September 11, 2017Mayor Bill de Blasio: Hello everybody. Welcome, welcome to City Hall. All right, that’s a good ring tone. It’s a pleasure to be with you, to be back together again. Want to start by saying thank you to all of you for the work you do in a world where there""s, one could argue, too much information, too many stimuli and people are seeking truth. A lot of folks in communities all over the city turn to you as trusted interpreters of what’s going on in the city in this country, in this world and depend on your outlets, your publications to help them get a clear picture of what things are happening that really affect their lives.I think we can safely say that sometimes the mainstream media leaves out a lot of the stories of the committees represented here and doesn’t speak to the realities and their needs but you in so many cases play that role. I want to thank you for that. I am joined by my colleagues. I think a lot of you know my Community Affairs Commissioner Marco Carrion. I thank him for his good work with all the communities represented here. I want to thank Bitta Mostofi who is our acting Commissioner for Immigrant Affairs for the great work that she has been doing.Our Commissioner Nisha Agarwal is on medical leave and will be back soon. Bitta’s continuing Nisha’s great work in her absence. Look just I’ll say a few things quickly and then I’ll look forward to opening it up, I don’t need to tell anyone here there is a very, very different reality in the city and in this country than if we were sitting here just a year ago, the amount of fear and the amount of confusion has grown for so many communities. The actions in Washington, not just the rhetoric, the ever-changing actions have left people even more confused. I’m very, very worried for themselves and their families in so many cases.Our job here in the city is to address that fear by showing the New York City will stay true to our values and will be supportive to all communities to make sure people know that in this city, they’ll be respected, their documentation status will never be asked by our police or our educators or the folk who work in our public hospitals. People know that IDNYC is there for them and will be kept secure to know that legal assistance is available for anyone facing deportation.These are the kinds of things that matter so much. It’s very, very helpful when all of you provide information to communities and a constant reminder that help is available often in just a simple fashion as calling 311 or going on the city’s website. There’s always more to do to reach people. Want to remind you that some people are being told falsehoods. Some people are taken advantage of by people preying on them because of their documentation status or preying on them because of the fear that so many people are feeling.We depend on all of you to get the truth out to warn people against the scams and those who would take advantage and to remind them where I can get good and reliable information. They can always get that from the mayor’s office immigrant affairs. That should be one of the go to locations for consistent information. It was very, very helpful to remind people of that.We obviously this week are focused on DACA 30,000 New Yorkers directly affected. The message we gave coming literally hours after the president’s announcement was the city stands united and we had all of the elected leaders of the city together and faith leaders of many backgrounds notably joined by Cardinal Dolan and his leadership has been particularly strong on this issue. I’m sure many of you saw the absolutely inappropriate and upsetting comments by Steve Bannon directed at Cardinal Dolan.The Cardinal is staying true to his faith and his being a leader in the truest sense by standing up for everyone who is a recipient of DACA. I commend him for that. But with that kind of common front, you’re going to see in the city in addition to all the efforts to help the DACA recipients get good information to make sure that any who need to reapply in the coming weeks who need an extension in the short-term do it.Most importantly we’re going to be working on two fronts, on the legal front still refining what cities can do to fight this back, fight back the president’s action. We will take every possible legal action but even more promising to me is Congressional action which might sound surprising to some but I think what has happened here is that the national distress and it’s really something that cuts across ideological levels in many ways, the national distress that young people who have only known life in the United States could be sent away and ripped from their families. That is creating a tremendous pressure on the Congress to act.We already see a surprising amount of support from Republicans for the Dream Act or the Bridge Act. I am very, very hopeful that over the next six months we will see action. What I’m going to do is work with mayors around the country and a lot of Republican mayors are willing to be a part of this to push those swing votes in the house and Senate to support the Dream Act.I think we have to understand this is a moment where lots of communities are speaking out and that is affecting the behavior of some Republican senators and Congress members. We certainly saw that on the Affordable Care Act. I think we’re going to see it again on the Dream Act so we""ll be working hard to in every way build that support to get this legislation passed. Then finally we know that everything else that""s going on in the city affects all communities, opening day of school yesterday. Really, really proud of the progress our schools are making and also the beginning of a very new era with the first classrooms of 3-K high-quality free early childhood education for three-year-olds that started in the South Bronx and in central Brooklyn and will expand across the city.We continue all of our efforts to protect people and protect their affordable housing including providing legal assistance to stop people from being evicted and really powerful legislation was passed by the Council in the last weeks which I was honored to sign obviously the right to counsel law providing that legal assistance to stop evictions but additional anti-harassment measures to stop landlords from taking advantage of tenants of all backgrounds, documented and undocumented. We want to do much, much more to keep people in their affordable housing.Now we have more powerful legal tools to do that. So those are couple of the highlights. I want to open it up in a moment but with one last point I just want to say this up front because it may come up because it has in our previous gatherings and I just will affirm to you the people have to make a decision about the future of the city if they decide to extend my employment contract. I look forward to continuing these gatherings. I think they’ve been very, very helpful but one of the things that came up when we first got together a few years ago was a concern about the city using its resources to promote our many programs Thrive NYC and affordable housing and pre-K and 3-K through all of your publications.We’ve made a concerted effort to improve that and I want to know in terms of the community and ethnic media, our spending has increased steadily and the number of ad buys have gone up very, very profound over 290% percent