What Can We Give You? Ferry Service To Tottenville?

How will the mayor build support for congestion pricing? Pick a pet project — high-cost, low-impact, no matter — and “negotiate” away:

One Staten Island politician has separated himself from borough colleagues who either oppose congestion pricing or look at it with raised eyebrows.

Meanwhile, the state Assembly, regarded as the biggest legislative hurdle for a proposal that requires city and state approval, said it will introduce a congestion pricing bill today.

Insisting that the plan is the borough’s best hope of getting substantial money for mass transit, state Sen. Andrew Lanza, a Republican who left the City Council for Albany last year, told the Advance yesterday he is endorsing Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ambitious, controversial proposal.

Lanza stepped into the pro-congestion pricing camp after a private meeting Tuesday with Bloomberg and his staff in City Hall, at which the senator said he was promised the Island will not be shortchanged when the projected revenue is doled out.

. . .

Bloomberg did not offer Lanza any new transportation promises, nor did he guarantee the borough would be given a specific percentage of the money pot — a proposal Oddo and Ignizio have floated to the mayor’s office. But throughout negotiations, Lanza said he has secured several assurances from the mayor’s office, such as completing a long-awaited private ferry line into Midtown Manhattan from the South Shore.

. . .

Island gains from congestion pricing so far include the expenditures laid out in the MTA plan, as well as 33 new express buses and a study of the dormant North Shore rail line, and Bloomberg is assuring the politicians that more gifts would be unwrapped if his plan is approved.

For the assignment desk: Cost-benefit analysis of ferry service . . . start here, for example.

Either Proof That Staten Islanders Have A Wicked Sense Of Humor . . .

. . . or yeesh:

Staten Islanders are so reluctant to give up their cigarettes that one in five pregnant women still light up, alarmed city health officials said Tuesday.

. . .

The Staten Island smoking rate has held at about 27% since 2002, even as other New Yorkers have given up the deadly habit. Nearly 20% of Staten Island moms reported smoking in their third trimester of pregnancy, according to a fresh look at a 2004-05 survey.

The Post is less polite:

Even when they’re knocked up, Staten Island’s Marlboro moms refuse to put their cigarettes down, according to disturbing figures the city released yesterday.

Ignoring common sense — and the advice of doctors — 19 percent of expectant Staten Island mothers admitted to smoking through their third trimester, compared with the 5 percent of pregnant women who smoke in the other four boroughs, city health officials said.

. . .

City officials are trying to understand why Staten Island women are more willing to turn their babies’ umbilical cords into hookahs.

Thank God It’s Good Friday!

Although it perhaps violates the spirit of Lent, it does make for good press:

At Goodfella’s Brick Oven Pizza in Dongan Hills, there’s a tasty meal this Good Friday for Catholics abstaining from meat.

Their Lenten-specialty pizza features tender chunks of lobster, crabmeat and shrimp drizzled with a champagne and blackberry brandy cream sauce, tomatoes and scallions scattered above a layer of homemade fresh mozzarella cheese. Atop a cheese and coconut-infused 10-inch crust, it’s a veritable slice of heaven.

But some say the name the pie’s creators picked for the pizza, the “Passion of the Crust,” is as sinful as the cheesy seafood masterpiece is delicious.

The restaurant’s co-owner, Scot Cosentino, a Scientologist, and executive chef Sal Russo, a Catholic, insist they mean no disrespect.

“We wanted to give everybody a chance to have a special pizza,” Russo explained, adding that the pie has been popular since it was introduced at the start of Lent, and especially so on Fridays, when Catholics are enjoined to abstain from meat.

And the name, both said, derives from their passion for pizza, and the special coconut crust.

“We’re very passionate when we describe our pizza to our customers,” Russo said. “They start to drool.”

But though he said the pie “is nothing against the church,” he gestured to the old-fashioned brick oven where the Passion pizza was turning a gooey golden brown and joked that he sometimes sees a heavenly light shining from inside. “If you listen very closely, you can hear the voices of the archangels,” he said.

. . .

Russo said pizzeria staff called St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan to try to arrange for an official blessing of the pie, in preparation for his journey to Las Vegas on April 1 to enter it in the International Pizza Challenge. But an archdiocesan official called back and said the name of the pizza was too controversial, he said.

