Gary Byrd: The second mayor of color and the first hip hop mayor in the city's history. It's time for us to hear from him once again, our mayor, Eric L. Adams on 107.5 WBLS. Mr. Mayor, good morning and welcome.
Mayor Eric Adams: Hey, good morning, Gary. And to all the listeners, this is our final episode of “Hear from the Mayor,” and I just really want to thank WBLS and the entire team over there, but personally, I just want to thank you for a friendship that spans over 40 years. And we have been going through and fighting on behalf of the upliftment of people in general, but specifically Black and brown people. And you have been a true warrior using the airwaves to educate and motivate. And I think we've accomplished some great things in that time.
And so, to all the listeners out there, I want to say happy Sunday. Welcome to the final episode of “Hear from the Mayor,” and I'm your mayor, Eric Adams. And if this is your first time joining and tuning in, the purpose of the show is just to have a real dialogue with you, with everyday working class New Yorkers. Listeners should give me a call and hear directly from me at 212-545-1075.
And as you can see, we have this season's first accumulation of snow on the ground. The National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory for the region. Snow accumulations are expected to total three to five inches. So, get out there, shovel your snow. Once it stops, put some salt down so that no one will slip on your property. And the heaviest snow amount is right now. It should stop falling around 1 PM today. If you do not need to travel, stay inside, let the crews do their job, removing snow off our streets and off our roads. Remember, we want you to be informed. So, text to notify NYC to 692-692 for real time updates.
And so, a lot happened last night that we want to keep folks abreast of. Some things happened nationally, I mean internationally, I should say, and some things happened here locally. Locally, we had a shooting in Brooklyn, where six children were shot coming out of a sweet 16. Thankfully, all are expected to survive. But guns are hurting too many people, particularly our young people. We’re seeing a real trend towards young people being victims of gun violence. And today we are reflecting on all the work that we have done to build a safer city.
But we also had some terrible international incidents. In Australia, we had a number of people who were shot, in Australia, that is still under investigation. We see no nexus to the city, but it is really a terrible incident. As we acknowledge the first day of Hanukkah, we are really troubled by the shooting that took place overnight.
And when you add it to what happened yesterday at Brown University, we saw a number of students at Brown University who were shot, and we have some deaths there as well. A lot of details are still unraveling, but gun violence [is] not only impacting the international [but] national and the local. We're going to continue to do the work that we've done.
I wanted to, Gary, open the airways up early as we have this last dialogue, just to hear from New Yorkers and get their feedback on the last few years of– I am really proud of this administration. And people often ask, “Well, you're not able to do a second term, are you disappointed?” Of course, you want to continue the work that you do, but it's 8.5 million people in the city, only 111 of them were mayors of the City of New York. Let's never forget gratitude, and I have a lot of gratitude for the people for electing me.
And I have a great deal of gratitude of a mother with a third-grade education that raised the mayor of the City of New York, raised a young man to become the mayor of the City of New York. And that's gratitude. Gratitude is not built on doing four years or 12 years like other mayors have done. Gratitude is getting here and doing the job we've done to help working class people.
And it's really important to acknowledge that we touched every aspect of the lives of New Yorkers. And when you go back and look at what I ran on, and say, “Okay, let's see that you deliver what you ran on, Eric.” I ran on public safety. This city is the safest big city in America.
We're probably going to end the year, we're close to a thousand people less shooting victims than when I took office in the first place. 25,000 illegal guns removed off our streets, 135,000 illegal vehicles, ghost cars, that were used for crimes, dirt bikes, and other illegal vehicles. Decrease in crime on our subway system. The safest subway system in the recorded history of the city. That was a long way from where we were in 2021.
And then when you look at robberies, grand larcenies, these other major crimes, you're seeing decreases. As well as shoplifting, shoplifting was a real problem across the city. We see a 20 percent decrease in shoplifting, a decrease in hate crimes, particularly of crimes against people of color and antisemitism. We're seeing a decrease. And so, you're seeing the public safety that I stated I was going to give New Yorkers, you’re seeing the reality of that.