since the beginning of 2014 when we came in. We continue to increase spending. So this is something I believe has been very effective. In fact, we want to deepen it because we still know there’s a lot of people have to be reached and a lot of people need good, clear information and something as you know near and dear to my heart like pre-K and 3-K, there’s still parents who are not taking up that opportunity for their kids because they don’t fully understand and I don’t blame them but they don’t fully understand what it could mean for their child’s development and future. We want to help educate them and make them comfortable and we’re also very concerned.Obviously, there’s been some talk of people holding back their children from educational opportunities because of their fear of their action regarding their documentation status. We need to be evermore energetic at promoting these good opportunities and letting parents know they will be safe, their children will be safe and I know that’s another good reason why we want to make sure we’re working with you on those message including through paid advertising. So we will continue and deepen that effort. With that, I look forward to your questions and hearing your concerns. YesQuestion: [inaudible]. My question is [inaudible] Dreamers Act so as mayor of the largest city of United States, what is your message to the people who are affected by this?Mayor: My message is to recognize that a lot of help is on the way, that all over the country, more and more people are working to protect the dreamers. There’s a lot of anger at what the president did and it is actually crystallizing support for the dreamers. I am convinced that there will be congressional action. We have to work at it. I’m not saying it’s instantaneous. We have to work hard but I’m convinced it will ultimately be achieved.In the meantime, to make sure that they are current on any paperwork, anything they have to do to stay in their current status, obviously for those coming up on their October deadline. That’s a subset of the dreamers but making sure they do what they’re supposed to do before that. As much as I am so distressed by what the president does all the time, even he acknowledged that the next six months there will be no negative actions towards dreamers so people should use that time to work with all of us to make the change we need in the Congress. Yes?Question: [inaudible]. Thank you so much that since you [inaudible] thanks for that. One thing I found which is [inaudible 00:11:58] very expensive and a lot of people [inaudible] that whether you can [inaudible].Mayor: Well yeah, we will look at everything. I think the point about being expensive is part of the challenge. Unlike the private sector which devotes a huge amount of resources to advertising, we have some real limits. We are usually on pretty thin budgets to begin with and we try to reach as many communities as we can but look if people want to work with us to figure out a price that we can afford, we want to do as much as we can. Everything I’m talking about we want to promote. You’re exactly right there.Question: [inaudible]Mayor: Right and that’s very helpful. Jessica will follow up who’s done a great job helping us build up our advertising efforts and all of your media. I thank her for that. The point I make is we have a common cause. We want to educate communities whether to stop smoking or as you said vaccination pre-K, 3-K, all of these things IDNYC. We really want people to know about it. We’re very urgent about that. You do too and I understand you need advertising to keep your publications going, keep doing the public service you do. We’re going to try and match up as much as we can just recognizing we do not have extensive advertising budgets, we have limited advertising budgets but we want to use them I in a more equitable and effective fashion so Jessica will certainly, anyone from a broadcast outlet who wants to present us options that we may not have known of, we will welcome it yes.Question: Hi, Tony [inaudible] Community News. First of all, I would like to thank you [inaudible] like to thank you for all the work that you did over the past six years, but it seems like six months. Nevertheless the whole community knows is [inaudible]. I just wanted to see is there and we""re a free publication weekly and I would like to know is there any major contact that we can focus on to increase over the city advertising to help [inaudible].Mayor: Hi there, Jessica. That was easy. That’s the easiest and thank you for being a cofounder [inaudible] yes.Question: My name is Javier [inaudible] Latino. The DACA issue has affected the Latino community in a big, big way, families and students. [inaudible] in the next six months the Congress is going to do anything and the lawsuit is [inaudible] what’s going to happen? What is the plan of the city for seven months now?Mayor: I usually don’t respond to hypothetical questions and I’ll tell you why because I don’t think that’s the way to achieve our goal, to think about fallbacks when we have something that we can achieve right now. I also understand the city has things we can do and other things we can’t do when we""re talking about a federal policy.Obviously the legal services we have put in place with the city council are there right now for anyone facing deportation. That would be true if there was ever a situation which there was a problem with DACA. We would keep doing everything we could to make sure we could serve as many people as possible. I don’t think, I’m not saying your question is not fair, I’m just telling you I don’t think that’s the right way to think. I think the pendulum is swinging very hard on this issue. I think there’s tremendous pressure on the White House and on the Congress to act. I think we need to increase that pressure. I think it is to me almost inconceivable that they don’t act. I think it leaves them so vulnerable substantively and politically.The strong voice of faith communities is going to play in here who overwhelmingly regard the DACA recipients as a very sympathetic group of people. I don’t think we should be planning on fallbacks right now. I think we should be energizing a strategy to winning as many members of the house and Senate to agree to the Dream Act or something very close to it. I think it’s also very interesting. I haven’t fully analyzed it but the vote in the last 20 hours on this package of items that Trump negotiated with the Democratic leadership suggest an understanding that the recklessness of the previous approach the White House took was very damaging to their standing. I think it’s way too soon to predict anything about Donald Trump to say the least but on this one, the door is wide open for a solution. It’s quite clear and if they can make the deal they made on the debt ceiling and the continued resolution which in many ways are even more controversial issues in recent years. I’m certain they can make a deal around the dreamers. [inaudible] hey.Question: [inaudible] I want to just actually follow up on that [inaudible].Mayor: I don’t think that way yet is the honest answer. I’d like to see more evidence even though I believe this was the right thing to do for everyone concerned to agree to raise the debt ceiling to vote on the continued resolution, the Harvey aid etc. I don’t think it’s proof of a paradigm