Transcript: Mayor Adams Holds In-Person Media Availability

September 3, 2024

Video available at: https://youtu.be/EqxcGncVWm0

Deputy Mayor Fabien Levy, Communications: Good morning, everybody. My name is Fabien Levy and I serve as deputy mayor for Communications for the City of New York. Thank you for joining us for our weekly in-person media availability. 

Keeping New Yorkers safe and making our city more affordable, that's our mission every single day and drives us every single day. That work takes all of us, every agency, every office, every deputy mayor, commissioner and executive director, which is why the mayor has once again convened senior leadership here at City Hall to tell you more about these efforts. 

As always, we look forward to taking your questions and addressing the issues that are top of mind for New Yorkers. So joining us today, we have Mayor Eric Adams, First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, Chief of Staff Camille Joseph Varlack, Chief Advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom, Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development and Workforce Maria Torres-Springer, Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi, Deputy Mayor for Strategic Initiatives Ana Almanzar, Chief Counsel Lisa Zornberg, and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Tiffany Raspberry. So I'm pleased to now turn it over to Mayor Adams.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thanks. Thanks a lot, Fabien. It's hard to believe summer is over. A lot of sad faces on Thursday, kids get back to school. So we're looking forward to a great school year. It just falls in line with the keeping these children safe around the schools. Really happy with the 71 sites that we're going to have for you're late to class today. 

Remind me of me sneaking in the room. The 71 Open Streets, just a good concept to allow the children to play outside and keep the streets safe around the school. And we really wanted to focus on the cannabis shop. Many of them were targeting our young people. You know, some of you covered some of the stories and we witnessed how the colorful packaging really was zooming in on our young people. We're really proud Sheriff Miranda and his team to close a thousand illegal cannabis shops and being able to burn four tons of the illegal product really shows that we started out when we got the authority from the state, the expanded authority, we're zeroing in on this problem. It's so important. 

Two of the shops actually were shut before and they reopened. It just goes to show that it's just a revolving door that we have to stay on top of and that's why police, they were crucial to this operation because it's part of routine patrol to look at those sites that were closed and if they were reopened illegally. We're going to continue to move forward, but we didn't stop on that day. 

On last Tuesday, we had inspected 100 percent of illegal cannabis shops known to us. But every day, we're continually being out there and we're going to make sure that it's going to reach the goal that we want with $64 million worth of illegal products removed off our streets. It is so important. There's still more work to do, 800 pounds of illegal products with an estimated value of more than $1 million on Friday night, we were able to seize. So Sheriff Miranda and his team is really out there doing the job that we're looking forward for them to continue to do. 

We were proud last week, early childhood, and this is a phenomenal feat that is really, I don't think folks really understand the magnitude of it. D.M. Ana Almazar and her team, for the first time ever in New York City, and we say that a lot, early childhood education seats were extended to 100 percent of families who applied to 3K on time. 100 percent of the families who applied to 3K on time received seats, and that is exactly what we stated. And we went beyond that, thousands of families who did not apply on time, we continued to find seats for them, and we found seats for many. And it's a moving target, because people sign up every day, so you continue to make sure it's done correctly. 

And despite that the applications tripled from five years ago, from 14,000 in 2019 to more than 45,000 during this school calendar year, our administration, we met the demand, and with 9,600 additional children who did not apply on time, we're also giving seats with a total of 52,600 seats, just a real awesome task to have accomplished as we continue to move forward. 

When we were at 94 percent, people kept asking, when are you going to get to 100 percent, 100 percent, we said we're going to get there, and we knew we were going to get there, hats off to you, D.M., for making it happen. And it's because we put the money in, $100 million, additional dollars, and we added over 1,500 seats when we identified areas where seats were not located, and the 450 seats for special education. 

We knew we could get it done, and when you add that to what D.M., First Deputy Mayor Wright did, and pushing and fighting in Albany with Ingrid and Tiffany of going up to Albany to decrease the cost of child care from $55 a week for those who make $55,000 or less down to less than $5 a week, this is a continuation of really supporting families in the manner that we believe is important. So it's clear, when our city's safe, affordable, and livable for working class people and all New Yorkers. Fabien, I'll turn it back over to you.

Deputy Mayor Levy: Thank you, mayor. All right.

Mayor Adams: How are you? Good seeing you marching yesterday. 

Question: We were marching. So today I have my Gen Zer here from the platform, from the Reset Talk Show. He's going to pose the first question. I'll pose the second question. Go ahead, DeAndre. 

Question: Hello, good morning. 

Mayor Adams: How are you? 

Question: I'm great. How are you? 

Mayor Adams: Good, Good. 

Question: My name is [DeAndre Dazeer,] I'm with the Reset Talk Show, as J.R. mentioned, and I'm a faculty member of the Juilliard Pre-College and a graduate student at Columbia University. And I mention that because I'm sort of in a dual position of, of course, being in the hot seat as a teacher and being in the hot seat as a student and seeing what's going on. Rachel Wolfe, last week, of the Wall Street Journal, published another statistical retelling of why the American Dream is so out of reach for most people and how it's particularly targeted toward young people because, of course, that's coupled with the fact that a lot of corporations and jobs are taking away the fact that you need a bachelor's education to apply for the position. The fact that housing is so expensive, fear of AI taking over. 

What should I and what should New York be doing, rhetorically, to tell these high schoolers, you should be doing education. Maybe not necessarily college, but there is something for you. I know we've been doing, hey, college isn't for everyone, we all understand that. The kids are very smart and they are aware of that, too. But what is for them? Vocational schools are also, even these days, out of reach. So when, when my students come to my office hours and they say, hey, I'm really struggling because, you know, depression is also up, and I say, well, things worked out for me, just because things lined up and I got lucky. Should I just tell them, flip a coin, so you can flip another coin, so you can flip another coin, and then maybe it'll work out? What more can we be doing, as I mentioned, rhetorically, for these kids? And the second question.

