All You Need To Know

It’s simple:

With costs ballooning to replace two Bronx parks that were bulldozed for the new Yankee Stadium — the latest estimate is almost $195 million — the city’s Independent Budget Office said on Tuesday that more than $16 million of the higher expense “remains to be explained.”

The latest cost is almost $79 million over the 2005 estimate of $116 million, which itself was considerably more than the $96 million figure based on “conceptual designs” in an environmental impact statement using 2004 dollars.

The Yankees will be using their new $1.3 billion ballpark for opening day in April, but Little Leaguers, tennis players and picnickers are unlikely to have access to all eight replacement parks until the end of 2011, a year later than promised, the budget office said in a report.

How About We Try A Little Experiment?

Given that special elections are so complicated and prohibitively expensive, especially in this economically fraught time, we could just go a year without a Bronx Borough President. It might prove instructive:

The Bronx borough president’s chair is still warm, and the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club is trying to figure out who’s going to sit in it next.

The Riverdale-Kingsbridge-area political club hosted beep hopefuls Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. and City Council Majority Leader Joel Rivera at a meeting last week. Both men explained their qualifications for current Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión Jr.’s job and didn’t debate directly, according to people who attended the meeting.

Ever since Mr. Carrión’s slip of the tongue at a speaking engagement at Yale last year, it’s been widely rumored that he will go to Washington, D.C. to head the Office of Urban Policy under President Barack Obama.

. . .

If Mr. Carrión leaves, Mayor Michael Bloomberg would have to call a special election — but since no announcement has been made, Ben Franklin leaders have postponed any endorsement until their annual meeting at the end of this month.

I mean, it’s already the case that the Office of the Borough President has no real authority — a fact that even leads some legislators to look into the possibility of creating a sort of shadow borough presidency:

The leadership deal that resulted in the Democratic Party taking a majority in the state Senate for the first time in decades included a little discussed agreement that gave Riverdale and Kingsbridge lawmaker Pedro Espada Jr. leeway to lead a legislative coalition on Bronx economic development.

Mr. Espada describes it as “an active coordinating council that will really work to do the things that the borough president can’t do by statute.”

He says it will include the Bronx delegations to the City Council, Assembly, state Senate, and Congress, and will be funded by the state Senate’s Democratic majority. A spokesman for state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith deferred questions about the plan’s details to Mr. Espada.

“Its ultimate goal and mantra would be to remove the designation of the poorest county in the state,” Mr. Espada said.

Borough presidents have a degree of oversight over all aspects of city government in their county, but long-term strategic planning for economic development is a special part of the job description. Mr. Espada has long coveted the borough presidency.

Among the policy ideas Mr. Espada has for the post is creating an authority, similar to the city’s Industrial Development Agency, to issue bonds for public works exclusively in the Bronx. The IDA issues bonds for big capital projects like Yankee Stadium — a controversial deal itself — and is overseen by the city Economic Development Corporation.

“Simply put, a borough president should have the bully pulpit, and that will continue to be their main job description,” Mr. Espada said. “They don’t really have any legislative authority.”

Riverdale and Kingsbridge politicians familiar with the deal aren’t sure why it’s been a stealth program. Mr. Smith’s office hasn’t made any official announcements about it and it’s still unclear whether the plan will stick.

Alright Then, So Explain It To The Millions Of Us Who Aren’t Running For Mayor How This Is A Great Deal

It cheapens our sense of righteous indignation to say “Yankee Stadium Burdens Mayor’s Campaign” like it’s just a case of political posturing when the larger story is that much more egregious:

On Tuesday, the comptroller said the city had made a bad deal, a complaint that the mayor’s office dismissed as “political posturing.”

Without a doubt, politics is part of the invisible cost benefit analysis of the Yankees and Mets stadium deals — not only for those who now criticize them, like the comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., who approved them in 2006, but also for those few who champion them, like Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Such political values may not turn up on any public balance sheet, but it would be unwise to ignore them simply because they are invisible.

Suppose you are Mr. Bloomberg, your hopes of becoming president or vice president all but vanished. You have to step down as mayor in 2009 because a law that you unequivocally supported says you only get two terms.

How handy, then, to have powerful allies, like the developer, Jerry I. Speyer and the lobbyist, Howard Rubenstein, to convince other influential people that term limits will deprive the city of an essential leader during an era of financial crisis.

Mr. Speyer is building Yankee Stadium. Mr. Rubenstein represents the Yankees. Their stated case for Mr. Bloomberg never rested on the mayor’s support for the stadium, but on his qualities as a manager and their view that he would be the most capable steward of the city during hard economic times.

Mr. Bloomberg not only abandoned his own emphatic support for term limits, but his own opposition to corporate welfare for professional sports. After canceling deals made by his predecessor, Mr. Bloomberg has gone on to subsidize the most expensive baseball stadiums in the country.

. . .

There is far more to building a stadium than simply its construction. To replace the 22 acres of parkland the city turned over to the Yankees, to build sewers and roads that will support the stadium, the city will spend $325 million — money that will be borrowed by the taxpayers, leaving that much less for other public projects.

With interest, that $325 million could come to $700 million, an aide to Mr. Thompson said. The city must also pay to tear down the old stadium, a cost now put at $27 million. It is contributing $39 million toward a new Metro North station. (The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is paying another $52 million.)

Both Mr. Bloomberg and his predecessor, Mr. Giuliani, even gave the Yankees and the Mets a $5 million annual rebate on rent the teams were paying to the city for their old stadiums — money that could have restored at least some music programs to public schools, but instead was turned back to the baseball teams for the explicit purpose of planning ballparks that the public is paying for.

. . .

The city is proud of the deal, officials say, because it will create “1,000 permanent new jobs.” If you scratch into the official filings, it turns out that there are actually only 22 new full-time jobs expected. The rest are seasonal positions — valuable, certainly, but only if they really exist.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

Fortunately For Him, The Super Avoided Getting A Ticket From The Department Of Sanitation For Disposing Of A Body On A Tuesday . . .

. . . because everyone on that street knows they only take them on Thursdays:

Police were searching for a killer Monday night after making a shocking find in the Bronx.

A building superintendent found a body stuffed in a plastic bag. He had been stabbed to death. It appears he was put out with the garbage.

Yes The Bronx (Mowgli)!

No, we were kidding earlier! We didn’t think anyone would actually do it:

Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and husband Pete Wentz welcomed a son Thursday night, according to a posting on his Web site.

Bronx Mowgli Wentz weighed 7 lbs., 11 oz., and was 20 1/2 inches long.

“Ashlee, Pete and baby Bronx are all healthy and happy, and thank everyone for their well wishes!” a spokesman said, according to People magazine.

. . .

The Web site says Mowgli is a character who originally appeared in Rudyard Kipling’s short story “In the Rukh” and then went on to become the most prominent and memorable character in “The Jungle Book.”