shift.As I said, I want to see a lot more before I believe that. I do think it has a continuity with the DACA vote because I think they stem from the same situation. The president was in an untenable situation. That’s why I think he did it. I think he was running out of options. We’ve seen with his poll numbers and we’ve seen how the erratic approach was totally destructive to what he was theoretically trying to achieve. I think they understand more and more. Maybe it’s General Kelly’s good influence too that they understand they have to resolve some of these outstanding issues if they ever want to get anything done but that’s a different matter than whether there could be grounds for any more meaningful collaboration.So my argument is let’s keep pressure on. Until we have evidence of a convergent experience of the White House, let’s keep pressure on. DACA’s a great example. I think we succeed in DACA if we really put pressure on the swing Republican senators and Congress members that has to come from the grassroots up. That’s why I’m going to work with fellow mayors around the country. It has to come from fellow Republicans. It has to come from independence. It has to come from clergy. It has to come from the business community.I think on that one, we can win but I am dubious on other fronts and I am particularly dubious on the “tax reform” which is really what they are trying to achieve. I want to caution everyone. There’s a great phrase from the Watergate years and a lot of other people have used it to follow the money. I believe that what’s really happening here is the Trump administration is trying to reset themselves to achieve a “tax reform” that will really be a tax giveaway to millionaires and billionaires and big corporations and is very dangerous for this city and other cities because that would mean a huge revenue loss for the federal government and that will come out of education funding, housing, affordable housing funding [inaudible] funding.On top of that, there’s discussion of taking away exemption for state and local taxes which is going to greatly increase taxes in main parts of the country and certainly cause more burdens on local budgets. I want to see if there’s any possibility this president is going to take an entirely different path, I’ll be watching but I need to see a lot of evidence of that and I unfortunately don’t believe that. I believe it’s a calm before the storm.Question: In particular, it should be on DACA [inaudible].Mayor: Right. Right now from my point of view, it’s DACA tax reform and healthcare is not done yet and I remind people that. I think again the grassroots effort helped to protect the affordable care act but that drama is not over. Those are among the things were I put my focus on working with fellow mayors and organizing from the grassroots up. We’re going to keep doing that on all those three fronts. If we see a different approach to all of that again, we might be in a new era but right now, I’m really, really concerned that what you’re going to see is a very painful tax reform that deeply hurts cities around the country. I shouldn’t call it reform, I’m using shorthand there.Question: Hank Levy with The Jewish Post, during major disasters like we’ve seen in Texas and now we’re anticipating from Florida up the coast, the help of the federal government can be crucial. Can you compliment president Trump and his team for what they’ve been doing and how they’ve been reacting to local and state, state officials in these instances, and two, would you consider toning down the general rhetoric which is almost entirely negative towards Trump and wanted to keep open lines of communication if and when our city may need that assistance from federal government.Mayor: Well, on the first question, I don’t have a good enough sense of how things have been handled on Harvey. I’m very happy of course, I can certainly compliment the White House and the president for recognizing that the aid package needed to go through. They did agree to that quickly compared to some of the partisan obstructionism we saw around the Sandy aid. So on that, if you’re looking for an area where I can say, “Okay that was actually a good thing,” that was certainly a good thing.In terms of the ways the federal government worked with local authorities in Texas or how FEMA acted, I just don’t have enough field vision of that to give you a great assessment. On the question of keeping an open dialogue, look again I have analyzed this guy over the last few years and we""ve all seen him a long time for that. I think right now, position of strength is the best way to deal with him and I think what he has said and done is so egregious that anything less than a forceful approach allows him to get away with things that should never be excused and the comments after Charlottesville are a great example.Most normal politicians that would’ve been all you ever heard of them, that would have been the end of the line. We could have said that a lot of other times about Donald Trump starting with when he belittled John McCain’s war record. Many, many times, those would have been the fatal last words of a politician.The fact that this guy has nine lives politically doesn’t change the reality. He has said and done absolutely reprehensible things and they must be confronted. I also think the way that he has been forced to moderate at times was because of pressure, not because of silence, not because of compromising, because of pressure. He felt the pressure on DACA. He felt the pressure on healthcare as did the Republicans in Congress and certainly felt the pressure after Charlottesville even though what he said and did was unacceptable, it may have led to having Steve Bannon leave which was very important for the country.My argument would be a lot of us have made a decision to be resolute in challenging him. Again if we see, I say it facetiously but it makes the point we see a conversion experience, if we see a whole new Donald Trump consistently, we can then have a different discussion but I don’t think we’ve ever associated the word consistent with Donald Trump in the last few months. Yes?Question: President Trump talked about general [inaudible] dealings with Muslims and this is like signing up for the other people to increase their hate crimes in quantity and quality. That’s the [inaudible] penalties, stronger penalties for those people [inaudible] the public.Mayor: You mean stronger penalties for hate crimes?Question: Yeah.Mayor: Look, yes I think there are areas where we need stronger penalties. From my perspective, the most important thing right now though is to make sure people report anything that might be against the law. Obviously free speech is protected but there are any number of actions, in particular anything that might instigate or achieve violence that are illegal for the people to report those so the NYPD in our case can act very quickly and resolutely and show that there is a consequence which we have done in many cases. I think it’s always good to have consequences, the penalties calibrated properly and I’m sure there""s cases where that’s not right yet with the hate crimes but much more importantly to me right now is to use the penalties we have and act quickly and aggressively to show that there will be consequences. I think that message will spread. The growth of hate crimes