Mayor Adams: First of all, I clearly realize that you are a college professor. You know, so that's good. But go ahead, J.R.

Question: The second question is, Labor Day marks or signals the end of the summer. Yes. You know, yesterday was my senior day carnival, festive time. We were all out there, great, great event. But of course, there was a shooting where five people were shot. Could you update us on that and on the families?

Mayor Adams: Yes. First, I want to answer the question about the future. I think cities should look towards New York and what we are doing, leaning into. We want this to be the A.I. capital of the country. 

The governor agrees, Chancellor Banks, in what we're doing. Instead of being fearful of the future, we should be prepared for the future. And we also realize that there are many jobs that are available that should not require a college degree. DCAS looked at some of those jobs and we removed the college requirement from them. And we are getting ready to take some new bold steps that I think is going to be the first time in the country. 

We're going to finalize how we continue to expand employment opportunities. And we didn't sit back. When we saw Black unemployment and Hispanic unemployment were at levels that were too high. We witnessed a 30 percent decrease in both those areas. We knew that for the first time, Black unemployment was less than 8 percent since I believe 2019. And we know we have to go out and meet people where they are. The team, we have been doing hiring halls where we're going into the community and we're seeing good results from doing so. But we have to remove the barriers that are preventing people from number one, employment, number two, enrolling into college, and number three, believing that because they made mistakes in their lives that they don't have opportunities in the future. And that is our focus. 

Our focus is to be on the ground and finding ways that we remove those historical barriers that have been in place that prevented people from being gainfully employed and receiving the support that they deserve. You should not have to be lucky to be successful in our city and cities across America. And too many people need luck. We want to remove that luck from the dynamic. JR, the parade, really hats off to the crisis management team, local clergy leaders, the New York City Police Department, of just what they did over the weekend, starting with J'ouvert. You know, the team was out there. J'ouvert was probably one of the safest J'ouverts we've had three years in a row. We made some major shifts from the hours to partnering with our on-the-ground team. And all the agencies come out. 

A lot of people don't realize what's taking place behind the scenes. All of our agencies come out, and we have had a real proactive approach. I think they removed 24 guns off the street pre-J'ouvert. So in one of the interviews, the person said he was out, he had his gun, because he was out, he was going to shoot someone that he had a fight, a dispute with. I think the number was 24, 25, 25 things, 25 guns off the street pre-J'ouvert. So we were proactive. This was a well-executed plan. And so some people would say, OK, well, five people were shot. Let's be clear. One nut shot five people, one. You know, we were just in that area. And so when you look at that one person who we're going to find that shot five people, you removing from the equation, you got hundreds of thousands of people that were out this weekend and really heard the call of a peaceful J'ouvert and a peaceful West Indian Day parade. So really, hats off to the teams. 

And our hearts go out to the family members. I know one person died. We go out, our hearts goes out to the family members, because you come out to celebrate. You don't want to come out and have that violence that we've seen in the past. That parade has always attracted a small element of people that wanted to commit violence. But we showed that if we come together, we can prevent that. And hats off to all those who were involved.

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce: Mayor, can I just add a couple of things on the future and jobs here in this city? Thank you for your question. What I'd like to add is that whether you're a student or someone coming and hoping to work in New York, you don't have to roll the dice, because we are not and we have not been in terms of strengthening the type of economy that we have here. And it doesn't just start with college graduates. We've made record investments in our young people. So just to name a few, record investments in programs like Summer Youth Employment Program. We have a moonshot goal for apprenticeships of more than 30,000 by 2030. And we are more than, we're close to halfway there, just a few years in. 

The mayor mentioned we've had 26 hiring halls to bring resources to the people of the city across the five boroughs, connecting close to 9,000 to jobs. And I think the proof is there. We have record high private employment. And if you look at study after study of where college graduates are going, where tech workers are relocating, at the top of the list is New York. And so our job across city government is to, as the mayor mentioned, take luck out of that equation. And that starts with making the type of generational investments across different institutions to give everyone a fair shot. 

Question: Mr. Mayor, how are you doing? 

Mayor Adams: Good. How are you?

Question: Good. Two questions for you. Did you watch the confirmation hearing of Randy Master last week? And do you have any updates as far as, are you going to wait until the vote plays out? Or are you going to pull the nomination? Do you have anyone else in mind if he's not approved? And just back to the parade. Was there any lessons learned or anything you think the NYPD could have done better, could have prevented the isolated shooting?

Mayor Adams: First with Randy, my job is clear. He and I spoke over the weekend, had a great conversation with him. Just a great New Yorker. And probably one of the best attorneys we have in the country. And you know, you don't, we're not a halfway team. We're all in. My job was to bring the best qualified candidate for the people of this city to represent us during some very challenging legal times that we're in. And we did that. 

Hats off to the editorial boards who all looked at his credentials and said, listen, this is the right guy for the right time. And so I did my job. Now in the process must go to the City Council to vote. And they will do their job. You know, I say this over and over again. That's the system we are in. And I'm pleased with our democratic system. The system calls for the different branches of government to do their job. And I did my job. I'm looking forward to him being confirmed. 

And when you come to the West Indian Day weekend and the entire team that put on the operation, you said, was there anything that we could do? How do you stop a nut from taking a gun, shooting it to a crowd of five people? We were proactive. 25 guns removed off the street just in those small days. 25 guns. No telling how many shootings we prevented. These random acts of violence. We had the police coverage there. There were new things that they did. I don't know if many people noticed, but there was an additional corridor of lanes that they implement now in our parades. So it's no longer that we have to move rapidly. There's a space for police officers to do it. So they did their job. The crisis management teams and the clergy leaders did an amazing job. Again, you remove that one shooter who shot five people, you have a parade that probably never witnessed that level of safety that we saw before. And just a quick follow-up. Yes.

