June 25, 2024 Office of the Mayor News
Marko Nobles: Rhythm and Soul Radio, I am Marko Nobles. We have our virtual studio open. And we are fortunate to have coming back with us after he was with us last month, he's back with us, the 110th mayor of New York City, Mayor Eric Adams. How are you, sir?
Mayor Eric Adams: Doing good. It's good to be on with you, as always. Always a good conversation. People who heard our last show said it was extremely informative and it was just a real pleasure to [inaudible.]
Nobles: I'm glad of that and I'm glad you're back and glad we're actually doing this on Primary Day here in New York State. Many people focus on the primaries for the federal election or the presidential election, but the primaries are super important all up and down the line.
As somebody who's been through primaries when you were running for state senator or running for borough president, of course, for mayor, this is an important day. Talk about how important this day really is.
Mayor Adams: It is. When you look at just the lack of civic participation, it really hurts how we really want our city to run. I just encourage people to get out and vote. I know oftentimes, particularly when comes down to Black folks, people say we folks had to die to give us the right to vote, but it is more than that narrative or aspect of it, which is extremely important that people gave up their life, but it's about our lives now as well.
Who is elected is going to determine our public safety, is going to determine our educational system, is going to determine laws and rules that are going to be passed, so I want people to see the connection. If you want to raise your voice about the quality of how the city is performing its function, it is through the ballot box.
You are looking at some of our council districts, for example, you'll have 175,000 people who are represented in that district, and you'll have only 7,000, 8,000 people who are voting. If you don't get out to vote the things that are important to you won't be front and center.
Nobles: Absolutely. Now, obviously, we're going through primaries today, but you'll be involved next year in the primary season. One of the things that's been interesting over the last few months, you've talked about, I don't know if you've called it a conspiracy or an effort to have you removed from office, which is an interesting statement. A lot of mayors may not be as outspoken about something like that at least.
First and foremost, you are a Black mayor in New York City, only our second we've ever had, so there's that aspect, but you have other thoughts about how people view you and what ulterior motives may be as you head into what will be a more heavy campaigning season going into next year.
Mayor Adams: I don't use the term conspiracy and I'm just very clear, which has been a very successful administration. I've been in office for two and a half years. People told me it was going to take five years to turn around the economy and the city and look at where we are. When I was elected, we had a 40 percent increase in crime. Our employment numbers were low. We were dealing with COVID. I had to deal with 200,000 migrants and asylum seekers. Look at where we are right now. We have more jobs in the city, in the history of the city. I cut Black unemployment. One time it was four times the rate of white. I cut it in half. For the first time, it's under 8 percent.
Since 2019, Small Business Services are at the highest level. Almost a third of them started in our administration. Everything from free high-speed broadband to NYCHA residents so our children can learn remotely to NYCHA Land Trust that we pay, build more affordable housing, finance in one year in the history of the city, more people transition out of homeless shelters into permanent housing [inaudible] of the city, tourism back, people back on our subway system, decreasing homicides, shootings, five of the seven major crime categories, but you don't read that.
When I share what we have done in this city, people say, I don't know that, because you are seeing the worst thing that could happen in the city of 8.3 million people being plastered on the front pages of our papers and people begin to identify that the city is out of control and it's not. This city is the safest big city in America and the economy has turned around under this administration.
Nobles: Now, do you think that is different because we all have seen that the news cyclers always promote the negative news first? Some could say that's a continuation of what it's always been. There is obviously all the successes that you have, but then people might say, Oh, the polling numbers are down. There are certain people who are already declared who want to run for mayor next year. The polling members are down, things are not as good as they should be, or the people that the mayor has pledged to help, he's not really helped them as much as he could. How do you change that narrative?
Mayor Adams: Cities have never been ideal. I don't think anyone can point to any time where everything we wanted in a city was there. I ran on some very clear specific things. I ran on dyslexia screening. 30 percent of the inmates at Rikers Island that are dyslexic, I ran on that. I ran on bringing down crime. We removed over 15,000 guns off our streets. You see how safe our city is. Our subway system is one of the safest now in decades. It was just reported the substantial decrease in crime in our subway system. 4.1 million riders use our subway system a day. I want to say this again, 4.1 million. We have an average of six felonies a day on our system with 4.1 million people.
When you do an analysis of other cities, you don't see encampments on our streets. You don't see people living on the highways in the subway stations like when I inherited. When you look at what I said I was going to do, we're doing. I got to get that message out to the voters and I must do a direct-to-consumer communication. Like here, I'm able to speak directly to voters. Then when you go back 30-something years ago, the same narrative that they are attempting to say about my administration is what they said about Mayor Dinkins.