since Trump got elected is troubling for sure. But I do believe there have been many instances where people saw immediate investigations, immediate actions. I think that’s helping to inhibit further hate crimes. Who else? Yes?Question: I’m focused on DACA. I think it""s a really big issue that we should be concerned about it""s the [inaudible]. So four months ago [inaudible] was removed for six months as opposed to 18 and people already told be prepared for deportation. We talking about 6,000 Asians almost half of them are here in [inaudible] and about two months [inaudible] to Haiti. It""s a vulnerable issue at this point. That may be rehearsal for the direction [inaudible] so they may be using the TPS [inaudible] as rehearsal for dealing with [inaudible] so DACA [inaudible].Mayor: Well I’m not trying to be – I’m not the greatest TPS expert in the world. I understand how necessary it is and will fight for it. I think it is by definition a harder fight than something as the relatively universal as DACA and the dreamers I think because too probably a lot of people on Washington, it’s a more obscure issue that is a problem. On the other hand, it relates to crisis and catastrophe and that does help even people I wouldn’t agree with politically to understand how important it is.We want any chance for Haiti to keep recovering the folks who are here many of whom are sending back a lot of support to their homeland. It""s actually a very important part of the recovery process in my view so we""ll do everything we can to protect it. But Bitta, why don’t you talk about the context.Assistant Commissioner Bitta Mostofi, Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs: Yeah I’ll just add that we have been very active locally in particular with broad-based coalition of labor and faith and community leaders doing on the ground know your rights forums, partnering with elected to do legal clinics to make sure that people have the right information and recognizing that in fact in the case of Haiti, the president of Haiti himself has said it’s a near impossibility to receive back a sheer number of individuals.Haitians in New York City represent our health community, many nurses, health aides so we know the value that they bring and the importance of recognizing that it’s an imperfect benefit but as you said it’s a general part of this attack on removing immigration benefits that we care about and we’re actively working on through our coalition of mayors equally have sent letters in support of the renewal of TPS.Mayor: Just one follow on to that. Look, I don’t want to be unduly optimistic about the future but I would say an interesting analysis from my point of view is does the moment focus on the dreamers begin to open minds about comprehensive immigration reform. I’d like to believe the answer is yes. I mean I’m a big believer that we""ve seen consistent public opinion from people around this country that they actually do want a comprehensive immigration reform with the pathway to citizenship for the vast majority of people who are here.The reason I say that is in principle if we could get on that track, that would also be a way to address a lot of people with TPS status from Haiti and other countries. It’s not going to happen overnight but I do think if the dream act or anything like it passes, one could argue that would have been the most substantial step toward compressive immigration reform and might begin the process of a reckoning that it""s going to be needed for the future of the country. Let me see if anyone that has not gone yet has a question. Yes?Question: Hi my name is Regina Fox. I’m from [inaudible] station. I have a question about the school. There’s a new Russian bilingual school in Manhattan, 145, PS 145. Do you have any plans to expand the program, the bilingual program for Russian speakers because there are around 1 million of us in New York City. Do you have any plans for them?Mayor: Okay. That’s a higher number than I’ve heard previously.Question: You gave that number.Mayor: I did not give that number, maybe tri-state area but not for the city but we speak on behalf of the Chancellor too, really believe in the dual language programs, they’ve been very popular, very successful. I mean in a globalized world, what a gift to give the children to make sure they are fluent in multiple languages. I don’t know what the specific plans are around Russian. We can have our DOE folks follow up with you but I can tell you we intend to keep expanding dual language programs.Question: Would you try to speak to our kids in our languages, all of us. There are so many Russians for example on Brighton Beach. What do you do to reach them, the younger generation?Mayor: Well when you say what do we do to reach them, you have to specify that a little bit more.Question: I can""t tell you but I don’t see a lot of outreach program from the city hall. Speaking about the ads.Mayor: Well look I mean in terms of – Bitta will jump in, in terms of I’m thinking of many things we do where Russian obviously is on the list of primary languages of primary importance for translation in this city and we provide a lot of materials online and paper in Russian translation services. We are trying to promote these key initiatives like pre-K in a host of languages and a host of communities. We""ve actually sent people out, our public engagement unit into communities to engage people directly but why don""t you speak –Assistant Commissioner Mostofi: Yeah, I will just add that we actually through our office even have outreach workers that speak Russian in the community on a regular basis and making sure that we’re effectively connecting with services with that community. If we""re not doing it where we need to be, we want to hear that and so that we can respond. Most recently, we have done things like make sure that voter registration forms are translated into Russian and other languages and our local law requires that we translate city serving materials into that language so please let us know what we can be doing better but we absolutely do have an initiative on outreach in that community.Mayor: And so I just square it by saying the vision is there meaning we thoroughly believe in intensive outreach in English and in other languages, in all kinds of communities and obviously the focus we try to put in investing more in all of your outlets. If you’re saying you don’t feel it’s reaching the community then Bitta, Jessica etc., Marco would like to know what we could be doing to reach the community more because we want to. Okay, yes?Question: [inaudible] Charlottesville [inaudible] revolved around [inaudible] here in the state. [inaudible] among others. [inaudible] many of us had some conversation [inaudible] so I wonder if you could speak specifically to the [inaudible] and personal conversations at home and how they are [inaudible].Mayor: Look, I appreciate the question. The idea of the conversations at home is actually a great paradigm because that’s what I’d like to see the city have is a conversation openly about these issues rather than let them fester. I think every dynamic is different. I think we should understand the situation where the Confederate statues for example is particular and because that’s its own history and also I think there were so many people paying to see their government embracing that symbol like on