Question: On the Mastro hearing, do you see any lessons there for the Council's desire to have a larger say over Advice and Consent over more positions? Do you feel like there's any, after watching the hearing, do you have any more trepidation about that proposal, I guess?

Mayor Adams: I think that I don't want to conflate the issue. I want the Council to continue to see that this is a qualified person. And if anyone walks out of the room after looking at his credentials and say that he was not qualified to be the corp counsel, I find that surprising. And so it's important for them to do their job. And long before any legislation was introduced, Ingrid was communicating with the councilmembers, And I take my hat off to him. He knew it was going to be tough. But he said, listen, I believe that I've served the city well. And I'm going to move forward.

Question: Mr. Mayor, just following up again on the West Indian Day parade. I know you talked a lot about the preparedness this year. Is there any way to prevent that one shooter, because one shooter can hurt five people and kill one. And also, back on the Mastro situation, do you feel like councilmembers treated him unfairly? There were many instances where councilmembers would cut him off and not let him finish his thought or his entire statement. It kind of seemed like their minds were mostly made up already.

Mayor Adams: I don't know if many of you remember, I saw this comment on how we communicate with each other. And we do it all the time in the street, on how we should communicate. I told you, I was not happy with how Melody, a long-term civil servant, how she was talked about. I was really not pleased when Tiffany went in to speak. We just should not talk to people in a discourteous fashion. You could ask tough questions, but people are watching us, and we should have a level of decorum. And I just think that not only for Randy, but for anyone that comes in to testify, we should show a level of decorum and professionalism on how we interact with each other. And I've noticed that on a couple of times, and I just don't feel that's how we should treat each other. 

On the side of our police cars, the CPR, that should be on the side of every building. Courtesy, professionalism, and respect, we should always display. But again, I did my job. It's time for the City Council to do their job.

Question: Mr. Mayor, this morning, [Dr. Quaden] from Doctors' Council, the senior, was on with [Kaziah Glow] on what's going on, and she expressed major concerns about the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation directive that physicians cut their time with patients from 40 minutes to 20 minutes for primary care visits. 

[Dr. Quaden] specifically pointed out that because the city's hospital takes all comers, that would be people that are sanctuaried in, paroled in, maybe never have seen a primary physician, or the uninsured people that are on the radar, that this really puts the doctors in the position of not being able to do the job they know they need to do. This, of course, happens while they're at the table right now, still haven't found a new contract.

Mayor Adams: Yes, I'm not quite sure why Health and Hospital made that recommendation. You know, I'm not a physician.

Deputy Mayor Anne Williams Isom, Health and Human Services: Yeah, it's so that they can get in more visits. So starting in the fall, all primary care visits for new patients will go from 40 minutes with the doctor to 20 minutes, and this will allow us to book more patients who are new to the system for their first visit. So we think that this is actually going to be a good thing, and it's going to allow us to see more people. We're going to be adding more physician assistants to take over things like prior authorization and care team management. So I think, I know that the negotiations are difficult right now. We're looking at that. We're trying to come to a conclusion, but we think this is going to be a good way to serve New Yorkers. 

Question: You do understand the doctors are saying that they should have been consulted. They're the people with the license and are responsible. They're the people with the license and are responsible for this issue because this humanitarian crisis was not in the city's making, and yet what's happening as a consequence of being overloaded is you're cutting down that face time, and the doctors say it's going to add to the stress in their day. 

Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom: Oh, I think we disagree a little bit, and we think that the length of the appointments hasn't been necessarily decreased. These visits have been 20 minutes for a long time, so now just making sure that we're able to get more in and working together and to make sure that we’re seeing New Yorkers.

Question: Mr. Mayor, on Mastro again. You just said you're looking forward to him being confirmed. It seems highly unlikely, but mildly, that he's going to be confirmed. Your team has spent months trying to make the case to the Council. They're not bending to it. If you still have faith that he could be confirmed, are you going to change anything in the strategy in how to communicate with the Council, how to try to convince them that he is the nominee that should be confirmed?

Mayor Adams: I did my job. Now it's time for them to do their job.

Question: Just to follow up to the shooting. Any word on a motive? Was this gang related? Were the people who were shot, were they intended targets? I know one victim I believe is 64 years old. 

Mayor Adams: No. I communicated with NYPD this morning to try to get an update. The age ranges. Sixties. It just didn't appear as though… it's not the normal profile of gang members. So we're not sure at this time. As soon as we get an update, I know that NYPD is going to give an update to find out exactly what happened. But we're going to find this person that's responsible for it. 

Deputy Mayor Levy: Just to be clear, mayor, you're talking about the age ranges of the victims. The victims.

Mayor Adams: Yes, the victims.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

Mayor Adams: Good. What's happening?

Question: Getting back into it. Following up on the West Indian Day Parade, just another thing. 

Mayor Adams: I'm sorry, the what? 

Question: The West Indian Day Parade. Ethan asked before, is there anything that can be done to prevent these one-offs, as you said, a nut job doing these things? Has there been any consideration of possibly cancelling parades like this if it continues to have violence? Typically there's something that possibly happens every year. 

Secondly, on a different note, probably for anyone who's asked this, the Post reported today on asylum seekers kind of clogging up the criminal justice system. It seems like a lot of low-level arrests, but they're in the court system. Is your administration doing anything to track these arrests when they're in the shelter system? What happens if somebody gets arrested? Are they allowed to go back into the shelter or is it waiting for a conviction? What is the process?

