Your Word Is A Pot Of Gold At The End Of The Rainbow

Connecting with the people is about making promises and sticking to them:

No nationally known political figures graced the ninth annual St. Patrick’s Parade in Sunnyside and Woodside, and even Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave notice he wouldn’t be around this year, though once he had said he’d attend each parade faithfully, even after he had left office.

He Should Have Taken Them To Planned Parenthood . . . Sorry, Was That Out Loud?

The cab driver who delivered an infant to safety after becoming the unwitting participant in a nurse-and-dash scheme seems to have made up parts of the story as a cover up and has been arrested:

In a stunning turnaround, the cabby hailed as a hero for delivering an “abandoned” baby to a Queens firehouse Thursday was arrested yesterday for making up the heart-wrenching story.

In a dramatic jailhouse confession to The Post, livery cabdriver Klever Sailema, 45, said he was only trying to help the infant.

“I feel really bad. It wasn’t my intention to hurt anybody,” a shaken Sailema said from a holding cell in Kew Gardens yesterday. “We did it so that the girl would be well cared for. I just wanted to help.”

The cabby, a father of three from Elmhurst said that he kept up the ruse because “every time I lied I thought it would end there.

“I felt terrible. In my heart I knew it wasn’t right. It was a mistake.”

Sailema allegedly teamed up with the child’s dad, Carlos Rodas, 27, and paternal aunt, Maria Siavichay, to enact a bizarre plot to get rid of the kid, dubbed “Lourdes,” but whose real name is Daniella Perez, after the little girl’s 14-year-old mother said she could no longer handle being a mom, police sources said.

The plot unraveled late Friday night, when a neighbor who spotted the baby girl’s picture in the newspapers called cops.

. . .

Sailema told The Post that Siavichay, a waitress in his neighborhood, asked him for a ride to work Thursday, as she frequently does.

But when he arrived at her apartment at 7:30 a.m., she walked out carrying a baby in her arms along with Rodas, whom he had never met. All three got in the back of the cab.

Sailema initially thought that the baby, whom Siavichay had mentioned before, was sick and therefore Siavichay was taking the tot to work with her.

“The father said, ‘I know you don’t know me, but I need to ask you a favor. Can you take my girl to the fire station?’ ” Sailema told The Post.

Rodas wouldn’t take the child himself, because he “had a problem with the courts,” Sailema said.

“At that point I knew they were talking about bringing her to a safe place,” the cabby added.

Sailema dropped off the dad, a construction worker, a few blocks away and then headed to Queens.

A few blocks from the firehouse, Sailema said, Siavichay became worried because “she did not have [immigration] papers” and asked Sailema to drop her at work and take the baby to the firehouse — Engine 289 in Elmhurst — alone.

Just before 10 a.m., the cabby arrived at the firehouse. “That’s when I invented the story,” he told The Post.

. . .

“I don’t know how I committed a crime,” said an exasperated Sailema.

That’s How You Run The Old Nurse-And-Dash

Gypsy cab as impromptu safe haven:

A man carrying a 6-month-old girl flagged down a black car for hire in Queens on Thursday and left the baby behind after asking the driver to stop, the police said.

The driver immediately took the infant to a firehouse in Corona, the police arrived and the baby was taken to St. John’s Queens Hospital, where she was in good condition.

. . .

About 10 a.m., the driver, whose name the police did not release, was flagged down at Northern Boulevard and 106th Street by a man holding the infant. When the driver and his passengers reached Northern Boulevard and 83rd Street, the man asked the driver to stop so he could make a phone call.

The man then walked across the street to a pay phone and fled, the police said. The driver took the child to Engine Company 289 at 97-28 43rd Avenue.

The driver is an independent contractor affiliated with Tel-a-Car of New York, said the company’s manager, Rocco Sacramone.

“It was a great thing he did,” said Mr. Sacramone, who would not disclose the driver’s name. “He went out, he went to work, he did a great thing, and then he went home and went to sleep.”

Generally, only taxis are allowed to pick up passengers in the street; Mr. Sacramone said he did not know why the driver had picked up the man.

New York City, Where The Parks Even Have Silverware

I understand why it’s wrong to make cracks about the silverware:

Moving to close the books on a long and ugly chapter in New York’s employment history, the city has agreed to pay more than $20 million to settle a federal class-action lawsuit charging that the Department of Parks and Recreation systematically discriminated against black and Hispanic employees in awarding jobs and setting salaries, lawyers for the plaintiffs said Tuesday.

In announcing the agreement, lawyers and the plaintiffs painted a portrait of an agency that under its long-serving commissioner, Henry J. Stern, routinely rewarded a handpicked coterie of inexperienced white workers with plum assignments at the expense of experienced black and Hispanic employees.

In addition, the plaintiffs charged, white employees earned more than black and Hispanic workers performing the same jobs, and those who complained faced punishments like being reassigned to dusty basement desks or to an office far from home.

. . .

According to court documents, statistics show that in 2000, 92.9 percent of employees earning less than $20,000 a year were black or Hispanic, while only 14.2 percent of those earning between $50,000 and $60,000 a year were black or Hispanic.

And, according to the papers, Mr. Stern and senior parks employees routinely made derogatory, racially charged remarks. Mr. Stern told one former employee, Tanya Bowers, who is Jewish and black, that although she looked black, he knew she was Jewish when he heard her talk.

“I can bring you home and know that the silverware will still be there when you leave,” he said, according to her deposition.

But what does that have to do with swimming (“Wasn’t that a requirement?”)?

“Productive” Is Fine For Mutual Funds And The Number 3-4-5 Hitters . . . Traffic Enforcement Agents, On The Other Hand . . .

The Bloomberg preoccupation with productivity goals continues to result in abuses of the system:

Alan Weiner, a 64-year-old amusement park manager, charges that after he got hit with a legitimate ticket on Queens Blvd. last spring, his car was then slapped with three bogus tickets in the same area over the summer while he was working in Maine.

A judge last month threw out the allegedly phony tickets after seeing Weiner’s proof that he and his car, which has Maine plates, were out of town at the time.

. . .

Weiner’s saga began last April when his Jeep Cherokee, registered to the Maine amusement company where he works, was hit with a well-deserved ticket on Queens Blvd. after he failed to get back to the meter in time.

Weiner said he paid the ticket and thought nothing more about it — until last month when the city sent him a letter saying he had three more outstanding tickets.

All three summonses turned out to be issued by ticket agents in the same Queens command that wrote the first ticket, T-402.

Earlier: At Some Point Isn’t It Just Easier To Simply Do Your Job?