the Statehouse lawn in South Carolina or on the Mississippi state flags.So that is one piece of the equation of this larger discussion how does government go out of its way to reinforce that symbol. I think a lot of the other things are different meaning of the statues and markers and one [inaudible] that raise real historical questions but don’t involve the kind of constant promotion of an idea as we saw on some of the situations with the Confederacy. What I want to see is a commission that thoughtfully evaluates a whole host of things brought forward by New Yorkers. I want to be an open nomination if you will.I mean New Yorker can put forth any concern, it gets looked at. Most importantly, effort to come up with some kind of universal set of guidelines of how we handle these things going forward. Look, I will only say this, I thoroughly I don’t want to say I understand everything because I don’t know all the history but I thoroughly acknowledge the complexity of Columbus. I got a Master’s degree in Latin American studies so it""s hard to miss some of that complexity for my studies but I also understand as an Italian-American why he was promoted to generations of Italian Americans as a positive symbol, a symbol of pride in a country that they often felt was rejecting them.I talked about this the other day, the open discrimination against Italians in this country occurred until very recently and the media stereotyping still, negative media stereotyping continues so I understand why a lot of people have been told about only the good element or the good interpretation of Columbus and why that raises some real concerns for them when they hear something being examined.I said the other night in the debate, I think we should never fear looking at these questions. I think airing them out is good and healthy and actually helps us to move forward. That’s what I look forward to the commission doing, looking at these things and coming up with some way to think about how we move forward as a city and obviously what we do with future monuments. Can we see those few more. Go ahead.Question: My name is [inaudible] Martinez from El Diario. Mayor, since you’re looking for an extension of your contract as a mayor for next term, one of the biggest concerns from people in New York is still transportation even though I know that MTA is running by the government [inaudible] they ask what the city can do more in order to poach governor to do something to improve the subway. My another question is what is your position about the announcement from Governor Cuomo about the increase the fees for people who throw things on the subway?Mayor: Sure. Well I agree with that. I haven’t seen all the details but the concept of cracking down on littering in the subways that’s causing these track fires, I agree with that. The bigger point, look, I think it is understandable that folks look at the situation with the subways and they""re just totally frustrated, it’s having a horrible impact on their lives that there’s all these delays and I always say it’s affecting whether people get to work on time or pick up their kids after school on time or get to a job interview.So I understand the frustration and I also understand that for a lot of people, there’s still confusion about responsibility although I’ve noted in the last year, the understanding of the fact that the state runs the MTA and the governor is responsible for the MTA has deeply increased. I’ve been really struck by that. I have talked to people all over the city and I go to town hall meetings. I literally asked the room like who’s in charge of MTA and more and more people are raising their hands when will I say the state and that is part of the solution.If we were talking right now about a police issue or a education issue or the sanitation issue, I could not pretend to you that that""s not my responsibility right if I right now if you said, “Oh I have a concern about the city school.” I said, “Well you know I don’t actually run the school, you’ll have to talk to someone else,” you’d laugh at me so the fact is we actually needed to have a deeper civic conversation to clarify that the governor and the state are responsible and that is the pathway to fixing the problem.The MTA was built to evade responsibility. It was literally built structurally to be unclear so whatever it did, no one you who to blame or to hold accountable. Well, now actually something is changing. The governor and the state are being held accountable. I think that will foster the action we need. The second point is when the governor said he wanted money from the city, I responded that we will work with them on a long-term plan but the immediate money that they need to address is the $456 million they took from the MTA over the last few years and diverted to other causes. They have that money. The state still has the surplus. They should return that money to the MTA.If that were happening at the city level, everyone in this room would say how dare you, you have to give that money back so same thing, the state should give that money back. That will address the immediate needs. In the long term, I""ve put forward the millionaire’s tax which will certainly provide the kind of money every year it could be made, in my view, permanent. I think it should have been done a long time 700 to 800 million per year for the MTA. Half billion or more of that would go to fixing the physical plant of the MTA and that could be used for bonding to bring in a lot more resources beyond that.About 200 million will go for the fair fare which is the half-price Metro cards for low income New Yorkers which I think would be a great act of justice and provide a lot more opportunity. It would be a sustainable source of revenue and Lord knows the millionaires and billionaires in New York City could afford it. A lot of the pundits say, it’s not possible let’s do something else. I argue that’s a misunderstanding of the political context. If the governor got behind the millionaires tax given what’s happening to the MTA, given how much people want to see millionaires pay their fair share, that could be acted on quickly. There is no other alternative on the table. There’s been talk about congestion pricing, there’s literally no plan that’s been offered by Albany to date. So the only plan on the table is the millionaires tax and I think it’s something that would make a huge difference. Yes, in the back?Question: Isseu Diouf Campbell, Afrikanspot.com. I know that you are very proud of the pre-K program you just launched the 3-K. I thought the [inaudible] community and many have unconventional schedule and we know that in the community, there are few illegal family care. They do use the illegal family care because they cannot find on the city level help so do you plan on doing something for even New Yorkers done work on conventional hours and cannot get what they need with the regular.Mayor: I want to separate the answer into two parts. Do we have a plan right now? No, we do not. Is it something we should look at to see if we can find an alternative? Yes, I think that’s a perfectly fair request. I don’t know how to do that in the first instance because we’ve built this along the same lines as the school system and that was part of what was so important about pre-K was to add another grade to our school system working with the