Although My Plans For The Future Haven’t Changed, I Believe This Brings My Affiliation Into Alignment With How I Have Led And Will Continue To Lead Our City

What, being unaffiliated wasn’t good enough for you? Spineless wuss:

Mayor Bloomberg will run for reelection as a Republican this fall, the Daily News has learned, after successfully courting the party to let him back on its ballot line two years after he left it.

Footprints Like A Couple Of Yetis, You’d Think They’d Be Able To Mix In A Compact Fluorescent Or Two

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.

The Kanye West Of Municipal Executives

Mr. Mayor, we don’t mind looking the other way while your Department of Education cooks the books on test scores because ultimately we don’t necessarily care that there isn’t a large difference in results — we only care that school boards are lame and mayoral control makes more sense. That, however, does not give you latitude to come up with ludicrous claims like you have “changed public education as we know it” like you’re Bill Clinton circa 1996 and this is welfare or something because that’s when we check out:

Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that under his administration, the city has “changed public education as we know it” — and predicted a deal will be reached with state lawmakers to renew mayoral control of the schools.

Less Confident Than Crazy*

Mayor Bloomberg wants $45 million to retrain employees who are probably the least likely to trust government job training programs:

Just as Michigan is scrambling to retrain laid-off auto workers, New York City officials have come up with a plan to find new work for the unemployed from one of its core industries: financial services.

Under a program unveiled on Wednesday by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the city wants to invest $45 million in government money to retrain investment bankers, traders and others who have lost jobs on Wall Street, as well as provide seed capital and office space for new businesses those laid-off bankers might create.

The plan is intended to stem a potential exodus of banking professionals from the city during the restructuring of the financial services industry, which has been the city’s economic engine for decades, and to speed the industry’s recovery, which will take at least several years, officials said.

. . .

The mayor announced the 11-part program at a building at 160 Varick Street that will house an incubator for start-up companies that might employ laid-off professionals. Trinity Real Estate donated the space for three years and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University will select the entrepreneurs who will occupy the space, beginning in April. A second business incubator is scheduled to open in Lower Manhattan later in the year, said Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation.

The agency plans to put $3 million into funds to make small investments in start-up companies, Mr. Pinsky said. He said that he hoped to attract twice as much money from private investors and that $9 million would be enough to help start hundreds of new businesses.

All told, city officials plan to spend about $15 million on the program, in addition to the $30 million of federal money. They estimate that over 10 years, it could stimulate the creation of at least 25,000 jobs and contribute $750 million to the local economy, but Mr. Bloomberg referred to those projections as a “guess.”

*And think of how many housing project roofs or elevators that could be fixed with $45 million . . .

“If You Times That By A Million That’s A Billion Dollars”

The wicked cult of trees will stop at nothing to get its way:

A plan to plant a million trees is being met with opposition from homeowners not in the loop on where they are planted.

Under the city initiative, a property owner’s consent is not a requirement for the city to plant a street tree in front of their property.

“To us it’s identity theft because anybody can request a tree to be planted in front of your house,” said Dyker Heights property owner Sonny Soave, who has been fighting with the city on the initiative ever since a neighbor requested a tree in front of his house.

Soave said he stopped the operation as planters readied to put the tree down in front of his house, but has little hope he will get more than a stay of execution.

Among his complaints is that the tree will take up too much sidewalk space in front of his house. He also says that the gas shut-off main and the sewer pipe are right below that.

Soave said he also complained the tree roots will eventually break or lift the sidewalk and the Parks Department told him he would be long dead by the time that happened.

“We were told the tree costs a thousand dollars each to buy and plant and if you times that by a million that’s a billion dollars,” said Soave. “To him (Bloomberg) trees are more important than anything else. He is cutting back on the Fire Department, Police Department and teachers. Now what do we do when we need help, call a tree?”

The Parks Department is actively courting residents to come forward encouraging them to suggest the planting of trees on their block, even in front of a neighbor’s house.