Transcript: Mayor Adams Hosts Community Conversation

July 2, 2025

Commissioner Fred Kreizman, Community Affairs Unit: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. This is in Bayside Queens. This is the mayor's 41st Community Conversation. This is not including the mayor's 24 senior town halls, his youth town halls. Maybe the most active mayor we've ever had speaking to communities. Including dozens and dozens of roundtables with old ethnic communities throughout the city. We first want to thank our host, P.S.46, the Alley Pond School, and the school's principal, David LaPoma.

We want to thank Community Board 11, who is here today, our district manager, Joseph Marziliano, and our chair, Paul DiBenedetto. We want to thank the NYPD, the 111th Precinct, who is here, to Captain Ramlochan and our XO of the borough, Joe Hayward. The point of these community conversations is to listen directly to the community. And that's what the mayor constantly does. This setup that we have here is three parts. The first part was the first hour, having members of the Mayor's Office listen to your concerns with Community Affairs officers from NYPD. To hear what the types of issues you have, in case your question is not asked.

So this way, those issues are actually brought to the policy makers here at City Hall. We have our deputy mayors here today, as well as the mayor. And all the issues you raise at the tables actually get brought to them. The next set of questions are brought to the dais. We're asking everyone to go around the tables, to be brief, so we have an opportunity to get to all the tables, and ask your question directly to the mayor and the city agencies. And then the last portion, as everyone notices, there's a card on your table. Do you happen to have one of those cards?

If you don't have an opportunity to ask a question, or your question is not asked, please fill out this card. This gives an opportunity for the Mayor's Office to put this in an Excel spreadsheet, send it around to the agencies, and ensure a direct callback. And we monitor in the Mayor's Office to ensure you get a callback directly from the agency. So at this time, we just want to give it- let's go through the dais quickly, and then we'll hand it over to the mayor. First, we're asking everyone to save your applause for the end. To my left, we have the mayor of the City of New York.

We have the first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro. We have the deputy mayor for Strategic Initiatives, Ana Almanzar. We have the deputy mayor for Intergovernmental Affairs, Tiffany Raspberry. We have the deputy mayor for Public Safety, Kaz Daughtry. We have the deputy mayor for Health and Human Services, Suzanne Miles-Gustave. Chief public realm officer, Ya-Ting Liu. We have NYPD deputy commissioner, Mark Stewart. NYC Public Schools deputy chancellor, Danika Rux. DYCD commissioner, Keith Howard. Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, Commissioner Manny Castro. DSS commissioner, Molly Park. Health and Hospitals, president and CEO, Dr. Mitchell Katz.

Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, executive deputy commissioner, Dr. Jean Wright. Office of Community Mental Health, executive director, Eva Wong. ACS deputy commissioner, Joseph Cardieri. DFTA executive deputy commissioner, Ryan Murray. CCHR deputy [commissioner], Kajori Chaudhuri. Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence, Commissioner Sethi Saloni. Fire Department, assistant deputy commissioner, Jim Harding. Mayor's Office of People with Disabilities, director of Accessibility, Phil Monaco. To my right, we have our SBS commissioner, Dynishal Gross. Department of Buildings commissioner, Jimmy Oddo.

We'll be joined by our acting commissioner of HPD, Ahmed Tigani shortly. DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodríguez. Sanitation acting commissioner, Javier Lohan. Department of Probation commissioner, Juanita Holmes. Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, Director Deanna Logan. DEP borough commissioner, Alfonso Lopez. [Parks] borough commissioner, Jacqueline Langsam. Department of Finance, director of Interagency Relations, John Mulvey. Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, executive director, Elijah Hutchinson. New York City Emergency Management Chief Financial Officer Christopher Blanco. EDC project manager, Angie Espino. And City Planning director of Queens Office, Lynn Zhang will be joining us shortly.

