Michael Bloomberg refused to listen–let alone respond to–remarks Anthony Weiner made this morning criticizing how the mayor handled the budget. 

“I didn’t hear him and I’m not going to respond,” the mayor said when I tried reading Weiner’s remarks to him. “If you want to waste your question, you’ve just done it.” He went on to say, “The answer is, I’ve got to worry about the next 350-odd days and I’m not going to respond.”

The mayor was speaking at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new firehouse in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where he also announced response times by the fire department are improving, along with a drop in the number of fire-related fatalities.

At the event, Bloomberg said the city budget will likely force greater reductions in the size of the its work force.

Bloomberg said his job is to “try to protect the existing people who work for the city. That’s where I have an obligation. We may not be able to afford them all, but nevertheless, if you want our workforce to work harder and be more flexible, creative and work as a team, you pay them as well as you can. The realities are we only have a certain amount of money, and that amount of money is falling dramatically.”

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