Even at carefully staged p.r. events in all of the outer boroughs, Mayor Bloomberg couldn’t escape criticism yesterday over his administration’s bungling of the blizzard cleanup.
In Brooklyn’s Marine Park, the mayor visited snowed-in senior Mary Lyons, who told how caring neighbors supplied her with food, shoveled her path and started her stranded car every day to make sure the battery wouldn’t die.
“It makes you realize how wonderful this city is,” Bloomberg gushed.
But then he was approached by Claudia DiPeri, who lives on Fillmore Avenue.
DiPeri said she told Bloomberg how her husband, an MTA employee, had to walk 60 blocks to an N station to get to work.
“[Bloomberg] asked, ‘What does he think about me?’ ” DiPeri recalled. “I just told him, ‘He doesn’t like you.’ ”
In Queens, Bloomberg posed with children at the Roy Wilkins Recreation Center and then stood shoulder-to-shoulder with elected officials and senior commissioners fielding questions about the storm, again explaining that the city’s response was “unacceptable” and that a review would be conducted after the cleanup to determine what went wrong.
The mayor was calm.
Then Queens Borough President Helen Marshall chimed in.
“One of the things I think should have happened earlier is that the routes of the buses should have been cleaned,” she declared.
Marshall went on to say her office was inundated with calls from residents wondering, “Where is the plow?”
Bloomberg just said, “OK, thank you,” and moved on to another topic.
Even at a Staten Island diner for coffee with Borough President James Molinaro, the mayor was grilled about the snow.
Before Bloomberg arrived, Councilwoman Debi Rose said that her constituents are angry and that she herself was snowed in for three days.
“I really think he realizes this could turn into his Waterloo,” Rose said.
Bloomberg’s final stop was in the Pelham Bay section of The Bronx, where he was greeted by applause as he entered George’s Family Restaurant off Westchester Avenue.
But the takeaway message from Councilman James Vacca was the same as it was in Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn: “I told the mayor snow removal could have been done much better and many of us are not happy,” said Vacca.
“What happened in this snowstorm is that people on taxpaying streets didn’t see a plow for days. That’s something we have to change.”