But not only public safety. There's so much more that's important to us. Housing, we built more affordable housing than any mayor in the history of the city. And, because of our City of Yes plan, we zoned the city for 433,000 units of housing. That is more than 12 years of Mayor Bloomberg, eight years of de Blasio combined. In four years, we did with two mayors and 20 years combined were unable to accomplish.
Move more people out of shelter into permanent housing. Clean our streets from the encampments that we saw, people living on the streets, living on the subway system, living in trees in the parks. When you start looking at what we've done, and we moved them into shelter. Because there's no dignity living on the street, no matter what people say and how they try to sugarcoat it, there's nothing dignified about living in a tent or cardboard box.
When I took office in January and I visited some of those locations, we saw inside those tents, we saw human waste, stale food, drug paraphernalia. People were suffering from schizophrenic behavior, bipolar. And so, there was nothing dignified about living on the street.
But we also looked after children. We knew that if we care, we must provide childcare. We lowered the cost of childcare from $220 a month to less than $20 a month, unbelievable what we did. 150,000 children got access to childcare across the city.
We went after foster care children, paying their college tuition, giving them life coaches, and to 21 instead of dropping off at 18. We went after justice, involving young people with a program called CRED, and we taught them real skills, after they had involvement in the criminal justice system. And then we looked at NYCHA, and said that not only must [we] get the NYCHA land trust so we can build better on NYCHA, but we also gave NYCHA the technology they needed in high-speed broadband for free. High-speed broadband and big Apple connect.
We wanted our young people to be ahead in technology. So, we gave free iPads to our young people. We wanted them to have safety after school. We did after school for all, 184,000 young people experiencing after school from kindergarten to eighth grade. The first ever comprehensive plan for universal afterschool program in the history of the city. A hundred thousand summer youth jobs, never have been done before. First time we got it done.
We passed so many pieces of legislation in Albany. We also overhauled how we teach reading and math and you're seeing the results. We’re out pacing the state with reading and math. So, there's so much that was done in these four years.
I’m leaving the city in good shape. I'm turning it over to the incoming mayor. And I said it once and I'm going to say it again, don't screw it up, man. You know, we're not going backwards. We can't decriminalize prostitution. We can't allow encampments back on our streets. We can't run out high-income earnings from the city. We have to understand that we are in an ecosystem that all of us depend on each other.
Let's go to some callers as I have time and hear from them. They should be home with their boos, drinking some hot chocolate under the blanket, and enjoying life. On a snowy day, this is when babies are made.
Byrd: Okay. The program is “Hear from the Mayor” and the mayor wants to hear from you, okay. 212-545-1075. We got a call standing by, just give us your first name and where you're calling from if you join us this morning on 107.5 WBLS with Mayor Eric Adams.
Good morning. You're in the air. Caller, you're in the air, make sure you keep your radio down, talk to us right on the phone. First name and where you're calling us from.
Question: Calling from Connecticut. There you go. There's that bell. Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for taking my call and much respect. [inaudible].
Mr. Mayor, let me say this, from Connecticut, I supported you a hundred percent, bro. I was down with you, you know, being a former firefighter, definitely supporting you as a police officer and seeing you move up, when you became the second Black mayor, not a mayor color. I'm going to say Black mayor of the City of New York.
Now, no doubt you did all those things. But let me tell you, right, initially Black New Yorkers supported you, but somehow, they felt throughout the course, Mayor Adams, that your agenda changed. And so, with that being said, there were terms that came up and I'll be honest, I’m going to keep it 100. The word corruption came up. Okay, so the Black leadership distanced themselves from you and your support, and then switched it over to Mamdani. So, I had even arguments with my own family and still got to deal with that because I supported you 100 percent.
Now, with that being said. Now, in your opinion–
[Crosstalk.]
Mayor Adams: I got the essence of what you said. Let me say this to you. I don't blame Black and brown folks for saying, “Okay, the mayor didn't do anything.” That's why I gave you the rundown that I just did. I'm gonna say to Black and brown folks, we gotta stop buying into the BS. If I was an everyday voter and I read the papers every day, I would have been saying the same things that you're saying. And that's why I understand that.
