Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council remain on the track to butt heads over reforming the city’s restaurant grading system.

Earlier this week, Mr. Bloomberg held a press conference to tout health safety improvements since the new system was implemented and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn held an event to demonstrate the excessive and confusing punitive aspects of the system. On John Gambling’s radio show this morning, Mr. Bloomberg casually dismissed efforts to reform parts of the system.

“If you want to have the restaurants be dirtier, have more mice and cockroaches and all that sort of stuff, lower the fines. Something like 72% … have A’s, so it isn’t hard to get,” he answered when asked the City Council hearing on the subject. ”The standard, even if it’s hard to get — saying you should have a clean kitchen and sell healthy food — it’s not something that should be negotiated.” Read More