Restored Pavilion map left out in the rain

"Here is where the restored Terrazzo map panels from the NYS Pavilion ended up after students worked months at the Queens museum to restore with all the money raised for the project. Where is Estelle Cooper?

The Parks Dept dumped (as well as damaged) it back on the ground, where it's open to the elements. (Behind the West gate) !!" - Elvis

Dumping again, eh, Dottie?

Council slush funds date back to 1998

The practice of stashing funds in the city budget through allotments to phantom organizations goes back at least a decade, The Post has learned.

An investigation of budget documents shows phantom groups first appearing in fiscal year 1998, when $150,000 was allocated to "Elder Statesmen" - a name identified by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn as phony.

HAUNTED BY PHANTOMS

In interviews with a dozen current and former council and mayoral staffers, The Post was told that the practice - which it revealed has hidden as much as $17 million since 2001 and which has brought on federal and city investigations - began in the Giuliani administration, when Peter Vallone Sr. was council speaker.

In Vallone's last budget, for fiscal year 2002, there were five phony groups. In [Gifford] Miller's, there were 16.

As coffers swelled, the amount of money funneled to fake groups also grew, with annual sums reaching the millions.

Tarnish on the Bloomberg legacy

Throughout his tenure, Mr. Bloomberg has taken particular pride in the construction boom, promoting it as the product of his pragmatic approach and the application of high-tech, yet common-sense solutions to the problems of government.

Crane Collapses Prompt Questions on the Mayor’s Oversight

But the deadly crane collapse that killed two people and injured another on the Upper East Side on Friday morning is now threatening to tarnish that legacy. It was the latest in a series of construction-related accidents — including a crane collapse in March that killed seven people — that have left New Yorkers uneasy, with a growing concern that Mr. Bloomberg may have let high-rise construction proliferate without adequate oversight.

Indeed, despite the administration’s recent efforts to improve construction safety, including replacing the commissioner of the Department of Buildings, there are signs that residents — even those who have generally viewed him favorably in the past — are running out of patience with Mr. Bloomberg.

Tree huggers

One of several tree stories from the NY Times:

Carl Ballenas
168th Place near 83rd Avenue
Jamaica Hills, Queens
Two Japanese maples
8 years old

Medicine has been in my family for generations. My brother works in an E.R. in Massachusetts, my sister is a pediatrician in Portland, my mother was a midwife and my father was a doctor. So I named the two trees after the twin saints Cosmas and Damian, who were healers. Officially they’re the patron saints of physicians, pharmacists, chemists, surgeons, midwives — and barbers.

My father died in the spring of 2006. He was cremated in Peru, but a cousin of mine brought up some of his ashes, and I sprinkled them around the base of the trees.

This year it’s exciting because the trees are finally touching each other. They’re forming an arch over the walkway. Trees are amazing. They grow old with you.

Manhattan sounds like Queens these days

Turtle Bay is just one neighborhood under siege by foreign real-estate moguls building artless, tacky buildings with Chinese money to sell to Europeans, Chinese, Russians and Middle Easterners - the only ones, with the exception of Michael Bloomberg, who can still afford to buy in Manhattan.

Yes, kids, the Russians and Chinese are coming - but they're coming with checkbooks, not bombs - even though the effect is the same: destruction of neighborhoods by big-bucks bullies.

RUINED LIVES? JUST COLLATERAL DAMAGE TO CITY

I'm sick with worry because they don't use union workers. I've complained about the weekend construction, the after-hours construction, the scaffold that leaks into puddles the size of wading pools. And that's just one building.

Almost every single block on Second Avenue between 53rd and 46th has a monster high-rise either under construction or shuttered because of the crane accident. It's like living in Fallujah.