Mayor Adams: First, the parade. We don't surrender to crime. If someone does something to stop the Thanksgiving Day parade, do we stop the parade? Do we say all of a sudden don't do the Thanksgiving Day parade anymore? The cities won't be held captured by the numerical minority that participate in criminal behavior. We seek them out. We hold them accountable. It's imperative that the other parts of the criminal justice system don't allow them to be recurring violence in our city. 

Yes, the parade has had a history of violent encounters, but we can't say that about this weekend. J'ouvert was one of the safest we've ever witnessed. We would have had the same with this parade if we didn't have this nut job that shot five people. It goes to show you hundreds of thousands of people converge on that community. Many of them come from the Caribbean diaspora. It is an economic boost from hotels to food to material that's purchased for the costumes. It is an economic boost to our economy just as the Thanksgiving Day parade is and the other big huge parades. So the festivities as part of the city, the Police Department did the job of keeping New Yorkers safe. We're going to continue to do that.

Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom: On the second part, I was just going to say as a proud ancestor of Trinidadians, I know they would be in their graves if we were ever going to stop that parade. I remember coming when my mom first came here. It was so important to her to take us from Queens and to pack us up and put us on the subways and to be able to go to see and to experience part of our culture. But can I speak about migrants? Okay. So I so Camille might want to jump in, but I think in terms of the shelter, we don't say that you can't come back into shelter because you've gotten arrested. 

I certainly am not tracking the amount of arrests that happen. I'm sure that there is a lot of arrests that happen for a lot of different groups that come here, especially groups that might not be able to work. So I think what I'm spending my time focused on again, the Camille or the police may have a different perspective, is how do we get people connected to their asylum applications? We've done over 67,000 I think applications so far and we're continuing to do that. We want to connect people to their community based organizations so that we can get them connected to work, get them out of shelter. We've been really proud that over 150,000 people have made their way out of shelter so far, Craig. So that's what I've really been focusing on.

Camille Joseph Varlack, Chief of Staff to the Mayor: I think I would just very quickly I would add, I echo everything that D.M. also said, but there is a code of conduct in these locations and if individuals are in violation of that then they are dismissed from our care.

Question: Yeah, good morning everyone. Mr. Mayor, how are you? 

Mayor Adams: Good, how are you? 

Question: Again, following up on the parade there were so many adjustments made to the Juve celebrations where there were now floodlights and there were barricades put up for an orderly process. Would something like that be considered for the safety of the parade itself? Would you consider shortening the parade or ticket the parade, you know, not cancel it, but make some adjustments to the parade to hopefully weed out anybody, you know, with a gun or a weapon. 

And second question, have you made any progress regarding phones in schools? Will that be announced before the school starts or during the school year? Where are you with that? 

Mayor Adams: Yeah, I'll talk about the parade first. We always evaluate because remember when we came into office, J'ouvert was all night and I said there's no reason for no one should be out all night, you know, and people pushed back on us. We modified it and the results are clear. That modification made it safer and then when you, I don't know if you guys caught, we said we took 25 guns off the street pre-J'ouvert. You know, a few probably one or two during the parade. That is what you call proactive, using intelligence, using the right amount of police presence, and we had a call of, what was it, Saturday? Saturday, where there were some electors that said that we were being too heavy-handed.

Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Chief Advisor to the Mayor: And let me just add this. After every parade of that magnitude and scale, there's a decompression strategy. So NYPD, a number of people from the community, a number of people from our different agencies will sit down and have a discussion on what additional means, if any, are necessary. But as the mayor said, it's really difficult to single out an individual who has done something of that magnitude and scale. 

If it were gang related, for sure, and we knew we could say, okay, it's gang related and we can look at gangs more closely, but we really don't know, so we have to do an assessment, which the team will do, and they'll talk about what worked this year, and what steps we can do better. 

And, mayor, may I remind you, all of the stuff that was implemented started from Borough Hall. You actually started having all of those meetings as the Borough President, and had a discussion about what was necessary, and then you took it to the next level. So it's an unfortunate incident, but as Anne said, this parade is very important to a number of us. Almost a number of us on this stage are of West Indian descent or culture. My family is Beijing and Panamanian. Camille, Trinidadian. Sheena, Jamaican. I mean, the list goes on and on. We are Chinese. And this parade has been, this is the 57th parade, and even if you look at it historically, I don't believe that there's been 57 incidents. It's unfortunate. It's a high-profile parade. It's the biggest parade in the city. It drives in the most money economically for the city. So these things happen, but we have a great team, and we will do an assessment, and whatever we can do to address it, we will.

Question: Given that you wand people that are participating in J'ouvert, would you consider something like that? 

Mayor Adams: I'm sorry? 

Question: You wand people, they have the locations during the J'ouvert march. Would you consider something like that?

Mayor Adams: That's a great question. And what we found through the years, and when we look back and do an analysis of what works, what doesn't, in previous years, it was amazing how many shootings took place off the parade route. It wasn't on the parade route. And so when you look at the length of the parade, and when you look at the number of people and the police personnel, you have to, how do you manage your personnel? 

Because remember yesterday, not only did we have that large parade with thousands of officers assigned, we had 7,000 people walking through the streets with flares and smoke bombs that we had to respond to also. And that attracted many people. We've arrested four people. Three of the people we arrested were not from New York.

Deputy Mayor Levy: Just hold on one second. I just want to point out, Juliet, a couple of things also. So this year on the parade route itself, while the mayor talked about proactive, they took off ten guns off the parade route itself. That's more than last year. Remember, that's in context of over 18,000 we've taken off the streets since the start of this administration. If we hadn't done that, there'd likely be more shootings on our streets. 

