “Hackathon,” I Say “Consult For Free”

“Doing more with less” in municipal government:

The city is inviting techies to a weekend competition to reinvent its nyc.gov Web site.

“We want them to show off and show us the best they can do,” said Katherine Oliver, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment.

The “hackathon” takes place on July 30-31 at tech company General Assembly in the Flatiron Building.

The press release says “prizes” will be distributed . . . maybe they get free trash pickup for a year or something?