Mayor Bloomberg brought a bazooka to fight a peashooter of a snow flurry yesterday, unleashing an army of snowplows and salters aimed more at public perception than any real hazards.
Bloomberg and his Sanitation Department, stung by scathing criticism that they botched the cleanup of the real blizzard two weeks ago, dispatched thousands of trucks and workers across the five boroughs, but most spent the day idling or driving around aimlessly.
The show of force aimed at instilling public confidence only enraged city residents still reeling from the neglect they felt during the last storm.
“They’re making up for what they didn’t do the last time. It’s not even a big storm,” snorted Mike Riggio of Middle Village, Queens.
“You can’t plow a quarter-inch of snow! Right now, all you need is a little salt — that’s probably more than enough.”
In Queens, Frank Golbig, 33, looked at a salt truck passing by and said, “They’re just driving around, listening to the radio.”
Even though yesterday’s snowfall was originally forecast at 6 inches at most, Bloomberg took no chances.
“We don’t think this snowfall will be anything like the Christmas blizzard. But we are ready for any eventuality,” he said in the morning.
As a result, the Sanitation Department dispatched 1,700 snowplows, 365 salt spreaders and 2,400 workers onto the streets.
That hardware and manpower — which Sanitation officials said was standard given the forecast — was rendered useless, with the largest accumulation a mere 2 inches in Flushing, Queens, and The Bronx’s Parkchester neighborhood.
“It’s very upsetting seeing the plows now because the snow is not sticking,” said Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, resident Justin Daniels, 23.
“During the [Dec. 26] storm, I was stuck in a friend’s house for two days and I didn’t hear any plows outside,” said Daniels, a schools paraprofessional. “So today it’s like now you want to do something? It’s a waste of time.”
Staten Islander Antoinette Williams, 66, was so enraged after seeing six Sanitation plows driving around slowly and aimlessly that she pulled over one driver to demand, “What the hell are you doing?”
“He told me to get lost!” she recalled.
Bloomberg, whose poll numbers tanked on the heels of the blizzard, today is scheduled to make an ultra-rare weekend public appearance in Queens, one of the hardest hit areas of the first storm. The mayor, who prefers to spend weekends in Bermuda, is appearing at a Christmas-tree recycling event.
Meanwhile, the mayor took a beating from predecessor Rudy Giuliani, who said Bloomberg made “a big mistake” in his handling of the December blizzard by failing to declare a snow emergency.
“People expect a mayor to pick up the snow, to pick up the garbage,” Giuliani noted on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show.
Additional reporting by David Seifman and Shari Logan