Vladimir Duthirs: Superstorm Sandy destroyed the boardwalk, though, when it made landfall 10 years ago tomorrow.
Anne Marie Green: Yeah. Earlier today I spoke with New York City Mayor Eric Adams and I asked him how his administration is commemorating the devastating storm.
Mayor Eric Adams: To understand that Superstorm Sandy was not just a storm, it was a wake up call, and we cannot continue to hit the snooze button, believe that these storms are going to come every 100 years. In fact, it's not. We're seeing this type of devastation due to climate warming happening just about every year and several times a year. We saw what happened in Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic and right here in our country in Florida. Our goal is to be prepared to look at some of the coastal conditions. We are putting a shovel in the ground at some of the things that we are doing along our coast, but also to be prepared by looking at how do we use alternative forms of energy so that we don't continue to contribute to the crisis we are facing?
Green: All of that sounds great, but it also sounds very expensive. How on earth can New York afford to pay for this on its own?
Mayor Adams: It's so true, and some of the funding must come from within the city, and that's what we have been allocating. But this price tag is in the areas of about $8.5 billion. The federal government has an obligation to ensure not only New York City, but all cities that are experiencing the sort of coastal flooding, that we have a designated pot of money either through FEMA or the infrastructure types of bills that would allow us to tap into this money when needed to build these projects. We do it already under other emergencies. We now have to be focusing on these sort of infrastructure buildings that we need moving forward. We can't do it alone. New York sends over $20 billion to the federal government that we don't receive back from taxes. Now is the opportunity to make sure we get the funding we need to build out.
Green: As you know, mayor, people look to New York to see how to handle some major issues that afflict many other cities. It's just 11 days until Election Day. Crime has become a major issue across the country. And earlier this week, you and Governor Hochul announced an initiative to increase the number of police officers in the New York City subway system. You're going to be paying them overtime. You noted that about 40 percent, and I think this is important to talk about, 40 percent of the murders in the transit system were believed to have been committed by people with mental health issues. I take the train in and out of New York every day and I see people along the transit lines and Penn Station. These are people who are in need of great help. How are you going to deal with this growing problem?
Mayor Adams: Well, and you're so right and I think that you as a train user, you are part of the 3.5 million people that use our system every day. We have six felony crimes a day with 3.5 million people that use our system. We're going to get rid of those six felony crimes, but it's more than those actual crimes that's impacting your commute and my commute because I too use the system. It is the feeling of being unsafe as well. So while we deal with the real crimes, we have to deal with the feeling that New Yorkers are having. That's why on January 6th, I immediately put in place our operation to remove the encampments. Also to zero in on those who were sleeping in our subway system. For years, we were walking by them, ignoring them. And I said not under this administration. We allowed over 2,000 people that were living on the system to go into Safe Havens and other shelters so they can get wraparound services.
Now we are moving to the second phase of our subway safety plan that is going to deal with those who are on our system, and you can visibly tell they should not be there. They may be barefoot, they may be talking to themselves, yelling and screaming. We are having our mental health professionals partner with our police with the new support that we received from the governor with 50 new mental health psychiatric beds, and so that we can put people in the care they need. Too many people are on this system that should not be there. They are a danger to themselves. They're a danger to others, and we are zeroing in on that.
Green: Let me ask you about another big issue. The migrant crisis. New York City has been one of a handful of northeastern cities that have seen migrants being bused from the border. You've had to improvise to deal with the influx of migrants. But the argument that we get from some of these border states and these governors and other representatives is that, hey, what you are feeling is just a fraction of what they have to deal with along the U.S. Mexico border on a regular basis. And it's time for some of these northeastern cities and states to handle their fair share of the burden. How do you respond to that?
Mayor Adams: Well, the entire country should deal with the migrant issue. This is a national problem, and those bordering elected officials and government officials that were dealing with this crisis, crisis calls for coordination. That's where we went wrong. Those who were not willing to coordinate. It is unfair to say that if my municipality here in New York is experiencing something, I'm going to just displace it to another municipality. No, let's coordinate together and figure out how do we, number one, in a unified voice speak to our national government? And two, how do we absorb some of the crisis that one of our neighboring states is actually experiencing? Because we're all Americans and we are in this together. We're not made up of just different localities based on where we live, but when it comes down to it, we are all Americans, and we did not do that here.
That is why I was clear and stating what New York was going through or what we have done, what we're doing now. And most importantly, to call on the federal government to put in place a decompression strategy. And I'm glad Washington heard me. We were able to put in that strategy. We went from an average of 10 buses a day down to about I believe one or two of this week. The mayor of El Paso reached out and stated he would no longer send buses here to New York. And we are seeing the planning and operation we did during this crisis actually play out the way it's supposed to be, that we come together as a country to resolve this issue. We need a national immigrant policy to deal with how are we going to deal with migrant and asylum seekers?
Green: So the coordination that is happening now, is that the kind of coordination that if it had happened in the beginning, you would've been more than willing to take on these busloads of migrants?
Mayor Adams: Oh, yes. And what's interesting of New York State, we have some of the highest numbers of migrant and asylum seekers here. We open our doors to those who came from Ukraine after the war. We open our doors to other entities. We are a right to shelter city. We know what it is to be a diverse city. We are one of the most diverse locations in this entire country, if not the entire globe. We will always live up to our legal and moral responsibility to help those who are pursuing this great dream we call America. Because believe it or not, at one time or another, all of us had our ancestors that arrived here at these shores trying to pursue that same dream.
Green: Mayor Eric Adams, thank you very much.
Mayor Adams: Thank you.
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