He's so special no one can replace him

From the NY Times:

It has been a bedrock assumption of this year’s race for New York City mayor: Michael R. Bloomberg and the muscular political operation that guided him to three electoral victories will coalesce around his favored candidate, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker.

But behind the scenes, a different reality is playing out.

High-powered advisers to Mr. Bloomberg — and even the mayor himself — have chewed over alternatives, joked about dream candidates and even floated the possibility of a mayoral run to at least five boldface figures, highlighting their worry that City Hall could fall into less nimble hands.

The conversations have occurred over dinners and by telephone, in tones both serious and playful. The prospects span the world of government and business, a group whose members dwell within the five boroughs and beyond the city’s borders.

Mr. Bloomberg has mused about a Mayor Charles E. Schumer with the Democratic senator from New York, and teased Mortimer B. Zuckerman, a fellow billionaire media mogul, about a possible bid. The mayor’s advisers raised the idea of a run with Edward G. Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and mayor of Philadelphia, and with Edward Skyler, Mr. Bloomberg’s former top deputy in City Hall, according to several people.

The mayor’s most formal overture was delivered to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, perhaps Mr. Bloomberg’s most quixotic choice for the job. The mayor personally encouraged her to enter the race about a year ago, three people who were told about the discussions have told The New York Times.

The conversations suggest that Mr. Bloomberg and his aides long for somebody who can match his own blend of celebrity, success and self-assurance.

“The mayor believes he is special,” Mr. Rendell said in an interview in his Philadelphia office. “He wanted somebody at a very high level to come in to do a job he has often said to me — and he’s not the only person who says it — is the second most difficult job in the country.”

A spokesman for Ms. Quinn’s campaign, Josh Isay, declined to comment.

3rd term not exactly a charm

From the NY Post:

Four months into Mike Bloomberg’s third term — amid a fiscal crisis, the threat from Albany cutting 18,500 city jobs, and of a growing roll call of top aides departing City Hall — Bloomberg appears to be a Mayor alone, his old guard falling faster than the new blood trickles in.

Earlier this week Bloomberg’s longest serving and most loyal and powerful aide, Deputy Mayor of Operations Ed Skyler, announced that he would be leaving by the end of the month to run government relations for Citigroup, where he’ll earn a reported $1 million-a-year salary.

Skyler’s departure came on the heels of Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey’s March announcement that he would be assuming a lucrative top post at Bloomberg LP, as well as the departure of communications director James Anderson, who went to work for the Mayor’s charitable foundation.

Bloomberg’s sustainability guru and the architect of PlaNYC, Rohit Aggarwala, also announced this week that he will be following his wife to California after his April 10 wedding, where he’ll start looking for a new job.

After years of loyally beating the drum for their boss, Bloomberg’s top aides are now thinking first about what’s best for them before weighing what fits City Hall’s interests. In total, more than 15 high-level staffers and commissioners have announced their departure since Bloomberg decided to run for a third term.

The Daily News noticed as well.

911 procedure questioned at council hearing

From the NY Times:

City officials and union representatives testifying at a City Council hearing on Thursday presented divergent evaluations of a firefighter dispatching system that was instituted in May.

The new system, referred to as unified call-taking, is meant to streamline the way firefighters are sent out on runs, but it has quickly become the subject of some controversy. Fire union officials say it sometimes provides firefighters with incomplete or inaccurate information, even as the city has credited the new system with helping to cut response times to historic lows.

“It saves valuable time,” Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler told the council members. “That is unassailable, in my opinion.”

But Capt. Alexander Hagan, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association union, called reports of lower response time “statistical trickery,” adding, “The people were not getting a faster response time. They were getting a snow job.”

Mr. Skyler repeatedly told the council members that limiting emergency calls to one call taker was faster and more efficient. But some council members asked whether 911 operators, trained primarily in responding to crimes rather than fires, might take longer to elicit information that could benefit firefighters.

And fire union officials asserted that response times were being calculated in a misleading way. They said such calculations before the new system began included the time that fire dispatchers spent on the phone questioning callers. Now, the times do not include the period that 911 dispatchers are making similar queries, union officials said.