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As the 2013 mayoral elections near, the expected candidates are looking to build platforms through the work in their current jobs. For Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn -- who will likely go up against each other in the race to replace Mayor Mike Bloomberg -- the controversial expansion of New York University in the Village is one opportunity to influence a development issue that will impact the city for decades and beyond.

But Quinn's not quite ready to talk about it yet.

This week, Scott Stringer, standing beside NYU President John Sexton, announced his support of a scaled-back version of NYU's two-decade expansion in Greenwich Village, pushing the project one step forward in the lengthy review process mandated by the city.

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An Apple Store Grows in Brooklyn from Marty Markowitz on Vimeo.

Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz really wants to see Apple set up camp in Brooklyn. What with this being the epicenter of Mac worship and all, Marty thought it would be a swell idea to pitch the idea to Steve Jobs via this ridiculously campy video skit he created with his hip secretary (probably a Mac user) and sent from his brand new iPad. Because who wants to trek all the way to one of Manhattan's four Apple locations -- they're so far, so Manhattany. We Brooklynites would really prefer to drop a couple grand without crossing the East River.

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Score one for the unions. A public event celebrating Black History Month was supposed to be held at the Bronx Museum of the Arts this evening. But the UAW Local 2110, which organizes local museum workers, went out of contract with the Bronx Museum last summer, and claims management is trying the break the union, "violating the basic civil rights of its own workers," etc.

Local 2110 planned a rally to protest the Black History Month observance, which Bronx borough president Ruben Diaz Jr. was scheduled to attend. But they've called their rally off because Diaz refused to cross the picket line, his office confirms.

Diaz has arranged for the event to be held instead at the Andrew Freedman Home at 166th Street and the Grand Concourse. Local 2110 is asking its membership to send Diaz thank-you notes.

Hot97 morning show host Cipha Sounds sprayed a fusillade of doubt on the city's gun buyback program yesterday, telling listeners during a news brief that at last weekend's Bronx buyback event, which collected 1,186 weapons, the NYPD photographed and compiled a list of participants.

Maybe he expected to spur some call-ins with that charge, but he probably wasn't expecting one from the Bronx Borough President.

This morning, Bronx Beep Ruben Diaz, Jr., who promoted the program, refuted the host's paranoiac commentary in a call to the station's Cipha Sounds and Rosenberg show.

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Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, who succeeded Guy Molinari in 2002 and just won a third term, tells the Advance he'd like to be succeeded by local councilmember James Oddo.

"When I make a commitment," says the Beep, "you can put it in the bank and get interest."

That should please Oddo, who's been collecting money for a Beep campaign since 2007.

We approve, and not just because this would break the pattern of Staten Island Borough Presidents with names beginning in Molinar (though if the delightfully ill-spoken Jim Wyne gets back into the race, all bets are off). Neither is it because we like Oddo's doctrinaire Republican politics. But we love his way of expressing himself.

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Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz's last campaign mailer has for its text only a headline, "Marty Markowitz: As Brooklyn as They Come!," a terse invocation to vote, and one quote from the Beep: "If I've made you proud of being a Brooklynite, if I've improved your life even a bit and put a smile on your face... the best is yet to come." Nonetheless it is a gatefold, showing dozens of pictures of Markowitz posing with constituents, celebrities, and politicians, and striking funny poses. Basically his pitch is that he is quite a character -- he even has his own bobblehead! --and our lives would be a little grayer without him. The fun-loving pol, having gotten local businessman Eugene Myrick thrown off the ballot in the primary, faces Republican Marc D'Ottavio in Tuesday's election.

To our surprise, Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro has a challenger in this year's race, Democrat John Luisi, who has not only collected expected labor endorsements but also the backing of the local Independence Party, the Lenora Funlani org which has also endorsed Mayor Bloomberg and received a quarter million dollars from him. (Update: Not so! Despite the Advance report, Molinaro, not Luisi, is endorsed by the Independence Party.)

Luisi gets a bit of press in the Staten Island Advance today, arguing with the current Beep over the slow restoration of the National Lighthouse Museum in St. George. Luisi argues that the Museum should be fast-tracked to draw tourism to the Island, an issue of some concern. Molinaro responds that Luisi is "the least-informed person I've ever seen run for any office at any time of my life."

Despite his gift for repartee, Molinaro has refused to debate Luisi, even when personally challenged by the candidate ("Why should I debate you? I don't have to debate you")...

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The Brooklyn Paper tells us the borough is taking resumes for its Poet Laureate position. Effusive Beep Marty Markowitz says the replacement for the recently deceased Ken Seigelman should be a "fine poet" and an "enthusiastic ambassador of poetry and literacy." Paying gigs for poets, or even non-paying gigs, being scarce, they should expect a flood of applicants. The BP proposed a short list back in June, but we hope Markowitz and his literary panelists will consider outside-the-box contenders, like this guy, or the anonymous lunatic who dropped copies of his anti-Obama poem from the top of the Metrotech Building in September ("Leave this house, once graced by Reagans/Take the liberals, commies, Satans and pagans"). Though if Sharon Mesmer, author of Annoying Diabetic Bitch and Holy Mother of Monkey Poo, gets the gig, as some have demanded, we won't squawk.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. (pictured left) and Plinio Ayala (right), CEO of Bronx non-profit Per Scholas, have 1,000 previously-owned laptops, and they'll sell them to you for $275 each.

As part of the Beep's "Smart Start to the School Year" program, Diaz and Ayala got donors, including Con Edison and the Internal Revenue Service, to collect and contribute the laptops; Per Scholas refurbished them, making it possible "for these computers to be available to many Bronx families who would otherwise be unable to afford them," says Diaz.

You don't have to prove residency to get one. (Details below the fold)...

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Way back in October, the Willets Point Industry and Realty Association, a group strenuously opposed to the city's attempt to throw their businesses out of Willets Point so it could be redeveloped, accused former Queens borough president Claire Shulman of being an unregistered lobbyist for the Bloomberg Administration and the Economic Development Corporation on that issue. At the time, a spokesman for Shulman admitted to the Queens Gazette that she was a lobbyist and that she was going to revise the paperwork of her organization, the Flushing Willets Point Corona Local Development Corporation, to reflect that.

For their report today on Shulman's possibly illegal lobbying efforts on Willets Point, the Times questions city officials, who insist they weren't paying her to lobby -- though during the Willets Point campaign Shulman was "promising to meet with every member of the City Council as it prepared to vote on the plan last fall," says the Times...

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