And again, we want to thank the principal, David LaPoma. We want to thank the chief of department, Chief Chell, for being here. We want to thank the chief XO of the Borough, Joe Hayward. The 109 precinct inspector, Kevin Coleman. 111, Captain Ramlochan. CEO of New York City Health and Hospital Queens Neil Moore, who is here. Fire borough chief, Joseph Schiralli. And of course, again, like I said, our community board, which are great partners all the time. I'll give it over to Mayor Adams. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thanks so much, Fred. And thank you for allowing me to come out here. I went to Bayside High School, so I know this community so well. And, I am an authentic New Yorker. And I'm 65 years old, folks. And those of you who live as long as I am fortunate to live, you know you make mistakes. In fact, I'm perfectly imperfect. I dropped the ball many times in my life. I trusted people in my life that I should not have trusted. People have broke my heart. But every day, I've served this city to the best of my ability. I gave this city everything I have. And I'm proud of what we've accomplished.

January 1st, 2022, when I became the mayor of the city, we were losing jobs. There was something called COVID that was everywhere. Crime was through the roof. Our city was proliferated with guns. Unemployment was high. We were not developing housing in the capacity that we should have. No one wanted to be on our subway systems. There were encampments in our subway system along highways. Many places that were community spaces and open spaces turned into tents. NYCHA residents did not have high-speed broadband. Foster care children did not get the support that they deserved.

Three and a half years later. Three and a half years later, we have more jobs in New York in the city's history. More small businesses are operating in the city's history. The last six months, we had the lowest number of shootings and homicides in this city in the city's history. We removed 22,000 illegal guns off our streets and about 1,400 ghost guns. Free high-speed broadband for NYCHA residents. We are paying the college tuition for foster care children, giving them life coaches until they're 21, and giving them a stipend so 6-700 won't age out every year and slip through the cracks.

You don't even see the encampments in our city anymore. And you remember what happened 2021, 4th of July? You [would have] thought you were in Beirut for so many fireworks going off in the city. Close 1,400 illegal cannabis shops. We had 237,000 migrants and asylum seekers that entered this city. People used to stop me in the subway, in the street, and say, “Eric, what are you doing to us?” They didn't know I could not stop the buses from coming in. It was against federal law if I did. I was required by federal law not to allow people to come here and work to pursue the American dream.

Migrants and asylum seekers wanted to volunteer to clean streets, remove graffiti, and the federal government told me, you can't do that. If you attempt to do that, you are going to be in trouble. City law required me to feed, house, and clothe, and we educated over 50,000 children. At one time, we were getting 4,000 people a week, 8,000 every two weeks, and we could just do the math. And today, 85 percent of them left our care, and they're moving on to the next step in their journey. We were able to close the Roosevelt Hotel. Today we announce the closing of the hotel, as well as 61 other sites that were open.

And with all of that, all that we did, recovered our economy, brought down crime, ensured that we pushed back against those who did more for those who were abusive and dangerous to our society, we were fighting for working class people because I'm a working class mayor. 

I'm probably the first union member that has ever been the mayor of the City of New York in this city's history. 22 years as a police officer, my kid brother followed me, my cousins followed me. Fighting for this city. When you put on a bulletproof vest for 22 years, you have a different love affair with the city.

I love this city. And I'll be darned, if I'm going to sit back and watch someone state they're going to empty Rikers Island, or they're going to go after our small businesses by having government supermarkets to put our local stores out of business, or those who don't respect the fact that if you're a small property owner and everything is going up around you, there should be a slight increase in the rent so you can keep your head above water and don't lose your home. I'm going to fight for working class people in this city. And I'm going to deliver a very clear message to them. We're not going backwards. We're safer with Eric, and we're going to see the city move forward.

And I'm going to continue to do these town halls because I need to hear directly from you. I don't live in some sterilized environment of a legislative chamber. I come on the ground and speak to everyday people. There is no community in this city I did not police, and there is no community in this city I'm not going to come and speak with as the mayor. 

And we're not going to agree on everything because I don't know if you read the memo, I don't agree with myself all the time. But we can communicate because one thing we do agree on, that little baby girl that's sitting on her grandmother's lap deserved to grow up in a city that's safe, where police are respected, and our neighbors are respected, and you're able to thrive.