Mayor Dinkins created Safe City, Safe Streets, got police officers to come and deal with the crack era. Mayor Dinkins was turning around our economy. They use the same terminology, Oh, he's out too late. Oh, he dresses too well. Oh, he's not confident enough. This is the same playbook, brother. Same playbook. We have successfully turned around a city that was moving in the wrong direction even with the crises.
People are angry also because we had 200,000 migrants and asylum seekers that came to our city. I don't have the right to stop the buses from coming in. It's against federal law. I don't have the right to say you are not going to get three meals a day, you're not going to have a place to sleep, washing your clothes, and educate 38,000 children. That's the city law. I got to follow it.
I don't even have the right to say, A group of migrants came to me, they said they want to remove graffiti and clean the streets. They want to volunteer and we can give them a stipend. Federal government said, You can't do that. That would be against the law. I have to govern with all of these crises, and we've done an amazing job of turning this city around.
Nobles: Rhythm and Soul Radio, we are talking with New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, and having conversation about the primary season, but obviously bigger than that, and politics. It's interesting you mention Mayor Dinkins and what was said about him. It also makes me think about President Obama. At the end of his first term, one of the things that people talked about that I remember in both cases was that they didn't talk about their successes enough. They were going into an election season but didn't talk about all the good that they have done, to remind people, certainly in President Obama's case, because the nation was extremely divided, Democrat, Republican, and continues to be so.
One of the things that you have done is continue to remind people about what your successes have been under your administration. Is that something you took when you look back at Mayor Dinkins' administration and President Obama's? Is that something that you thought about or is that something that is just you're almost out here in a fight you're going to protect yourself and say, Hey, hey, hey, look at what we've done here?
Mayor Adams: It wasn't so much Obama as much as it was Dinkins. Of course, Mayor Dinkins was a mentor. After reading his book and doing a lot of– while I was running and particularly after the primaries, going in and reading some of the old articles and what the comments were and how there was a real organized effort to erode his base. As successful as he was. He started the M/WBE program. I'm improving on what he started and a number of women and minority-owned businesses that are doing well.
When you have people who are distorting the reality, even your base starts to buy into it. I get Black folks that stop me all the time and say, Why are you giving migrants more than what you're giving us? Which is just not true. Migrants are sleeping in the shelter on cots and they have outside restroom facilities, but when you read it and hear it over and over again, just as what happened with Mayor Dinkins, it could happen to me also.
Nobles: Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm going to shift a little bit to do more talking about the administration and what you're doing. One of the things you just announced yesterday, the New York City Solves program and the efforts to create a more level playing field for our public school students coming out of New York City. Talk about what that program is and explain it for people who may not have heard it since you just announced it yesterday.
Mayor Adams: At that announcement, we also just really laid out just the untruth about our investments in school. We've invested $500 million into our school system. This is unprecedented numbers. When we came into office, some very important programs, the Summer Rising programs would allow children to go to school summer camp type style all year long. That was losing its funding. That was COVID money that sunsetted. We had to find the money for that. The Pre-K, 3-K program, that was losing its money. The previous administration created these permanent programs on temporary dollars and we had to find the money for that even with the $4.6 billion migrant budget deficit that we had.
Yesterday the chancellor and I rolled out to include the improvement we've had in educational system. Brother, you know we're outpacing the state in reading and math? Outpacing the state in reading and math. We rolled out to marry our phonics-based reading curriculum, which now the state is getting ready to pick up. I think the country is going to. We rolled out the math partner to that because far too many young people say, I'm not good at math, I don't like math, I hate math. We are going to use the same methodology that we are using for our reading to apply to our math curriculum at the same time because we're going to improve these math scores and turn this concept around that math is not enjoyable.
Nobles: Growing up in the public schools, I was not a fan of math. I know my daughters are not huge fans of math, but one of them is working on being a veterinarian, so that is extremely important. Thank you for that. Speaking of my daughters, both my daughters are in public school in New York City. One of them said, ask the mayor, she didn't put it in these words, but ask about the infrastructure for the schools in terms of whether it is schools that have security devices that don't work properly and it creates an issue getting into school on time or the bathrooms aren't working properly and there's only one bathroom for the entire school.
These days, different than when I went to public school, you have five or six schools in one school. It can be an issue. Can you talk to some of the things you are looking to or how the Department of Education might be looking to address some of those issues in terms of the infrastructure, which obviously helps education as well?
Mayor Adams: What is your daughter's name?
Nobles: I have twins. Zola is the one who asked that question.
Mayor Adams: To your daughter to answer your question, the facilities of the school, the money to fix it is called a capital budget. That's our capital budget. How we pay the teachers is not capital. Those capital improvements of our schools, because many of them are old, many of them have been left in disrepair for a long time, and so what the chancellor has done, particularly in communities where they've been ignored, has put in a real fast track to get some of those facilities repaired.
