Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007

It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.

To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.

Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.

Steve meant so much to us.

We will miss him terribly.

Accountability, please

As drivers dug themselves out from Wednesday’s modest but messy snowstorm, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg found himself on the defensive over the city’s decision not to suspend alternate-side parking rules. That move had residents complaining that their cars were ticketed after plows buried them in snow.

New Yorkers complained that their cars were ticketed for illegal parking today when they were buried in snow.

The mayor was at times curt, testy and defensive as he answered questions from reporters at a Sanitation Department garage in Woodside, Queens, yesterday, even suggesting that New Yorkers stop “griping” about the situation.

Mr. Bloomberg said the Sanitation Department had done “a spectacular job” of clearing the streets. There were “a lot of fender-benders,” he said, but no major accidents. “We want to get the snow and ice off the roads as quickly as possible so emergency vehicles can get through, so that you can get to work, so that the kids can get to school,” he said. “And if we all do it together rather than griping, we’ll be better off.”

But asking New Yorkers not to gripe is like asking for mayonnaise on a pastrami sandwich — highly unlikely.

Even if the situation did not approach the furor of February 1969, when parts of Queens were left unplowed for nearly a week after a crippling blizzard and Mayor John V. Lindsay bore the brunt of angry ridicule, complaints were prevalent yesterday, when the temperature ranged from 15 to 24 degrees.

“I have to dig out the car, and where am I going to put it?” Carol Jolley, 50, asked in frustration. A stay-at-home mother in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, she used a garden shovel to excavate her Volvo sedan from a two-foot snow mound.

“Take a look around,” she said. “I have no place to put it. And then when I come back, this spot will be gone. All my good work for nothing.”

In prior years, Ms. Jolley maintained, the city usually relaxed parking rules the day after a storm. “This is cruel and unusual punishment,” she said. “I’ve lived here all my life, and I don’t remember them doing this so soon after a snow.”

Nearby, Eric Feldman, 50, a sound editor who was moving his Ford Explorer, said that enforcement of the rules served little purpose. “It’s going to make the roads more dangerous,” he said, “because you’ve got cars double-parked and some staying in place.”

Labels: bloomberg, New York city, snow