We're passing stricter gun laws in this city than anywhere else in the country. If we didn't do that, there'd likely be more shootings. We're going after gun traffickers. If we didn't do that, there'd be more shootings on our streets. So there's a lot of proactive stuff that the mayor didn't even mention here that the NYPD is doing here.

Question: Just on the phone question… 

Mayor Adams: Yes. Nothing has changed from I think last week, was asked, we have to get it right. What I don't want to do is to implement and then change. And there's a lot of strong feelings around this. Trust me. But making the right decisions and making sure we can get it right is what we're doing. We're looking at best practices in other schools who have banned [cell phones]. There are schools who have banned already. We want to get it right. 

I think that our model is going to be able to help the entire country with a larger school system. But we've got to get it right. I'm not there yet. When I feel we've got it right and I've done enough research, I've got enough buy-in and engagement, then we will make a decision on moving forward. Trust me. As soon as we do it, all those people who are saying we should do it are going to be jumping up and down saying, what are you doing? Why are you doing it? I have a master's in the public administration, but I have a PhD in New Yorkers.

Question: I want to ask you two questions. Today Linda Sun who previously worked for Governor Hochul and Congresswoman Grace Meng who was indicted by the Eastern District as an agent for the Chinese Communist Party. I know you traveled to China multiple times with Winnie Greco, a current staffer whose home was all surveyed by the same federal entity. She was just a volunteer in the Brooklyn Borough President's Office. 

I'm curious, what kind of due diligence did you do on those trips to ensure… I know you visited all over the country. I know she had a lot of connections there. What kind of due diligence did you do and do you do now as mayor to vet both your staff who maybe has connections to various foreign governments, whatever the connections may be, and even when you're traveling? 

My second question, I know you praised some of the editorial boards for their support of Randy Mastro. A few days ago, the New York Post editorial board characterized what the City Council's 11-hour hearing as an attempt at lynching. I didn't know if you agreed with that characterization of what you call as part of the process.

Mayor Adams: I don't quite understand that. I've answered this question over and over again. I did my job. Put up the most qualified candidate to be the Corporation Counsel as we deal with these challenging times and legal issues. It's now time for the City Council to do their job and confirm Randy. I think it will be a win for our entire city. We're going to have one of the most qualified, well-diverse and well-rounded legal minds to protect the city. 

[Crosstalk.]

Right now, I want the Council to vote and confirm Randy. I think that those who are outside observers and saw what happened, they're going to weigh in on what took place. My job is to put up the best candidate, and that's what I did. We do our due diligence to look into the topics that you just mentioned

Question: [Inaudible.]

Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Chief Advisor to the Mayor: You don't take a trip unless it goes through conflict of interest. If they approve it, then we assume that it's fine. This is all new. We never knew about people being agents of the government. That was never brought to our attention. When we go on a trip, anyone on this panel, it goes through legal, and it goes through conflict of interest. If they approve the trip, we think that it's legal. We're not lawyers.

Question: I have two questions. Number one, the school is going to be open tomorrow.

Mayor Adams: I'm sorry.

Question: The school. 

Mayor Adams: The school is Thursday, right? Today is Tuesday. Okay, is it tomorrow? Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry.

Question: The COVID is spreading all over. Is there any guideline for students? Because there is no guideline for masks now, and then the parents, they need to have some kind of guidance in order to protect their kids, number one. 

Number two, there is [inaudible] yesterday, which is all new New York taxis must be wheelchair accessible. What is the city position on this?

Mayor Adams: Okay. I didn't get that. The second question?

[Crosstalk.]

Mayor Adams: Taxi, wheelchair accessibility. Got it. Camille, you want to go into the schools, or Anne in the COVID? 

Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom: I bet you we're going to say the same thing, which is that there is no real new guidance, because this is going to be our new normal, and that we want people to go out. The vaccines are available. You can go on Vaccine Finder, or go to your local pharmacy and make an appointment. 

We think everybody definitely should make an appointment and get an updated vaccine, and if you're not feeling well, if you have sniffles, if you don't think, you should stay at home so that we're not spreading it, because I think it's right. We're all back. I read an article today. We're back at work. We're back in restaurants, right? Everybody's having a good time, so we just have to make sure that we're taking those precautions, and the same thing for kids as they're going back to school.

Question: What about the masks?

Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom: No masks. I think people, go ahead, Camille.

Joseph Varlack: We follow the CDC's guidance, and the Department of Health will work in partnership with New York City Public Schools and make sure that the families, the teachers, everyone, all of our professionals have the right guidance.

[Crosstalk.]

Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, Operations: I'm happy to. The order that came out recently was in relation to a settlement that was reached over a decade ago at the end of the Bloomberg administration, where the Taxi and Limousine Commission agreed to ensure that half of the yellow medallion taxi fleet would be wheelchair accessible. 

A lot has changed since then. Number one, one of the biggest changes has been during the interim period we have extended wheelchair accessible requirements to the entire industry so that's over 80,000 to 100,000 vehicles, that's Uber and Lyft, and they're required now to pick up people that ask for a wheelchair accessible vehicle within a period of time. Usually that's less than ten minutes. There's nowhere else in the country that you will get on demand wheelchair accessible service at those levels, and that's a level that we're constantly working to improve. So it's been an absolute life-changing policy change for people that use wheelchairs to get to where they need to go, work, class, social commitments, and not have to be at the mercy all the time of Access-A-Ride. 

On the taxi side, we've worked very well to ensure that we meet the 50 percent accessibility requirement. TLC is a regulator of a private industry, the medallion industry. There's been a lot of changes there, and the accessible vehicles are much more expensive than standard vehicles, so the TLC has set up reimbursement programs where sometimes up to $30,000 is given to the medallion owner to help them purchase the vehicle, and additional money is paid to everyone who drives an accessible vehicle, as well as extending the retirement dates of those accessible vehicles. 

