Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks at Calvary Baptist Church

May 1, 2016

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you so much. Good morning, Calvary.

[Good morning]

First, I want to give honor to God, without him this day would not be possible. I want to tell you, it is a joy to be back here. It has been now years that I’ve had the chance over and over again to this wonderful, warm, deeply-felt spiritual congregation; this place where people feel something for each other, feel their faith, act on their faith. And it is a family here. It is a special family. I get to go to wonderful houses of worship all over this City, but I can tell you, here, you have something special. And I think your Pastor has something to do with it.

[Applause]

First of all, my view of Pastor Hall is he can tell me I’m any height he wants and I will accept. He is a man of such good will, such warmth, such love for the congregation and the community. And I learned long ago, he has a special wisdom. And he – I’m thrilled to say we tap into that wisdom now because we invited him to be a member of our Clergy Advisory Board for the whole City of New York.

[Applause]

And he brings with him a keen sense of what communities all over this City need and what we have to do; and what we have to do better. And he mentioned a moment ago – I’m just going to say this very quickly – he said to me, and I appreciate it, what can people do to make this City better? What can they do to share in this work we’re trying to do to uplift the City and make it a fairer and better place? Everyone, every single New Yorker can participate in the changes we’re making. If you know a family with a child whose four years old in September, let them know how important it is to have that child in pre-k. If you know a family with a child in middle school, let them know that every middle school child now gets afterschool programs for free, every day during the school year.

[Applause]

If you know someone struggling with an issue of mental health – and by the way, one in five New Yorkers experiences some kind of mental health challenge each year – then tell them about the work that my wife, our First Lady, is doing to uplift all New Yorkers. It is called Thrive NYC, and it says something simple – this City should make sure that anyone with a mental health challenge gets a helping hand because there is nothing wrong with having a mental health challenge.

[Applause]

So every single person that can help us to spread the word about what we are doing can help us reach people who need that help. And we need everyone in this room to be a part of it. Now, I mentioned my wife and what she’s doing is so powerful because it is from the heart and it’s from her own experience in her life; the challenges she had with her own parents, the challenge we’ve had helping our daughter. And my wife’s spoken very, very openly and that’s part of what has given her the power to go out and say how can we help each and every person with a challenge. I got to tell you, I could not do anything that I do if I did not have beside me, Chirlane McCray.

[Applause]

And I say that very specifically because, you know, people have been very kind to us and said the old fashioned phrase, behind every great man stands’ a great women. Well, Chirlane McCray didn’t approve of that phrase. She said we need to say beside every great man stands a great woman.

[Applause]

And now, I’ll bring it back to Calvary – beside this great man, you’re Pastor, stands a great woman, your first lady and we thank her.

[Applause]

And this church under the leadership of your Pastor has done something so powerful. It’s something I really appreciate as it speaks to how we actually make this community and this City a better place; creating housing for grandparents – helping grandparents.

[Applause]

Now, we’re trying to do so much more to create affordable housing for all our seniors, but I want to dwell for just a quick moment on our grandparents; so many whom have, with such a good heart, taken up the challenge of raising their grandchildren. Maybe it wasn’t what they expected originally, but they answered the call. And we have to answer the call to help them by making sure they have the affordable housing they need. And this church is doing that, God bless you Pastor for that.

[Applause]

Now, I have a couple of things I want to tell you about, I am – here, every Sunday you talk about the good news. I have some good news from the public side – the government side that I want to share with you, but first I have to talk about the two gentlemen sitting behind me. Now, I’m going to go in order of State official and City official. The State official, as we’ve heard, I’ve known him many years. I consider him a good friend. He supported me when I ran for this office, but as you heard from Pastor, Senator James Sanders Jr. is – he’s seeking redemption brothers and sisters.

[Applause]

Now, we – we are a loving and kind people, are we not?

[Yes]

We will give him a chance – we will give him a chance to go back to Albany and address this important issue.

[Laughter]

And I’ll do all I can to help him because I think he is a good man; he has done so much good for so many communities in this City. He goes to Albany – Albany is not an easy place to fight for fairness. It’s not an easy place at all. So, I urge a little more patience on his pathway to redemption. Are you with me?

[Applause]

Luckily, I don’t have to offer that kind of comment about Councilmember Daneek Miller. He is – his soul is fully clean.

[Applause]

Councilmember Daneek Miller – I have seen this man stand up for what is right over and over again. And this is – I got to tell you, you see this in public life all the time – some people take the easy way and some people take the path of conscious. I have seen him stand up for our veterans and I have seen him stand up for working people. And over and over again do not the easy thing, but the right thing no matter what the [inaudible] and all the announcements I’m going to tell you about today – which I’m very proud to share with you – they wouldn’t happen without Councilman Daneek Miller. Let’s give him a round of applause as well.

[Applause]

So, I’m going to be very quick, but I’m going to tell you about four things and I think you will like what you hear. The first is – and I want to speak to you in this instance not just as residents of this City and people who love New York City, people who love Queens. A lot of you, I believe, are homeowners as well. And let me tell you, for homeowners all over this City, for decades and decades – and I’m a homeowner in Brooklyn – for decades and decades something happened that wasn’t fair, but guess what? Like many things that are not fair in the world, we weren’t told about it. So, we got a water bill and a lot of times it seemed like a lot of money, but what we were not told is part of our water bill wasn’t going for water. Part of our water bill was going right back into the cities general treasury. They called it for some reason a rental payment, but unfortunately you might call it a type of Three-Card Monte.

