De Blasio’s muddled vision overshadowed by tragedy

Bill de Blasio simply cannot catch a break.

The collapse of his carriage horse deal was the talk of the day. It was probably a good thing given that the deal was seen as tied to pay raises for City Council members (and other city elected officials).

In my pre-speech draft, I noted that de Blasio was delivering the first-ever prime-time State of the City and that a lot of bad things have occurred at night in the Bronx. In less than an hour, my prediction unfortunately came true.

De Blasio’s third State of the City speech was overshadowed by the shooting of two Bronx police officers who were patrolling a housing project five miles south of the Lehman College venue. Fortunately the two police officers will survive their injuries, while their shooter lies dead in the city morgue of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Upon learning about the shooting (which took place about a half mile from my apartment), I tweeted, “Is @BilldeBlasio snakebit or what? BDB’s sleepy #SOTC2016 will be overshadowed by this Bronx shooting.”

The shooting guaranteed that Friday’s headlines would largely ignore de Blasio’s sleepy and tepid vision for New York City. An East River trolley line connecting Queens and Brooklyn is as bold a proposal as replica vintage electric cars replacing carriage horses in Central Park.

The state of our city is one of dread – dread of the next subway slashing; of the next cop shot by emboldened gun-toting thugs; of having your daily commute disrupted by panhandlers; of having to send your child to a failing middle school; of being priced out of your neighborhood by escalating real-estate prices and gentrification.

Despite my ambivalence (and boredom – I longed to switch to the Bernie Madoff made-for-TV movie), I listened to Mayor de Blasio outline his vision for our city because my baby boy Max will grow up, attend school, play and commute in a city shaped by de Blasio. As I said, dread.

Mandating algebra in all middle schools and offering more Advanced Placement classes in high schools may encourage middle class families to keep their children in city schools. But I didn’t hear an improvement plan for the low-performing schools that dominate black and Hispanic neighborhoods across our city.

Instead, I heard rhetoric about disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline through reductions in suspensions and in reported school crimes. Not one word, however, about the educational malpractice in those classrooms that is the lubricant for the school-to-prison pipeline. Parents want to know that their children are learning and to have access to high-quality neighborhood schools.

In a statement, Kathy Wylde, President and CEO of the Partnership for New York, said that the business community shares de Blasio’s “practical and achievable” priorities. That Bill de Blasio, an admirer of Latin American revolutionaries, has successfully won over business leaders is poetic irony.

During the evening, de Blasio twice invoked Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia – his personal hero. As much as he may aspire to emulate LaGuardia, de Blasio is nothing like his hero. LaGuardia was politically crafty and a feisty counter-puncher who knew how to inspire working-class New Yorkers.

Perhaps sensing his snake-bitten nature, Mayor de Blasio has taken to treading cautiously through city thickets. His signature housing rezoning plan faced defeat at the borough level and is opposed by many City Council members. So for de Blasio, pursuing new programs that are practical and achievable is the best he, and we as a city, can hope for.