Metro

Give local shops the business

Sandy shouldn’t soak local local businesses, city officials said yesterday as they launched an advertising blitz aimed at getting shoppers to patronize small businesses impacted by the hurricane.

The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City is allotting nearly $100,000 for the subway, taxi, radio and TV ad campaign, and yelp.com will direct users to an interactive map listing companies that have recently reopened.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Small Business Services Commissioner Rob Walsh made the announcement at One Girl Cookie, a DUMBO, Brooklyn, gourmet dessert shop that reopened 12 days after being flooded.

Walsh said the storm damaged 5,900 companies in Brooklyn, 4,000 in lower Manhattan, 2,300 in Queens and more than 1,000 on Staten Island.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), meanwhile, urged Congress to pass a bipartisan bill to let homeowners and small businesses write off storm-related repairs on their taxes.

“If you have to pay to have a tree cut down [due to Sandy], this bill will cover it,” he said.

Meanwhile, red-faced officials at the Department of Transportation were about to drastically raise parking fees for people recovering from Hurricane Sandy — and only had a change of heart after they were asked about it.

The DOT planned to hike parking rates at municipal garages in some of the areas hardest hit by the storm — including a 233 percent increase in the Rockaways.

Prices at that Beach 21st St. garage were slated to jump from $30 every three months to $100 every three months — a $280 annual increase at a time when many residents are still struggling from Sandy.

And over in storm-ravaged Great Kills on Staten Island, prices were scheduled to rise from $60 a quarter to $150 — a wallet-busting 150 percent increase.

The price increases were supposed to go into effect in February — but when The Post asked about the hikes, the DOT said they were called off.

“Changes in the Rockaways and SI were postponed,” a DOT spokesman said.

Still, the surprise hikes to motorists still recovering from the storm of the century left some officials fuming.

“The last thing our city needs right now is massive increases for residents who use municipal parking facilities,” said City Council Member James Vacca, who is chair of the Transportation Committee.

“To impose these increases in flood stricken areas is even more outrageous and goes against all the city has tried to do to assist those reeling from Sandy and all its terrible consequences.”

Other hikes will go on as planned, including a Bronx garage on White Plains Road that will have rates hiked from $165 for three months to $350 — a $740 annual increase.