De Blasio, Bloomberg Make Rare Public Appearance Together
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Mayor Bill de Blasio and his predecessor, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, made a rare public appearance together Friday.
The two mayors were joined by Bette Midler at Joyce Kilmer Park in the Bronx to celebrate the completion of the MillionTreesNYC initiative, two years ahead of schedule. The Empire State Building will be lit up green tonight to mark the occasion.
"We planted tree number one just down the road eight years ago and we've added one million more thanks to the dedication of so many," said Bloomberg, who launched the program in 2007 when he was in office. "Each new tree planted makes our city a little more beautiful, the air we breathe a little cleaner, and our carbon footprint a little smaller."
It wasn't anything close to a "bromance," but the two mayors seemed to bury the hatchet in planting the 1,017,634th tree in the program, WCBS 880's Rich Lamb reported.
De Blasio gave his predecessor a lighthearted introduction at the event saying, "He is doing extraordinary work in his new stand up comedy career as we saw at the Al Smith Dinner."
And as the ex-mayor stepped up to speak, Bloomberg said, "Bill, thank you. This podium seems a little taller than I remember it."
Even after they put their gold shovels down, the two actually smiled and seemed to publicly shmooze for a minute, Lamb reported.
De Blasio also thanked Bloomberg "for helping us build a more resilient, greener city for all New Yorkers."
"This one millionth tree highlights what New Yorkers can do when we work together for the greater good of our city, and is a strong example of the impact that volunteers are having in and around our communities every day," the mayor said.
De Blasio said the city will plant 150,000 more trees over the next three years "to continue this great tradition."
De Blasio invited Bloomberg to join him two years after the then-public advocate was elected on the back of a fierce campaign that frequently criticized the billionaire incumbent for presiding over a city pockmarked with racial and economic injustice.
Those criticisms continued at the Democrat de Blasio's January 2014 inauguration -- at which one speaker likened Bloomberg's New York to "a plantation'' as the former mayor sat a few feet away -- and early in the current mayor's term.
Bloomberg had been a Democrat, but ran as a Republican and later became an Independent. He served three terms.
He pledged before leaving office that he would refrain from publicly criticizing his successor and has largely kept his word even as some of his allies, including former Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, have taken loud umbrage at de Blasio's attempts to reverse some of Bloomberg's policies.
Early in his term, de Blasio also missed few chances to criticize Bloomberg for creating a "Tale of Two Cities'' in which the gap between the rich and the poor grew, de Blasio believes, because of his billionaire predecessor's Manhattan-centric policies.
But the mayors' relationship has shown signs of thawing in recent months. De Blasio has softened his rhetoric about Bloomberg and has taken pains to compliment his predecessor's policies on climate change and gun control and his successful push to win mayoral control of the city's school systems.
It was a top Bloomberg aide, Howard Wolfson, who suggested to the de Blasio administration that the city throw a ticker-tape parade for the World Cup-winning women's soccer team. Conversations between the two men's staffs have also increased in recent months, and de Blasio and Bloomberg chatted amiably at this year's 9/11 memorial service.
They also appeared together in June at the groundbreaking for the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island and traded some sincere, if somewhat restrained, compliments. But the event next week is to be explicitly a display of outreach from one mayor to the other, according to the people briefed on the plan.
Bloomberg also remains popular with some pockets of New Yorkers, and aides to de Blasio could see the political advantages of a stronger relationship with the media mogul.
De Blasio has wildly differing relationships with the other two living New York City mayors. Republican Rudy Giuliani has emerged as a fierce critic of the current mayor, particularly on policing issues. But de Blasio enjoys a warm relationship with Democrat David Dinkins, his former boss, and presided over a ceremony renaming a government building for Dinkins last month.
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