Not satisfied with making life hell for New Yorkers for eight full years, now-(thankfully)-former Mayor Bill de Blasio raced to extend the pain long after he’s gone. Last week, he delivered two more 11th-hour thumbs-in-the-eye for Gotham: pushing further ahead with plans to replace Rikers jails with local facilities in four boroughs and expanding his money-losing, underused city ferry service.
His jails plan never made sense: Rikers is a disaster, but it can surely be rebuilt at its current location, rather than inflicting new jails on neighborhoods that absolutely don’t want them. Nonetheless, Wednesday he announced the selection of six firms that’ll compete to design and build the new jails. Mayor Eric Adams can expect continued community opposition unless he’s wise enough to deep-six the whole scheme.
And Tuesday, Blas announced the opening of an NYC Ferry stop in The Bronx. Never mind that the service he started some years back has been a financial bust that primarily serves upscale New Yorkers and tourists. Last year, The Post revealed that Team de Blasio misled the public and the City Council about the heavily subsidized ferry system’s ridership after its own surveys showed riders skewed white and upscale.
Even before the pandemic, in October 2019, NYC Ferry was serving only about 4 million passengers a year, fewer than the subways on an average day, and offered an operating subsidy of $10.73 per trip — nearly 10 times that of the New York City Transit.
Last week, the now-ex-mayor also changed the process for parents to appeal special-ed decisions for their kids.
All this comes after a string of other last-minute moves to hamper his successor: the creation of supervised IV-drug injection sites, the axing of Gifted & Talented programs in city schools and the imposition of a private-sector vaccine mandate . . .
Blas might’ve tried to tie Adams’ hands, but if the new mayor wants to avoid flak and relieve New Yorkers, he’ll find a way to take a wrecking ball to all of his predecessor’s missteps.
