Newark Mayor Cory Booker is certainly the star of the giant east coast December snow storm. He is twittering all over the place and out there rescuing people in destress. He might even be wearing a superman cape. He has delivered diapers to a family who was out, helped shovel out cars,
According to the New York Daily News:
Trapped in Newark after Blizzard 2010? Mayor Cory Booker wants to rescue you – and he’s only a tweet away.
Booker has been tweeting up a storm, personally responding to tweets from citizens stranded by snowed-over streets. For days, Newark’s hero mayor has helped dig out buried cars and snowy roads – and even delivered diapers to a stranded Newark family.
“Highland Ave b/w Bal and Berk not touched yet. My sis can’t get out to get diapers,” Timothy Hester frantically tweeted Booker. Hester lives in Virginia and tweeted the mayor on behalf of his snowbound sister Barbara, who lives in Newark.
The valiant mayor tweeted back, “I’m delivering the diapers now. We will get to her street soon.”
After the diaper delivery, Hester displayed his appreciation Twitter-style: “Awesome! Thanks again!” and “#awesomemayorbooker delivers diapers!”
Booker also responded to a call for assistance by Newark resident TaJuan Bonds. “I’m stuck on bergen & grumman ave,’ tweeted Bonds. Booker tweeted back, “Please DM me your phone number” and sent another tweet when he arrived on the scene: “I’m here now to help.”
Meanwhile, Bonds tweeted an expletive-laced post about the amount of snow he needed to shovel – and despite the fact that Booker had called Bonds’ mother, the agitated citizen tweeted skepticism that Booker would show up.
The Newark mayor was not amused.
“Wow u shud be ashamed of yourself. U tweet vulgarities and then I come out here to help & its ur mom & sis digging. Where r u?” Booker scolded Bonds. The Newark mayor helped the snowed-in family shovel.
Not many people can expect to get this kind of personalized service. Newark was hit hard. 30 inches.
Across the river in New York, people are moaning and groaning and complaining, some with good cause. They got 10 inches less snow than Newark. Their streets aren’t plowed and public transportation still isn’t up and running.
On the other hand, when services are cut because of money, the obvious outcome is reduced services. Somehow people continue their mantra of ‘stop spending’ and then bitch the loudest over reduced services. Snow removal and all it involves would obviously be one of the area hit by reduced spending. Somehow its always the other guy who is supposed to spend less. Go figure.
Leadership in action….what more could you as for?
I love mayors who show leadership like this. I liked it when Manassas Mayor Hal Parrish spent the night in the SERVE shelter to shine a spotlight on the needs of the homeless. No fanfare, just modeling good citizenship, and challenging others to join him in a chain of helping.
a government employee who actually cares! earth-shattering! stop the presses!
Not sure how the ‘spend less’ mantra fits into this as numbers weren’t posted showing that Newark or NYC spent less this year on snow than previous years.
I think the Newark Mayor is a solid guy. My guess is he’ll win re-election…by a blizzard! Ok, bad pun. But, the Mayor gets the idea of being a hands on manager and serving his voters.
New York City’s budget was reduced. I have no idea by how much. It isn’t just about snow removal. It is about having people on call to get a job done, regardless of time of year.
Remember all the bitching and moaning because background checks were taking so long in Virginia? Same idea. When you start cutting back, things will just take longer. Premium services vs bare bones services.
Of course, you can always pay to have your own snow removed. 😉 Have at it.
Granted, this is an opinion piece but it’s interesting.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/12/29/2010-12-29_new_yorkers_stop_complaining_about_the_snow_city_hall_is_doing_its_best_to_recov.html
2000 garbage trucks are all that are needed for garbage removal. Those same trucks are used for snow removal. Now, if they had 2000 more trucks what would those trucks be doing when there isn’t any snow?
So, do we take those trucks, the storage and maintenance of out of lets say…the FDNY budget? No? How about education? No again? I know, social services. No? Hrm. I guess we can go back to the taxpayers and tell them we want to buy twice as many trucks then we need to just sit around ‘just in case’… See how the rabbit hole works.
Regardless, I agree with you that the Newark Mayor is a good guy and did good.