That's what we've done. I turned around a city that was moving in the wrong direction, and we're moving in the right direction. We got more to do. Trust me. We got more to do. But we are doing it. And I thank this team for the three and a half years that have been with me during some very difficult times. And they stood fast. They sacrificed their families. Right after COVID, they had to get back and deal with the crisis of the asylum seekers. I thank Chief Chell and Kaz Daughtry for being up at 2, 3, 4 a.m. in the morning responding to crisis after crisis, going after people who want to hurt and harm working-class people.

This whole panel of people here, these are ordinary New Yorkers, ordinary people. This is the most ordinary working-class administration in the history of this city. Everyone on here has their own story. They all went through a lot, and now we're here helping people who are going through a lot. 

And so I look forward to this conversation, and I'm going to respectfully listen whenever you speak. I'm not going to interrupt. You don't have to filter what you want to say. And when I speak, I'm going to ask the same. I want to be a deep listener so I can be a deep understander. And I would hope you would give me that same privilege. So let's open the floor to your questions.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table number one.

Question: Good evening, Mayor Adams.

Mayor Adams: How are you, ma'am?

Question: We share a love for this city, all right? And I heard you say that you've made some mistakes, so I appreciate that. I would like to talk to you about rolling back the City of Yes. You've lost the trust of tens of thousands of taxpaying homeowners, single-family, co-op owners across the five boroughs. If you want them back, there are people in this room, including myself, who can help you get back those votes. We want to restore the zoning protections that have historically shielded our communities from overdevelopment.

Will you put residents first or prioritize developers if re-elected? Northeast Queens is being squashed. You're trying to quiet our community boards, our City Council. Supporting Northeastern Queens that wanted to secede, okay, from the City of New York, because every time a house sells in Northeast Queens, we fear, okay, that it's going to turn into an apartment building. 

Any 50 by 100 can be a 10-unit building. That's not a way to live, all right? We have Empire State Development trying to put in 3,000 apartments, 110 buildings in the middle of a residential neighborhood. We have Fresh Meadows looking to put in 2,000 apartments. How much can Northeastern Queens Flushing take? I'm asking you, will you roll back the zoning?

Mayor Adams: No, I won't. And I'm not going to tell you anything to get elected like a lot of people do, and I'm not going to do that, and let me tell you why. I have a 1.4 percent vacancy rate in the City of New York. 1.4 percent. Functionally zero for this city. And what we saw during the analysis with Dan Garodnick from my planning board, we had 59 community boards in the city, folks, 59. Out of 59, 10 were building more housing than 49 combined. 10. They were building more housing than 49 combined.

Another problem we're having right now, we have people from all over the country now filling our shelter system, not immigrants and migrants, everyday Americans that have made their decision, they want to come to New York, and our shelter population is increasing and is bursting at the scene.

And if we don't build more housing, the cost of housing is going to continue to increase. We have an inventory problem. And if a child grows up in a homeless shelter, they're less likely to graduate from high school. And if you don't educate, you will incarcerate.

We need more housing in the city, and we have to build that housing in every neighborhood that's possible. And anyone will come in front of you during the election year and say, “Yes, I'll do whatever.” They will promise you anything. I'm not going to promise you anything. What I'm going to promise is I have to build more housing. Now, we need to work with our community boards. We need to sit down and make sure we don't overdevelop. That was the whole plan, not to overdevelop. But I have to build more housing in the City of New York.

If I don't build more housing, you know what's going to happen? You're going to see tents on your block. Go look at San Francisco, folks. Go look at Los Angeles. Go look at Portland, Oregon. Go look at what those cities look like and see what New York looks like. We've been able to keep this city from turning into those other cities by making sure we continue to build more. The cost of housing has gone up because the inventory has gone down. This is a basic supply and demand conversation. Less supply, the costs go up.

When you have a 1.4 percent vacancy rate, when your babies go to college and come back home to this city, Jordan can't afford to live in this city right now. My only child can't afford to live in this city because the housing is too expensive. We put out lotteries for a 500-unit house. The acting commissioner put out a lottery for a 500-unit house. You know how many applications we get? 60,000, 70,000 applications for it. That's how much housing we're not missing. Let her have the microphone again.

