Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on Fox5's Good Day New York

March 16, 2020

Rosanna Scotto: It’s now official, city schools are closed until April 20th.

Lori Stokes: And starting tomorrow morning, bars are going to shut down, restaurants will be takeout and delivery only. That’s the order from Mayor de Blasio. He’s joining us on the phone. Good morning, Mayor.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, Lori. And just to be clear – restaurants, bars, cafes, if they serve food they can convert to takeout and pickup. So, some bars obviously do a lot of food as well. They have that option, but there won’t be folks allowed to, you know, sit down and eat or drink the way we are used to. It’s all going to go to takeout and pickup for any institution that serves food.

Scotto: What about road restrictions, Mayor? Do you foresee road restrictions here in New York City?

Mayor: It’s one of the emergency powers I have under the state of emergency, but there is no immediate plan to do that, Rosanna. We’re going to take this one day at a time, but I want to urge, you know, I see rumors all the time flying around. I need people to understand, yes, we’re in a crisis, but it’s really easy to get information. You can go to 3-1-1, you can go to the City website, nyc.gov/coronavirus. I’m giving briefings all the time and anyone who wants to not be, you know, caught up in the rumors and find out what’s really going on you can really get that information quickly. So, no, no plans for road restrictions at this point.

Stokes: Okay. Mayor, can we start to talk about the city schools and, of course, you held the press conference yesterday, how distraught you were in having to do this, but what’s the deadline to get a plan in place so that the kids are straight on it, so the teachers are trained and have an understanding, and the locations are set up? Bring us up to date.

Mayor: Yeah, that will be Monday, the 23rd. So, what’s going to happen is starting today, for the remainder of this week, Lori, any child who needs food from the schools can pick up food, breakfast and lunch, at their school. There’s just pickup, not sitting in the building and eating. And then we will by Monday the 23rd, next Monday, we will have a couple of things operational. We’ll have the distance learning operational for the first time in the history of New York City. So the online learning, and we’re going to have to build that as we go along. It’s never been attempted on this scale before, obviously. We’re going to have some specific learning centers for kids of most essential workers. That means, for example, first responders’ children, children of health care workers, children of transit workers. So, for folks who don’t have the option of leaving their kids home for the distance learning, need their kids in a particular location, we’ll be setting those up in all of the five boroughs. So that’s happening. The training for the teachers will happen on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday to get them ready to do that, starting Monday the 20th.

Stokes: Have they ever had to do that before?

Mayor: Never anything like this. I mean we have been building some distance learning capacity. There are some examples of it happening. For example, with Advanced Placement courses in New York City, to the best of my understanding. We’re talking doing this on a, you know, kindergarten to 12th grade comprehensive level for a million-plus students, nothing like that’s been attempted in New York City in our history. And we’re going to need our educators to really step up. Kids are going to need them deeply in this moment because it’s – look, we’re talking about the potential of losing not just a month but losing three months of a child’s education. This is our best hope to convert to this distance system, but we’re really going to need our educators to answer the call because our kids are – they’re in a really tough place and there’s a lot of dislocation. Kids are going to feel this crisis deeply and we need to support them.

Scotto: Alright, Mayor, we got to talk about supporting the parents, too. Lots of people tweeting me this morning, they are concerned about paying their bills, their rents, their mortgages, their credit cards. What can the City do to help these people and are you concerned that crime will go up now because people are going to be desperate?

Mayor: Well, the first part – the City right away, we’re taking a number of actions to try and support people and try and support small businesses, to try and stop and say this, [inaudible] I think we’re going on stopping evictions because obviously for folks who can’t pay the rent, the crucial question is can they stay in their apartment. We stopped all evictions from anything sponsored by the City public housing, affordable housing. We’ve asked the court system – and that’s run by the state, but we’ve asked the court system to cancel all eviction proceedings. They’ve agreed for a short period of time. We want to make that ongoing. We’ve gotten a commitment from the real estate board that they will hold off on evictions for the foreseeable future. That needs to be for the duration of the crisis.

Scotto: What about credit cards? And I mean people live, as you know, paycheck to paycheck. They’re concerned they’re not going to have enough money and they’re not going to be able to pay their bills as this goes on.

Mayor: Of course they’re right to have that concern, Rosanna, and that’s where – we’re going into a deepening crisis here. There is no way that can be addressed without federal support and federal relief on a vast scale. I said earlier this morning, this is – the only comparison here, a little bit to the Great Recession, but much more to the Great Depression where we’re going. There has to be direct federal support to put money in people’s pockets and replace the income they’ve lost. That is the only way we’re going to get [inaudible] –

Scotto: What about crime in the city? What are you going to do to make sure people feel safe?

Mayor: We’re going to do what we do every day. We have the finest police force in the country and we’ve had a few challenges, the last few months for sure, but still crime in New York City is at an all-time low compared to anytime in the last 25 years, thanks to the NYPD and everyone who works for the NYPD at the neighborhood level. We’re going to deepen those efforts. And look, our first responders have been amazing in this crisis so far. They’re going to step up. I am concerned, I’ve been blunt about it. We’re going to have a lot more teenagers, home in their neighborhood. We’re going to ask parents, they all are going to have to work hard here to make sure that their kids are doing the right thing and keep an eye on the kids. Bluntly, Rosanna, you got a lot of parents who still have to work, but a lot of parents are – no longer are going to be able to work. Hopefully they’ll be able to be home and support their kid. But NYPD will be out there as always looking for anything that we need to address. [Inaudible] absolute faith that they can keep this city safe.

Stokes: Mayor, with law enforcement, do they have a support system in place because this will be even more taxing on them?

Mayor: Yeah, absolutely. Besides all the supports that are already there, we’re going to be very careful to watch out for the health of our first responders and to make sure that there’s a lot of reinforcement ready. I mean, if you look at the real workings of the NYPD, the FDNY, they’re extraordinarily well-managed. They can always get more personnel online quickly when they need to. We’re obviously going to use overtime whenever we need to. So we’ve got a lot of capacity and I am convinced that we can handle whatever is thrown at us.

Scotto: Alright, what about alternate side street parking –

Stokes: And garbage pickup?

Scotto: What are we doing?

Mayor: So, Rosanna, excellent question. So what we’re doing is literally hour by hour we’re bringing up each new additional topic and making decisions on what stays and what goes. So that’s going to be one of the topics we talked about today at City Hall and at Emergency Management. But I do want to caution, garbage pickup is the kind of thing – and our Sanitation workers have been great – you do not want to cancel basic services if you don’t have to. We still have to keep moving as a society. We have to protect people, keep the city clean. So that’s going to be one day at a time deciding what we can hang onto and other things that have to be changed.

Stokes: Alright, Mayor de Blasio, appreciate you taking the time. I know you’re extremely busy, but bringing us up to date.

Stokes: Thank you, Mayor.

Mayor: There you go. Take care, everyone.