At the armory  ribbon cutting ceremony, a buoyant Bill De Blasio spoke with me and a 10th Street resident about the 64 new parking meters on Seventh Avenue above 10th Street.

"I was walking on Seventh Avenue one day and I saw the meters and I said, What the…?" De Blasio told me. Clearly he knew nothing about it in advance.

So, the Department of Transportation installed 64 parking meters on Seventh Avenue without warning neighborhood residents—and politicians.

"And there was no process," De Blasio said. "There has to be a process. You talk to residents, you talk to merchants. You have a community meeting."

He talked about the process that went into the rejection of the proposal to turn Seventh and Sixth Avenues as one-way streets and the community’s input into the successful plan to put a bike lane on 9th Street.

In this case, the DOT just surprised the neighborhood with absolutely no warning. Like no one was going to notice. Come on, parking is everyone’s hot button issue. Car owners spend way too much  time parking their cars not to notice. Adding 64 meters to Seventh Avenue spaces that were previously Tuesday/Thursday spaces. Not good.

"They did everything wrong," De Blasio said about the DOT. "It was wrong all around.

For now, he has formally asked the DOT to discontinue use of the meters and has asked them to organize a neighborhood meeting.