Question: There has to be a cap on the city, and let me explain. Not everybody gets to live where they want, okay? If I can't afford to live where I am, I'd have to move. I'd move out to the Midwest. I'd move to Georgia, whatever, okay? I'd love to live in East Hampton, but I can't afford it. We have to learn to live within our means. We can't take everybody.

Mayor Adams: You're preaching to the choir. I'm a big believer. My son went away to college in American University. When I went to see him, he moved off to campus, and he was living in a penthouse apartment. I would say, “Who the heck do you think is going to pay for that, Jordan?” So I'm with you. I'm not the choir. I wrote the song. You know? 

Question: [Inaudible]. 

Mayor Adams: Right. And I agree. And that's why it's my obligation as the mayor to make sure that the city is affordable for people to live in. Because you know what? I need the person who's driving the limousine to live in the city and the person who sits in the back of the limousine.

You don't want this city to be a city only for the affluent. We need working class, middle income, low income New Yorkers to be part of the soup. So we're going to- I have to build more.

Question: [Inaudible]. 

Mayor Adams: No, but why are they not going to stay? I'm sorry. I'm not understanding. Why are they not going to stay?

Question: You're talking about- I don't live in a very expensive neighborhood, okay? I've worked my whole life. My husband's worked his whole life. We saved. My own son had to move out of New York. He moved to Georgia. And you know what? Every once in a while, you just have to sit back and say, “I can't afford New York.” Because even if I live in rent controlled or subsidized housing, I go to the grocery store and it's more expensive than it would be someplace else. At what point do you say taxpayers are leaving?

I don't know if you listen to the news. I know I'm hearing it in my own neighborhood. People are afraid. The City of Yes, their whole lives are invested in their homes, their condos, their co-ops. They need a voice. And you are our voice.

Mayor Adams: I don't subscribe to the theory that people should move from the city because it's too expensive. I subscribe to the theory that we need to make it affordable for New Yorkers. That's the theory I subscribe to. We put $30 billion back in the pockets of working class New Yorkers. Lowering the cost of child care from $220 a week to less than $20 a week. Paying off medical debt. 

Number one cause of bankruptcy, we're paying off medical debt for eligible New Yorkers. My job is to figure out how your son does not leave. It's an indictment on our city if our children are leaving the city that they grow up in. I don't want Jordan to leave the city. I have to make this city affordable for working class people. And that is what we're doing. Everything from paying our working class. 

[Crosstalk]. 

From settling our union contracts at respectable wages, we were seeing union members living in shelters in the city. Union members of our city employees living in shelters because they couldn't afford it. We settled 98 percent of our contracts with our union members to give them an affordable living and gainful employment.

We have to make this city affordable for everyone that's in this city. That's the number one issue that people are facing. Now, I can't reduce the cost of bread. I can't take down the cost of milk. I can't do all those things. But I can put bread back in your pockets and I can use the government in a manner where you don't have to be paying for expensive things to survive in this city. That's what I have to be committed to do. 

Now, a whole lot of people are going to tell you we're going to do whatever you want. We're going to give you everything for free. You're going to do all of that. But that's just a lie. We're not that foolish as New Yorkers to believe all of these bogus ideas.

Governing this city, you have to have the balance of making sure you don't oversaturate communities, but you deal with this real inventory issue. 1.4 percent functionally is zero for affordable units. That's what I have to do. Tough choices, but we're making the right choices for this city.

Commissioner Kreizman: Mr. Mayor, and also one thing to add with that, this was driven by communities coming to City Hall and making the request, as the mayor said. Families did not want to see their kids leave. Communities said, we don't want to move to New Jersey. We love Brooklyn. We love Queens. 

They said that we want to make sure that our families, our kids stay. That's why we had one, two family homes, side yard, rear yards modified, so those families can expand their homes to be able to keep those families inside the city.