community organizations and all the different types of schools.We want to do that again with 3-K which means it’s harder to think about how you do something on very different hours schedule but it’s not inconceivable. We’d certainly welcome community leaders to meet with the department of education to talk about what that might look like and who might be able to provide that working with us because I do know you’re right, everyone has every New Yorker has a different set of hours and it is worth looking at the alternative. So I’d say not part of the plan now but worth exploring whether there’s some way we could create that. Who has not gone yet? Anyone who’s not gone, go ahead.Question: What are you going to do next Tuesday [inaudible]?Mayor: A victory party where?Question: [inaudible]Mayor: Oh yes. Sure, I like that you call it a victory party. That’s a good start. I believe we invite any and all media. I’ll certainly have Jessica follow up with folks from another organization which is our campaign that will be putting together not the government obviously and just note this concern but I believe we –Unknown: I have free time.Mayor: In your free time. I believe it’s something we have done traditionally and certainly we’d be happy to do. Yeah that will certainly be an event Tuesday night. I don’t personally know where it is. I know it exists and so I intend to over the next days go all over the city and I’ll be doing that as well on Tuesday at least for a good chunk of the day and will be voting in Brooklyn at my poll site so pretty traditional election day but my intention is certainly particularly in the morning to get around the different parts of the city. Okay anyone who has not had one yet, forgive me and then we’ll do a few more from people who have, who wear – TVs, yes.Question: Hi I’m [inaudible]. That’s a lot [inaudible] of Tuesday and I want to sort of go back to DACA a little bit. Well you say you work on a socio [inaudible] the other mayors to poach on the swing votes across the country, what exactly like I want you … Can you specify what exactly?Mayor: Sure.Question: And also as we know there are several pending views in Congress right now including like the new version of DACA which actually provides the pathway from documents, immigrants to become legal. Does New York City stand with any deals right now or you are more referring to as we passed by a single act in terms of DACA right now.Mayor: Look we are going to look at all the legislative options. What I want is the one that best provide security for the dreamers going forward and a clear pathway obviously. I’m not familiar with all the details of the Dream Act but I want to see an outcome where dreamers know once and for all that they get to remain in this country and get a pathway to citizenship.So and again my hope is this could be the beginning of a bigger pathway to a full and comprehensive immigration reform. We’re going to look to support the strongest version has any chance of passing. I’m not going to be surprised if there’s a different attempts to amend the bill on the way to final passage but we we""ll push for the strongest possible version that will support the dreamers. In terms of how we do it, I mean the example which I think was pretty well covered of how we handled healthcare so I worked with mayors in all of the states that had a swing senator in them.There was a really impressive effort by mayors on the ground and was always bipartisan to do rallies and press conferences and meetings with the Senators and they worked with their healthcare communities, and their hospital executives and their business communities, it""s very comprehensive. When you get an outcome that you hope for, it’s always interesting to say what were the component parts. We’ll never know exactly what moved Senator Murkowski or Senator McCain or Senator Collins but I think it was helpful that a lot of local leaders were pushing them to preserve the Affordable Care Act so we had a very good experience with that. I want to take that model and use again. It’s pretty clear at the outset who some of the swing Senators and Congress members are. We obviously know who are the key mayors in their states and their districts and we’re going to work with them to just create as much positive pressure as possible to get their representative to act. Anyone else who is not gone once if you haven’t gone once, you haven’t gone once.Question: [inaudible] so my question is regarding to increase the diversity to specialize high schools [inaudible] future.Mayor: It’s this is one where and I’ll separate the things that I think can happen with the current open dynamics and the things that can’t happen. The millionaires tax I mentioned earlier for the MTA because it’s a crisis I think that’s something that could happen even with the current state Senate if the governor got behind it.The effort to fix the specialized schools I’m less optimistic can happen with the current Republican state Senate in Albany, I am much more optimistic will happen when there’s a democratic state Senate which I believe will occur in the November election next year. That one to me it requires our law department fundamentally believe it requires state legislation to fix this problem once and for all. I would go from a single test which is the current model to a multiple measures approach just like universities use. If Harvard and Yale decide entrance based on multiple measures, I think [inaudible 00:50:48] and Brooklyn Tech can do the same and that’s what I would look to. I believe that would be more fair as a way of assessing students in general and I also believe it will inherently lead to more diversity.Question: Mr. Mayor [inaudible] was very little turn out [inaudible]. What’s the strongest argument you have to [inaudible]?Mayor: I will start, I will give you the argument but I’ll start by saying I’m not blind to the fact that it""s been very quiet and that doesn""t help in terms of turnout. We have to figure out how to engage people when there’s controversy and when there isn’t. I think one of the answers is to work on civic engagement all the other times besides the elections as a way to train people to be involved.If people think their civic engagement happens once a year and fortunately, that’s going to be a formula for continued decline if people conversely believe there’s lots of ways to be involved in the civic process, that’s going to encourage more regular voting so I think we have to figure out how to correct that but here’s my answer to your question. There’s a lot more to do. If anybody has seen a change that has affected them, they have a reason to come out to vote this Tuesday, September 12 and then again on Tuesday November 7th in general election.If anyone in your life has pre-K or now 3-K and that has made their life better, any child in your life has experience that, that happened because on election. If you want to keep happening you need to show up. If you benefited because there’s 93 percent less stop and frisk and communities of color, people are being treated with more respect or the other piece of the equation you benefited because crime is gone down because we’ve helped to repair the relationship between the police and the community then you should want more of that, you have to come out and do something about it.If you believe that things like a