[Laughter]

It was a bait-and-switch. And we came into office – and I had looked at this issue when I was Public Advocate. We said, you know what, here’s a simple idea – people have enough challenges. It’s hard to make ends meet. This is not an easy city to live in; it’s not an inexpensive city to live in. You’ve got enough challenges, how could we help? We said people should only have to pay for water on their water bill.

[Applause]

So, I had presented that proposal to the Water Board, and if they vote my way this summer all homeowners will get $183 credit, giving them back the money that shouldn’t have been taken from them in the first place.

[Applause]

That will reach 664,000 New Yorkers. And what it means for homeowners all over the City is we’re going to save them altogether about $250 million a year – giving back to the people.

[Applause]

Now, I’m going to link to my second topic, which is also related to water but it is when water falls from the sky in the form of snow. Well, you remember the snowstorm we had a few months back?

[Yes]

The National Weather Service, at the time, said it was the second biggest snowstorm in the history of New York City. They have now re-estimated – it was literally the largest snowfall in the history of New York City. That’s what we experienced. And our Sanitation Department – I thought the men and women who do that work did an extraordinary job. And this City over a couple of days really was cleared and we could go back to our lives, but there were some neighborhoods where that wasn’t true; and a lot of them were in Queens. And we found that some of the smaller streets were not cleared the way that people deserved, so we said we had to do something about it and we figured out what the something was. Guess what? We had really small streets and we had really big equipment. And really big equipment cannot go down really small streets, especially when you have that kind of snowfall. So we are spending in this budget and we are going to ask Councilman Miller to support us in this – $21 million for the kind of equipment that can actually go down a small residential street and clear out the snow.

[Applause] 

Now I am going to continue on the theme of water. In the Bible, we read a lot about flooding. And if you live in Southeast Queens, you’ve had an experience that is a little too biblical – of flooding being a regular part of your life.

There are so many people who live in Southeast Queens, who have suffered because long ago when the City took over the water supply, something wasn’t done right. And it led to homeowners dealing with flooding, year after year after year and guess what? They had to deal with the consequences of that flooding themselves. And not only homeowners but churches, houses of worship, so many community institutions. So we said –you know what—we are not going to ignore a whole community of this city that is dealing with something that never should have happened to begin with. We are going to actually find a way to fix it. In this budget there is $1.5 billion dollars to fix and end the flooding in Southeast Queens.

[Applause]

And now I am going to take you to one last topic and it’s a different topic but it’s the one that really is the beginning of all things, which is safety. If we’re safe, if our families are safe, all other things are possible. Now when I came to this office I said we had to do something very different in this city. We had to recognize that safety and fairness have to walk hand in hand. You will remember there were many doubting Thomases who said the only way to keep the City safe was to deny some people their rights and their freedom. And it was expressed in an unconstitutional policy called Stop-and-Frisk.

[…]

In that policy in its high point in 2011 –700,000 New Yorkers were stopped, a vast majority of them young men of color. Over 90 percent of them had done nothing wrong. By all police statistics they had done nothing wrong but they were stopped and they were stopped and they were stopped and they were treated like it there was something wrong with them. And I always said there was something not only immoral but something fundamentally mistaken in this city about stopping and criminalizing –

[Yes]

young men of color because young men of color will be the leaders. And young women of color will be the leaders of this city of tomorrow and they should be treated that way with respect and with embrace.

[Applause]

So we have now reduced Stop-and-Frisk to about 25,000 stops a year and they are now overwhelmingly because there actually was a reason. An actual police reason— a suspect description or some other actual reason for stopping someone—not just a broad brush treating all communities with a negative light. Well at the same time over the last two years crime has continued to go down. Major crime has gone down 6 percent over the last two years. So we prove that you can make the City safer and fairer simultaneously.

[Applause]

Now that brought us to 2016. In the first quarter –first three months of this year, the lowest number of shootings and the lowest number of homicides of the first three months of any year in New York City history, any year.

[Applause]

But we have only just begun. We want to keep people safer in every way. We want to address not only violent crime but we want to address quality of life issues. We want to go farther. We want to make this community and all communities even better and so we heard the voices of so many people in Southeast Queens who said here’s the 105 Precinct. One of the biggest precincts in the City had to cover so many people, so much ground and there had to be something better. People said not just for years but they said for decades, we need a new precinct.

So ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to tell you that in this budget we will vote on in the month of June, we have proposed a new 1-1-6 Precinct for the people of Southeast Queens.

[Applause]

Everyone will benefit but particularly if you live in Laurelton or Rosedale or Brookville or Springfield Gardens. This precinct will simply mean faster response times to address your needs and keep you safe and that’s what we’re here to do.

[Yes]

That’s what we’re here to do. So I will conclude with this, I want to thank you again for this chance to be with you. I love this church and it’s a joy to be with you. Thank you for helping me start my birthday celebration a week early. I really want to appreciate that. Pastor you just gave me an extra-long birthday – that’s very kind. But the most important point in all of the things that I’ve talked to you about today is: the people spoke.

The people said these are the kinds of things the government should do for them. People – everyday people said we need to stop the flooding, we need our streets cleared and the snow [cleared]. We need fairness and we don’t want to be overcharged on our water bill. We need safety. We need to know the police will come when we call as quickly as possible. The people spoke for years and years and years and we are listening. We are honored to serve your needs, to hear your voices and to be your government. Thank you and God bless you all.

[Applause]