So, unlike, you know, one way of thinking, many communities across the city don't want to see their own kids leave. They want to be close. As they're getting older, communities age, they want to know they have their kids nearby. And that's why the mayor had the conversation with city planning based on community feedback and various ethnic communities coming to the city, whether it was the Asian community, the Jewish community, the Muslim, all communities throughout the city. They wanted the kids to stay nearby.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. And trust me when I tell you, we are never going to agree on everything, folks. Trust me. We need to do an analysis of where we're going as a city. And if you're going to do an analysis over the 1,343 issues I have to face and say I don't like this one issue about Eric Adams, so I lost him, that's just the reality I have to face. The legacy is going to be that I'm going to create a city where your children won't have to leave the city as your baby did. I want my son near me, and I want him to afford to live in this city. Go ahead.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table 2.

Question: Yeah, thank you. You talk about affordable housing.

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Question: On the subsidy and the money. However, all the unfunded mandates, basically making condo and co-op unaffordable, Local Law 11, Local Law 87, Local Law 88, Local Law 95, that's a discussion by itself, 126, we're getting zero, each one of them, I'm on a board. We have to spend hundreds of thousands, multi-million dollars a year. 

The city doesn't give us anything, making us unaffordable. I understand affordable housing to do it, but at a certain point, people living in a condo and co-ops become unaffordable, imposing all those unfunded mandates. We spoke to you before you were elected, Local Law 97. It's a list of things. We cannot afford it anymore. You talk about affordable whereas you make it unaffordable.

Mayor Adams: Nothing better than a good clap in town hall, man. Listen, my first apartment was a co-op, first, and I want us to all be clear that I inherit the local laws. I inherit them. The City Council passed them. I can't change the local laws that when I came into office, these local laws were in place. Would I have done them differently? You're darn right I would have, because I know what it is to be a co-op building, 52 units we had, and when that roof came in, and all of those different mandates that we are given, we would have done it differently, and we were tempted to have done it differently, that we didn't put that weight on co-ops, and many fixed incomes are dealing with it. This is what I inherited. I can't break the law to enforce the law.

Question: I understand and appreciate but going forward, every Monday, there are new unfunded mandates. City of Yes, forget what I think about it or not, the money is going there. You are the cheerleader for the city. If you push the City Council and other members, it's time to wake up. Otherwise, condo and co-ops, they're going to stay here. Hello, Miami, hello, Florida. We cannot afford it. It's unreasonable. Local Law 11, we have to spend every five years $1.5 million. Local 95, forget 10 to $20 million, 88. I would give you a list of things that I don't want to remember anymore. It becomes really unreasonable, and the city has to wake up.

Mayor Adams: First of all, you said something very interesting. You said that we need to push the City Council. You see how we've been fighting with them? I'm the cheerleader, and I concur with what you're saying, that these unfunded mandates are burdens on my co-ops and my condominiums. I agree with you, but that is where your local council members, and not only the council members, our co-ops are a powerful block of votes. They have to organize around this issue. I inherited this issue. The law was passed. I don't pass laws. The City Council passes laws. And so that arm of government, your strength of all of these co-ops in our city must organize together and send a clear message on how this law needs to be dealt with.

Question: Actually, I appreciate it. But we need your voice to say we need the City Council to wake up. I didn't hear you or anybody in the city say, “People, wake up.” You talk about affordable housing, you're killing-we need you and everybody else to go to City Council, wake up. It's a problem.

Mayor Adams: Brother, I'm not sleeping. You need to get them to wake up. We're on the same page. We're on the same page. Introduce yourself.

Acting Commissioner Ahmed Tigani, Department of Housing Preservation and Development: My name is Ahmed Tigani. I'm the acting commissioner at Housing Preservation and Development. We have extensive conversations with the council about what the cost of many of these bills are, in fact, one of the Charter Commission changes that the mayor led was to make more clear the fiscal impact of these measures that get passed by the council. It was the mayor's work to bring that into the process so a more holistic and honest conversation about these bills would be part of the public conversation. 

So more clarity and transparency as new mandates are put on the table. But right now, one of the things that we're trying to do is figure out ways to help you pay for these improvements. So people are familiar with our effort to get J-51, which does not meet everyone's goal.

But we've heard a lot from especially co-op shareholders about ways we can improve that program. It will be coming up for renewal in about a year. And so we'll be looking to engage with co-op owners and rental owners about what else we can do. Without having it as a right benefit or as a right tool, we didn't have anywhere to go or anywhere to help you in that regard. 

