TICKING TIME BUM
E-mails reveal aides scrambling to buy always-late Blas a clock
Mayor de Blasi o’s chronic lateness frustrated his staff so much that they went shopping for clocks, The Post has learned. Just two weeks into his first term in 2014, one staffer e-mailed another asking for suggestions for a “Visible Clock for Mayor.”
City Hall staffers got an early wake-up call about Mayor de Blasio’s chronic lateness.
Barely two weeks into de Blasio’s first term, aides launched a hunt for an alarm clock visible enough to get even the perennially tardy mayor moving, e-mails obtained by The Post reveal.
The search launched by mayoral aide Javon Coney on Jan. 14, 2014 came just three days after the nap-loving mayor ticked off graduates of the Department of Correction academy by showing up nearly an hour late to their ceremony and delaying the affair.
“Visible Clock For Mayor,” reads the subject line of the note sent by Coney to City Hall research coordinator Paula Sortino.
The rest of their limited exchange was redacted as though they’d been discussing heavily-classified city secrets — a City Hall spokesman called the backand-forth “inter-agency deliberative conversation.”
At one point in the e-mails, Sortino responds with images and descriptions of five clocks to choose from.
One was a “Large LCD wall clock” featuring a “weekend alarm with snooze feature,” while another “Atomic alarm clock” adjusts automatically to daylight saving time.
The most eye-catching suggestion — a small globe sitting atop a pyramid-shaped clock with a built-in reading lamp — could have made a handsome addition to Hizzoner’s office, where he’s known to snooze on the couch after workouts at the Park Slope Y.
But something more portable might have been in order — an April e-mail received in the same Freedom of Information Law request shows then-Director of Media Research and Analysis Mahen Gunaratna flagging a tweet from a New York Times reporter that read: “Press van just passed @BilldeBlasio’s SUV. He seemed to be taking a nap in the front seat.”
The internal missives don’t make clear which model of clock was selected, but spokesman Eric Phillips confirmed one was purchased.
“The Mayor’s office didn’t have a clockclock. SSo we got one,” Phillips said.
“It’s been the key to pushing crime to record lows and seamlessly implementing free universal pre-K,” he added, facetiously.
But the new timepiece didn’t seem to put any more pep in the mayor’s step.
De Blasio continued his sluggish ways through November of that year, when he disrespected family members of the 265 people who died in the 2001 crash of Flight 587 by showing up late for the annual memorial service in Queens.
The Post even tried to help Hizzoner by giving him an alarm clock — with no snooze button — after that mishap, but it wasn’t clear that he ever used it.
The mayor’s penchant for running on “de Blasio time” first revealed itself during the 2013 campaign, when he said he wished society was reoriented toward staying up late rather than getting up early because he’s “not a morning person.”
In recent years, de Blasio seems to have reined in his punctuality problem somewhat — albeit with the occasional assist from police helicopters to whiz him around the city at great expense to taxpayers.
But old habits die hard — the mayor was late to several stops on the campaign trail during his own reelection campaign last year.