We intended to let Mayor Bill de Blasio off easy, despite all those unplowed Queens streets — just the odd crack about maybe admiring ex-Mayor John Lindsay a bit too much. But then de Blasio went and blamed the victim.
With Queens still snowbound on Monday, Hizzoner slapped residents for digging out their cars on plowed streets:
“A snowplow goes through and then people go out and clean their cars off and they literally re-block their own streets . . . People are saying, ‘My street’s not cleared.’ They’re not wrong, but unfortunately they may have contributed . . . to it inadvertently,” he said.
First off, that ignores all the streets that didn’t get plowed. Worse, it prompts the question: What are they supposed to do?
Where do you dump your shovel when — as de Blasio admits — so many Queens streets are narrower than those in other boroughs?
This reality isn’t new. Maybe the Santitation Department needs to rethink its borough-by-borough protocols?
On a related note, City Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Queens) asked why the Department of Education gave the OK for all schools to open Monday when it was practically impossible to move in much of Queens.
The mayor’s answer: “We cannot say in this neighborhood there’s school, in that neighborhood there’s no school. It doesn’t work that way. We made a decision that was in the best interest of the overall city.”
How about at least suggesting it may be time to rethink that level of centralization? Show people you’re looking for better answers than you had this time.
Above all else: Think before you open your mouth to tell a borough full of folks with aching backs and blisters from shoveling that they’re part of the problem.