But moving forward, we will. Separate and apart from that, HPD has a number of different loan programs around sustainability, around green energy improvements. And so I can give you my card, and I'm happy to talk through each of these term sheets and see if any of them would be a good fit for you.

Question: Obviously, as a condo, we're not allowed to take a loan. But basically, we're asking us to put a mortgage on our future because the city is imposing. It wants us to get a mortgage of $10, $20, $100 million for unfunded mandates. But taking out a loan is imposing on us. J-51, which is $45,000, is a tax rebate after we have to impose a $10 million assessment. We have to get the money first up because nobody is helping us. The J-51 is just a small screen because of the tax break after the fact. It's a whole- we're not allowed in a condo to take a loan even if we want to. But even the co-op takes a loan, you're mortgaging the future.

Tigani: So, again, I'd love to give you my card and talk about how we can work on the program.

Mayor Adams: And what I really want to share with you is that we don't disagree with you. But that's the council law. I can't change that law. The law was already in place when we came into office. So we need to counsel to alter it, to listen to our co-op owners, and to make the modifications that you're talking about. 

So we're taking a bad law, as the commissioner stated, and say, how do we help based on what our powers are? How do we find ways to assist you in doing so? So we're using our powers to the best of our abilities. But the council's law, I can't change the council's law.

Question: I appreciate it because my friend, Paul Vallone, the council member, I dealt with him 10 years ago, but he tried to help us. Vicky is not here trying to help us. We need the city to help them to help-

Mayor Adams: I don't disagree. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table number three behind you.

Mayor Adams: How are you? You brought your own photographer. Is that dad? Is that uncle? Father? Good to see you.

Question: So my name is Dani Queen. I'm a rising senior at Bayside High School. I've lived in Bayside my whole life. I'm the senior council president at Bayside High School, editor-in-chief of the newsletter. And I'm here on behalf of every student in Queens because this whole time we've been talking about the future. We've been talking about the future of New York, the future leaders, but there's nobody here who is our future. I'm it, guys. I'm the future. Hi. Nice to meet you. So I'm here, on behalf of all students of New York.

What I wanted to talk about is how the Central DOE has been unresponsive to concerns from both students, parents, and families as a whole. And these concerns manifest in two main ways that I'm going to bring up. First of all, enrollment is up, class sizes are smaller, and that means that the school days have been changing. They're starting earlier and they're ending later, but student safety isn't really- I haven't seen a plan for that and how that's going to change.

Me and a bunch of my friends commute to school. We take the buses, we take the subways, and I have friends who commute from Jackson Heights to Bayside, New York, to go to school. And they're terrified to take the subway because they don't know what they're going to see. They don't know if there's going to be someone with a knife. They don't know if there's going to be someone who's going to stare at them, take pictures of them. They don't know what's going to happen, and they're afraid to come to school. That's one of the things that I've noticed is really consistent with everybody who I've talked to at Bayside and at other schools.

And that's not okay that students are afraid to come to school, to commute to school, to go home from school, especially if it's going to be dark early in the mornings and dark late at night because of these schedule changes. Furthermore, schools like Bayside have been facing funding issues. 

I don't know if you remember, but we talked before when you gave your budget address at Bayside, and one of the things we discussed was portfolio funding for Bayside High School and how we've been missing out on this funding, although we're a 100 percent career technical education school.

And although this funding would benefit Bayside and its numerous programs, which I have here the Bayside High School newsletter, which is sent out to every family at Bayside. And here we can showcase the amazing programs and talents that our students have, which you can take a read from that. We have our article from when you visited in front. And you can really see how deeply Bayside cares about its students, so much so that it's so proud. It creates this newsletter. We have a whole bunch of other publications and programs, yet we are not getting this funding.

Yet there's other schools that don't have state-certified CTE programs that are getting this funding. So we have put together here some data for you if you want to take a look at that to see if you could do anything more to help our school. And what I really want to ask is, in summary, student safety has to be considered because of the changes. 

