Bianca Peters: All right, let's get to this now, the city again, we're talking about this, a brand new weapon to combat the rats. You've seen them all over the city. They're infested here. But Mayor Eric Adams has appointed Kathleen Corradi as the director of rodent mitigation. The hire comes as rats in the city continue to rise.
Rosanna Scotto: So the mayor has made fighting rats one of the three pillars of his plan to make New York City a livable city. Joining us this morning from City Hall, Kathleen Corradi and Mayor Adams. Nice to have you both on Good Day, New York. So mayor, obviously we know New York needs to be cleaned up. I know you're trying your very best, but where's the money coming from? We know that you're cutting across the board department after department. Where are you getting this money from?
Mayor Eric Adams: Well, the right term is really course efficiency, and I've been on this show several times when I was running for office. That's what's very important about my role as mayor. Exactly what I ran on is what I am doing. I ran on public safety. I ran on finding efficiencies. I use the term PEG, Programs to Eliminate the Gap. When I was running for office, I did not do anything in office that I did not say I was going to do when I was running, it's efficiencies. Just as taxpayers are finding ways to efficiently run their households, whether if they do the same thing in government, we are not going to do layoffs, we're not going to impact services. We are finding efficiencies within our agencies, and this is one of them. This is not new money. This is within the budget of the city government to bring someone on and really orchestrate how we deal with rodents in our city.
Scotto: All right. So Ms. Corradi, I know since you were 10-years-old, you were trying to get rid of rats in your neighborhood. What is your plan of attack day one?
Kathleen Corradi, Citywide Director of Rodent Mitigation: Day one starts with tackling the three things rats need to survive: food, water, shelter. Working across the different agencies, arming New Yorkers with the tools they need to get this job done. This work is going to take all of us to make sure rats are disturbed from their homes, deprived of food, and we're going to dispatch innovative and effective extermination techniques, see what works, scale it up, and cut back what doesn't.
Peters: All right. We do have to ask, because 900 people applied for this coveted position. You're the one that got it. What is your background and how did you get this role?
Corradi: I think it's well known since I was a kid taking into public service trying to do better for my own neighborhood, my background's education and sustainability; my degree is in biology and urban sustainability. Really, I came to this from a place of waste and how we can make waste better, which of course cuts off our rats' access to food.
Mayor Adams: And her success in the Department of Education, the role she played in rat mitigation and the DOE where our babies are every day. And she brought the commitment ... and I use the term all the time, emotional intelligence. Soon as I communicated with her, I saw her dedication, her ability to just be innovative. Remember 10 years old, she was doing a petition on her block to say, "Let's get rid of rodents." I mean, she hates rats as much as I do for God's sake.
Peters: Well, mayor, as much as we hate rats, I feel like the people of New York also hate crime. The people that live here in the city really do hate crime. So let's talk about that because that is an issue that plagues us every day. That suspected gunman shooter in the Harlem smoke shop, as we know, killed two people on one weekend. But the thing that outrages New Yorkers is the fact that he got in a shootout with police in 2021. That bail was set, it was downgraded, and then he goes and kills two people.
Mayor Adams: And I saw that video, the chilling video of just how nonchalant he was when he assassinated that young man. But when you think about it, this is what I talk about when I say extreme recidivism, small pocket of people, roughly 2,000, they are repeatedly committing dangerous crimes. And that's what we must zero in on. We get rid of those extreme recidivists, the gun carriers, the shooters, the burglars, the grand larceny, auto thefts, we have been zeroed in on them and Commissioner Sewell and the Police Department. And we want to really focus on those extreme recidivists. And I have great conversations with the leaders in Albany and hopefully, we can get something done around that.
Scotto: So Mayor, the front page of the post today, "New Yorkers are leaving." I know that you got your finger on the pulse and I know you know that lots of people leaving. There are now new polls. Siena Polls saying a third of New Yorkers, out of here, 10,000 people have already left this year, changed their driver's license. Crime is big. The cities are chaotic with the bicycles. You got to license these kids on the bicycles. My friend was knocked unconscious by a bicyclist and they took off. What are we going to do? Because rats are a problem. But living in New York City day to day is a huge problem.
Mayor Adams: Well, it's not a problem. Just as we hear about those who are fully in, we also need to acknowledge those who are coming here. We are recovering jobs in New York City faster than the nation. 90 percent of the jobs we lost, we have recovered. I'm watching every day as new industries come here, but they continue to grow.
Scotto: But you know that there are big industries, finance companies, the big money, they're leaving, we're getting the migrants.
Mayor Adams: Listen, let me tell you something.
Scotto: And we can't afford it.
Mayor Adams: JPMorgan is building their headquarters right here in New York. We're watching our tech companies. Google has expanded. I just was at TransPerfect, 1,500 jobs. They did their headquarters right in New York. I know the full scope of New York City. Now we want to keep everyone here. I'm clear on that. But I also know that if we continue to make this a clean, safe city, people will come here, live here and raise their children and families. And that's the direction we're going in.
Homicides are down, shootings are down. We are seeing the leveling off of the seven major crimes in this city because we are doing the right things of attracting businesses, and the city's going to continue to thrive.
Scotto: Why is it that other cities seem so much cleaner than ours and their taxes are less?
Mayor Adams: Well, I don't know about every city being cleaner than ours. I've been moving around this country and I'm watching cities combating homelessness at a level that's far worse than what's happening here. I'm seeing encampments, I'm seeing tents. We don't see that on our subway system anymore. We removed 5,000 off our streets and continue to have a system in place to make sure they don't remain. When you visit some of these other cities and seeing what's happening, you realize that New York is moving in the right direction. You know what mama used to say? Grass is always greener on the other side, but our grass is green for real, here in this city. And listen, these are New Yorkers. We are resilient. We're going to push through.
Scotto: Mayor Adams, we like your determination. Thank you so much. And Kathleen Corradi, we look forward to meeting you in person on Good Day, New York. We got a lot to talk about.
Mayor Adams: Thank you.
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