Back in the saddle

Admitting to having made “major mistakes” back in their 2014 crusade, the humans who shouted loudest and spent most lavishly to free New York’s supposedly enslaved carriage horses are asking to please, please reset the conversation. Wendy Neu and Steve Nislick of NYCLASS visited the Daily News Editorial Board last week with a new public relations team, a positively sheepish tone and hands full of sugar cubes.

Last time around, they became the story, they say; that was wrong. They were arrogant; that was wrong. They pitted animals against workers; that was wrong. They don’t want to ban the industry they called — and still call — “inherently cruel.” They don’t want to reduce the number of horses, 220, or carriage medallions, 68.

They don’t even want to move stables from the West Side into Central Park, as suggested in a last-ditch compromise that some tried to broker after Mayor de Blasio failed in his pledge to “ban” the industry “within the first week on the job.”

Neu and Nislick, claiming now to care a great deal about the drivers whose jobs they were previously happy to send to the glue factory unless they switched over to electric put-puts, want only some small nips and tucks.

So while the NYCLASS website urges, “Sign the petition to ban horse carriages in NYC,” Neu and Nislick leave doubt about whether even they would lend their names to that cause.

They promote what they claim to be aroundthe-margins reforms that certainly won’t hurt and could even help drivers — but will, absolutely and positively, help the horses that they say they know, perhaps from yay-or-neigh opinion surveys, are unhappy.

Maybe, say, bigger stable stalls. Many of the current ones are too small, they claim.

And an independent panel of veterinarians to establish a standard of care, paid for by who knows whom. And a new system for having the animals get to and from Central Park, maybe via bike lanes, avoiding Columbus Circle.

And a change to the way farriers put the horses’ shoes on. And a mandate to swap out all the Standardbred animals they say are too small to pull carriages; replace them all with large draft horses.

And a guarantee that they go to pasture, never to slaughter, upon retirement. And a ban on carriage rides outside the park, like Times Square, where they say the traffic is just too much to bear. (Never mind that police horses there, which deal with the crowds with equine-imity.)

And maybe a change to the way carriages pick up riders. Central Park South bad. Somewhere else better. Did we forget anything? While they’re at it, Neu and Nislick want to help the industry — an industry they think is cruel! — market itself, so horses and humans alike get more work and more money via increased fares.

None of the reforms is ridiculous on its face. Some may even be perfectly good ideas.

Ontheotherhand,ideaA+B+C+D+E+F may well add up to, gee, a lot to ask a hardscrabble industry that wants only to stay afoot.

Which maybe, just maybe, is part of the NYCLASS plan. You can lead a city to Kool-Aid, but you can’t make it drink.