The Upside Of Having An Elected Official With Like Five Weekend Homes . . .

. . . is that maybe now we can get past the fiction that it’s somehow comforting to have a politician on the scene of an accident:

Of course, even the head of the nation’s largest city is entitled to weekends off — especially when he bolted from his seat at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington the previous Saturday to bring order to the chaos in Times Square. But so did Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, and he was there in Staten Island on Saturday after dozens of passengers and crew members were injured in the latest mishap to befall the ferryboat Andrew J. Barberi.

Gov. David A. Paterson, who lives somewhere upstate, at least during the week, was at the ferry terminal, too, as was Mr. Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan.

But over the weekend, a coy Bloomberg aide only fanned curiosity about the mayor’s whereabouts by offering that the mayor was “monitoring the situation” — from where, he would not say.

Wonderers were left to wonder -– was the mayor at one of his many other pieds-à-terre, in London, or Vail, or outside West Palm Beach? (A person in Bermuda who has reliably tracked the mayor’s movements in the past said that he did not visit the island, where he owns a waterfront estate, over the weekend.)

. . .

When asked, “How was your weekend?” the mayor responded coolly, “It was fine. How was yours?” and added, “Any other questions that’s not a social thing?”

Of course there are so few things that mayors actually do these days beyond campaign against food additives and answer 311 calls, so what else do they have to do on a weekend night?

Have Ferry Accident, Will Travel

You can afford to be a little scrappy (“Mayor Bloomberg is not going to treat the governor poorly, with disrespect!”) when you were the only guy on the scene while weekend news happened:

Of course, Gov. David A. Paterson was there because the Andrew J. Barberi ferry had crashed four hours earlier, injuring dozens and raising the specter of the 2003 crash of the very same boat, in which 11 people were killed. After visiting the scene of the crash, Mr. Paterson returned to Manhattan by ferry, telling the television cameras that people “should not even hesitate to use it.”

He boarded the ferry accompanied by two aides in suits, a uniformed state trooper and several camera crews. The governor wore a smart pinstripe suit and a tie. This alone set him apart from about 99 percent of the riders on the weekend ferry, when the commuters give way to camera slingers. The majority of the passengers seemed to be tourists, and most of them foreign, so the governor’s presence was met with many mute stares.

But soon enough, constituents noticed. “Hey, governor!” a man in shorts called out, and the governor smiled and waved.

The mayor was in Bermuda I take it?

Location Scout: Staten Island Ferry.

“New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg Plans Surveillance Trip To London”

Read: The mayor probably wants to host a dinner at his Kensington pad or something.

Leadership In These Tough Economic Times

Although anyone could have just sat back and blamed Albany, but no matter:

An irate Mayor Michael Bloomberg charged Thursday that the circus in Albany — and the inability of state lawmakers to pass a budget — forced him to cut city services to the bone in a bloodletting that will give 11,000 city workers their walking papers.

Next Time, Please Make All Edits In Pencil

As the City budget looks grim for next year, the Staten Island Advance identifies ways the City is doing its best to use up whatever money is left in this year’s budget:

Fresh off the pointless labor of putting lines on a Dongan Hills street, the city Department of Transportation was painting the town again yesterday, this time laying reflective white stripes down the center of the West Shore Expressway.

Only problem is, the new paint was dropped right down the pothole-riddled center of the crumbling highway, which is itself slated for milling and repaving starting Monday night.

Many of the new hashmarks were actually painted inside the potholes, which had the comical effect of accentuating their depth and craggy edges.

That’s just the micro version of municipal waste. The Daily News’ Errol Louis discusses some macro issues here.