City's Snow Removal Effort Lags Behind In Little Neck

As Little Neck residents spent yet another arduous day digging out and helping neighbors stuck in the middle of side roads and smaller thoroughfares, many started to openly wonder when the "cavalry" would arrive.

"We've had other really big storms in this city," said one frustrated resident, Paula Cleary of Little Neck. "Not exactly sure what happened on this one, but it felt like we were all alone out here."

Cleary wasn't the only Little Neck denizen who said they felt like they'd been stranded in the snowy-white ether.

"I had to find someone with a snow blower to help an elderly woman dig her way out so that she could make a flight to Israel," said Rabbi Eli Shifrin of Chabad of Little Neck. "That's troubling."

According to Mike Wallace of Little Neck Hills, Shifrin's predicament seemed to be the rule, not the exception for many stranded in the wake of the recent blizzard, which dumped between one-and two-feet of snow across northeastern Queens.

"It was miserable out there yesterday," Wallace said. "I mean, I shoveled my car out, but then there was nowhere for me to go — all the streets were paved in white."

In a press conference Tuesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the city's snow removal efforts and urged patience.

"We are doing everything we can think of, working hard as we can," he said. "We cannot be every place at all times."

However, according to those stuck digging out their cars, walkways and mailboxes on still-unplowed streets, nowhere did this lack of omnipresent power seem more evident than on the streets of Little Neck.

"The plowing by the city of New York has been nonexistent," said Bob Friedrich, president of nearby Glen Oaks Village Civic Association. "The Mayor needs to leave Manhattan and come to the forgotten boroughs to see what a disaster it has been."

And while City Council Speaker Christine Quinn didn't go quite as far as Friedrich in her criticism Tuesday of the city's response to Sunday's storm, she did agree that perhaps the response left much to be desired for many New Yorkers.

"By all accounts, the collective storm response was not anywhere near up to the standards New Yorkers are accustomed to," Quinn said in a statement.

On Monday, Councilman Dan Halloran, R-Whitestone,  with Assemblyman-elect Ed Braunstein, D-Bayside, to help residents in College Point, Whitestone and Bayside most affected by the delay in snow removal efforts. 

"The outer boroughs are always the second string," Halloran said. "The priority has always been to clear Manhattan first."

But in his remarks to the press Tuesday, the mayor cited stranded motorists in the city's outer boroughs as one of the biggest impediments to the snow removal operation.

"The NYPD along with authorized towing companies removed 1,000 cars from the Van Wyck, Gowanus and Cross Bronx expressways," Mayor Bloomberg said on Tuesday. 

He was also quick to point out that the extreme conditions on Sunday created a snow removal nightmare.

"Anyone who's been outside recently can see that this storm is not like any other we've had to deal with, including the Blizzard of 2006 …" Bloomberg said. "The wind blew so forcefully creating white outs, many motorists got stuck and abandoned their vehicles in the middle of streets."  

But in the end, there was only one question most citizens of Little Neck were looking to answer.

"Where were the plows?" Shifrin asked.  "A day-and-a-half is just too long to wait for the city to respond."

Quinn, who has been singled out as a possible mayoral contender in 2013, scheduled oversight hearings for Jan. 10 to look into what she called the city's "unacceptable" blizzard response, which she explained underscored the need to "protect core public services from potentially life-threatening budget reductions."