Distorted Priorities

I don’t like NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Period. I object to the way he manipulated his City Council stooges to circumvent the term limits law. And I also object to many of the issues he has wasted his energies on the past eight years, such as eliminating trans-fats from restaurants, posting calories in fast-food restaurants, and creating a pedestrian walkway in Times Square. He should instead be focusing on issues like the one addressed in yesterday’s New York Daily News.

Tanesha Jones is a single mother of two daughters—a nine-year-old and a one-year-old. Jones was recently relocated into a Bushwick apartment as part of “Work Advantage”—a NYC Department of Homeless Services program that moves families out of homeless shelters. The Bushwick apartment contained a broken kitchen window, a missing front door knob, and a disconnected kitchen sink. It also contained lead paint and provided no heat. Just several days after Jones and her two daughters moved in, a rat ran out of the bathroom. One month later the building’s owner was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing Jones’ nine-year-old daughter. (The city did pay for the lead removal and for a new bathroom window. They also pay all of Ms. Jones’ monthly rent).

Explanations by bureaucrats that Ms. Jones’ problems are the exception and not the rule have been proven wrong by a New York Daily News investigation, which exposed the following:

“The city has paid for families to live in foreclosed homes, illegally converted apartments and dangerous flats. In some cases, landlords have shaken down tenants for extra rent.”

It is a disgrace that there are families who fear putting their children to bed at night because of rats. It is unacceptable that people must beg and plead to receive heat during sub-freezing temperatures. Why isn’t Mayor Bloomberg attacking this problem with the vehemence that he went after public smoking?

Where are you, Mike?

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CUNY Math and the Mayoral Election

Thursday’s New York Daily News reported that “during their first math class at one of CUNY's four-year colleges, 90% of 200 students tested couldn't solve a simple algebra problem. “ Frightening? Yes. Yet as disastrous as those figures are there is another element to this story that disturbs me. Why is it that the public is only now learning of these facts even though CUNY’s Council of Math Chairs submitted this report to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein in September 2008?

At the risk of sounding cynical, it was quite convenient for Mayor Bloomberg that these figures weren’t released until after the Nov 3 mayoral election. Considering Bloomberg won by only 4.6 points and that education reform under his watch was a major element of his platform, it is fair to ask whether these disastrous math statistics could have swayed the election.

Did City Hall bury these findings, or pressure others to do so, until Mayor Bloomberg was firmly entrenched in office for another four years? Or was it merely coincidental that the results of this report were released less than two weeks after the election?

Luckily for Mayor Bloomberg what could have become a PR disaster never materialized.