Catch 22(0 Volts)

Chutzpah, and by being unable to deliver basic services because of a lack of money for infrastructure improvements give them bonus points for the perverse Catch-22 scenario:

Consolidated Edison asked state regulators for permission yesterday to substantially raise electricity rates next April — by 17 percent for a typical residential customer and by 10.7 percent for a typical business.

Under the proposal, which met with immediate criticism, the total monthly electric bills for the utility’s 3.2 million electricity customers in New York City and most of Westchester County would rise by 11.6 percent in 2008.

Bills would increase by another 3.2 percent in 2009 and by 3.7 percent in 2010.

The rate increase request, the first since 2004, raised hackles among politicians and community advocates who were infuriated by the utility’s sluggish response to a nine-day blackout in western Queens last July that affected some 170,000 people.

. . .

Kevin M. Burke, the chairman and chief executive of Con Edison, defended the rate increase yesterday in a statement that made no mention of the blackout, although it did cite improvements planned for the underground network in Long Island City, Queens, where the blackout began.

. . .

Under the Con Edison proposal, the average monthly bill would increase to $82 from $70 for a typical residential customer and to $2,435 from $2,200 for a typical business.

Con Edison said it planned to spend billions of dollars on improvements over its next three-year rate plan, including $942 million on substations, $899 million on transformers and related equipment and $467 million on new underground primary cables.

Con Edison’s chief financial officer, Robert N. Hoglund, said the company would need an average of nearly $2 billion in new investor capital each year to pay for such improvements. The company needs the increase to obtain such capital, he said. Con Edison has $12 billion in annual revenues.

Pay To Guard Strays

If you’ve recently had trouble finding a black cab on your way home from Wall Street, it could be because Con Ed has taken them all:

Con Ed workers are angry that the utility is hiring livery drivers to warn people away from electrically charged streetlights, manholes and other equipment.

As part of a program to seek out deadly street-level electricity leaks, a Con Ed contractor pays the drivers to park by hot spots and ensure that people don’t touch them before a repair crew arrives.

. . .

Local 1-2 [of the Utility Workers of America] complained to the state Public Service Commission weeks ago, citing the case of a livery driver who sat for more than a day and fell asleep — at $35 an hour — in front of a Flushing, Queens, pay phone that was leaking electricity.

The drivers, meanwhile, are thankful for the work, said Fernando Mateo of the state Federation of Taxi Drivers, adding that “it opens up a whole new industry for us.”

Steve Guttenberg Rolls Over In His Grave*

What costs $1 billion? Half of the proposed 7 train extension . . . most of the new Yankee Stadium . . . twelve minutes of war in Iraq . . . oh, and a new police academy:

The city’s police department is set to get a new $1 billion training academy in Queens to replace its dated and cramped facility, which opened when President Johnson was in the White House.

The new site, on which the city is aiming to break ground in 2009, will be a state-of-the-art, college-style campus that will include a mock streetscape and subway platform for terrorism drills, a firing range, and dozens of other facilities.

Mayor Bloomberg referred to the planned 30-acre site as a “single public safety campus,” and said one of its biggest virtues will be its capacity to consolidate the academy’s three main programs under one roof. For years, they have been scattered across three boroughs, requiring teachers and cadets to commute a triangle of roadways.

“We estimate that building a new training campus will cost over $1 billion,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Now, that sounds like a lot of money, but this is a smart and essential investment.”

Sounds like a lot of money? Eh . . . what’s another $1 billion?

*Apologies to Steve Guttenberg, who is in fact still alive.

Even Calvin Trillin Knows Deep Down That Cars Just Don’t Belong In Manhattan

The New York International Auto Show attracts a rough crowd:

As the New York International Auto Show opens its doors to the public tomorrow, law enforcement officials and car companies will be ramping up security — and concerns go beyond terrorist threats.

In the past decade, the week-long auto show at the Jacob K, Javits Convention Center has been the site of a stabbing, numerous thefts, such as of gas caps and fuses, and multiple acts of vandalism, including slashed cushions and key-scratched doors, an official at General Motors who works at the convention each year said. The official asked not to be identified.

There has been a distinct increase in security levels over the past three years, since an alleged gang member was arrested for inciting a riot in 2004, Sergeant Ken Cano of the New York State Police, the department in charge of policing the state-run convention center, said.

As the press descended on the convention center yesterday, security was light. It isn’t until Friday, when the show is opened to the public that crimes generally occur, officials said. Mr. Cano said Easter Sunday is an especially popular day for criminal activity.

And On Your Left, A Four-Year-Old Davis-Bacon Tree Is Starting To Bear Fruit

The Sun explains why it costs $1,100 to plant a tree:

The high cost can be attributed in large part to an increase in labor costs, which date to a 2003 decision by the city comptroller, William Thompson, to raise the pay of tree planters more than threefold. Today, tree planters make about $55 an hour, up from the $15 hourly wage they were paid before the change. Prior to that decision, the price of planting a tree was about $700.

“That seems like a lot,” the current commissioner for the parks department in Westchester County, Mitchell Tutoni, said when told of the $1,100 price tag in the city.

. . .

In addition to rising wage costs, one contractor, Angelo DeBartoli, said a second change in the contracts contributes to the high price of planting a tree in New York City. A new rule requires contractors to replant trees that are felled by vandalism within two years of their planting, he said in a telephone interview. Mr. DeBartoli, the owner of Robert Bello Landscaping, said it was “insane” that contractors had to guarantee the trees against vandalism once the plantings were finished.

Still, Mr. DeBartoli said the sudden rise in cost was largely caused by the required wage increase for tree planters.

The decision to raise the wages came as the comptroller’s office reclassified the job of planting trees to labor from gardening.

But that classification is in question today, as it was when it was made.

“We got lumped into the laborer category, but we’re landscapers,” Mr. DeBartoli said. “We don’t come out with cranes and all kinds of fancy equipment. We come out and dig a hole and plant a tree and put stones around it.”