“have your own snow removed”…That is exactly what we did in our HOA during the big storm last year in Loudoun. We were in a budget crisis like everyone else. We cut some out of the budget over there and added some over here to get a used Bobcat — just in case. Between the residents with shovels and the HOA staff with the Bobcat and our pickup trucks with blades attached, we cleared this place fast — 14 streets plus about 10 parking lots in total. Once we were finished I happened to have a conversation in the neighborhood with a member of the local rescue squad. He was describing how the big rescue vehicles were having trouble getting down the unplowed streets in the town. After saying that, he looked around and said: “Amazing!!! YOUR streets are all cleared!!!”
To paraphrase a TV actor of some years ago: We love it when a plan comes together. (And it didn’t cost the rest of the taxpayers in the county a thin dime.)
Mayor Booker has been interviewed by Bill Maher at least twice. He was asked why he didn’t aspire to higher office and he said there was no higher office than Mayor of Camden. Hats off to a true American patriot.
First I would like to say hats off to this guy! It’s shocking these days that elected officials actually “HELP” their community.
About NY’s snow removal problems, looks like all of issues with their snow removal may have been due to nothing more than NY union bosses posing “a protest to city budget and staff cuts”. How sad… how did Rahm Emmaule, soon to be Chicago’s new mayor despite not meeting their residency requirements, say it “never let a crisis go to waste”…
“The truth of the matter here is that there is no question that something happened. Something happened between 1 and 6 am within the department of sanitation. They did not send out enough trucks. We have one of the finest commissioners, but I believe something happened. Put hundreds of tow trucks, thousands of able bodied men and women, get these people out and get these streets open. These streets have not been touched,” Markowitz said.
In addition, New York City Councilwoman and sanitation chairwoman Letitia James also told Good Day New York on Tuesday that the “deployment of snow plows was orchestrated in City Hall as opposed to the respective sanitation garages in each of the community boards… there was a change in the response,” she said.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/did-nyc-unions-order-worker-slow-down-during-winter-storm-emergency/
P.S.
I love the pic in this article about Obama’s recent meeting with his BFF, BIG LABOR. Just who’s interest is he looking out for? Special interest groups like Big Labor’s DICK Trumka or the average American? I think the pic speaks for itself…
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/12/obama-meets-with-labor-leaders/1
Back to the topic at hand. Wolverine, who used to do your snow? In PWC, communities with are stuck doing their own unless it is a state maintained road. Usually it is hired out.
marin, if they are using garbage trucks for snow removal, then that explains a lot. I am trying to picture this. Don’t they have snow plows?
No one is suggesting to double up on the number of garbage trucks.
It is a very simple concept: When you have fewer people to provide services, the services take longer to dish out. That is what comes with cutting back. No one should expect the same level of service.
I still don’t know why garbage trucks are used for snow removal rather than plows. Surely there is something we are missing here. I don’t even know how you would get snow into a garbage truck.
Moon – they use plows on the front of the garbage trucks 🙂 and it has worked well in past years, as they are not collecting garbage at the same time. In NYC, it is the responsibility of the Dept of Sanitation to clear the snow from the streets. It took the airports until midday on Monday to clear the runways, and they have dedicated (and large) equipment.
@Pat, that might be their problem then. garbage trucks aren’t snow plows and they certainly don’t have the traction.
That might work for average snow but this was a blizzard.
I don’t see this snow in NY as too much different than what we got hit with twice last year.
New York spends about $1 million to remove an inch of snow, said Jason Post, a spokesman for the mayor. Based on that, the city has spent more than $20 million so far, more than half its $38 million snow budget for the current fiscal year. A full accounting won’t come until after the city finishes the job, he said.
I don’t think $$ was the issue and Bloomberg is saying he’s launching an investigation. So it doesn’t look like it was for a lack of atleast money.
Could it be that there are fewer people on the payroll to do the work? How about the rate the snow fell and that it was a nor’easter? I don’t really see their plight as being much different than our 3 blizzards last year. Certainly roads werent all cleared out after 4 days down here. There have also been sub freezing temperatures.