We were not getting coverage of our success long before the bogus lawfare that came at me. They were attacking us day one, day one. No matter what we did, cycle us out of Covid, cycle us out of 237,000 migrants and asylum seekers, recovered the job and dropped unemployment in a Black and brown community. One of the most diverse administrations in the history of the city, they were not giving us credit from the beginning.
And so, all they needed for us to do, like they did with David Dinkins, is to create the soundbite of– with Mayor Dinkins, they said he was incompetent. And then we started running around saying it. We're the most easy folks to be duped that I've ever met. We don't have to worry about the man coming after us, because we're coming after us. I spent 40 years doing what's right from police officers, state senator, borough president, then mayor. And all of a sudden I'm gonna wake up and be corrupt. We need to stop the madness.
And so, listen, you made a decision. You voted for who you wanted to vote for. All I can say to all of you out there who's called me all those names. You're going to miss me when I'm gone. That's all I can tell you.
Byrd: Let's get more calls in as quickly as possible. Thanks for joining us this morning. First name and where you're calling us from. This is “Hear from the Mayor,” the mayor wants to hear from you. Good morning. Caller you’re in the air. Go right ahead, please. Don't listen to your radio, listen on your phone. Stay right with us. First name and where you're calling us from. Go right ahead, please.
Question: Adriana from Queens.
Mayor Adams: Hey, how are you?
Question: Good morning. Hi, how are you mayor?
Mayor Adams: Quite well.
Question: So, my question is first, I appreciate everything you've done, especially for our children in the education system in New York City. We've taken great strides, huge strides, in academia for our children, especially our Black and browns. And I appreciate everything you've done, and hopefully we don't go backwards.
But my question to you is, DOE is really huge, right? It's a large, I don't even know what to say, bureaucracy or whatever it is you want to say. But you've done so much, and instead of us going backwards, how can parents, especially parent leaders across the city, what can we do to help with that? Because I feel like our voices are lost and I don't mean on a local level. I mean, in the city level, no one really listens to our parents.
So now with the new mayor, you looking back at what you did with parents, what can we do as parent leaders, not the parents of every day, but parents within the system that are not being heard, what can we do that you have already done to support? Can you give me recommendations, suggestions?
[Crosstalk.]
Byrd: We’ll go to break and come back and give the mayor a chance to respond to your question and comment. And also, for those of you who are standing by at home, we're coming back to you as well. 212-545-1075, “Hear from the Mayor,” and the mayor wants to hear from you.
[Commercial Break.]
Byrd: Well, it's the last program for “Hear from the Mayor,” and the mayor wants to hear from you. 212-545-1075. We're going right to your calls. Please express your comments so we can try to get to as many of you as possible this morning on 107.5 WBLS. Mr. Mayor, you were responding to a question.
Mayor Adams: Yes, we were about empowering parents and the school system. It's important that the empowerment means going to the PTA meetings, try to get on your pep. Engaging with your school community and really starting your own parent support groups. You don't have to be officially part of the system to improve the system.
What I think we can't and shouldn't do is go backwards to the days of the Board of Education. There needs to be a leader of the school system, and we cannot attempt to turn it over to the UFT. Particularly, the leadership over there. We need to allow those school professionals to continue the success that we've witnessed on every area. That's both academically and mentally as well.
Byrd: Going right back to our phones right now. Thanks for joining us. First name, where you're calling from, and your comment for Mayor Eric Adams. Go right ahead, please. I'll call you in the air. Go right ahead, please. You're in the air. Good morning.
Question: Yeah, Mr. Mayor, my name is [Kingdon] from Brooklyn, New York. How are you, sir?
Mayor Adams: Hey, how are you, man? Good to speak with you. Thanks for taking the call.
