Well, it’s a start.
Hours after The Brooklyn Paper went online last week with its world exclusive about the disastrously broken sidewalk in front of Borough Hall, someone made a fairly lame effort to fix it.
What once was an obstacle course of fractured paving stones is now an only-less-slighty dangerous walkway of half-dry mud and gravel. Even Borough President Markowitz agreed that the repairs were lousy.
“It still needs work,” Markowitz said after seeing that some of the plaza’s cracked bluestone had been removed.
The Downtown disaster first flashed onto the borough consciousness last Wednesday after BrooklynPaper.com posted the story and pictures revealing that the sidewalk on the north and west sides of the People’s House had become a minefield of cracked slate and high-heel-gripping potholes.
Markowitz, who is not reponsible for the repairs, quickly joined the chorus of voices calling for the Parks Department to fix the pock-marked plaza in front of his office.
“We’ve been begging to get it done,” he said. “There is no question that it is dangerous. The problem is this bluestone. The weather breaks it, trucks break it. It’s not a matter of [the Parks Department being] lazy, but they have no funds, and, sadly, it’s not a priority to them.
“It’s a shame,” added the borough president, employing a bit of irony, considering he earned a $225,000 payday from his own 2001 slip-and-fall accident in Albany. “I wish they’d give us the budget so we can be responsible for it.”
A Parks Department spokeswoman had told The Brooklyn Paper that the problem is caused by the weather and the fact that government cars and trucks often drive on the plaza.
That was very much the case last Thursday, when several members of Congress gathered inside the Rotunda in Borough Hall to show their unified support for Haiti.
Outside, their government-plated cars idled on the plaza, undermining the poor conditions there.
