If money could melt snow, Mayor Bloomberg would be basking in victory over the storm. When he took office in 2002, Gotham spent $1.3 billion annually on the Department of Sanitation. Today, the city spends more than $2.2 billion on “New York’s Strongest.” That increase during Bloomberg’s tenure was almost three and a half times the inflation rate. It follows that we should have a sanitation army well equipped to clean the white stuff up fast. Not quite. Today’s budgeted sanitation force—from supervisors to garbage collectors—is 392 people smaller than it was nine years ago, a 4 percent decline even as population is up. And the department is shrinking further, as Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith knocks 200 people off the rolls to save $21 million by moving supervisors into front-line jobs.
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