Maybe New Yorkers aren’t as patient as Washingtonians.
Moon, we used to contract the snow removal job out. We were dissatisfied with: (1) the lack of a speedy arrival when needed; and (2) the kind of job that was done. We dropped the expensive contract (which cost you all those contract bucks even if there was actually little snow during the year) and elected to go with our own on-site staff and volunteers. Nothing like actually having skin in the game to get a job done and done right. Also a good way to help stretch the budget.
Admittedly this only works if you have an HOA or some other kind of neighborhood association. For others……??? Both Mrs. W and I come from real snow country in the upper Midwest and the Great Plains. People just didn’t wait around for the doggone gumint to show up. Men, women, and children with shovels and always the bubbas with private pickups or other machines with blades who seemed to enjoy moving the white stuff and helping neighbors. Moreover, we kids used to replenish our disposable income by going door to door and offering to shovel everything in sight for a fair price. Never see that anymore.
Wolverine, if you all have reliable people to do that kind of work, you are better off. And the longer you wait to plow, the more difficult it becomes.
Everyone once in a while some kid comes by my house in a snow storm. Not enough though…for sure. My grown kid usually rescues his geezer parents. Last year it was tough because we couldn’t get the dogs out of the house. Now that was an emergency.
There are reports that the slow pace of snow removal in NYC was a job action to protest cuts of 400 (out of more than 6000) sanitation workers. Supervisors are due to take a pay cut on January 1st as well.
So far the only paper reporting it is the NY Post, so there should be some skepticism, but a job action would certainly explain the slow pace of snow removal in NYC compared to other cities during this storm. And job actions are not exactly unusual in the world of NYC labor.
It’s unfortunate that three people died because of the slow pace of the cleanup, regardless of the cause of the delay.
FA, I saw the same thing. But, the article pointed to 200 job losses and 200 supervisors being demoted to worker status. The Union is protesting rather loudly that they weren’t the cause and that City Hall dropped the ball by not indicating an emergency soon enough and by the time they did – was too late.
So, I think the commentary above (the thread starter) isn’t accurate for this case. In this case, it seems that the highest levels of NYC government failed to activate emergency systems in a timely manner and only when the city was overwhelmed did it make an all hands on deck call even asking for civilian help.
Lesson to be learned. I’m not going to kick Bloomberg in the apples over it (esp since I don’t live in NYC) but if I was a voter I’d press for a rationale into the decision making process.
We will probably never know. It was probably many different factors, some mother nature in nature and some human in nature.
But it does stand to reason, simple math problem, that if you have 1 job to ‘complete and there are 200 fewer to do it, it will take longer. Throw in a few disgruntled employees and a few people who want to teach a lesson and you have a recipe for disaster.
Sanititation workers in NYC make a boat load of money, all things considered. People stand in line for the jobs. It doesn’t carry the same stigma there that it does here.
I don’t think that sanitation work carries a stigma here. At least, I’ve never seen it.
I, too, have seen the reports that the snow removal delay was due to union malfeasance.
Tell me again, why are public employees allowed to unionize? Conflict of interest, anyone?
I guess this is the test: Do you want your daughter to marry a santitation worker?
I can think of several jokes that have been kicking around for the past decade or 2 about sanitation workers, starting with attaching engineer after it.
Could be about NYC. They should be fired if that is the case with union malfeasance.
I am not sure you can keep workers from unionizing, regardless of who they work for. I don’t think public employees should be prevented. Municipalities can abuse employees just as quickly as private industry. I might not like what unions do but I sure don’t deny anyone the right to join one. The way around it is to make the state a right to work state and blow holes in binding artibration. A state legislature could make that happen if they had the stones.
@marinm
Most snow removal is by private contractors using Dump trucks and pickup trucks which mount a plow in snow emergencies but spend most of the year working on construction sites. Snow removal budgets are pretty predictable, but if they are exceeded then the way good political machines work is that you call the same people you get to turn out for visibilities, canvassing and phone banking and you ask them to bring a shovel and come down to shovel out the subway stop, or the sidewalks or go block by block and help people get their cars out.
Those who can’t shovel bring refreshments and a good time is had by all