Saturday, July 11, 2009

High Line concession award a backroom deal?

From the Daily News:

MANHATTAN'S dazzling new park in the sky was sucked into the mayor's race yesterday.

City Controller William Thompson, who hopes to unseat Mayor Bloomberg, condemned a lucrative no-bid city contract that would give a politically connected group exclusive rights to sell food and merchandise on the High Line park.

"It almost appears to be some sort of back-room deal," said Thompson, who called for a competitive bidding process and ordered his delegate on a city contracting board to vote against the deal. "We have seen this again and again and again from this administration, and almost every time New York City could have gotten a better deal."

The Daily News reported yesterday that backers of the nonprofit Friends of the High Line have lavished campaign contributions on city officials, including more than $100,000 for Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Three board members including High Line Founders Joshua David and Robert Hammond have publicly endorsed Bloomberg's reelection, appearing on a list of gay and lesbian New Yorkers who support Bloomberg.

They are connections that Thompson said may have affected the plan to put the group in charge of food concessions.

"I don't think it hurt," Thompson said.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just wait and see how overwhelmingly expensive it will become to maintain that structure.
The underlying support is nearly 100 years old. It will be abandoned once again in 10 years or so when the money runs out....

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, the lesbian/gay connection. Now that the are brought into the clubhouse tent by crafty hacks, now have fogotten what its like to be mistreated..

Amazing how a group of people, so scorned over the years are now not only acceptable, we are told, but are indeed held up to us as exemplory examples of the human condition (our code of religion, morality, etc notwithstanding).

You see, the hacks were too smart to let a clever, educated, articulate, wealthy group of people stay too alienated so they co-opted them.

Now look. The maya, ol Chrissie, the whole gang.

Well you know what? Just because the clubhouse says they are swell doesn't mean we have to believe them.

Don't have to accept them at all....

Anonymous said...

Dazzling? Ugleist thing I've ever seen anywhere in the World.

Anonymous said...

Thompson (Isn't he gay himself?) is just pissed off that Josh and Bobby never offered to go down on his joint...politically speaking of course!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
Thompson (Isn't he gay himself?) is just pissed off that Josh and Bobby never offered to go down on his joint...politically speaking of course!

Sunday, July 12, 2009

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I take it that you were witness to Thompson's activities.

And if he is, so what?