A defiant Mayor Bill de Blasio again refused to provide details Tuesday about a weekend meeting at Gracie Mansion that he cited as the cause of his late arrival at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in the Rockaways.
“We are not, as a practice, going to tell you who’s in every internal meeting and what time it started and what time it ended. We just don’t do that,” the mayor said at an unrelated press conference in Brooklyn.
He also lashed out at critics, bluntly declaring: “I’m not hired by the people to go to parades.”
Hizzoner insisted that the Saturday meeting that made him late to the Rockaways — half an hour after organizers expected him — was extremely important.
“We had a meeting of senior members of the administration at Gracie Mansion to discuss education. It was a high-priority meeting. We then went off to the parade,” the mayor said.
“I’ve said many times, you guys, but I’ll keep saying it. We are here to make policy, we are here to make decisions. We are here to make people’s lives better,” he said.
“I’m not hired by the people to go to parades, I’m hired by the people to fix schools, and create jobs and do a lot of other things.”
The mayor for the second day kept the lid on details of the meeting, including who was there and what was discussed.
“We’re very comfortable with the way we approach things and we’re very comfortable with our priorities.”
The mayor’s comments came after a visit to Boys & Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant — where he offered updates on his $150 million program targeting failing schools.