Because it is a market, not a service that we provide directly. There has been less interest in bringing on new medallion taxi cabs that are accessible, and as a result we don't have 50 percent of the accessible active taxis that are 50 percent of our accessible, of our fleet that's accessible. We do have thousands and thousands of accessible taxis, which is so much larger than what the state was in 2013, where it was a handful. So we're going to work with the industry to ensure that every new hack-up is to an accessible vehicle. The only difference between today and yesterday is that previously the medallion owners basically was every other hack-up would be accessible, and now to accelerate the conversion, it'll be every hack-up until we reach 50 percent of the active.

Question: Mr. Mayor, thank you for taking all these questions on the parades. I do think it's an important issue. Someone gets killed, shot to death, you know, 2:30 in the afternoon, and you posed a question to us, what compels someone, and could it be, right or wrong, that someone thinks it is fine to go get an illegal gun, carry it illegally, there's a low likelihood they'll be caught, and if they are caught, the punishment will be so light, and that they can actually use it. Do you think that that is the case? People do think that the punishment is simply not there, or the balance is in favor of using that gun? 

And then just secondly, I was at the security briefing with Chief Maddrey. A lot has changed since I went to the parade like 10 years ago. I live in Crown Heights, and like the wanding, for instance, and you have the drones, but what else then can there be done? It sounds like you're saying you're doing everything you can. Is Strategic Response Group involved in these plannings as well, I guess the better question is?

Mayor Adams: I'm sorry?

Question: NYPD Strategic Response Unit, I know they're only for protests, but when you're seeing violence like this, are they brought in in the parade planning?

Mayor Adams: I think the best person I can answer that is chief, Commissioner Caban, and Chief of Department Jeff Maddrey on who they pull in. I know a parade of this magnitude and some of the history, everyone is in the room coming up with real good ideas and solutions, and those ideas and solutions got us to where we are now. 

We found that we were responding too slowly to get guns before they get on the route. That's why we got 25 guns off the street and 10 along the parade route. So our response has always been what happened, as Ingrid indicated, what happened the year before, what can we do differently? And you see a different modification each year, different evolution. We'll do some different things this time around next year to make sure that we just continue to stay ahead of the bad guys. 

But I think you alluded to something that I think is important. There is an energy out there that the criminal justice system is not willing to hold people accountable when they are carrying possession and using guns. It's just become a revolving door. And I think we need to be very serious about dealing with those people who have repeated actions of violence in our city. They need to be held accountable.

Deputy Mayor Levy: I would also add, Dan, NYPD just sent me these numbers. There were 74 shootings in August, which are obviously 74 too many, but 74 shootings is the lowest number in the history since NYPD has started tracking these numbers. 

Question: What is that number? 

Deputy Mayor Levy: Shootings in the city of New York. In August. They are doing a lot of proactive work. Obviously 74 is still too many. We don't want a single person shot in the city. But their proactive efforts are working right now. 

Mayor Adams: There was a high belief that this was going to be a challenge in July and August. What Fabien just said, D.M. Levy said, the 74 is the lowest in history for the city.

First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright: Safest August.

Mayor Adams: Safest August in gun violence in the history of the city. 

Deputy Mayor Levy: Recorded history. 

Mayor Adams: Recorded history, right. I don't know what they were doing back in the 1800s. I think that what we really failed to do, one day we have to just say thank you NYPD. One day, one story needs to be thank you NYPD. These men and women, when those shots went off yesterday, they didn't run away from the shooting. They ran toward the shooting. There's something that is special about people who are willing to put their lives on the line to protect other people that they don't even know.

Joseph Varlack: Just to add to that, I think someone alluded to it earlier today. It wasn't just NYPD. In real time, you had the God squad. You had so many other nonprofit organizations, volunteers, even elected officials who were in real time identifying where the temperature may have been turned up at a particular block and they needed to deploy some additional resources to try and pull things down. They were all moving as quickly as they can in real time communicating with each other to try to be responsive to what was happening. Not just NYPD, but a shout out and thank you to all of them as well. 

Mayor Adams: Hi, Mr. Mayor. On the 3-K front, two questions. On the 3-K front, when do you imagine you'll be able to say 3-K is universal the way we talk about 4-K as being universal? 

Secondly, in February, after it was reported that the Knightscope K5 robot was no longer being deployed in the Times Square subway station, you guys said that you were looking for a new place for it to be deployed. I'm just curious how that thinking is going and whether you foresee it having a useful place in New York City.

Mayor Adams: Camille, You want to do the universality?

Deputy Mayor Ana Almanzar, Strategic Initiatives: I'll take the 3-K. As the mayor mentioned in the opening this morning, we have made offers that are unprecedented to the entire history of 3-K. We made more offers than ever before. This year, the number of applicants was triple from that of 2019. It went from 14,000 to 43,000 or so. Of that, today we can say that we offer 100 percent of the families a seat for those who applied on time. 

We also offer, and the mayor mentioned this, 9,600 families who didn't submit an application on time a seat this year. We do have a number of them who are waiting. We're working on those families day in and day out to make sure they find a seat. Working with providers as well to make sure that they work off those waiting lists. As families accept those seats from the waiting list, we can move those families who are waiting for a seat into those spaces. 

We also work with New York City Public Schools to make sure that as of today, we have made offers to 52,600 families throughout the entire system just for 3-K. And we're talking about a system entirely for early childhood that's over 150,000 families. That's the size of a city, I would think the  mayor would say, throughout the entire system. We do work day in and day out with our teams from ACS, HRA, DOHMH, New York City Public Schools to make sure that all the changes that we can make to the system adjustments are made throughout the system. 

