NEWYORK: New York city Mayor Eric Adams said that they inherited a real issue in economy as they had a $7.1 billion budget gap that they were able to close and at the same time bring back over $300 million to some of those important issues when they settled the $112.4 billion budget.
Speaking at media briefing, Mayor Adams said that they we have been clear while dealing the economy that public safety, affordability and make this place livable for working class New Yorkers.
“Education announcement in the 2023 budget. All of these programs that were sun setting, we were able to sustain. hats off to Jacques Jiha and the chancellor and his team over there,” he said.
“The investment was clear. All the advocates have been calling on dealing with children with disabilities, those with different language barriers. What the chancellor is doing with his new initiative, DIAL, Division of Inclusive and Accessible Learning. It will support the needs of multilingual learners and students with disabilities. People have been advocating this for decades. We are going to do it and the money is going to be there with the right coordination,” he added.
“We want to remind everyone the Charter Revision Commission is in place. Folks come out. We have Manhattan and Staten Island is coming up asking people to come out. We know 8.3 million New Yorkers and 35 million opinions. This is an opportunity to hear those opinions,” he said
About smishing campaign, Mayor said that NYC’s cyber command center is aware of this campaign involving a fake New York City Pay website.
He said that the department of finance and CityPay will never request payment from anyone via text messages.
“OTI has created a social media alert which has been disseminated by the Department of Finance and our communications team to inform residents of this problem,” he said.
Regarding public safety, he said that when he was state senator he advocated for the decrease in the speed limits. He said that now the speed limit is decreased to 20 miles an hour which is so important.
“Too many reckless drivers out there. We’ve been zeroing in on them, removing over 40,000 moped, dirt bikes, and illegal two, three-wheelers off our streets. Thousands of ghost cars are off our streets,” he said.
To a question about spending on overtime cost, Mayor Adams said that no one thought we were going to be spending $4.9 billion on migrants and asylum seekers. “I knew that, you know what, we better be ready for the uncertainty. Because we went in and told the agencies, you have to find efficiencies, like households find efficiencies, we were able to now close that $7.1 billion deficit and have $8.2 billion in savings for what the next crisis is going to happen,” he said.
He said that city had a record number of protests, protecting people from everything from tree lightings to the Israeli Day Parade to those having the right to protest to managing our subway system. “We had a spike in January in subway crime. Now, subway crime is at near record levels. It’s so safe in our subway system. I’m not going to do anything that’s going to impact public safety in this city. We have to be safe. Having our police officers out there doing the job is crucial,” he said.
“Now, we need more police officers. We need more correction officers. DM Banks tell me all the time that we’re at code red on correction officers. We need more parole officers. We need more school safety agents. If you don’t have the personnel, as the DM stated, that you have to have people there to fill those slots. That’s what we should all be part of is a recruitment campaign to get people to fill these jobs,” he said.
To a question about cases of alleged police brutality, Mayor Adams said that he has committed his life to police reform and proper policing, public safety and justice.
“We are going to have a Police Department that’s professional and public safety. They go together. Police Commissioner Caban, just like Commissioner Sewell, they have been extremely clear in doing that. We’re closing the timelines to get these cases handled. They’ve been going on too long. The number of reforms that we’re going to do, I think, is going to be amenable and is going to lead the entire country on how you can have both justice and safety,” he added.
