If you can’t stand the heat this summer, don’t go looking for a New York politician to offer refuge.
Preparing for a sweltering weekend, Mayor Adams’ office last week appealed to hundreds of local electeds, asking them to open their offices as small “cooling centers” to give New Yorkers an air-conditioned space to shelter from above-90-degree heat and punishing humidity.
Just six — state Sen. Leroy Comrie, state Assemblyman Michael Novakhov and City Council members Nantasha Williams, Selvena Brooks-Powers, Ana Sanchez and Alexa Aviles — replied, and only to offer their spaces up during weekday office hours.
The other 219 didn’t bother responding at all.
Shameful.
These public servants don’t feel like serving the public, not even to the extent of paying a staffer (or asking for volunteers) to do a potential good deed.
The AWOLers included Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who promoted the use of cooling centers in a post on X — but didn’t offer his office up as one of them. (How often is your office open, Jumaane?)
And also city Comptroller Brad Lander, who previously slammed the Mayor’s Office when 41% of cooling centers were closed on Juneteenth (a national holiday, which thereby shuttered libraries and the like), saying, “if you’re telling people to get to a cooling center, then the cooling centers have to be open.”
A rep for Lander pleaded to The Post that the city Department of Citywide Administrative Services “controls entry, hours of operation and access to the public spaces” of the building housing his offices — as if it’d be impossible to sort out the logistics if Lander had bothered to respond.
Summer’s just getting started; far worse heat waves are surely ahead.
Time enough for all the pols who love to preach about “community care” to quit ducking the chance to walk the walk and figure out how the public can actually get some immediate use out of their offices.