We know there's work yet to be done and we are working together to make sure that happens as well as I work with the City Council in looking at every single corner that we can change and adjust and bring more funding as we did for our special ed seats, the 25 million extra in addition to the 25 million that was there, 50 million total, for this year. And looking at the system and seeing that we initially had a prediction of 300 seats for our early childhood education special ed and we're able to start opening 450 of those and looking at it throughout the entire year to make sure those kids with special needs as well find the seats when they come in looking for it.

Question: As far as universality is concerned. 

Deputy Mayor Almanzar: We are engaging as part of our 10 year plan with a group of advisors from the system that are not part of New York City Public Schools or the city itself and looking at every possibility of what we can do to make sure that we offer seats to every family that needs one and that applied on time.

Mayor Adams: We came a long way. 14,000, 2019. 14,000, 2019. Hats off to former Mayor de Blasio for understanding how early childhood education is crucial, but from 14,000 to 52,000 there's an evolution and we are very much moving towards that evolution of accomplishing that task and we're looking forward to doing that.

Question: And on the K5 … 

Mayor Adams: Yeah. We have it in a new assignment. Once it goes through its pilot we're going to respond to that but it has a new assignment right now. 

[Crosstalk.]

Mayor Adams: You said teach another robot?

[Crosstalk.]

Mayor Adams: We have it on a new assignment and I want that assignment to be able to play out. You know we have it on a new assignment and once it goes through the pilot we roll out exactly its new assignment. 

Question: Hi mayor. Sorry to be late to class. I do have a more substantive school question but a quick button on parade first. Just for our knowledge you talked about the resources being brought to bear the prevention, the 25 guns for J’ouvert and then moving into Carnival. Is there any other parade or event where you have to bring these sort of resources to bear and then again I did have a school question after that.

Mayor Adams: Yes. You would be surprised. Some of the parades you think are without any additional resources one of the most peaceful parades call for some of the greatest level of resources because of the external factors that are involved. But yes, many of these parades you have to have a great deal of resources. 

Even if you look at the celebration we do on New Year's. We wand people. That's a huge amount of resources. This year we had to change the Israeli Day Independence Day parade. That took an awesome amount of resources because of the external factors. So yes. We look at the events and then we make the determination of the resources we need. 

Now what I'm pleased about when my first year I made it clear that we were not properly deploying our resources and many of you who have attended these parades you will see along the block every three feet you'll see a police officer. That was just a waste of manpower and we cut that down. If you did the Western Indian Day parade you saw a different deployment of police officers they were able to respond faster to incidents. 

There was an incident when we were crossing I think Nostrand Avenue that there was a fight three or four people were fighting and the police officers were able to get there quickly stop it from turning into a large event. As Camille pointed out we're using just some good tactics that a lot of good intel, a lot of the crisis management team, a lot of our clergy, a lot of our nonprofits but yes. All of these parades are unique and there's a different level of resources and other parades call for more resources believe it or not than this parade does.

Question: On schools I wanted to read you two sentences from a public school teacher in Gowanus who posted on Nextdoor. “Many of my students are currently in shelters which means they do not have the school supplies are in reach for them.” She goes on to ask for things like sweaters and pencils and sensory tools. I mean really basic things. We know the shelter system has exploded because of the migrant crisis and the city has pledged to educate all of those kids. 

So all of that being considered, is the city in your view doing enough to support teachers with these kids that are just coming to school without exaggerating with nothing and are the teachers then able to focus on the kids that do show up with everything but they're so busy with the kids that have these very real needs. Is the city doing enough?

Mayor Adams: I always say everyone knows that Tracy was a former teacher and principal that if teachers only had to teach children one and one equals two, it would be a great day. But the reality is by the time these babies get in the classroom their needs are so great. Some of them are dealing with just the stress of getting to school, of not having some of the basic supplies that many of us took for granted, of just having that nice backpack with a ruler and stuff to write with. 

The reality is everyone needs to chip in. Hats off to that individual who posted what they're doing and hats off to those principals. We have a lot of principals and teachers who have volunteered and stepped up to the moment. Every New Yorker can do something. We have organized, participated with backpack giveaways throughout the entire year. That goes a long way when you give a child a backpack and have some of the basic supplies that the family members won't have to go in and purchase particularly in the shelter.

So this is a real call for all New Yorkers that when we go into buy for our children to start school pick up three or four different items and drop them off to the shelter. Buy that windbreaker. Buy that pair of sneakers. We have spent 5.6 billion dollars on this crisis. We are all going to have to step up and help. Whoever that individual is that posted that, I really thank them and others should follow her lead because that's what it's going to take.

Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom: Mayor I want to say last Thursday we had the Episcopal Bishop, Bishop Matt Heyd and we had the Interfaith Council. We have Ruth Messinger and District Three. There's so many people who have been stepping out. They gave out 5,000 backpacks last Thursday to kids and there's just been a lot of again faith based organizations, community based organizations who have been stepping up and doing that, parent association councils at the kids schools so I think your point is exactly spot on.

First Deputy Mayor Wright: I want to go back if I can and just address two things just to put some things in perspective. There's been a lot of questions certainly about the parade and the police response but just put into perspective we have 35,000 police officers when fully staffed. Hundreds of thousands of people at one parade. Tens of thousands of protesters across the city in addition to regular police work every single day and trying to keep 8.9 million New Yorkers safe. That's huge in terms of the work that's done every day and as Camille pointed out we do it in partnership with the community so I think that's really important to keep into perspective. 

