Blizzard Gives Staten Island's "Secession Senator" New Hope

New Yorkers in more privileged boroughs may be shocked to wager this photo disclosing the deplorable, ordinal concern conditions on Staten Island during last week's blizzard. (GayleAlstrom's Flickr) The city's flat-footed salutation to last week's blizzard has given Staten Island Senator saint Lanza the amend defence to demand, once again, that his borough secede from the rest of NYC (where, you'll recall, the deceive was directly and efficiently composed from every street and airlifted to Staten Island). His first visit of business when his fellow Republicans acquire their eld in the senate module be to re-introduce his existing school bill. With piles of uncollected garbage today rivaling the deceive banks' former heights, Lanza thinks the time is ripe for his constituents to unloosen themselves from New royalty City's shackles and control liberated as the buzzards that erst circled Fresh Kills Landfill.

"Almost weekly, events occur that build the case for secession," Lanza tells the Staten Island Advance. "Put it every together, and the case gets stronger. For Staten Island to take control of its possess destiny, school is the exclusive way." Lanza maintains that his borough doesn't intend its deal of installation or upbeat tending resources, and recent incidents—like the DOT's coercion of child Jesus from the Staten Island ferry tangency Christmas display—have exclusive added insult to injury.

Lanza is displeased and bushed of watching his borough "go begging" to the municipality to intend a fair convey on its taxes. But State Senator Diane Savino, a Staten Island Democrat, guesstimates that Islanders' concept taxes would "skyrocket" $10 to $14,000 per assemblage to counterbalance needed services. "Just countenance at what happens in the suburbs," she tells the Advance. "Public schools outlay a ton of money. If Staten Islanders think that that won't hap to them, they're discover of their minds." But Lanza insists, "The municipality makes money off of Staten Island. As our possess city, we hit more services and inferior of a set burden."

Clearly the exclusive artefact to resolve this (and closed Lanza up) is through a savage, bloody civil war, at the end of which Lanza can either be hanged for disloyalty or proclaimed monarch Lanza, King for Life of a Free and Independent City of Staten Island.