Question: First of all, happy holidays to you and everybody that's listening. I got just a silly question, and a comment. The comment, not silly. The question, a little bit silly. First thing, is the question, Mr. Mayor, what's your favorite restaurant in New York City? And what's your go to order at that restaurant?
Mayor Adams: Well, I cook at home a lot because I know what the ingredients will be. But when I am out, I enjoy being in Brooklyn. Two Steps Down was one of my go to locations. But while I'm in Manhattan, I have a few spots I'd like to go to, Uptown Veg is one of my favorite places. Opera, I like that as well. So, it depends on what my taste buds is at.
Byrd: Alright caller, thanks for your call. Appreciate that. You're in the air. Your first name and where you're calling from for Mayor Eric Adams. Go right ahead, please. You're in the air, go right ahead.
Question: Hi, this is Yvonne from Brooklyn.
Mayor Adams: What's up, Yvonne?
Question: Hi. So, I watch your daily New York City Mayor's Office updates every day. So that one light you see is me. Very quickly, so I was notified by the DEP that my service line had lead. And I remember you said that you were going to help homeowners change over that service line. And then I got an email saying that, no, that email was an error. But I had my water tested and I have ten times the amount of limit of lead in my water. So how can I– I [inaudible] the commissioner, I'm getting no help. How can I get help? Because I know you said you were going to help small homeowners.
Mayor Adams: Yes, we did. So, what I need for you to do is to reach out to my [Community Affairs Unit] and they can let you know about the program that we have for small property owners. I know there's a limited budget to it, but we want to be there to help. So, my [Community Affairs Unit] is what you go online. You can look up the information, reach out to them, and they'll help you navigate through the process.
Byrd: Trying to move things along. Thanks for your call this morning. We appreciate you. First name and where you're calling us from. Your call from Mayor Eric Adams on WBLS. Good morning. Go right ahead, please. Go right ahead, please. You're in the air. Go right ahead. We know you're there. Go right ahead. Listen on your phone, not the radio. Hello. Good morning.
Question: Good morning, Gary. Mayor Adams, how you doing? Good morning. This is Craig from Brooklyn.
Mayor Adams: How's it going, Craig?
Question: And I'm doing fine. And yourself?
Mayor Adams: Okay, we got to do a quick question because it's going to be real quick.
Question: Let me get with it. Mayor Adams, first of all, I would like to thank you on the great job that you did for this city dealing with the circumstances that you was left with from previous mayors. You did a great job.
Mayor Adams: Thank you.
Question: I follow your career from you being Brooklyn borough president of my beloved Brooklyn. And I applaud you for all the work that you've done, the great things that you've done and you've made.
Mayor Adams: Thank you.
Byrd: Alright caller, thank you. I'm just jumping in to try to get another call in. Caller, you're in the air. Last one. Go right ahead, please. First name. You're in the air. Go right ahead, please. Talk to us directly in your phone.
Question: Hi, I'm calling in this week with Eric basically to thank him and commend him and give them a professional hug and thankful for his resilience and his remaining steadfast in his quest to achieve his goals. I wish him a great deal of success, and I wish him well on his future journey with hopes that I can continue to see him.
I wish he would stick around because he's literally done so much for this city. And it's a shame that so many people didn't acknowledge his work and didn't work or stand behind him, as they should have, because he was working for the people of the city. What people don't realize is taking on positions and jobs such as that, it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of time.
Byrd: Caller, I'm only jumping in because I want to give the mayor an opportunity of responding to wrap things up. Mayor Adams.
Mayor Adams: And I really appreciate that. And thank you for your kind words. And there is a life after government. And I'm excited about this. I've been doing this for 40 years, folks. 40 years of being scrutinized, of being applauded, yelled at, cursed at, kisses thrown at me, fingers pointed at me. For 40 years. Now it's time to enjoy life and the fruits of my labor. And I'm looking forward to doing that every day. And when you see me out there and I got the smile on my face, I'm just simply saying to you, I'm good.
Byrd: Brother, that is good for us to hear. Brother, stay strong and be strong. No question about it. We love you. Stay strong.
Mayor Adams: Take care.
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