The Mamdani administration dropped the snowball by failing to recruit enough emergency shovelers for the recent winter storm that dropped nearly a foot of snow on the Big Apple, critics said.
As of Tuesday, 1,800 people were signed up for the temporary work this winter season, and a peak of 550 were out shoveling bus stops, crosswalks and other public areas since the Jan. 25-26 storm that continues to delay trash pickup and many other city services, a City Hall source said.
In comparison, 6,454 shovelers were recruited for the 2015-16 winter season – which saw nearly 33 inches fall on Central Park – and up to 3,500 shovelers simultaneously worked at peak times that winter.
The Big Apple until two weeks ago had been blessed with mild winters most of the past decade, making emergency snow shovelers less of a priority.
But amid this brutal winter, the city only recently beefed up recruiting efforts for the $19.14-an-hour jobs through ads and social media posts.
Critics say it’s another black mark on how Mamdani handled his first crisis as mayor. He’s already facing plenty of heat over mass gridlock, unplowed streets and mounds of neglected trash.
“Once it became clear that we were going to have a major storm on our hands, the city should have gone all-out in advertising for snow laborer jobs,” said Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens).
“Instead we saw a half-hearted outreach effort, and as a result we still have crosswalks and bus stops blocked two weeks after the snowfall.”
Council Minority Leader David Carr (R-Staten Island) praised city sanitation workers for doing the best they could under tough conditions that included nine consecutive days of subfreezing weather but added the “administration dropped the ball when they didn’t hire snow shovelers as early as possible.”
“Anyone who looked at a forecast two weeks ago could have easily foreseen that this prolonged arctic blast was going to make snow removal extremely difficult unless they got ahead of it,” he said.
“Now parts of our city seem to be stuck in another ice age.”
Daniel Hill, communications director for the nonprofit security group Cityline Ozone Park Civilian Patrol, said the snow laborer “shortage” is obvious this winter, adding in “past years, our community was covered by way more workers who had our [fire] hydrants and [street] corners cleared way faster.”
“It’s very concerning that we’re still feeling the effects [nearly two weeks] after it’s snowed. I hope the city can get more snow laborers in place to take care of our communities the next time it snows.”
The Sanitation Department issued a statement claiming the 2015 comparison is “misleading” considering there’s since been changes to local weather patterns, the snow laborer program and “the nature of work post-pandemic.”
“This is the largest deployment of emergency snow shovelers since the pandemic, and it included extremely rare night shifts, making this a round-the-clock effort that we have not seen in years,” the agency said.
The agency also said it has “one of the highest workforces in recent memory, as well as dozens of pieces of smaller, specialized equipment that can do some of the work previously done” by the emergency workers.
People interested in the temporary job can register through the Sanitation Department’s website provided they’re at least 18 years and eligible to work in the United States.
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