rent-frees and free lawyers to keep people from being evicted are the kinds of policies that protect people’s right to affordable housing, those happen because on election. They never existed before. They happened because of the election and we want to continue to take actions that protect people. But it’s a matter of people recognizing that so much was hanging in the balance in 2013 and when the people of the city voted overwhelmingly for a series of changes and they actually got those changes so they have a chance now to go much farther but I need their help. I need another strong mandate to do it, that’s my argument. Go ahead and then we’ll do a few more, go ahead yeah.Question: I read your interview in New York magazine [inaudible] that we can talk about many issues but something that really got my attention is your relationship with the press, how can you differentiate or characterize a little bit [inaudible] to compare with the angle media [inaudible].Mayor: What a fabulous question. If Jessica could kick me under the table right now, she would but she’s too far away. It’s too bad you have longer legs Jessica.Unknown: I could do it.Mayor: I’ll give you a preface that I’ve said publicly before when I directly hear from New Yorkers, it is entirely different than what’s asked by the mainstream media so I have had 30 or 35 town hall meetings where anybody can ask anything and they typically go on for two and a half, three hours and then for a year or two, I had the call and show on WNYC which was fabulous because Brian Lara would talk about whatever the controversy of the day is and then the next caller inevitably would talk about their sidewalk or the raccoon in their yard or anything and everything about affordable housing. It was the perfect example of the famous phrase from Tip O""Neill, all politics is local. But my point is this, when everyday New Yorkers talk to me, they want to talk about the most tangible things, schools, jobs, affordable housing, obviously protecting immigrants.It’s not about personality, it""s not about politics, it is about the lives they live so I would only say what I appreciate when we had these sessions is it is the questions obviously are more rooted in people’s experiences and they""re closer to the ground if you will because everything you’re asking is about the lives of the people who read your papers and watch your outlets so I appreciate that you’re so deeply connected to communities and it reflects in the questions you ask. Okay, last call, we""ll do two more and then we""ll be done.Question: [inaudible]Mayor: I like your analysis, they are insightful.Question: [inaudible]. What is your most significant [inaudible] and what is the memorable incident [inaudible]?Mayor: So the most and the first part you""re saying what’s the thing I think has had the biggest impact or the thing I""m proudest of and then what""s the second part?Question: If you have a memorable incident, please tell us.Mayor: Memorable incident. You have to explain what you mean by that.Question: [inaudible].Mayor: Oh, there’s been thousands of them. I’ll give you something recent because there’s been so many. On the first question, there are a lot of things I’m proud of but I think I’ve been pretty consistent about saying the thing I’m proudest of is early childhood education because I think that’s going to change everything. It’s funny to work on something that you’ll see the full effect of in 15 or 20 or 25 years.A lot of people in public life need instant gratification. I think the beauty of pre-K and now 3-K is we knew that it’s going to start to help kids right away and make them intellectually stronger and obviously take financial burden off of parents. But the real impact we""ll all get to see in the generation when we have an entirely stronger smarter generation of young people taking over the city and I think kids who are going to have much more ability to stay focused on their education and to avoid some of the dangers out there so that to me is the most moving thing.It’s one of the things we’ve done that’s reached the most people. I’m very proud of that. I recommend to all of you Juan Gonzales’ analysis from a few days ago that was in the daily news. I give him a lot of credit and he’s always been one of the best journalist in the city. I give him a credit for asking the big questions or the redistributive impact of this demonstration.I think we have had a huge impact in terms of getting resources in the hands of folks who needed them and helping to create more equity in the city but to me, you said what""s the leading edge, it""s been pre-K and now 3-K. On the memorable experiences, I think I can just give you from yesterday because it was very evocative to me and it was both ends of the spectrum so I went into a 3K classroom. I must admit to you even though my kids went to preschool, they went to pre-K, they called it pre-K in the public schools but before that, they were in nursery school and all so I""ve been in those classrooms.I believe in this vision, but I had never been in a New York City public school three year old classroom before because they didn""t exist. I went into a classroom in Brooklyn. I would say maybe noon or something yesterday and I walked in the door, I was like, “Oh my God this is little history before our eyes,” like this has never existed and here it is and I was very excited and very moved and the parents were so happy.I didn’t know how three-year-olds would react because I’ve seen the four-year-olds and I’ve always been very impressed at how focused the four-year-olds were. I didn’t know how the three-year-olds would react. I was amazed at how engaged they were. That’s probably an underlying worry that it might be hard for them to relate to the classroom setting. A lot of these kids have never been in a classroom setting but they just took to it immediately. I also learned that if you want to engage three-year-olds and get them focused, just bring out Playdoh.Playdoh is immediate focusing agent and they’re all totally into the Playdoh. Yeah, that’s a very good point. The other fun, the lovely little vignette from yesterday morning, the very first place I was in the Bronx and I walked a three-year-old and his mom to school and his name is Joel. He was very shy and hesitant but one of my colleagues wisely anticipated the situation. I had an imitation toy firefighters hat and Joel was hiding behind his mother’s leg and didn’t want to come out the door of his house so I just held up the hat and said, “Joel, do you want to look at this?” and he’s like looks out from behind her leg and looked some more and then he starts walking forward.I said, “I brought this for you. Do you want it?” He like runs forward to that point and put it on and all he could think about was his hat. There was literally like 20 TV cameras and still cameras and all he could think about was the hat, that was wonderful but the other end of the spectrum was Queens, August Martin High School and it was a really beautiful session. It was traditional public high school which happens to be renewal school and a lot of good work is happening and then at charter school are in the same building and they work together very well.The kids from the traditional public school, the seniors were working with the charter school juniors on college preparedness and they did it like a game show