The Great Thing About Parks, Playgrounds And Various Open Spaces

The great thing about parks, playgrounds and various open spaces is that you can always rely on finding a broken swing to distract folks from whatever issue you need them distracted from:

An audit released by City Comptroller John Liu’s office claims that the Parks Department was slow to fix dangerous conditions in some playgrounds — and might have missed regular inspections.

Liu, who’s still dealing with the fallout from the arrest of his campaign treasurer, said that the agency would sometimes neglect to fix nasty problems — such as rusted and broken equipment — even after they were “flagged for repair.”

Tautology Of The Day

The Bryant Park Corporation’s director of operations explains what they do with the coins they fish out of the fountain there:

“The coins pay for the collection of the coins,” he said. “You get your happy feeling and we take nothing off the top.”

Location Scout: Bryant Park.

You Can Lead A Horse To A Spiffy Pedestrian Mall . . .

But then the horse sees a group of ne’er-do-wells congregating in front of the Walgreens and decides not to go in:

Kensington residents are shooting down the city’s plan to turn Church Avenue and Beverly Road into a “Parisian” plaza teeming with benches and trees, claiming that the proposed champs elysees will become a home base for neighborhood hoodlums.

“We don’t need more people hanging out,” [a resident] said as she slammed the changes proposed for the corner, where the city wants to bring three benches, three trees, granite bollards and a bike rack to a large patch of concrete in front of a Walgreens. “People already congregate there and if I see a crowd in front of Walgreens, I won’t go in!”

Looming Civil War Over Trees Threatens To Take Root

In Staten Island, battle lines are drawn and officials are worried about what could happen:

Seeking a compromise between the city and his constituents, Councilman Oddo feels there ought to be some exceptions to the no-refusal policy.

“I believe in trees. I love trees. But let’s not spill blood over trees,” Oddo said. “Don’t cause needless angst” in achieving the million-trees goal, he added.

Earlier: Plant First, Ask Questions About Pruning Later; You Say You Don’t Want It But Then You Slip It On In; “If You Times That By A Million That’s A Billion Dollars”.

Some Mayors Enjoy Nibbling On Straw Men Before A Main Dish Of Crow

When the mayor went on the offensive about the city’s new letter-grade restaurant inspection system, he boasted that salmonella incidents dropped an entire 14 percent since the new system was implemented (and revenues went up!) and derided critics as “people that complain because they don’t want to keep their restaurants clean”. No one can argue with a straw man, but about that salmonella statistic:

DOH boasted of a 14 percent plunge in reported salmonella cases in the grading system’s first full year. But the numbers reflect only a minuscule drop in an infection rate that was negligible to begin with.

In fact, reported salmonella cases fell from 15 per 100,000 New Yorkers between 2007 and 2010 to 13.7 cases last year — a difference of 1 case per 70,000 people.

The data don’t even say how many salmonella infections were contracted in restaurants compared with home or anywhere else — nullifying any correlation with inspections . . . per se.

That last post-elliptical comment being a reference to the apparent preferential treatment some restaurants receive.