The second thing in terms of perspective is around early childhood education. We just had the Olympics and you get points for degrees of difficulty with diving and gymnastics and it's easier to get 14,000 people in seats than 52,000 and if you have a false, if you say universal is a specific number you missed the point. If people need it do they have it and that's what we're aspiring to do.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: How are you? 

Question: My colleagues have a follow up to this investigation they've been doing on 700 women who filed lawsuits under the Adult Survivors Act against about sexual assault and rape that they experienced at Rikers and what they've shown in a story today is that at least five of them are still, five of the guards are still employed by the Department of Corrections and three are actually still working at the women's jail. 

I wanted to see how you respond to that and what actions you think the city should take, should these people still be working at Rikers for example or should they even still be employed, should they be put on some kind of leave until the Law Department completes its review and will the city initiate a separate investigation apart from what the Law Department is doing?

Mayor Adams: I think that, right, in the Law Department and the Department of Corrections the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections will have determination on how to move forward. I just saw that story. It is there. We have to allow investigations to take their course that's important but you don't want to keep people in harm's way and the Law Department and DOC will make that decision.

Question: Hi, how are you doing? 

Mayor Adams: How are you? Good. 

Question: I have a question, Elizabeth Street Garden is still an issue it seems and the [inaudible] date is September 10th so I'm wondering when you are planning to go there to see for yourself what this garden or park actually looks like? 

The second question is I was there yesterday and I was talking to the seniors that live in section 8 housing next to the garden and they are devastated because it seems like they're going to lose their courtyard. They've been living there for 42 years they're old American Italian residents and they feel like the city has not communicated with them at all and listened to their concerns.

Mayor Adams: We had a great meeting with those who are advocating for the garden to remain there and not the 100 percent senior housing. It was great to have my girlfriend Norman Siegel who was representing them and so it was a good healthy conversation. 

I'm going to stop by and see the garden as I committed to and told them I would do and the Deputy Mayor Maria Torres Springer is going to do the follow up conversations and then we will be able to announce based on what happened with that. We know there's a lot of passion on both sides of this issue just as there's passion with Jacobi Hospital building. There's passion in Susan District for the shelter. There's passion wherever. Wherever we build housing there's passion. 

But I cannot make it any clearer to New Yorkers. I have two primary goals in the city. One, the city must be safe. Must be safe. Two, I have to make sure people are housed. That's it. Everything else is a luxury and if we can find ways to find win-wins as we accomplish these goals I'm more than willing to do so. I sit down with people all the time and say show me how do we get to a win-win that I could keep us safe and I can house New Yorkers and I don't believe the false premise that housing in green space cannot co-exist and open space cannot co-exist. I don't believe that. It can co-exist and that's our goal to do so. 

I got 60 something thousand people living in the shelter, 150,000 migrants and asylum seekers are going to be looking for shelter and I get calls every day, all day of seniors who are in tears because they don't believe they will have a roof over their heads. I got to put New Yorkers in housing and by doing so I'm often the bad guy for doing so but I got to do it. I got to get it done.

Question: Right, but it seems like … 

[Crosstalk.]

Mayor Adams: Hold on, let her finish because she's always in the back.

Question: It just seems like there's another property on Howard Street. 

Mayor Adams: I'm going to need that also. I'm going to need that property and more. This is what many people are not fully embracing. When we talk about housing, people often say well why don't you move it down the block and I keep trying to tell people I need that property down the block too. I need the property down the block. 

I have the city agencies doing analysis of every piece of real estate we have that we can build on top of. We're looking at parking lots that city agencies have that we can build on so it's not like okay if you don't take this spot we're going to give you that spot down the block. I need that spot too and I often say thanks for letting me know about it because I may have missed it because I need it. We have a 1.4 percent vacancy rate folks. Why is this not resonating with people? 1.4 percent vacancy. I got to put New Yorkers in housing. I don't think anyone in this room is homeless.

Mayor Adams: How are you? 

Question: Good, how are you?

Mayor Adams: Good. 

Question: Tompkins Square Park question has nothing to do with drug dealing or shootings or deaths. Parks Department is a big renovation of the playground. That was always known as a skateboarder's playground. Now there's a running track painted on there. A lot of the skateboarders and this isn't just a local issue. 

Nike has branded some of the skateboarders sneakers and everything so it's a world famous skateboarder park and they're worried that it will not be a skateboarder's park and there's also baseball and diamonds in there that they play. They're worried that they're not going to get it. It's now being billed as a multi-purpose asphalt park. Does that mean some of the skateboard people are going to get moved out? Are they still going to have access and are the baseball diamonds going to be painted in there? Why are they putting in a running track as part of the renovation?

Mayor Adams: Meera, are you familiar with that?

Deputy Mayor Joshi: Yeah. I mean I can follow up specifically with Tompkins Square Park but I do want to note as we said in our State of the City we're looking to become the East Coast Skateboard Capital so we have five parks slated to become skate parks, one in every borough, and we're looking to do them on an accelerated timeline. You've identified something that's really important to us. 

Skateboarding is attractive to a diverse group. It's also something that's very attractive to many of our youth and it's a way for them to get out and enjoy our public space because they don't all want to play pickleball. They want to skateboard and so we want to ensure that we have parks that speak to the people that live in New York City and are out there enjoying it so I'm happy to follow up exactly on the plans there but I urge you also just to take a look just across the street underneath the Brooklyn Bridge arches where we opened up a little postage stamp of an old skateboard park and the skaters are flocking there and more to come there.

Question: So is this Tompkins Square going to be a skateboard park?

Deputy Mayor Joshi: I'm going to get an answer for you. I don't have that information immediately handy but I'm happy to follow up with you.

Mayor Adams: Yeah. We opened one in Brooklyn and was really proud to open Brower Park I think it was, right? Yep. So skateboarders should have a place to skate.