Meeting Mayor Mike

Last night, in the middle of the snow and ice storm that blanketed New York City with a nice coating of snow and ice, Mrs. Lawhawk and I both got to a chance to meet Mayor Mike Bloomberg on Staten Island. The mayor was speaking at a Rotary Club of Staten Island Town Hall event, where people were able to ask the mayor about various questions and concerns of Staten Islanders.

The Staten Island Advance's report is here. Among the concerns were questions about the across-the-board budget cuts, and some parents questioned the cuts in education:

Bloomberg spent most of the night taking questions from residents, several of
whom criticized his administration for forcing the Department of Education to cut individual schools' budgets 2.5 percent this year and 5 percent next year. The cuts were mandated as part of a broader order that every city agency slice its spending to reduce out-year budget gaps.

"Nobody's gotten cuts so that they don't have money for supplies," Bloomberg said
in response to South Shore resident Liz Morano, a PTA member at PS1 in Tottenville.

Ms. Morano said the cuts are affecting the school's ability to purchase necessary supplies.

"Nobody will ever convince me that you can't squeeze a little bit" from the schools' budget, the mayor said. He called the 2.5 percent cut "a small amount of money," and said that in tough economic times, "we all have to do something."

The mayor also noted that the education budget is $20 billion, so that claiming that there was no money for school supplies rings hollow, although he would look into the situation if the individual school was playing politics with the money.

Meanwhile, the Mayor also commented briefly on his congestion pricing tax, which he said wouldn't affect Staten Islanders because they're already paying tolls that would count towards the congestion pricing tax, and that Staten Islanders would get a greater benefit from the tax because money raised from the congestion pricing would go to mass transit, some of which would be spent on Staten Island.

In a roundabout way, the Mayor pretty much said that the congestion pricing scheme was no more than a new toll on the currently free bridges into Manhattan because the tolls paid by commuters would count against the congestion pricing scheme. So, if you paid $8 in tolls to cross the Holland Tunnel, it would count against the $8 per day congestion pricing scheme.

If I were a resident of the Bronx or Long Island (Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau or Suffolk), I'd be steaming mad over this.

Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg also commented on the economic slowdown and that he needed to take steps to keep the city competitive and the budget balanced. Both are worthy causes, but raising taxes undermines the competitiveness. Something has to give, and the budget cuts are not going to sit well either.

Also, two questions were posed about the Mayor's presidential aspirations, and the Mayor gamely put talk about a run for the Presidency aside (in one instance claiming that he was eating a cookie) and that he would stay in office until his term was up in 2010.

UPDATE:
Here's one photo from last night:


And Ray Kelly, Commissioner of the NY Police Department was there as well: