Transcript: Mayor Adams Hosts Community Conversation

December 4, 2023

Commissioner Fred Kreizman, Community Affairs Unit: Good evening. My name is Fred Kreizman. I'm the commissioner of the Mayor's Community Affairs Unit. I want to thank our host, Central Park East High School and the Principal Segura who is at table number one.

The Adams Administration has decided to be here in East Harlem, El Barrio. It's a rich culture, community spirit. It makes this a very special community, La Marqueta marketplace as well as El Museo del Barrio. We're excited to be here.

We appreciate you taking your time. And we have our commissioners here, the mayor, deputy mayors, commissioner. I'll go through the dais quickly so this way we could give you a sense of who's here on the dais.

We have, of course, the mayor of the City of New York, our First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams‑Isom, Deputy Mayor Strategic Initiatives Ana Almanzar, Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development and Workplace Maria Torres‑Springer, Deputy Mayor for Operations, Meera Joshi, DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, NYC Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue, DOB Commissioner Jimmy Oddo, Department of City Planning Chair Dan Garodnick, Department of Consumer Affairs… Consumer Worker Protection Commissioner Vilda Vera Mayuga, Department of Probation Deputy Commissioner Sharun Goodwin, Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice Director Deanna Logan, Department of Sanitation Deputy Commissioner and Chief of Staff Ryan Merola, HPD Deputy Commissioner and Chief of Staff George Sarkissian, SBS Deputy Commissioner Dynishal Gross, NYCHA Chief Operating Officer Eva Trimble, Rodent Mitigation Director Kathleen Corradi, DEP Deputy Commissioner Beth DeFalco, Fire Chief from Manhattan Michael Ajello. We have Department of Finance Taxpayer Advocate Robin Lee, Jennifer Sun from EDC.

To my right we have our esteemed Councilmember Diana Ayala… The Councilmember-elect Yusef Salaam… NYPD Deputy Commissioner Mark Stewart, DYCD Commissioner Keith Howard. We have Department of Health Mental Hygiene Commissioner Ashwin Vasan, Health and Hospitals President CEO Dr. Mitchell Katz, Mayor's Office of Community Mental Health Deputy Director Laquisha Grant, DSS Commissioner Molly Park, Office of Asylum Seekers Director and Deputy Chief of Staff City Hall Molly Schaeffer, New York City Emergency National Commissioner Zachary Iscol, Human Rights Commissioner and Chair Annabel Palma, Department of Education Chief of Staff Melissa Aviles‑Ramos, Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs Deputy Commissioner Miosotis Muñoz, Department for the Aging Executive Director Commissioner Ryan Murray and Gender‑Based Violence Deputy Commissioner Ann Patterson and Mayor's of Office People Disability Commissioner Christina Curry.

We also have the Chief of the Patrol Borough of Manhattan North in the audience Commissioner Chief Stephenson.. the CO of the 23 Precinct Deputy Inspector Scott Callahan, the CO of the 25 Precinct, Deputy Inspector Maisonet… the CO of PSA 5 Captain Chase Maneri and Assistant Commissioner of NYPD, Kaz Daughtry.

Thank you. And the run of show, we're going to give Councilmember Diana Ayala an opportunity to speak and we have the Councilmember elect Yusef Salaam speak and they'll be followed by the mayor and opening up the floor. Thank you.

Councilmember Diana Ayala: Callahan, I clapped for you. Good evening, everyone. I'm Councilmember Diana Ayala and I represent the Eighth Council [inaudible] district, which is composed of East Harlem and the South Bronx. I'm here with my neighboring councilmember elect who will be joining us in a few short weeks. I'm really excited to be here to hear from you all.

Obviously, for me, one of the things that I love most is to really be in the community hearing from my constituency about the things that are keeping you up at night because I think it becomes very difficult to share space and to get information out to the masses. So, we will do the best that we can today to get as much of the information that you're here to seek and to also listen and to try to take back some of those concerns so that collectively we can try to figure out solutions that make sense for all of us as a community.

I know that there are a lot of concerns on a host of topics, and we hope to be able to get to as many of them as possible. But if not, I know that the admin has their own process for getting back to you on responses for questions, but my office is at 105 East 116th Street. If there is a question that we don't get to today, feel free to reach out to my office. My chief of staff, Elsie Encarnacion, is here somewhere in the room. There she goes. She's very little, so.

But we always welcome the feedback. We may not always agree, but I think that the important thing is that we allow each other the space to listen, so thank you, all.

Councilmember-Elect Yusef Salaam: Yes, sir.

Mayor Eric Adams: Go ahead, brother.

Councilmember-Elect Salaam: Oh, man. May the peace, mercy and blessings from the owner of all peace, mercy and blessings be upon you. I represent the 9th District Harlem, the place I was born and raised.

It is an honor to be here before you as the councilmember elect. I can't wait to move our city forward in the City Council. I'm thankful for the mayor for bringing me here and to be here in front of you and to listen to your concerns and to also ponder them as I consider this great seed that you have placed me in.

So, I just want to say thank you. I'm here. I'll be in the streets, as they say, as the young people say, we outside. Yes, indeed. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, thank you so much. This is number 19 for us, Town Hall meetings, seven senior meetings and we did several youth meetings at the same time. And this is really the best part of the job, getting out here on the streets, and as you said, brother Yusuf, speaking, one‑on‑one with folks. Assemblyman Gibbs would have been here, but he's up at a retreat.

So, I want to… I never like avoiding the tough issues, and so I want to touch on two top issues that you have been reading about in the city. One, someone made an allegation against me 30‑something years ago. I want to be very clear, never happened. I don't even know who the person is. I don't even remember if I ever met them before.

That is not who I am. I'm a protector. I've done that for 22 years and I fought for women's rights throughout my time. And so I want to be clear, that is not me and those who know me for my days of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement who care, state senate, borough president and now I'm a mayor, you know my character, you know what I stand for.

The second is the allegation around Turkey. We are cooperating 100 percent. When I was running for office, I made it clear that the city services must move at the right pace. And if someone reaches out to my office or any one of my commissioners and ask for us to carry out our duties, we're going to do that.

I do not break laws. I do not do anything that's inappropriate. My team would tell you, I tell everyone all the time that's on my team, follow the rules, follow the rules. That is who I've always been and that is always who I'm always going to be.

It's one thing mommy said to me, baby, never tarnish the family name. And although I lost her two years ago, her lesson stays with me every day. I am a person that believes in moving this city forward, and that's what we have done, folks. That's what we have done.

If you take away all the noise and strip it down and you look at this administration, the first thing you're going to notice is that they look like you. They look like you. First Trinidadian deputy mayor, first East Indian deputy mayor, first Dominican deputy mayor, first Spanish speaker to be the Police Commissioner, first Spanish speaker to be in the Department of Correction, first Korean to be a commissioner, first Dreamer to be the commissioner, Mayor Office of Immigrant Affairs, first Jewish woman to head our intelligence division in the New York City Police Department, first Filipino to be a deputy mayor.

You go down the list and you see the diversity of my administration and you can see it right in front of you. This is the whole team that's right here and this team looks like the City of New York.

It looks like the City of New York, and they're committed and they're dedicated to the job that they're doing. The countless number of hours that they spend doing this job, go back to January 1st, 2022, crime was surging in the wrong direction. And matter of fact, I remember you and I standing together, Councilwoman, after we lost the grocery store operator where he was killed. Crime was trending in the wrong direction.

You remember the five letter word, Covid? No one wanted to come outside, uncertainty if we were going back to school or not. People were telling us, keep the school closed; and we said, no. The safest place for our children were in the school buildings and we gave family stabilities.

Our economics in the city, they said it was going to take five years for us to recover. We have more private sector jobs in the City of New York, in the history of the City of New York. People are back on our subway system. Our subway system was moving in the wrong direction. No one wanted to ride. We're back up to four million riders. Crime has decreased in the subway system. Five of the seven major crime categories in the city are down. Homicides are down, shootings are down.

You are seeing the city recover at a pace that no one thought it was going to recover. Housing programs, we're breaking records on the amount of housing that we're doing.

Soon as we cycled out of Covid, what hit us? Migrants, asylum seekers, over 140,000. Unlike other cities… I want you to Google San Francisco, Google Chicago, Google these other cities that are experiencing this. In this city, not one child or family has slept on the street in this city because of what this Deputy Mayor Anne Williams‑Isom, Harlem, has been doing.

Go look at the encampments in other cities. Go look at people are sleeping in precincts. See people are sleeping in airports, people are sleeping in hospitals. Not in this city. People have come from all over the country and internationally to watch the humanitarian action that we are carrying out in New York City of how we're treating people with dignity and respect.

The coldest day of the year, I slept in a shelter with asylum seekers and talked to them one‑on‑one. You know what they asked for? They don't want anything free from any of us. They ask for one thing: they want to work. They want to have the right to provide for their families. That's what they ask for.

And so we hear all the noise. We hear people say, well, Eric, you're treating asylum seekers better than you're treating everyday New Yorkers. Go visit the HERRC on Floyd Bennett Field. People are sleeping on cots, getting three basic meals a day, have showers outdoors, restroom facilities are out, outside of their sleeping quarters. No one is getting treated better than anyone in the city, and there are things that as taxpayers, New Yorkers, you have that other people don't have.

But there's one thing that's clear. This should not be on our backs, folks. You're angry and I'm angry. This is costing us $12 billion over three years. $5 billion this fiscal year. That's why we had to go to the November plan to do cuts. And then we had to do $7 billion in January. $7 billion, $12 billion total, not out of $106 billion budget, but out of $30‑something billion, we have to take $12 billion out.

Now, who owns a home in here? Who's a homeowner? Let me ask you a question. You budget yourself for the year, your roof caves in and you have an insurance policy. You go to your insurance agent and say, my roof caved in. I already have my budget. I already know what I'm going to pay for my light, my gas, my food, my school supplies. That insurance company tells you, we're not giving you the money for that tragedy that took place.

Our roof caved in and the federal government was supposed to be our insurance policy, and they are not giving us the money. This is on the backs of everyday taxpayers, and I have to balance the budget every two years by law, by law. This is what we're facing. I don't have an option.

And once you have your budget for the year, the money has to come from somewhere. This is not the budget I want to pass. The budget I passed went into young people, a hundred thousand summer youth jobs, never has been done before. Went into our seniors, went into our housing, went into our police department, went into our Department of Sanitation. That's the budget that I passed with the City Council.
And we want to be clear, I don't have the authority to stop people from coming in the city, only the federal government. I don't have the authority to deport anyone, only the federal government. I don't have the authority to tell people, you can't have shelter, that is within the law that has been passed.

I am doing the job as the mayor of making sure children and families don't sleep on the street. And it's a hard job. This has been one of the most difficult experiences this team has ever had to do, but we have to do it. We have to navigate us out of this crisis that we're in.

And so we're up here to talk to you one‑on‑one, and I want to open the floor with you. Here's the only ask I have. You talk, I listen; I talk, you listen. We don't talk over each other. We don't disrespect each other. Your neighbor talks, you listen to your neighbor, because everyone in here has an opinion. Trust me, this is New York, 8.3 million people, 35 million opinions.

We all know it. And everyone can spend the next two hours sharing their opinions, but we want to do it in an organized way so we can hear from our fellow neighbors. We got it?

Question: Good evening.

Mayor Adams: Good evening.

Question: Our first question is how we invest in our budget and resources to improve the quality of life, ensure public safety and mental health of all the residents of Harlem.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. And mental health, we are all dealing with something coming out of Covid. People act like they're not, but we all, we're all going through something coming out of Covid, and mental health is a real issue that we are facing.

And so when we talk quality of life particularly around public safety, as I just stated, five of the major seven crime categories with our indicators that we use to determine the safety city, five of the seven are down: homicides are down, shootings are down, our robberies are down, crime in the subway down as well, all those major indicators.

We put a plan in place. It wasn't by accident, because we were trending up in January 1st, 2022. Partnered with the governor and my state lawmakers, we put in place a Subway Safety Plan that brought not only law enforcement but that brought mental health professionals in our subway system. And I want Deputy Mayor Williams‑Isom to talk about some of those numbers around that. And we have to maintain that.

We have to keep our streets clean and we have to deal with some of the petty crime that we're seeing in our city and that's what we are focusing on. Dr. Vasan and his team, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is going to talk about some of the stuff that we're doing around mental health, even extending to our young people in school. Unprecedented using technology to connect our children to mental health professionals, 24 hours, seven days a week, on the devices that they use and they're used to. So, Deputy Mayor Williams‑Isom, would you talk about some of the…

Deputy Mayor Anne Williams‑Isom, Health and Human Services: Yes. The subway work I will just say that since we started, we were able to connect almost 6,000 people to shelter. And so we all saw it on the subways with people sleeping. Here I know with Ms. Atkins, 125th Street Corridor, has been very difficult.

There's still a lot of work to get done, but we're out there with our teams, our mental health professionals, our folks from H + H and homeless services, multidisciplinary teams so that we could connect people to the services in the shelter that they need. But let me pass it to Dr. Vasan to talk a little bit more about the mental health services.

Commissioner Ashwin Vasan, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. I'm very proud that while we are addressing what's happening on our streets in our subways through these interdisciplinary teams, we're also investing upstream in our kids. The mayor referred to Teenspace, NYC Teenspace, which is the largest digital mental health platform ever created in a city in the world.

Over 400,000 kids, young people 13 to 17 are going to have access to therapy, to psychosocial supports, to counseling, to self‑help tools in the palm of their hand, free of charge just by typing in their name and getting consent from a parent. And that's never happened before, because the front door to our mental health system has been too complicated for too long.

And so I know we're facing a lot of challenges that are in front of us every day. But the mayor, the deputy mayor, this administration is making investments where we can to start stemming the tide of the problems we see in mental health.

Mayor Adams: And we went out with Shams DaBaron. He and I went out around about 1:30 in the morning on 125th Street, that train station on 125th Street in Lexington, dark, dreary, no light dirty. It's just total disrepair. Then we took the bus over to Randall's Island together around about two a.m. and went along Randall's Island to see what was taking place.

Kaz, can you want to go through what we did on the 125th Street when we saw what was happening on that corner? Assistant Commissioner Daughtry?

Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry, Chief of Staff to the Chief of Department, Police Department: Yes. Hello, everyone. My name is Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry. I'm the chief of staff to the chief of Department, Jeff Maddrey. We met with the mayor over the summer on 125th Street in Lexington Avenue, myself and Chief of Patrol John Chell.

We took a walk through it. It was dirty, it was dark, it was dingy, it wasn't a nice place. So, what Chief Chell and myself did was we started a community link team where we got all the city agencies that you see up there.

We met at the 25 Precinct with every city's single agency, Parks Department, homeless, outreach, Sanitation, et cetera, DOT. If you go to 125th Street right now, Lexington Avenue, you will see there's brand‑new lights there. Sanitation came in and they power washed, the whole streets. Parks Department came. They're going to put planters up there.

What do you call it? The DOT came and they moved that construction equipment. How many people were seeing that construction equipment on 125th Street in Lexington Avenue? Raise your hand. Do you see it anymore? That's all I got to to say, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: Right. And we did...let me tell you when we went out there. We went out there 1:30 a.m., we finished up 3:30 a.m. so we can see what happens at night, what happens at night. I am not the mayor that sits in City Hall. I need to be on the street. Mother used to say, you'll never be a good shepherd if you don't hang out with the sheep— and that's where I am. I'm out with the people every day.

And it's a huge challenge. Mental health is a real issue, particularly in Black and brown communities. We have often been stigmatized and afraid to come forward with mental health issues. So, we saw what happened in Rockaway the other day. This man, life was spiraling downward. Mental health is a real issue that we have to confront and be honest about it, and that's what Dr. Vasan and his team is doing.

Commissioner Kreizman: The next table. Next table. One second. Well, let's be courteous to…

Mayor Adams: Go ahead. Go ahead, ma'am.

Question: Oh, okay.

Mayor Adams: We're used to that.

Question: I am, too. Good evening. So, this is the question that was posed by the table. If a mayor wanted to double the number of affordable housing units in this community, what steps would the mayor need to take; and as a community, how can we support these actions to, quote, unquote, get it done.

Mayor Adams: Get stuff done, we say. Well, first of all, there are layers in… Okay, Deputy Mayor Maria Torres‑Springer is going to share with you what we have done and what we need to be doing. But there are layers to housing, and oftentimes, people look at housing they only think of the mayor's office. We got stuff we could do, but we need to help from Albany.

Everyone states that the number one crisis around housing is that we need to build more. We need to build more. Last year the governor and I partnered together and we put together an aggressive plan for housing. We did nothing in Albany on housing. Nothing came out of Albany at all on housing. Deputy Mayor Maria Torres‑Springer, can you talk about that? Some of our successes and some of the things we want to do?

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres‑Springer, Housing, Economic Development and Workforce: Of course. Thank you, mayor. Good evening. I love that question. This is what we wake up in the morning together with so many colleagues thinking about. And in particular, the question of how we can be partners on the same mission, because it's a really hard mission, given the affordable housing crisis that this city is facing.
So, first, in terms of this district, a lot has already happened, but I want to give you some specific numbers. There are 2,000 units in the pipeline in this community board and about 13,000 units financed since 2014. So, that's good news, but we have to do more.

In the first full fiscal year of the mayor's administration, I think we've shown that we are incredibly committed not just to ambitious goals but delivering on those goals. So, we financed more than 24,000 affordable housing units in fiscal year '23.

And it included many records, including the second highest new construction, the most supportive housing ever financed, the most homes for formerly homeless, the most homes for extremely low income New Yorkers, the most CityFHEPS vouchers ever dedicated to permanently housing New Yorkers.

All of that is good, but we know that there is more. So, Chair Dan Garodnick, for instance, is leading a major effort called the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. And that will ensure that we build a little bit of housing in every neighborhood of this city, because that is what we need in order to confront the crisis.
Finally, as the mayor pointed out, we can't do it alone. We need help from Albany. We need the help in the form of a rental production tax incentive that will allow us to build housing across many different neighborhoods of the city.

We need to remove this artificial cap and how tall, essentially, the density of buildings in a number of community and central business districts. And we need help to ensure that our work to convert outdated office buildings into housing, that we get the incentive that's needed to make that happen.
And finally, sorry mayor, just one more thing.

Mayor Adams: [Inaudible].

Deputy Mayor Torres‑Springer: I know when we talk about housing, it's not just affordable housing or privately financed housing. Our work with NYCHA has never been more important. The mayor always says the cavalry is not coming, so we have to take our destiny into our own hands, and what that has meant under this mayor is an incredibly aggressive plan to transform NYCHA developments across the city.
We got legislation from the state to create a trust that gives us a new tool. We have invested close to a billion dollars in capital across many NYCHA developments. That, too, is a record in terms of city capital and we have to do more. So, our work here is to do it together because a lot of this we can do on the city level, but we need partners of the state and federal to get it truly done.

Mayor Adams: Those of you… Go ahead, go ahead. Sheena, go ahead.

First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright: Yes.

Mayor Adams: Introduce yourself.

First Deputy Mayor Wright: Sorry. Yes. Sheena Wright. I'm the first deputy mayor. And one more thing, just in direct response to your question. Your question is, what can we do to double the number of affordable housing units in this community?

Deputy Mayor Torres‑Springer laid out an agenda, and as she said, we have to do it together. And what that means is we need you, we need you to contact your city councilmember, because when the City of Yes legislation is being contemplated, we need to hear your voice.

We need you to contact your state assemblyperson and you need to weigh in and say, we need these items passed so that affordable housing can be built in my community. So, our community affairs commissioner and our team here will engage with this community as we mobilize and advocate together to produce the outcomes that we want and need.

Question: And I understand everything that you said. I have looked at the City of Yes proposal, but I also know that the way that you are currently structuring the developments, the thing [the] conversions with RAD and PACT and the preservation trust in our communities are going to possibly cause people to be evicted, cause other people to have to pay more rent… Because of the changes that the transitions from RAD to PACT. So, the question was the table's question. It does not mean that I am in agreement with that. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: So, as you clap… As you clap, because I'm not new to this, I'm true to this. And I've been in NYCHA for years and I've heard everyone state maybe next year, maybe next year, maybe next year, as Deputy Mayor Maria Torres stated, the bugles you hear that's not the Calvary, folks. That's Taps. NYCHA is dying. How big is their capital budget? I mean…

First Deputy Mayor Wright: $80 billion.

Mayor Adams: $80 billion of capital needs in NYCHA. So, we can keep playing this game every year when people say, let's come up with a plan, let's come up with a plan. We have a plan. First time NYCHA is included in our housing proposal, never done before.

We went and passed legislation in Albany with our partners to do NYCHA Land Trust that the NYCHA residents will vote on if they want it or not. So, we need a menu of items. And if we don't get some changes in NYCHA, like what we're doing with the Chelsea project, which I think is a real important project, zero displacement, making sure you tear down those old buildings, build new buildings and move the tenant in the buildings. And again, NYCHA residents will vote and decide if they want to do it.

$80 billion is not coming from the federal government, folks. So, either we can just ignore it and be intimidated about the future or we can be aggressive and protect the residents and invest the dollars that we need. That is what this administration is doing.

Everyone else, it says it's too out of an issue. We don't want to touch it. Let's ignore it. I'm not going to ignore the conditions of NYCHA. I'm not going to do that. We need something new and that is what this team is doing. NYCHA cannot exist the way it is. Sister, I came back to you. I normally don't do that. I came back to you. We could rap after, but I heard you. I heard you. Okay, I heard you.

Second thing I want to say that's important. Listen, folks, I'm dyslexic. I used to walk into school every day and people used to have on the back of the chair, the dumb student. Students used to tease me in the cafeteria, used to call me names. They used to say, let's practice how dumb Eric reads.

I'm used to being yelled at. I'm used to being called names. I'm used to being called, you know, you're not good enough, you're not bad enough. This, you are this, use that. That noise doesn't bother me. If I did it in the third grade, I'd be damned at 63. I'm going to be bothered by it.

So, those who want to yell and call us names, why don't you do it and get out of the way so we can get on with this town hall? Because we got stuff to do.

And all of that stuff that, you know, people want to yell, you all brush that off my shoulders. I did not become mayor because I get intimidated by people yelling at me and calling me names. Been there, done that, you know?

Go to the next table.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table three over here, left.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for your hard work and your team. This is very appreciated. I would like to ask for, well, New York State provides [permanent] communication in 12 languages, many agencies, 12, even more except DOE, they still get nine and no more. And we would like to ask to talk to counselor or to PEP meeting to expand this communication to more languages like state or even more and also expand language education for all as early as possible.

Mayor Adams: DOE.

Commissioner Kreizman: DOE Chief of Staff Melissa Aviles‑Ramos.

Mayor Adams: Did you hear the question?

Melissa Aviles‑Ramos, Chief of Staff, Department of Education: Good evening. Thank you so much for your question. Yes, and we are in those conversations with multiple stakeholder groups to identify.

Mayor Adams: Just identify yourself, Melissa, okay?

Aviles‑Ramos: Hi, I'm Melissa Ramos, Chief of Staff. Thank you so much. We are in the midst of having conversations with multiple stakeholder groups. I actually believe you and I were in a meeting together recently and so we are going to identify those languages that need to be expanded and make sure that we are adding them to the Department of Education Translation Services.

Mayor Adams: Because that's a good question. It's crucial. Nothing gets in a way if you can't understand the language. That's why one of the phases we're doing is by having this monitor here. I told the team, this is a heavy Spanish‑speaking community, we need to have translation. And that's why we're using AI to do notifications in several different languages.

People attacked us for doing it, but they speak English. And so it's easy to live in a city where only your language is being dominant. Everyone should have access to understand what services are provided from the government. So, we're going to look into that. We need to get all those languages included. Thank you for your question.

Commissioner Kreizman: Excellent. Next table. 

Question: Good evening, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: Hi, my name is [Nina Saxon], and I'm the tenant association president for George Washington Carver. This question is for my development, but it's really like for all the NYCHA developments. What is or how can the administration help to reduce the amount of garbage and rats in the NYCHA development, and how can we help you do it?

Mayor Adams: Thank you so much. You may not know, but I hate rats.

Question: I know.

Mayor Adams: You know? Where's my rat czar? Come on, Kathleen. You want to do a combination one‑two punch?

Eva Trimble, Chief Operating Officer, NYCHA: Good evening. Thank you for that question. We all hate rats.

Mayor Adams: Stand up for a minute. Just introduce yourself, okay?

Trimble: Sure. Eva Trimble from NYCHA Chief Operating Officer. And right next to me here is Kathy Corradi from the rat czars. And I was speaking with someone else from your table earlier. We have the address of the building.

We have a grounds crew that's responding to rats now. We just hit a major milestone. We're now responding to rats in under two days from the time of complaint. That's the lowest rat response time that we've ever had. We're really proud of that. But we know there's so much more that we have to do.

So, I'm happy to take your exact address down as well. We'll get a crew out there. We have crews responding to rats specifically every single Wednesday going out to another site across the city. We're collapsing rat burrows at a greater extent, making sure that we're also doing that safely so we're not using any pesticides or anything that's dangerous to humans or really focused on what will kill the rats and keep them gone.

In regards to garbage, that's a really key connection. We have been using containerization ahead of the whole rest of the city for years. Because of our HUD agreement, we've been required to containerize garbage since 2019, we've hit that milestone. So, we work closely with DSNY, with the rat czar to make sure we're containering garbage and we're responding to all rat complaints. Do you want to follow up?

Kathleen Corradi, Citywide Director of Rodent Mitigation: Thanks. Hi, everyone. Kathy Corradi. I'm the director of Citywide Rodent Mitigation. I work very closely with the NYCHA teams, parks team, New York Public Schools, Department of Health, really inter‑jurisdictional, figuring out how we do this work better across public and private spaces.

Where we're sitting now is in our newly established Harlem Road Mitigation Zone, that's Community Boards 9, 10 and 11, which means we have extra eyes and resources in this area to make sure we're doing all we can as a city to drive down rat populations. But I want to connect with you around your site, and then everyone here to see what we can do to partner to make your building your block, your property clean and rat free.

Because the truth is we can't do this work alone as a city. We need buy‑in from the public to be doing the right behaviors, making sure trash gets in the right place, make sure we have cleanliness, a community consciousness around making New York City less rat friendly. So, you have our partnership in that and we look forward to working with you.

Mayor Adams: So, let's talk about some of our numbers since you took office in rat mitigation zones and overall citywide complaints.

Corradi: Yes. So, in April when sanitation changed the set out time from four p.m. to eight p.m., we saw a drop in 311 complaints citywide by 20 percent. In our rodent mitigation zones, Harlem being one of them, we saw a drop in 45 percent in our complaints. So, that means New Yorkers are taking notice that changing how we handle our waste, changing how our city interacts and approaches rodent mitigation on a system scale is being seen and felt and we're looking forward to keep driving those numbers down.

Mayor Adams: We will never get rid of rats as long as we have plastic bags and food outside. So DSNY, can you talk about what we're doing around our plan? They told me it was going to take me four years to do our containerization. Can we talk about what we're doing?

Deputy Commissioner and Chief of Staff Ryan Merola, Department of Sanitation: Yes, sir. Sorry about that. Ryan Merola from the Department of Sanitation. What the mayor and the commissioner of sanitation have driven over the past year and a half is what they're calling it, trash revolution.

In April, we made the first change in New York City's garbage set out rules that had been made in a long time, which was to say no more black bags on the street at four p.m. Residential and commercial has to be eight p.m. if you're going to put it in a bag or later or six p.m. if you're going to put it in a container.

And for businesses, you could put it in a container an hour before closing, but not black bags on the street before eight. That went citywide. And you've heard from my colleague Kathy how the rat numbers saw that change through 311. But since then, we've taken it further. Over the summer, we changed the rules for food‑related businesses in the city and chain stores.

Now, if you're a food‑related business or you're a chain store— on that, think like Verizon, T‑Mobile, a bank— you have to containerize your waste. It is no longer optional. That is something that went into effect over the summer, and then the mayor and the commissioner announced this fall that by March first of next year, every business has to containerize their waste. So, we are going to have 100 percent required containerization for commercial establishments in this city by early 2024.

Those are the types of changes that the mayor's referring to. When he came in, when the commissioner came in, they were told this wasn't going to happen. Through rules, through dedication, through enforcement, not for enforcement's sake, but to make sure these rules are followed, we've been seeing great compliance.

The next frontier, residential, the mayor and the commissioner announced as well in the fall that we were going to pursue an aggressive containerization strategy for the residential parts of the city, too.

By next fall, low density once in nine units will be required to use containers. They're working on now the plan for larger than that, but by the end of next year, you are going to see so much of the city in containers in a way you've never seen before. And as you've heard, it is making an impact already. And that's before we've got 100 percent containerization for commercial and before we push on the residential

Mayor Adams: Good stuff.

Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, Operations: And mayor, can I just note, we actually have a great... Meera Joshi, Deputy Mayor for Operations. There's a real life example of what Ryan is talking about, which is a containerized neighborhood on the other side of Harlem and Hamilton Heights, where we have residential containers on the street for high‑density buildings. We have 12 schools that are all containerized so you can see what the future of the city looks like when we're all containerized. So, I really encourage people to go over and take a look.

Mayor Adams: And it's in a very aggressive wave. First of all, it's unsightly. This is a relic from the sixties. During the sanitation strike, we went from the garbage cans to plastic bags, and you don't see other civilized cities across the globe having these plastic bags out. They unsightly, they attract rodents and we are moving full steam ahead. You're going to see a different city around garbage on our streets in the next year or so.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table number five.

Question: Good evening, Mayor Adams.

Mayor Adams: Good evening. How are you?

Question: Thank you so much for this opportunity to allow us to voice our concerns. My name is Carolina. I am here in representation of my community in East Harlem and also Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service, a CBO in East Harlem that has worked with our citizens.

And our table would like to know how we can maintain and ensure funding for a lot of the services that we need such as the closed libraries. We currently have no libraries in East Harlem. Programs to decrease gun possession, programs for food insecurity, mental health for families, access to early child centers such as 3K, preK and also childcare and then also community spaces.

Community‑based organizations such as LSA have been first line of action, especially in neighborhoods like this one, which is an equity, one of 33 equity neighborhoods. And so seeing the decreases in fundings, for example with participatory budget, which was excellent, that we did last year, and the decreases in funding are really concerning for our citizens.

Organizations like ours have assisted more than 3,800 asylum seekers with emergency, food, shelter...sorry, no shelter, just food, clothes, coats, but essential items. And thanks to the help of Councilwoman Diana Ayala, we have some funding but it's very little to the amount of need that is present. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you for your question. First Deputy Mayor Wright, can you go into what we did when we came in office around nonprofits and the billions of dollars of backlogs that they had?

First Deputy Mayor Wright: Sure. And there were a lot of things there that you mentioned. But when we came into office there was, I think, about $6 billion that were owed to nonprofit organizations for work that they had already done, backlogged for years. We cleared four billion of those dollars in 12 weeks and we also have cleared the backlog completely and changed all the systems and structures to ensure that people get paid on time.

We also passed, and I'm going to let Deputy Mayor Almanzar speak to this as well, we passed...we put more money in the budget for nonprofits, for salaries, that was also historic two years in a row and we will continue to do that, and a lot of the other items that you mentioned, I'm going to pass it to Deputy Mayor Almanzar.

Deputy Mayor Ana Almanzar, Strategic Initiatives: Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Now, I want to try to get up.

Deputy Mayor Williams‑Isom: See if you make the difference?

Deputy Mayor Almanzar: Yes. Can you see me? It's good to be in Harlem. Thanks. Thanks for that question. And as she mentioned, as the first deputy mayor mentioned the backlog, we also under Mayor Adams, we opened the mayor's office of nonprofits, an institution dedicated to help us work through some of the issues that our funded partners faced throughout the year.

In fact, we just built a team to have four deputy directors of the office, one ombudswoman, who's there dedicated solely to help you walk through the contracting issues. She's been here for 72 days and she has been able to clear about $8 million in contracting to the nonprofit services.

It is a painful process, and as the mayor has said before, we are facing a fiscal crisis that some of us are going to feel and all of us are going to feel it. We are looking at how we can do this best without touching our nonprofit services that are working with us together on this.

Mayor Adams: And so our goal, we didn't go in with a hatchet and just say, let's just cut everyone equally. We looked at those services that really low and moderate and struggling New Yorkers to say, how could we minimize this in a real way? This was traumatic for us to see some of these programs we fought for years, we fought for these programs, and now all of a sudden, we have to go in and cut.

Even the Police Department was cut. We didn't put in a police class. Everyone felt the pain of what this is like. And I haven't heard one organization, not one organization came to me and said, Eric, cut mine. No one. There's not one of these cuts that we've done that were good cuts. None of them. All of them were bad, all of them.

And when this happens, people look, okay, mayor, what are you doing? No, we need to be saying, why is Washington defunding us? Why are we spending $12 billion that should go into those nonprofits that you're talking about and not the federal government giving us the money from a national problem? That is what this is about.

And so this falls on this team to figure this out. And we didn't do one cut from the libraries having to close on Sundays to some of the nonprofits that you're talking about, none of them were good cuts. There are no good solutions when you have a $12 billion hole. There are no good solutions, they're all bad solutions and they all hurt a lot.

And I told New Yorkers last year, this is going to be painful for us. We need to raise our voices and say this should not be happening to New York City. So, we're with you. We don't want these agencies and nonprofits cuts.

That's why we're using our ability to make sure you can get access to the money better and that you don't have to go to the bureaucracy that puts you in backlog previously. We're with you on the same page. You're angry and I'm angry. They're doing this to my city when we made this city recover and now we are in this position we're in now.

Commissioner Kreizman: Next question.

Question: Good evening.

Mayor Adams: How are you ma'am?

Question: The Honorable Mayor Adams.

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Question: It's a pleasure to be here, an opportunity to be able to voice our concern. And I just want to say thank you for all that you're doing for the city. They may not be thanking you, but I'm going to say thank you. I see what your administration is doing.

I see that you still need help, especially with sanitation. With sanitation, when it's time, the sanitation trucks do come, but the cars don't move over. I think if you have somebody there to move the cars over, it can help to clean the streets. But back to the budget.

Mayor Adams: All good, all good. This is your daughter or granddaughter?

Question: That's my grandson.

Mayor Adams: Oh, son. I wish I had had that long hair. Good to see you, brother.

Question: With the looming budget cuts that have been announced, what is the status of the community model of support in your plan and how will you address the grave impact of these cuts? And what will it have on the ongoing crisis under your administration in education, homelessness, mental health and the drug epidemic?

To the City Council, how will you address the quality of life issues that have become pervasive in East Harlem since your election, including open air, drug use prostitution, public defecation, and I already said something about sanitation.

My recommendation, put a prayer group together. I'm not talking my religion, I'm just saying put a prayer group together, because the Lord said that the government shall be upon his shoulders.

If you put a prayer group together, you will get an answer to your problems, you'll get an answer to sanitation, you'll get an answer to police enforcement, you'll get an answer to the uprising hit and run that have been taking place. We just lost our son November 17, and I think it hit the news up on Southern Boulevard on 180th Street. We just buried our son.

Mayor Adams, my prayers is with you and your administration, and I pray for this community and all the communities that we get on our knees and that we call on prayer for answers to get it done.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. I was about to say the doors to the church are open. And listen, prayer works. Prayer brought me here and I'm unapologetic about my belief in God, and we are a spiritual city. And I agree with you on the spiritual aspect of it and I would love for you to partner with Pastor Monrose, our clergy leader of all faith that we bring together.

But those specific questions that you're asking, from the Department of Sanitation, the clean...the streets to our investments in childcare to our investments in our children, is something that we want to continue to focus on. As I stated, we had 110,000 youth that went to Summer Rising program, never been done before in history.

We've invested in foster care children, paid their college tuition, giving them a stipend so they don't age out and have to go to the streets. We've invested some employment, 100,000. Before they were trying to get to the 75,000, we went to 100,000. We believe that did a lot to keep down crime over the summer because our children were placed in a safe space, in a safe environment.

Huge responsibilities that we have. The dollars only go certain far. There's a fixed amount of money that we have and we've reached our max in many levels. And by reaching the max, there are places that we're going to experience some painful cuts that we don't like.

And I'm asking all of you who don't like what you're seeing around us paying for this crisis to raise your voice to your federal partners, to raise your voice to our U.S. senators, to raise your voice to Washington, D.C. that this should not fall on the backs of New Yorkers and fall on the backs of those particular New Yorkers that need governmental services every day. But I thank you for that.

Commissioner Kreizman: Next table.

Question: Hey.

Mayor Adams: How are you, sir?

Question: I'm very well. How are you, mayor?

Mayor Adams: Quite well.

Question: Good. Well, thank you very much, Mayor Adams for being here. Thank you everybody for being here representing your offices and services. My name is [Terrance Dixon]. I'm a resident of East Harlem, actually, a resident of Lakeview Apartments, which a lot of us are here, right?

So, we have a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and we've really invested in the community because we love East Harlem, as we all do. So, our question would be, how can we reduce congestion in residential areas for residents, emergency services and sanitation while reducing the burden being put on the city residents?

Mayor Adams: Sorry. DOT, you want to handle it? And before we say that, I remember when Deputy Mayor Maria Torres‑Springer was speaking. One of the big problems we're having, Sister, around housing is that I'm amazed that people march on Sunday for housing, and on Monday, they say not on my block.

That is why the plan that Deputy Mayor Maria Torres‑Springer was talking about of building...everyone needs to share. Our zoning was racist. They kept housing low so that they could not bring in various communities and various groups. We say no to that, and I just wanted to make sure we know that we had a racist housing initiative in this city.

We need to build housing around good schools, good transportation, good hospitals, good access to food. That's where we need to be building more housing. And too many places that have all of those niceties are the first to march for housing, but then march against it being built on their block. We need to build in every community. But going back to your question, I just wanted to touch on that.

Deputy Mayor Joshi: Hi, Deputy Mayor Joshi, Deputy Mayor for Operations, and I have the honor of overseeing both DOT and Sanitation. I just want to make sure I understand your question clearly. Congestion that impedes the sanitation, trucks…

Mayor Adams: Traffic congestion.

Deputy Mayor Joshi: General traffic congestion. Okay. Congestion, it's a sign of economic activity of life, and in that sense, it's good. But in day‑to‑day reality as we deal with it, it makes us late for work, it makes us use more gas, it makes it difficult for people on the bus and there's an actual number that's associated with the cost that it costs New York City for congestion every day.

Throughout, as you know, the nation, it's been debated, New York City is going to be the first city that will enact congestion pricing, and that will put a toll on people coming into the central business district. What that means for the outer boroughs, though, is something we've been very focused on.

And part of our negotiation around congestion pricing has been to get a number of mitigations to ensure that those communities above the congestion zone don't feel the impact of added traffic. And so that will also include more dollars to convert trucks to EV trucks, more parkland, especially in the Bronx, and more filtration systems for the schools around.

In addition to that, every neighborhood has its own congestion problem, and I'd like to also turn it over to our commissioner of DOT to talk about the work that he's doing. But essentially, we need to make sure that problems like double parking and abuse of our parking spaces and roadways that impedes the flow of every other form of traffic doesn't become the norm.

And we're doing incredible work on piloting and ensuring that we have good curb management to help that exact problem, because even double parking has a dollar sign attached to how much it costs us as individual New Yorkers when it delays us or when it makes us have to wait until the other person moves. But I would like to turn it over to our Fine Commissioner Rodriguez to talk about the work that they're doing to streamline our streets.

Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, Department of Transportation: Thank you, deputy mayor. One of the things that we all should know is that we live in the most dense city in the whole nation, and we only are 350 square miles. And I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic, which is more than Casa de Campo in Punta Cana.

So back there, we are 31,000 square mile of 12 million people but only 10 million visitors. New York City is only 350 square miles. We are not 12, we are 6.8, but last year we have almost 50 million visitors. So, whatever we plan, people my age, the youngest one, future commissioner, future mayor will have that big responsibility.

So, I know that we are here in El Barrio, so I used to live here at 1738, my father leaving us in the '80 to 2009 when he passed away, so I know the level of congestion in this area.

So, what we are doing is, as a deputy mayor explained, preparing for when the congestion price comes to the city, but we are not waiting for that. What we also trying to do under the leadership of Mayor Eric Adams is beside that, we are doing more busway, moving the buses faster in 125th. We also are connecting all community to our Citibike and also micro mobility.

And the reason why is that someone that when I was born in 1965, poor kid, no resources. My father had a bike, but we were told that bike was equal being poor and a car became a symbol of progress. So, here in our time while we assist biking beside the delivery that is more a working class individual is more equal to middle class and upper class, and people see biking as gentrification.

So, what Mayor Adams, the health department and all of us is doing is pushing back and educating our people to understand that if you ride a bike half an hour every day, you extend the average of six years to your life. So, we're trying to educate our people about the benefits.

So, you know, as we look at transportation and congestion reality, it's about improving our trains and our buses and that's why congestion price will allow MTA to have $15 billion with the 1.3 that they will raise, but also how much they can borrow.

At the same time that we realize that it's tough to come to downtown Manhattan. But at the same time, we want to connect all New Yorkers, not only the middle class and upper class, but the working class also to biking, scooter and other motor transportation and also encouraging New Yorkers to spend one time walking in the community.

Mayor Adams: Well said, because congestion is a real issue, brother. It's a real issue. And the way, have good transportation system from our trains and our buses, moving them faster, having a good utilization of bikes and have safe routes for people to carry out their biking.

And at the same time, as the commissioner stated, getting those steps in. You know, when you look at the area where you have congestion, you find that they also dealing with healthcare crisis that directly related to the lack of mobility.

So, we hear you right on point and it's crucial that as we do congestion pricing we don't displace the environmental issues into the outer boroughs, Harlem, Bronx and other locations. Thank you for that question.

Question: Thank you.

Mayor Adams: How are you ma'am?

Question: Hi. Good evening. My name's [Sarah Kaska] and I'm a community school director at a public elementary school here in East Harlem where we serve over 250 students from the community. So, our question is about the future of New York. You've said children are the future of this great city. You keep talking about investing in our children.

Then why is the mayor's office proposing to cut nearly $550 million, or should I say roughly $2 billion over the continued cuts, and kneecap our children's future? Because I can tell you, from experience, exactly what those dollars go to. They go to the 30 pairs of glasses that I handed out two weeks ago for my students, thanks to a connection with the Department of Health.

It goes to the 175 students that got their teeth cleaned in school. Some of them had never been to a dentist. It goes to the 110 students that I run after school for every single day where I came from two hours ago, who get their third meal of the day in that building, who get homework help in an expanded academic enrichment, STEAM programming and so much more.

And all of that is on the line, particularly with your proposed cuts to community schools. None of that would happen at our school without community school partnerships. And so can you please tell me who's going to provide those services for my kids if we're not there to do it?

Mayor Adams: Thank you, thank you, thank you for that. And I tried my best to share with you the dilemma we're in. I tried my best. And throughout my years as borough president, state senator, I partnered with nonprofits that did dental services for children, our sponsorship to dental vans that went around to schools, that partnered with nonprofits that gave free eyeglasses to children, partnered with nonprofits and other organization and corporate partners that went into school and provided meals.

We are not going to take away the meals children get every day. We have made it clear that we're not going to impact our classrooms. There are a lot of efficiencies that the Department of Education had to find.

But New Yorkers, I can't be any clearer with you of what we're going through. $12 billion, New Yorkers. We know we don't want to take it out of our school system that's going to impact the education of our children. But I ask you, you tell me where to take it from. Do I take it from the seniors?

I mean, we have to… By law, sister, I have to balance the budget. I have a fixed amount of money, $33 billion I believe it is. $12 billion of that is gone— not $12 million, $12 billion of that is gone.

You don't think that these folks sitting up here in this table that dedicated their lives, their lives to children, you don't think this is hurting them? This is killing us. And instead of us saying, Eric, what are you going to do about it? Shouldn't we be asking the national government who created this problem, they've turned their backs on our children. I'm not turning our backs on our children. I want a budget that I pass with the council that poured money in our school system that has never been poured before.

We poured dyslexia screening for every child. We poured into our school system to protect our foster care children, we poured into our school system Summer Rising 110,000, 100,000 summer youth jobs. We don't have the money, sister. I don't even know. It's like, are we speaking the same language? We don't have the money.

Question: We're speaking the same language. You know, I would take all the rats in the world if my kids can see the book that they're looking at, if they actually have an opportunity for future. These programs don't come in without the community school in place. These programs have to have that key partnership that stakeholders do it. Principals and schools don't have the capacity to take that on.

And so it actually becomes way more efficient to have a singular stakeholder collaborating and bringing together all of these partnerships because schools can't do it on their own. If we take that away, schools have to try and figure it out and they're going to be scrambling and so much is going to be dropped or they're going to be trying to hire more people to fill in the gaps without money as well.

Mayor Adams: But I disagree. Here's what we should be doing right now. What Deputy Mayor Almanzar is doing, what first deputy mayor has been doing. When a child goes to purchase an item that's sold in their company from Google or somewhere else, right now, we should be talking to all our corporate sponsorships to step up.

Right now, our children are buying iPhones; where's Apple? We Google everything; where's Google? We need to be building corporate sponsorships, which we have been doing, to bring in our corporate sponsors and say, listen, we need help right now. No one could be sitting on the sideline anymore. This is an all hands‑on‑deck moment.

And so if you are an accountant, a CPA, and you finish your eight hours in your company, hey, how about coming and adopting the school?

Question: But who's going to do that [inaudible]...

Mayor Adams: That's what we're doing. No, no, no, they're not. That's what we're coordinating. Go ahead, deputy mayor.

First Deputy Mayor Wright: Yes. If I can also clarify, the $500 million of cuts to DOE did not touch community schools. So, I want to make that clear. Melissa, if you could just explain where those funds came from. Community schools were not impacted in the first round of cuts, so it's very important that we have the facts as we're really discussing what the challenges that we have. So, I just want to make that clear.

Aviles‑Ramos: Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, First Deputy Mayor Wright. So, community schools have not been touched in this first round of cuts. We looked at our vacancies, we looked at areas where we hadn't been spending money and we really were looking for inefficiencies and putting that as part of the PEG. We are so committed.

This is an administration of people who have experience in school buildings. The chancellor, myself, a number of deputy chancellors, we've been principals, we've been superintendents, we have struggled with school budgets and district budgets, and so we are committed to making sure that these incredible programs that holistically serve our children remain in place.

That being said, we are in a very, very difficult time, unprecedented times. And so we need your support and we need to make sure that we are prioritizing our children. But for this first round, we did not make cuts to community schools.

First Deputy Mayor Wright: Right. And then the other thing I will say, community school expansion was done with stimulus funds. Those funds run out. So we have to grapple, as the mayor said, and make very difficult decisions.

But the mayor's given us priorities. I also want to just clear one thing up if I can, mayor, about NYCHA that was said earlier. And my grandmother raised her family in NYCHA. I'm on the board of NYCHA. I'm very proud to be on the board of NYCHA.

Other administrations, as the mayor said, said NYCHA was too tough. Let's not even talk about it. He said he wanted it to be chapter one in his housing plan. And so there are a couple of things that I do want to make clear. The plan is to make sure that the people who live in NYCHA have quality, affordable housing.
The mayor went to Washington, to D.C. and to Albany— and I would like Deputy Mayor Maria Torres‑Springer to talk about this— to make sure that NYCHA residents got money to pay their back rent, hundreds of millions of dollars. We make sure that NYCHA has free cable and free broadband, all this in our administration. So, it's important to know the facts because there's a lot of conjecture about what's happening and we want to make sure that we're getting the information out.

Mayor Adams: Well said. And the reason we gave NYCHA free broadband is because during Covid, when I was knocking on doors giving masks to NYCHA residents, when everybody said they don't deserve them, we noticed that the children did not have Internet service. And so when I said, when I become mayor, we're going to make sure that NYCHA residents can have free broadband. We promised it and we did it.

Deputy Mayor Torres‑Springer: And just to follow up on what the first deputy mayor mentioned in terms of rental arrears. So, one mistake that the mayor corrected, together with advocates from NYCHA, because together with us, they went to Albany in order to make sure that this change happened was to get more than a hundred million dollars in financial relief to cover rent arrears that NYCHA residents had.

This was a gap. It was a mistake that we corrected, and now more than 90 million of that has already flowed due to that being included in the budget and the partnership with the governor. So, those are real dollars that provide real relief to households across NYCHA.

Mayor Adams: NYCHA residents were left out of the plan to help them with arrears. We got the money to help them with the arrears. And I think it's important what this young lady stated that and which you pointed out, the previous administration put money in place, temporary money with permanent programs.
So, what you are talking about and you just talked about, they used temporary money that they knew was going to sunset when the next mayor came, a permanent program with temporary money.

Question: I'm only using that as one example.

Mayor Adams: There's many examples. But if you… I would love for you and I to have lunch and I want you to help me. I want you to sit down. I'm going to do an exercise with you, you and I. Okay? I want you to sit down with my budget director and I want you to help me with some ideas of what agency and program we should cut. Okay?

So, get her number because I want you to be in the room together. I want you to feel this pain that we felt and which agency and program. There is not one agency in this city that we want to cut.

And let's be clear on something else. Melissa stated that it wasn't included in this round. January, we got a $7 billion hole, a $7 billion hole. And that's what I need. I need… New Yorkers, you need someone that's going to be honest with you.

Let me tell you what my mother used to do, she to sit down at the beginning of the week and say, this is how much money's coming into the city, I mean, to the house. Here are our bills that we have to pay.

So, when you all think about buying those Air Jordans, tell me what on this list you want to take off the list. When you think about buying those new Calvin Klein jeans, you tell me what you don't want on this list. You want the gas off, you want the lights off, you want to not be able to get food on the table? That's where we are right now, folks.

$7 billion in January, we have to find from somewhere. And not only that, the dollars that we had, they're sunsetted. Those dollars are no more. Go ahead, ma'am.

Question: Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for the clarification. To you and your team, I am a product of public school education in Washington Heights, received amazing education and also in Harlem, which inspired me to be a teacher. So, your response and your team's response was well received right now.

Now, our table came up with a question for you, which also impacts our youth and our East Harlem community. Historically, this area is known for a high rate of drug overdose activity. The East Harlem community feels that this is primarily related to high concentration of methadone clinics within the neighborhood. Ultimately, this has a negative impact on East Harlem's quality of life. What is being done to offset or combat this problem?

Mayor Adams: Dr. Vasan, you want to touch that? And when I was running for office, I went to 125th Street, I think, were you there that day? Right. I went on 125th Street and there was an oversaturation of various hospitals who oversaturated this community with drug treatment locations. And many people were coming from outside of the community to get their various methadone and other things.

Dr. Vasan has put in some good initiatives and we need to do a real analysis with the congressmen, the electeds to see how do we get these providers to make sure that it's not oversaturated on 125th Street and 116th Street and other parts of the city. But Dr. Vasan, you want to talk about some of that stuff?

Commissioner Vasan: Sure. Thanks, Mayor. And thank you for the question. And we're well aware of the concern. And many of the programs you're talking about are state licensed facilities. So, we are in active conversations with the state around how to spread those out more equitably across the city.

But I want to mention the issue you raised underneath that, which is public drug use and just drug use saturation in this neighborhood. We opened one of the first two overdose prevention centers in the country here in Harlem. And in the year, well now almost two years that they've been in operation, more than 1,500 people have overdosed and have been saved.

And what we are desperate for is the same kind of leadership from the state that we've seen in Rhode Island, that we're going to see likely in Massachusetts, which is to say, we're in a crisis. We're losing a New Yorker to overdose less than every three hours, 2.8 hours. We've never seen numbers like this and they're moving in the wrong direction quarter on quarter.

We have to expand every opportunity to keep people alive and to provide them a pathway to stop using illegal drugs. We can't do that if leaders in Albany and otherwise are refusing ‑‑ or, are frankly publicly declaring that they're shutting doors to certain strategies ‑‑ because it's not palatable to other constituencies in the state. People are dying here in New York. 40‑plus percent of the overdoses in New York state are happening right here in New York City.

So, we have to have advocacy at the state level. We are here. The mayor has been supportive of every single strategy we've put into place through Health + Hospitals, through the health department, through partnerships with fantastic nonprofits all across the city. And we are spreading those opioid settlement dollars all across the city so that communities like this one don't have to have the kind of concentration of services that you're describing.

Mayor Adams: It's a real issue. And over 80 percent of the deaths that we are experiencing have presence of overdose, have presence of fentanyl. Fentanyl is a real crisis that we are facing nationally and we are really tackling this head on. There's a real problem. You're right, there's a real problem. And that's what Dr. Vasan and his team combined with the police force, we have to really stop the flow of fentanyl that's in our communities.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table number 10.

Mayor Adams: How are you, ma'am?

Question: I'm well.

Mayor Adams: Good.

Question: Good evening, sir.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Question: Thank you. My name is [Rema the Great,] and I am a community leader here in Harlem and a Wagner resident. My question is about the MAT program and NYCHA. So, before I ask this question, I want to give you some history.

Over the past three years, I have dedicated my time and energy to the MAT program, first as a resident stakeholder at Wagner Residence, second as a community‑based organization partner to the program and third, after writing the grant for it, as a program manager for the MAT program in East Harlem.

My question is, what are you doing about building capacity within the NYCHA tenant boards in order to increase community morale, building and safety outside of the MAT program?

Mayor Adams: NYCHA, who do we have from NYCHA?

Commissioner Kreizman: Eva Trimble.

Mayor Adams: You have the question, you heard it? And as she respond, one thing we like to do is to get suggestions from folks. If there's some things you believe we can do to build that capacity, we would like to learn from that as well.

Question: I have a few.

Mayor Adams: Because we don't have all the answers, but we have all the commitment.

Question: I have a few and it might save a couple of dollars.

Mayor Adams: Okay.

Trimble: Thank you. Again, I'm Eva Trimble, NYCHA's chief operating officer, and thank you for that question and absolutely agree, we'd love to have suggestions on how to build capacity, especially among our resident leaders.

We always say that the residents are the eyes and ears. You know better than anyone else what's happening on the ground in your properties and we need to have our ears open and listen to that. And that is really, every feedback is data. And so what's going on at the site, that's what we need to be responding to.

We work very closely with our resident leaders, as I'm sure you know, we do have a resident leadership academy to build the next generation of resident leaders. So, I'm happy to pass on more information about that program to you. However, that program is generously funded by donations to partnerships we have with philanthropies.

And it's something that we'd absolutely look for opportunities to increase because to be able to train our resident leaders to take on the responsibility of growing their neighborhoods, creating the excellent communities we have, it takes a lot of work.

And residents, leaders that you work full time and then you give your time to NYCHA. And that's a lot to expect from anyone. And so we look for opportunities to increase that capacity, as I said, to have the training, but we really need to expand the partnerships and through philanthropies community services to continue to grow that.

Mayor Adams: So, we look forward to your suggestions. And you have led in NYCHA and I'm sure you agree, you put 10 people in the room, you have 22 different opinions.

Question: Correct.

Mayor Adams: And it takes a lot of conversation discussions so we can walk out and we all feel as though we were heard and we are all feeling as though we're moving in the right direction. There has not been an administration, Sister, that has been committed to NYCHA like I have. And we have a lot that we want to do and we are going to need input from those who were there that can give us some real on the ground understanding.

Question: Let us help.

Mayor Adams: And I feel that. I feel that.

Commissioner Kreizman: [Inaudible], just get her information so we could be in touch. Next, table 11.

Question: Hi.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: Good. The past administration opened an injection site called OnPoint on 126th Street and Lexington. They didn't seek input from from the community and opened it across from a school.

Since that site opened, we have seen an increase in crime and quality of life issues. Our children are watching addicts with needles hanging out of their necks as they walk to school. We were hoping your administration would correct these issues, but they have only gotten worse.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams threatened to shut down OnPoint as it is running illegally. We now hear the site is going to open 24 hours. What can we do as a community to express our frustration? And what are you doing as an administration to correct it?

Commissioner Kreizman: Dr. Vasan.

Mayor Adams: Dr. Vasan, can you talk about the site? And you know, I join you in, you know, illegal injections, you know, people, we were sending a team uptown because there's a location where people illegally injected themselves.

Your children should not walk out their house and see someone injecting them self with drugs. You know, and so I join you in that frustration. That site has a role. Dr. Vasan, can you go into these safe injection sites and how many overdose we have prevented? Just some background on that.

Commissioner Vasan: Yes. Thank you for the question. I think what you're seeing in this community as a result of having a busy safe injection facility is the fact that we only have two of these facilities in the city. If we had 20 of them, we would actually have places to bring drug use indoors off the streets and reducing those kinds of visible signs of our overdose and fentanyl crisis.

A study just published.. And you know, studies are studies, but they are real data. A study published after the first year of data on these two sites showed that crime was actually down in those ZIP codes. 911 calls are down, police relationships are up because of partnership.

But I will agree with you that those sites, when they were first opened, there was a lot of conversation, there was a lot of debate, but I'm not sure that there was enough conversation with the community.

And so what the Health Department did was write standard operating procedures that were writing into every contract so that will never happen again. That will never happen again, because we've actually spelled out that there has to be a community advisory board, there has to be consultation from the beginning before there's even a discussion about whether safe injection should be opened up.

Now, but let's be clear, safe injection happens all around the world. There are more than 300 of these sites around the world. We are an outlier when it comes to advanced nations [and] overdose prevention centers. So, I don't know why we don't think in America we can have these sites and save lives in the midst of a fentanyl crisis.

So, it's a really hard position we're in as a city. We're leading the way and yet we don't have complementary leadership from other levels of government to allow us to expand a life‑saving public health intervention.

Question: Can I just say that that study was actually because police presence is so strong around the injection site, that is why crime is down around the injection site.

The police presence has increased around their injection site. That is why crime is down, because criminals have now gone to other areas because the police presence is so strong.

Mayor Adams: Well, again, as I said in the beginning, five of the seven crime categories are down in the city. So, they're not going down the block because crime is dropped down the city. What are the two that's up? Grand larceny, auto and what? There are two, that's five out of seven are down.

But listen, I'm with you. I cannot tell you how much I'm with you. Our babies should not see someone injecting themselves with drugs. But when you have a heroin, fentanyl, when you are addicted to these drugs, your rationale of where you're going to inject yourself, it'll be in a school yard, it'll be in front of a church, it'll be on your porch. People who are addicted, they're going to inject.

Putting them in a place where we can not only have a safe injection site, but we can connect them with counselors, we can put them in place and try to get them off drugs, now we have a control environment. If you are hooked on a drug, they could care less if they're in the supermarket aisle injecting themselves.

So, we're trying to do it in a way that we can get people cycle off. And it's not an easy task. It's a very hard task. And the last thing I want is your child, my son, to see someone standing on the corner, leaning on the bench in front of a school building, injecting themselves. That is what Dr. Vasan is trying to do.

Now, it's unfair just to have two. And this is the brunt. We need to spread this problem out because people addicted to these drugs all over the city and Harlem should not carry the whole weight for it.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table number 12.

Question: Hi. Good evening.

Mayor Adams: How are you, ma'am?

Question: I'm well.

Mayor Adams: Good. Good to see you.

Question: Thank you. Good to see you as well. So, the question from our table was, how can we streamline working class people into unoccupied housing? How can we leverage current unoccupied housing for this community? What accountability is in place for landlords who are hoarding apartments?

Mayor Adams: Deputy Mayor Maria Torres‑Springer.

Deputy Mayor Torres‑Springer: First of all, I do want to assure you that we are doing everything that we can, using every lever that we have to make sure that if there is a unit of housing in this city that can be used for permanent housing for New Yorkers, we are tapping into that. The reality is if you look at the vacancy rates for housing, in particular for housing that is affordable to the lowest income families, it's nearly zero.

So, I want to make sure, because I think there are often press reports out there about tens of thousands of units that are being warehoused. That is not what our data shows us.

But to the extent that there are either unscrupulous landlords that you are worried about, we definitely want to know about what those buildings are. We want to make sure that the quality of housing in those buildings, the upkeep, make sense. And I want to make sure that people also know that we have redoubled our efforts to get New Yorkers into vacant units that exist because we've made them available through our Housing Connect system.

So, that has been a partnership between the Department of Social Services and HPD. That process has taken way too long, and they're making great strides to speed that up. But if there are particular buildings that you are concerned about, or particular landlords who you believe are demonstrating behavior, taking action that is inconsistent with I described, please let us know and we're happy to look into it.

Mayor Adams: And the Department of Human Rights is looking at some of those who are not taking FHEPS vouchers. And the bottom line is inventory. We need more units. Sister, you raised your hand?

Question: Yes. Just to piggyback off [Deputy Mayor] Springer said, we have building… Right now, I have a couple of building...a couple of units of my building that's vacant. I would like to rent out, but I can't. The agency that we've associated with will not let us do it.

So, right now we have two tenants who, family's been in the building for more than 50 years. The tenant of record passed away and they won't let us rent these apartments to their family. Not only will this program that we are in allow them to have affordable housing, it would also let them have a path to home ownership.

So, I would like, I was going to ask you, I didn't know how this was going, but I wanted to ask you, would you say yes to letting us rent out those units? Because I would like to help, too. And we have affordable, I mean, literally affordable housing that's not going to cost over a thousand dollars.

And it's not just my building. There's other buildings like that that the program is in. But the agency will not let us rent these units, and we are a managing agency and it's only under this program do we have to get their permission to rent these units out.

Mayor Adams: Okay. Okay. So, listen, let's do this. Can we do this? HPD? Who do I have here? Okay, so listen, let's connect. Let's use this as a case study because if you are having that problem, then someone else is having that problem. So, let's use this as a case study. All right, deputy mayor, and let's circle back. And I want to understand why this woman is having a problem.

Deputy Commissioner and Chief of Staff George Sarkissian, Department of Housing Preservation & Development: Yes, we're happy to connect afterwards and I'll get your information. Figure out who your owner is and figure out what's stopping this from happening.

Mayor Adams: Yes. Yes. So, we're going to use your issue as a case study because others are probably having the same problem. And let's fix the problem.

Commissioner Kreizman: And [inaudible] get the information from her. And Table 13.

Question: Thanks, Mayor Adams, for being here. Thank you for all the commissioners that's doing this work in New York City. What policies and/or programs is your administration taking to enforce the crackdown of the illegal smoke shops that is bluntly selling drugs to our young people?

Bluntly, late. Sorry.

Mayor Adams: What do you know about blunt? [Laughter.]

Question: No, no, no.

Mayor Adams: So, here's the problem. Here's the problem. And have we been at one town hall where this wasn't raised? I think every town hall that we've attended, this was raised. Here's the problem. In Albany, they passed the cannabis law without the enforcement provision for local municipalities.

We've asked them last session to give us the enforcement. If they give me the enforcement, I will close down every illegal shop in 30 days. In 30 days.

We don't have the enforcement power, like we use, that we need. The sheriff is doing a great job. The sheriff is going in, he's taking, he has removed millions of pounds. No, go ahead. You can get it. Millions of pounds the sheriff has removed, but we are limited in the enforcement. It's the state enforcement powers. If they give it to me and allow me to use my agencies to do it, we would close down all these illegal shops in 30 days.

Question: Is there a way that we can lobby?

Mayor Adams: Yes. Yes. I know your Assemblyman Gibbs is in support of it. We can get you the state senators that's in support of it. If we can just give them to state, every local municipality will have the enforcement powers, because Buffalo is going through the same thing, other municipalities are going through the same thing. We don't have the enforcement power. My police officers cannot go in and take the necessary action to close down these locations. Commissioner Daughtry?

Assistant Commissioner Daughtry: Yes, as the mayor stated, we're very limited as a police department to go into these smoke shops and do inspections. So, what the police commissioner did and the chief of department did was assemble officers to work with the sheriff's department.

So, we have dedicated about 20 officers working with the New York City Sheriff's Office. And so there's about a little over 2,000 smoke shops in the city. And we have submitted so far over 400 nuisance abatement requests to shut them down. I think in Manhattan, we have 200 that we are trying to shut down right now.

Mayor Adams: And it's taking too long. This is all the cost of doing business. So, now imagine if we have complete enforcement. Now I could go to the precinct commander or the chief and say, you have 100 illegal smoke shops in your area, in two weeks I'm coming back up here and I better not see a place that you can buy a blunt.

That is what we need because we'll get it done. But we need the power. When we have those officers spread out throughout the entire city, you're taking away our manpower when we could just turn it right over to the precincts, they'll do an analysis where they are and they will shut them down.

Question: Thank you.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table 14.

Question: Good evening, Mayor Eric.

Mayor Adams: Look at you. Stop, stand up in threes.

Question: We'll stand up.

Mayor Adams: You know what I'm saying?

Question: [I'm going to introduce it again.] Good evening, Mayor Adams.

Mayor Adams: Good evening.

Question: My name is [Tina Tamba].

Question: My name is [Neve Henderson].

Question: [Kaylin Kobran].

Question: And we represent TAG.

Yeah, you all already know TAG in the house. All right. Given recent budget cuts affecting public education, how do you plan to comply with the law passed last year by state legislator that mandates smaller class size to support quality education.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. And so let me give you my thoughts on the smaller class sizes. Okay? The law was passed that stated every class must be a certain size. Okay? What that is going to do to us? Stuyvesant is not struggling for smaller class sizes, Brooklyn Tech is not struggling, Bronx Science is not struggling. All of these schools, specialized schools that are doing well, 98 percent graduation rate, all of them, 98 percent graduation rate, some of them 100 percent graduation rate, they're not struggling.

Now, see, the problem is people think of equality and not equity. Equality is that you and I are both given a coat, but we wear different sizes. So, you don't need just a coat, you need a coat that fits your size. So, we're now taking my ability away of saying, let's put the resources in the schools that need them.

So, what I ask is say, let's make sure we do those class sizes in those areas of the schools that are struggling in and not saying we have to do it across the board. Stuyvesant is doing fine. People are tripping over themselves to go to the schools.

And so you are now finding, ladies, you are now finding those schools that people are leaving the communities to go to the other schools that are doing well. We are going to be hurting them. So, the way this bill should be, let's look at the schools that are struggling and let's put more resources into those schools. That is equity. That's not equality.

I believe we've always [deal] with the equality that we're going to give everybody the same dollar amount when those schools are not struggling. Some of them have foundations, they have boards, they have PTAs that can [run] millions of dollars. That is not what we should be focusing on. We should be focusing on the schools that need the help the most. That is going to be taken away from me.

That's a problem to me. And I'm going back to Albany and I'm asking them, can we look at this and say, let's make sure we focus on those schools that are struggling. That's what we should be focusing on, not focusing on those schools that are doing well.

Stuyvesant is going to have 100 percent graduation rate. Who are we kidding? I don't care if you make class size 30 people. They're going to do well. Brooklyn Tech is going to do well, Bronx Science is going to do well. All of these schools that are going to do well now I'm going to be required to say, I'm going to give it to...I'm going to give you the same thing that I'm giving to schools that are not doing well. I just think that's wrong.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table 15.

Mayor Adams: I'm sorry. Where do you ladies go to school? Huh? Yes. Yes.

Question: I go to school to LaGuardia Community College.

Mayor Adams: And you?

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: Okay. And you?

Question: Bronx Community College.

Mayor Adams: Lehman? First of all, thank you for being here.

You're all together. Thank you for being here and I really need your help. I just think there's just a dark cloud that's hovering over our city. I think people are in so much pain and I would love for you to be part of our Leaders of Tomorrow group of young people who are coming together.

I would love for you to be a part of that because we are just going to need people, young people who are willing to come in and sit down and talk. And so if I could give one of you my cell number that I could connect you with… I'm going to text you over, and I want you...

Commissioner Kreizman: One second.

Mayor Adams: I want you to come to hold an event at Gracie Mansion with other young people. Give me your number and I'm going to text you. I'm going to send it over to you.

I'm going to call you and just lock it in.

Question: All right.

Mayor Adams: Okay. But I would love for you… It came through, right?

Question: Yes, it did. Okay. I would love for you to hold something like Gracie Mansion or City Hall and just bring young people. I'm looking at the diversity of this group that's here and just bring in young people together and just figure out how can we start talking to each other again. Okay? Thank you so much for being here tonight.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table 15.

Mayor Adams: I'm sorry?

Question: We're about to [inaudible] because we actually do have something every Thursday going.

Mayor Adams: I love TAG.

Question: Okay. Hi, everybody. Good evening, mayor.

Mayor Adams: Good evening.

Question: My name is Amy Guzman. I'm also a TAG...Sorry. I'm also a TAG youth ambassador along with my brothers and sisters here. So, on November 13th, we've held an event called Conversation with the Commissioners where we had top eight commissioners, Keith Howard, Ashwin Vasan, where's Luis Molina? Ydanis, yes, with all these amazing commissioners where they came and they held a conversation with the youth and we voiced all our opinions and all our questions.

TAG is one of the… Sorry. TAG is one of the biggest youth groups in the city right now. We've been developing for over two years now and we've always extended our invitation to you for TAG Night. So, my question to you is, when will you be attending TAG Night and what can we anticipate your personal attendance?

Mayor Adams: You know what I notice? Whenever somebody hit me on something, you all clap.

How about clapping when somebody says something nice about me? When is the event?

Question: So, TAG Night is held every Thursday at 2193 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. at Salem Methodist Church from 4:30 to six.

Mayor Adams: Okay. Okay. So, what we would do is you have my number. I'm going to connect you with Gladys. Gladys is my scheduler, and she will...if we can't get this Thursday, we'll get before the end of the year. I'll definitely come out. Okay?

Question: Also, just to say this Thursday TAG night is actually very special. We'll be having a collaboration with the DA's office talking about fentanyl and informing the youth and just the generation overall about what fentanyl does to us.

Mayor Adams: I love that. I love that. So, I'll try it. If I can't get this Thursday, but Thursday's the 7th?

Question: Yes.

Mayor Adams: No, I'll be in D.C. asking them to help us on Thursday. So, I'll come the next Thursday. But notice...those of you who were clapping, notice they had an event and my commissioners was there, you know that? Notice that.

So, when you ask, we come.

Question: Now I'm asking you to come.

Mayor Adams: That's what I'm saying.

Question: Okay.

Mayor Adams: Yes. But thank you. Thank you. So, listen, make sure you reach out so I can connect you with Gladys. Okay? Thank you. But listen, give it up for our young people.

Energetic. Energetic, just bringing that energy. They're bright, they know what they want. Clarity. I mean, it warms my heart when you see all the negative, all we hear is about the negative things that young people are doing. We are fortunate to come in contact with some positive young people.

See that brother there? Hercules. Hercules, raise your hand. Hercules was an intern that joined me in Brooklyn Borough Hall. And during Covid‑19 when no one wanted to come outside and we wanted to give masks to NYCHA residents and I told my staff, everyone go home because it was too dangerous to be in the street. I came into Borough Hall and I see him inside packing up boxes of masks for people.

I said, what are you doing here? He says, if you are here, I'm here. And I'm not going to abandon this borough at this time. And he has been with me all these years. All of my interns have come up with me throughout and these young people are going to do some great things. So, I really appreciate that you're here and we need to continue to invest and pour into you. And TAG is an amazing organization. Yes.

Commissioner Kreizman: So, just before we go to the last table, last question, I want to give a shout out to Tiffany Brown, our Manhattan Borough Director for helping put this together.

Mayor Adams: Yes, Tiffany. Stand up, Tiffany.

Commissioner Kreizman: Right there. Thank you Tiffany, helping us. Thank you so much. We're going to our last question on Table 16.

Question: I'm so sorry.

Mayor Adams: That's all good.

Question: We can't end my question without giving a special shout out to Mark Stewart, because he was definitely there answering the questions. Where is he? Where is he? Where is he? Oh, there you are, Mark. Hi.

Mayor Adams: You have my whole crew there.

Question: [Inaudible] amazing answering all the useful questions. I want to thank you guys so much.

Commissioner Kreizman: Next, last question.

Question: Good evening. My name is Anita Kennedy and I don't know how I'm going to follow the young children. They're great. I am a street outreach worker here in East Harlem. And as you know, the opioid overdose is a huge problem in our city. I personally do about 150 to 200 Narcan trainings a month in East Harlem.

So, Narcan is a lifesaving medication. Used to reverse an opioid overdose. Are the school's training teachers and perhaps students with the use of Narcan to reverse opioid overdose?

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. And you know what? And the fact that we are encouraging people to walk around with Narcan is an indictment in our society. It's an unfortunate reality and we have to live life the way it is and take it the way it ought to be. But right now, the way it is, everyone should be trained on Narcan.

Everyone. We saved two babies in the Bronx almost OD on fentanyl because of the Narcan. Heads up to those EMS employees that identified they were going through an overdose. How many we gave out, Dr. Vasan, 200,000, I think?

Commissioner Vasan: That's right. 200,000.

Mayor Adams: Okay. Melissa, are we training teachers? Are we training city employees?

Commissioner Vasan: Yes, absolutely. And after the tragedy that the mayor's referring to where we saved three babies but tragically lost one, we have begun distributing Naloxone to our daycare centers and training up workers. We've trained nearly 11,000 people across the city in the last year.

And as some of you might know, the federal government has made Narcan available over the counter. It is absolutely a lifesaving drug. I carry Narcan with me all the time. And it is an indictment on where we are. But it's the reality that why would you not want to have this simple lifesaving drug on you in the event you see someone in need?

It can happen in your home. It can happen on the street. It can happen in the most unexpected ways. Drug use, substance use. Fentanyl is making this crisis so widespread that it's either touching us all today or it's going to touch us all at some point.

And so having fentanyl with you and we're committed to...we're going to be ramping up Naloxone distribution, Narcan distribution even more in the coming year. Not just to schools, but doing more virtual trainings, doing more distribution to… We distribute them at city shelters.

We're distributing them to our asylum seeker sites because we've tragically seen a few overdoses at those sites. Because as the mayor has said and maybe it's a great way to end, mayor, for you, is the city's in pain. We're seeing it in data, but we're also seeing it very much in the lives of people who live with substance use issues.

Mayor Adams: And our life expectancy rate has decreased. Dr. Vasan and his team is doing, we have to change the life expectancy from gun violence to drugs to suicides and our children are experiencing a real dark place. So, we're all in this together and this is why we're doing this.

We want to get on the ground because much of what we say and much of what this team has accomplished, it is just drowned out by so much noise. And we know the work we're doing. This is a committed group of people. And matter of fact, my law enforcement people, can you guys stand up and we just want to acknowledge them that are here today.

And for our seniors that are here, for our seniors that are here, Commissioner Stewart, put in each precinct a senior liaison so you don't have to navigate the challenges and difficulties. We are here to speak directly to you. FDNY has this calendar of the firefighters and what have you. As I stand here, you are a bunch of good looking cats on my administration. Right, Jimmy, listen, thank you for coming out. We got a lot to do.

Commissioner Kreizman: Thank you. Please make sure to collect all the cards, Mayor's Office staff on every single table. We can collect all your questions and get back to every single one of you.

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