and they were amazing. These kids were it was in Southeast Queens in Jamaica and these kids were so engaged in helping each other and supporting each other and affirming each other’s aspiration to go to college. It was very, very moving because we see so many negative images of young people but if you were in this room, it was impossible to miss how many of these kids first of all assume they were worthy of college which was very moving to me as they should and how many were trying to help each other get there. That’s my vignette and you get the last one.Question: Okay and as you can feel when you go to Latino community, you can feel you have a big support from Latino people but on the other side, two of the biggest concerns from minorities are broken windows program and also affordable housing. So that’s why I would like to ask you if you’re having any plan to change broken windows policy in your next period if you got [inaudible] again and the second one what is that thing that maybe you think that honesty the city failed about affordable housing that you would like to promote more and go more further for the next term?Mayor: Well, on the last I honestly don’t think it’s a question of how did the city fail because I don’t have any regrets about the plan we""ve put together. I think the city has to go farther I think is a different view. I understand why there’s controversy around affordable housing but I also think we need to have a better dialogue about where we’re going on all this so if there’s a failure, I always say I’m very self-critical about communication and I’m constantly trying to figure out how to better communicate to eight and a half million people which is one of the reasons we did these sessions because we know that all of you have been part of allowing for better communication but I need to so if you’re looking for the self-critique, I would say going into a second term if the people choose me.I got to figure out how we reset the conversation about affordable housing because it’s not full enough now, it’s not a complete conversation. There’s so much anxiety about gentrification, there’s so much anxiety about displacement but we need to have a more realistic conversation about the tools we have and what we can do. I often say people I think understandably they think sometimes the mayor of New York City can defy the basic rules of the free enterprise system and I would love to in many ways if I had that power but I don’t.If I literally could say to anybody well it’s your private property but you must do this with this and develop or you have to build this kind of building, and I don’t care how much it cost, I want to do this, you have to do it. That’s not how it works. The private property based society, we have to constantly work with those realities and we do not have a limited government funding.We’ve got to have a different kind of conversation. I think the people are very smart. I have always said there is a – too many people in public life are disdainful of voters and everyday people. I think voters are very smart. I think everyday people are very smart. I actually think they respect being spoken to as adults and not placated. I need to do a better job as saying, “Here’s the reality, here are the real choices that we can make.”I feel good about the choices we made so far but I got to do better at saying people these are set of things we could do and this is why we’re choosing this path and I need you to support it and appealing them to be part of it. We did that I think with some success in New York, Brooklyn.There’s a long process around that rezoning that was very productive led to some really good changes and was an open honest dialogue and I think to some extent that’s been true in the Rockaways too now where we had just had another rezoning approved.That’s the area I want to improve upon and also on the tangible we did in the last budget in June increased the number of affordable apartments for lower income folks, for seniors and for veterans. Those actions were recognition that our plan needed to improve on those fronts and that we actually had opened up the space to make those improvements. We first put forward a plan. We try to be realistic about what we thought we could achieve but it became clear to me we had to do better on those areas and they were worthy. That was about a two billion dollar additional investment to do it just to give you a sense of magnitude.We’re going to look for other opportunities to deepen affordability and that’s certainly going to be a big part of the second term agenda. The other part of your question was on broken windows? Well look, I think we have a fundamental problem with just even the terminology. I think people shouldn’t cling to it anymore honestly.Some of the angst around broken windows is because of how it was utilized decades ago, different time, different police force with different training, different philosophy, different leadership and I say quality of life policing and quality of life policing begins at the community level where we get the calls from homeowners from people who live in apartment buildings, from the store owners on a whole host of issues and the police should respond to them, that’s grassroots democracy right if you’re a community member and you have a problem and you call the police, they should respond to that and a lot of times it is the most basic quality-of-life issues.If I describe that to you or anyone else, no one would oppose that but when advocates call it broken windows policing, they are connecting it to some of the problems of the past in my view. We’ve trained our police force in deescalating conflicts which we""ve seen vividly as having a huge impact. We are doing things like implicit bias training which is changing how our officers think about their work because we are helping them understand the human biases we all have and helping them to weed it out of their work. Those kinds of efforts were never undertaken by our police force previously, now, they are becoming universal.On top of that, the quality of life policing involves all the time. We made a decision to reduce the approach on low-level possession of marijuana. We took it from an arrest category to a summons category. Obviously with the city councils leadership a lot of things were changed about the use of summons obviously working with the DAs and the Council, a lot of things were changed about warrants and old warrants were in many cases terminated.I think it’s important to recognize all that is changing and the quality of life policing will evolve every time. We’re constantly looking for ways to reassess. Some people bring up turnstile jumping, fare evasion. I’m very, very clear no one should turnstile jump. Police are very focused on stopping turnstile jumping but while they’re doing it, they have reduced arrest for turnstile jumping by 21% in the last year. So that’s another evolution of quality of life policing. I feel that if you say what’s going to change, I say we are constantly going to evolve. We’re going to constantly improve training. We’re going to constantly going to look at what’s working, what’s not working but I would only ask that people recognize judge quality of life policing at this administration by what it has been now, not by the broken windows of 20 or 30 years ago.Thank you very much, everyone.