Thursday, August 12, 2010

Life in "Progress" CIty - NY edition

Here's one way to flunk economics.

Officials at a downtown public school wastefully threw out hoards of pricey desks, chairs, cabinets and other classroom furniture yesterday despite steep budget cuts to city schools.

Residents who live near the Greenwich Village Middle School on Hudson Street said they watched in horror as sanitation workers crushed more than 50 pieces of perfectly good furniture -- and perhaps twice that -- in the back of a garbage truck.

"It was perfectly good stuff. It should be used and not thrown away," fumed local business owner Richard Butensky. "There were a lot of desks -- at least 50 -- and those were all destroyed."

The damage would have been worse if Robert Nassau -- whose wife runs a new private school in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, called the Greene Hill School -- hadn't rescued dozens of items lined up on the block ready to be pulverized.

He quickly hired and filled a truck full of the salvaged furniture -- at a cost of more than $600 -- after getting the OK from the sanitation guys.

I just wanted to save the stuff from the trash. I saved half of what was there, maybe less," said Nassau, 38, who snagged about 100 desk chairs, standup cabinets, filing cabinets and bookshelves.

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