They were rationing toilet paper at the public restrooms along the Coney Is land boardwalk over the July 4th weekend — just like they do on Rikers Island.
What a humiliation.
For the city.
Seems like the city is short of cash — what else is new? — so the Parks Department decided to make it clear just where its priorities lie.
And it’s not with the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who turned out in picture-perfect weather to enjoy a holiday weekend at the beach.
No big deal, you say?
Maybe not — unless you happen to be one of the restroom attendants handing out squares of tissue, or someone on line waiting for your ration.
For them, it’s a lesson from Mayor Bloomberg, who had scant trouble finding the billions needed to keep the teachers union happy, but precious little for seemingly necessary civilities, like toilet paper in public restrooms.
Bloomberg just concluded another business-as-usual municipal budget: He got a fat spending hike; the City Council got its member-item swag; the unions got their usual cut — and Coney Island boardwalk strollers got no toilet paper.
Priorities, don’t you know?
Meanwhile, up in Albany, Gov. Cuomo had priorities of his own.
Demanding a change of behavior from all concerned in Albany, he brokered a no-new-taxes-budget deal with a real spending cut, the first cap on property taxes in state history and a three-year wage freeze from the state’s biggest public-employee union.
To be sure, Cuomo’s first six months guarantee nothing. The union rank-and-file can vote down the contract and — for sure — the election-year legislative session that begins in January stands to be a fractious affair.
But the city will still be stuck with its same bloated workforce — and the ever-increasing pension costs that will continue to gnaw away at city coffers and hamstring future budget options.
And now this — the Great Coney Island TP Shortage of 2011.
Which Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe attempted to slough off, saying: “We don’t know why [some employees] decided to ration toilet paper.”
So attendants decided to start rationing toilet paper on a hot July weekend just for the fun of it?
Please.
Is this what New Yorkers have to look forward to — niggling cuts here and there because City Hall couldn’t make the tough decisions when it counted?
Sure looks that way.