“I think the owners probably intended to do a very good thing in providing a seafood pizza,” said Sister Lois Darold of St. John Villa Academy. “I think perhaps they didn’t realize the title of this new pizza might be considered a little in poor taste.

“I don’t think there was any intent to make fun of the Catholic religion and the Christian experience. I’m not personally offended, except that I would have preferred a pizza that probably tastes very delicious would have a name that is a little more respectful.”

Come Ye Back When March Madness Is On ESPN, Or When The Bar Is Hushed While You Fill Out Your Bracket

Now that the seven-figure NCAA pool at Jody’s is gone, another bar takes up the slack:

It will be at least another year — if ever — before Jody’s Club Forest reinstates its legendary March Madness pool, which reached a $1.5 million pot and had hordes of bettors lined up outside the tavern until it got benched last year.

But that hasn’t stopped plenty of people from calling the Forest Avenue bar in hopes the NCAA basketball pool had somehow been resumed — and at least one other bar is trying to fill the void.

“We still have people coming in looking for it,” Mary Haggerty, wife of Jody’s owner Jody Haggerty, said by telephone from her home yesterday. “I’m sure we would love to see it [come back]. People have been asking for it to come back and they’re hoping, but it’s not going to be this year.”

Meanwhile, most bettors interviewed by the Advance yesterday agreed that the place to bet on the games is Dannyboy’s Tavern, an establishment located about 2 1/2 miles from Jody’s, on Victory Boulevard in Castleton Corners.

“The problem with Jody’s is, no one was paying taxes on it except the last guy who won. It just got too big, and it was blatant that it was getting so huge,” said one patron, picking up a Dannyboy’s betting pool form at Jimmy Max in Westerleigh yesterday. “Let me put it this way: Danny’s is legit, and I haven’t heard of anywhere else.”

The first round of NCAA tournament games begins tomorrow, but most pools focus on naming the Final Four, the ultimate champ and — the tiebreaker — the final game point total.

Dannyboy’s was keeping unusually tight-lipped about what is a legitimate and perfectly legal enterprise, but some estimates put the size of last year’s pool at $200,000. By comparison, Jody’s topped out at a $1.5 million payout at the end of its 29-year-run and was featured in national publications and network news shows.

. . .

On the paperwork for Dannyboy’s pool, clearly marked is a pledge that all of the money bet will be handed over to the winner, and a warning that any patron lucky enough to win “will be provided with a form 1099 and is responsible for applicable taxes.”

Who’s The Boss Here, Them Or Us?

How to change a lightbulb on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge:

. . . Two carry up a 50-pound red beacon light fixture, while the third distracts a peregrine falcon with a mean streak, lest it rip them all to pieces with its sharp talons.

By the way, all this requires sidestepping piles of pigeon heads, as the predatory falcons seem to have a habit of eating everything but.

. . .

The electricians usually make about 20 bulb-changing trips a year among the beacon lights, red “obstruction lights” on the cables and the bridge’s 340-plus decorative white “necklace lights.”

But burned-out bulbs have been a less-frequent occurrence these days, with the Verrazano the first MTA bridge to break in new ultra-efficient LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs.

With a life span of between five and 11 years, the new bulbs, which so far have replaced those in only the required red lights, already have decreased energy consumption by 90 percent, according to Maintenance Superintendent Charles Passarella.

With any luck, the new bulbs will mean fewer emergency trips to the top, and fewer dangerous run-ins with the falcon, which is particularly aggressive during mating season.

“Once they lay eggs around June, we can’t go up,” [MTA senior bridge and tunnel maintainer Kenny] Dybing said. “We don’t want to interfere with the process.”

Before the eggs hatch around early July, the male falcon is usually fairly well-mannered, but “the mother gets very protective,” Dybing said.

If a critical red light goes out during that window of time, the men go up with Chris Nadareski, a biologist and falcon expert from the city Department of Environmental Protection. Nadareski, who wears protective clothing, and is well-versed in falcon behavior, is able to distract the mother while the lights are changed, Dybing said.

“The same pair returns every year to breed,” Passarella said. The birds are banded so biologists can track their movements. Babies hatched on the Verrazano have been found far up the Hudson River.

Location Scout: Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.