As you see we're doing with swimming pools. We have opened up many more swimming pools in our schools. We've been doing the cosmetic things that are needed to have the school facilities be a clean and safe place. We agree with your daughter that we are not seeing our school infrastructure look the way it is, but we are really turning the corner, making these improvements, moving the barriers to get these improvements done. It costs a lot of money because some of these buildings have been really ignored for a long time. It's only by NYCHA, but we are now getting in and attempting to fast track and we're seeing some real improvements.
We were in Brownsville looking at some of the results there as well, but that is our goal, to get these buildings up to the physical presence that we believe it should be.
Nobles: Thank you for that. She'll be happy to hear that. Still talking about schools, because another announcement that you made yesterday was about the Division of Inclusive and Accessible [Learning], DIAL for short, talk about that and how important that is, and how that fits in the landscape of the education system that you and the chancellor are really growing out for public schools.
Mayor Adams: It's been a real problem. We've known it for years. It amazes me, brother, that there are things we knew were broken for a long time and we just continued to ignore them. Our foster care children, we knew what was happening to them. They were aging out without any real support, and they were ending up homeless, mental health, in jail, victims of crimes, and so we invested in foster care by paying their college tuition, giving them a stipend, and allowing them to have life coaches until they're 21 years old, to give that infrastructure.
That's the same thing with children with disabilities. We have just been unfairly and betrayed children with disabilities. I was joined by Lucina Clarke from My Time Inc. She has been an expert in the area of children living with disabilities and helping parents. Yesterday, we announced the combining of all of these services to really get outside consultants, because people have been doing it well outside of the DOE, and to have one deputy chancellor that's going to be in charge of the entire footprint so that we can start coordinating and giving these young people real support that they need because they may have a learning disability and they just learn differently or they're dealing with some other language barriers.
We're really excited about this announcement. I really take my hat off to the chancellor for seeing. The advocates have been calling for this for years and we responded because we felt they were right and we believe we have it right.
Nobles: All right. Rhythm and Soul Radio. We are talking with New York City Mayor, Eric Adams. We're winding things down, but I got just a couple more. The hiring efforts that you're launching. Talk a little bit about that because it is what it says; a community hiring effort, whether it's security guards or things of that nature. The people of the community to be able to get accessible jobs at a fair wage.
Mayor Adams: Yes. This is really so exciting and we think that there is a national model that could be duplicated across the country. What happens in New York City, not only do New York City employees, over 300,000, carry out the daily functionality of a city, we also have contractors, people who are not employees of New Yorkers who provide goods and services to the city. They do this by responding to what's called RFPs, requests for proposals. We need security guards, a security guard [inaudible] hundreds of millions of dollars contract to do so.
What we're saying now, Hey, security guard company, you want to get this contract, you have to now hire from people that live in NYCHA or that live in low-income communities. This is a job employment initiative that we can get [inaudible] low-income and public housing the opportunity to have some of these jobs that we are paying for as taxpayers.
I'm really excited about this. We're starting out with $1.2 billion. It's going to grow to billions of dollars and it can help continue to improve what we have done around unemployment in our city with our hiring laws, what we're doing about one or two a week. So many things we are doing because we know employment is crucial. Local community hiring is a big one. I want to take my hat off to Assemblywoman Zinerman and Senator Parker. They were really helping me get this bill through Albany. The leaders up there, I cannot thank them enough.
Nobles: Is it related, is it another level in terms of the M/WBE program, or does it give another leg up, for lack of a better term, for those who are applying as an M/WBE to say, Hey, now in addition, you're going to apply for this contract, but if you are also hiring people from the community, here's another opportunity for you?
Mayor Adams: This is for M/WBEs and non-M/WBEs. Anyone that wants to, for certain jobs and RFPs that you applied for, if you want to get and win an RFP with that requirement of at least 50 percent of the people should be coming from NYCHA or from low-income communities. It doesn't matter if you are M/WBE or non-M/WBE. This focus on hiring from these communities where unemployment is traditionally high and where people of color have been ignored for many years.
Nobles: Excellent. Excellent. I can't take up much more of your time. You're a busy man. You've got a lot of running around to do. We've been talking with the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams. I know you always want to get directly to the people and people can get information on different announcements and that sort of thing that you're doing through nyc.gov or is it a different site?
Mayor Adams: Yes. The easy thing to do, google me [laughter] and the website comes right up. They don't have to remember or write it down. Just go right to your whatever search [inaudible] and just type in Mayor Eric Adams and the website will pop right out.
Nobles: Excellent. Mayor Adams, thank you for joining us again.
Mayor Adams: Thank you.
Nobles: Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We look forward to doing this again. Enjoy the day, enjoy the week. Hopefully, there won't be too hot of a summer, but just hot enough.
Mayor Adams: Right. Thank you, brother. Take care.
Media Contact
pressoffice@cityhall.nyc.gov
(212) 788-2958