[GreenKeys] TELETYPE MENTIONED TWICE IN NEW YORKS LATEST NEWS...

[Don Robert House]

City's Sanitation Chief Fights Snow and Takes Heat
NEW YORK TIMES
Published: December 31, 2010

For John J. Doherty, who has been cleaning up snowstorms since the
days of the TELETYPE, perhaps the lowest point in the toughest week
of his career came early Wednesday morning. John J. Doherty has
been the New York City sanitation commissioner under two mayors.
He was called out of retirement by Mayor Bloomberg in 2002.

Mr. Doherty, who is New York City's sanitation commissioner, was
being driven around Brooklyn to survey the much-criticized cleanup
from the blizzard this week when his black Chevrolet Tahoe got
stuck in the snow. He called plows for help, but they were busy
with other jobs. So, like countless other New Yorkers this week,
Mr. Doherty, 72, hired two men with shovels to dig him out.
"It was," he said in an interview, "very embarrassing."

Since the snow stopped falling on Monday morning, local politicians
have competed to see who could condemn his department most harshly,
with the City Council scheduling hearings to investigate what went
wrong. Hours after Mr. Doherty got his car out of the snow, Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg said he was "extremely dissatisfied" with the
cleanup effort and vowed to conduct a review of his own -- with Mr.
Doherty at his side. Newspapers have railed against Mr. Doherty's
street crews and published photographs of his well-plowed block on
Staten Island.

"I keep waiting for the picture to be in the paper with the goat's
horns sticking out of my head, like I'm the goat of the storm," Mr.
Doherty said. "We got a black eye. I think my reputation, and the
reputation of the department, has been seriously tarnished."

Mr. Doherty's career in sanitation stretches back half a century
and down to the department's lowest rung, across strikes,
blackouts, heat waves and, yes, blizzards. If you know anything
about garbage or snow clearance, chances are you know his voice, a
nasal squawk with a New York accent so thick it sounds as if he is
hamming it up.

He went to work for the city as a trash collector in 1960. His
first assignment: cleaning up a snowstorm in Brooklyn. He worked
his way up through the ranks -- the fifth of the city's 41
commissioners to do so -- earning the respect of street crews and
City Hall, and has served as a senior official under four different
mayors. He retired to California in 1999 after serving as
commissioner for five years under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, only
to be brought back by Mr. Bloomberg in 2002.

"I started getting bored," he explained. "California is nice, but
when you're a New Yorker, New York is nicer." (Dumb) A resident of
Staten Island for most of his life, Mr. Doherty is the son of an
Irish carpenter who came to this country just in time for the Great
Depression. His father encouraged his three sons to take Civil
Service exams because, he said, civil servants were the only ones
getting paid. (Just like today!) while his brothers went on to
become firefighters, a neck injury forced Mr. Doherty into the
Sanitation Department, a job he accepted unhappily.

Those who have known him the longest say that he was never just
another garbageman. "As a sanitation worker, he was always the
neatest guy in the group," said Joseph Timpone, who worked with
him for more than 30 years. "He was always a standout. If you
needed to know something or wanted to learn how to do something,
you went to John."

As a senior manager, Mr. Doherty could often be found in the
TELETYPE room, Mr. Timpone said: "He couldn't wait to have the
report -- how much salt, when it was delivered, how, where's it
coming from."

Mr. Timpone tells a story of working with Mr. Doherty on a
snowstorm in the 1980s. After sleeping four straight nights in
the office, Mr. Timpone went home to shower and say hello to his
family. He returned to work at 7 a.m.; Mr. Doherty was already
there. "He asked why was I late," Mr. Timpone said. "What do you
mean late? You just shook your head and said, 'O.K.' "

This week, Mr. Doherty spent two nights in the office; he slept
four hours one night, and less than three the other. "In a storm
like this, your adrenaline is going, you can't sleep," he said.
He took midnight drives to check on cleanup progress and to buck up
the troops. "I like to get out on the streets," he said. "If they
hear you on the radio or see you, they say, 'O.K., he's out here
with us.' "

But there are dispiriting moments, too. There was the scene along
13th Avenue in Brooklyn late Tuesday night -- mountains of snow,
stranded cars, stumbling pedestrians. "It was a horror story," he
said. "We didn't do a very good job. We did less than good."

And he has made missteps. His vow on Wednesday that every street
would be clear by the next morning was catnip for photographers on
buried blocks eager to prove him wrong. His line blaming New
Yorkers -- "People did not listen and went out with their vehicles
and got stuck" -- did not earn him fans.

He has, however, kept the confidence of the man who matters most:
Mr. Bloomberg. On Wednesday, the mayor called him "the best
sanitation commissioner the city has ever had, period, bar none."
Mr. Doherty said it was too soon to tell why so many streets
remained unplowed days after the snow ended. Faulty equipment,
insufficient training and poor communication are all possibilities.
He vowed to investigate whether the rank-and-file deliberately
slowed down work to protest budget cuts, as has been rumored, but
said he doubted it.

"The only time you're going to be a hero in this department is when
there's a snowstorm," he said. "This is the battle we have to win.
It didn't work out. We've got to go out there and work hard and get
our reputation back."

So he was relieved when the mayor, amid the criticism, said
publicly that he wanted Mr. Doherty to stay through the rest of his
administration.

"We got through an awful lot in my career, some better than
others," Mr. Doherty said. "I don't feel good about this one. I
was at the end of my career when I came back. I don't want to be
at the end of my career prematurely."