The world is beginning to discover what an insufferable
s.o.b. Mayor Michael Bloomberg really is. Well, it’s about time. This blog has
laced into the mayor on numerous occasions, for egregious acts ranging from overturning
vote-approved term limits, to fibbing about how he commutes to work, to persecuting
scrap collectors. (A longer but still partial list, with links, at the end of this post.)
At last, the press in New York is beginning to wake up to
the mayor’s racial profiling of blacks and Hispanics via his baseless
stop-and-risk policies, thanks to a Federal judge who put a kibosh on the city’s policing policies.
"You're complaining about noise?
Sorry, I can't hear you."
Now there’s a new nightmare. Nearby residents in the West
50s of Manhattan are subject to ear-splitting barrages of noise, all day, all
night, around the clock, while the mayor’s Department of Buildings looks on
benignly, completely ignoring justifiable noise complaints.
So says reporter Heather Holland of the online publication DNA Info. Seems that a high rise luxury condo at 157 West 57th
Street is under construction – 24 hours a day. The fewer calendar days spent
building the building, the sooner the developers can start selling off
apartments and earning rich profits, so you can’t blame them for trying.
But you can blame
them, and the Department of Buildings, for the brutal, nonstop assault of
noise.The builders, Holland reports, have received over 300 variances from the
Department of Buildings, despite irate complaints of residential neighbors.
Much of the noise comes from a hoist. One neighbor told
Holland, “The hoist is incredibly loud. Imagine sitting in a subway station.
When the train comes through, you can’t talk….”
Another residential neighbor complained to Holland, “There’s
no place in this apartment that’s remotely quiet. When
things have to be done, I have to step out in the hall. I have to turn
everything up to its loudest level, to hear anything, and even with the
soundproof windows, I have to wear headphones on the computer to hear what I
have to hear.”
"This is not my department.
Also there is no department."
“Noise is not their issue,” a spokesman for the Department
of Buildings said of his department. Except, of course, that it’s pretty damn
rare (if this isn’t actually the only
case) that 24-hour permits are issued for construction work. Evidently,
complaints to the city’s Department of Environmental Conservation have also
failed.
All of this leaves the city open to some cranky (and
justifiable) speculation.
We suggest following the money
Are the builders also the buddies of Mayor Bloomberg, or of City Council President Christine Quinn (a Bloomberg disciple and herself a mayoral candidate) – and therefore getting special dispensation to make the lives of some New York City citizens miserable?
Does the billionaire mayor have a big investment in the
building, which will be the tallest residential building in the city when it’s
completed? If so, his administration’s failure to grant relief to the neighbors
would be a clear case of corruption.
Is somebody in the Department of Buildings, or the
Department of Environmental Protection, taking payoffs to issue these
quality-of-life destroying variances, in violation of criminal law?
Some enterprising investigative reporter ought to look into
the matter. Are you listening, all you young Turks at the New York Times?
A cranky (partial) catalogue of previous
sins of Michael Bloomberg
commented on by The New York Crank
Sexual discrimination at Bloomberg News when Michael Bloomberg was
directly running the place.
Fiercely fibbing about his “subway commute” (in part via two
limos, as it turned out) from home to City Hall.
Overthrowing the will of the people on term limits:
Implying that you have to be a communist if you think people
in New York should earn a living wage.
Blocking reports of police spying on legitimate political
activity.
No comments:
Post a Comment