With Ticket Agents Like These, Who Needs A Sales Tax Increase?

On track for another record-setting year:

“Agents are acting in order to maximize revenue to fill the city coffers, rather than doing their job correctly, which is to ensure turnover to help small businesses,” the letter read. “We, along with the business owners, want traffic agents to perform their job of enforcing the traffic laws to ensure turnover so that parking spots are made available. Unfortunately, the only way to describe the situation on New Dorp Lane — where tickets are handed out within seconds of a meter expiring — is harassment, pure and simple, the letter read.

We Are All Triboro Now*

It’s not just Staten Island — everyone seems to dislike the “Triboro” label:

For decades, stamps on letters mailed in New York City have generally been canceled with squiggly lines of ink and the name of the sender’s home borough. But this tradition may itself soon be canceled, at least in Brooklyn and Queens and on Staten Island.

Under the Postal Service’s plan, most mail from the three boroughs would be sent to a central processing center in East New York, Brooklyn, where it would be branded with a new emblem:

“TRIBORO, NY

BKLYN-QNS-STATEN ISL.”

The plan was spawned because of a 29 percent decline in the volume of first-class mail over the past decade. Officials say the change would save $6.7 million annually.

This is where a bureaucratic transaction gets personal.

“There are certain things you don’t mess with,” said Audrey Hecht-Stewart, 54, a teacher from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, who was standing in line last week at the Cadman Plaza Post Office in Downtown Brooklyn. “The postmark on your letter should represent where you live, like caller ID on your phone.

“You can’t throw Brooklyn in the same pot with Queens and Staten Island,” Ms. Hecht-Stewart added. “When you go and lump us in with those other two boroughs, you take away our individuality.”

A host of elected officials, from the relevant borough presidents to New York’s two United States senators, has decried the proposal, along with postal union officials who translate a consolidated postmark into lost jobs. And dismay is rippling across this proposed new land called “Triboro,” where many who know about the plan resent the prospect of being stripped of their envelope identifier.

*Think about it — it could look cool on a T-shirt!

Best Pizza This Side Of . . . !

. . . the street:

In the debate over who is the purveyor of the tastiest pie, tempers often get hot enough to singe the palate.

On either side of Garretson Avenue in Dongan Hills, two giant banners claim to have a definitive answer to this highly subjective question.

“World’s Best Pizza” boast the signs draped in front of Goodfellas Old World Brick Oven Pizza Restaurant and Il Pomodoro, located about 100 feet from each other on Hylan Boulevard.

Both state they won the honor in the “non-traditional” category of the 2009 International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas.

“We can authenticate Goodfellas; they won the contest,” said Linda Keith, who organizes the expo — perhaps clearing up the confusion for the hundreds who drive by the proclamations every day.

The March expo drew more than 6,000 pizza-business people from across the globe, and top culinary judges selected winners from 120 contestants in the “traditional” and “non-traditional” pizza competitions.

“Il Pomodoro is very passionate, I know that. But, no, they did not win,” said Ms. Keith.

They did, in fact, earn a slot as a finalist in the Eastern Division, a division won by the team from Goodfellas, who went on to sweep the contest and win $10,000 in prize money for its seafood-laden creation, “crustacean sensation.”

On closer inspection, Il Pomodoro’s banner does contain the disclaimer. The word “finalist” is written in looping, diagonal script over “2009” but hardly visible without searching for it.

Ninja Burglar Returns?

He’s back:

Alerted by the incessant growling of their pint-sized “hero” pooch, the Emerson Hill couple said they came face to face with a black-suited burglar Monday night, who escaped from their mansion by leaping from a second-story balcony and exiting the back door without missing a beat.

“He was a ninja in a black suit, only his eyes were showing,” said Russ Irarey, 55. “He got to that railing and just made a jump like you wouldn’t believe.”

Earlier: Speaking As Someone Who Makes The Most Of His Balaclava . . ., Great Pizza . . . And Now Throwing Stars, Too

Trust Me, You Don’t Want A Bunch Of Angry Staten Islanders

Because who knows what they might do if worse comes to worst:

Staten Islanders will have to swallow a $13 cash toll on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, while drivers in the rest of the city will keep their free ride on the East and Harlem River crossings, if legislative inertia continues to propel the MTA to enact its “Doomsday” budget.

The MTA board approved a 25 to 30 percent fare and toll hike this week, with the Verrazano and other MTA bridges set to go up in July, unless the state Legislature can devise alternate revenue streams to plug a $1.2 billion budget gap. Talks involving a bailout that would entail a payroll tax and tolling the currently free bridges have stalled in the state Senate.

. . .

Meanwhile, toll booths at all four Staten Island bridges already collect more than 6 percent of the nation’s tolls, according to Dr. Jonathan Peters, a finance professor and transportation expert at the College of Staten Island, who has done extensive research on the subject. Toll collection from passenger cars alone coming from only Staten Island ZIP codes accounts for about $65 million in revenue per year at the Verrazano, Peters said.

And without movement from Albany to balance that inequity, Islanders will continue to bear a growing toll burden, despite extremely limited transit options to travel off the Island without a car.

(Then again, Shelly says not to worry . . .)