So I wanted to know, how are you going to address those changes and make changes to student safety in terms of transportation? And also, how are you going to address the funding issues that schools like Bayside but also other CTE schools have faced?

Mayor Adams: So I want to peel back the layers so that we can deal with each one of them. First, I want to talk about when I did my state of the budget and I communicated with you. You probably don't know this singer, but his name is Nat King Cole, and he has a song called Unforgettable. So trust me, I remember you. And first of all, I thank you for your advocacy. 

And if you say that the future is not here, the future is here. Don't think because folks here are 60, 70, 80 years old, they're not the future. They're very much part of the future. You are going to be part of their future and our future. And this is a city that we're going to be for high school students and those who are older adults. We're all in this together. Our future matters.

And what you are sharing, what we did in this administration, in this budget, the Best Budget Ever, we held all of our schools harmless, regardless of their drop in class sizes, regardless of the number of students. We knew that we were still stabilizing after COVID. We're still stabilizing after that. So we did something called holding everyone harmless. 

Everyone got their dollar amounts that they deserved. There are some dollar amounts because the CTEs of which you were explaining, we need to do an analysis of that. But we put more money into our school system, particularly for our younger adults, than any other administration before because we're focusing on doing that.

We did that in spite of losing $7 billion to the migrants and asylum seekers that we had to find the money for. We put more money into our Summer Youth programs. We put more money in our Summer Rising programs. We put more money in building out our cafeterias. All the things around our young people, we put the money in to make sure that it was held harmless in this budget that just took place. 

We talk about public safety. The biggest problem we've had in the cities of my neighbors is that our good story has never been reported. If you wake up every day and you see the worst thing that can happen in a city of 8.5 million people and it's plastered on the front of your papers or your news, you begin to believe your city's out of order.

We have 4.7 million people that ride our subway a day. 4.7 million. We have an average of five felonies a day on our subway system. Those officers are doing an amazing job. We have record decreases in crimes in our subway system, record decreases in crime on our streets above ground. What these police officers have done in the last three and a half years, they've turned around the public safety narrative completely. 

So we want you to be safe, not only physically safe, but we want you to feel safe. That's why we want the omnipresence of our police officers. We put in 4,000 new cops. We're hiring to put it back into the system. So we want you to feel safe and be safe, and our streets and subways are showing the numbers that it is safe.

Commissioner Kreizman: Deputy Mayor Raspberry just wanted to add something.

Deputy Mayor Tiffany Raspberry, Intergovernmental Affairs: Good evening. Mayor Adams, you asked me to look into the CTE funding issue after our budget meeting, and it's a pleasure seeing you, Dani, and your father. Thank you for coming here tonight, and thank you for advocating for the students in New York City. 

So as we mentioned, I think we have just a misunderstanding of the program. Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said that the school is not eligible because it does not meet eligibility requirements since only 44 percent of the students graduate under a CTE. But I do have some good news that maybe you're unaware of.

You also received SAM's funding as well, and since last year, we've increased your allocation from $854,000 to $918,000. And so we were able to fuel some additional funds into Bayside High School for the upcoming school year. Thank you.

Question: We really appreciate that. Truly, we do. The problem is I was in that meeting with Dan Weisberg, and I heard everything that was said. However, me and my father, who is the PTA president at Bayside High School, did some research for ourselves. So what we found out was that this qualification, that we needed to have a certain amount of people graduating with the CTE, we haven't heard anything about that. And there are programs at schools that are not CTE certified. They are not state-certified CTE programs who are getting CTE funding.

If it's true that they need to have, if us at Bayside High School, a 100 percent CTE state-certified school, need to have a certain amount of people graduating with that credit, why is it that there are schools that don't have state-certified programs getting that funding?

Mayor Adams: So I'm going to need your help to identify those schools for me, okay?

Question: It's in the papers that I gave you. You have all of the information.

Mayor Adams: We'll look at that because you can't have- if there's a rule, we have to follow the rule. And if we- so based on what you're giving us, we're going to do an analysis. Because if there's a rule for Bayside, my high school, then there better be a rule for everybody else.

Question: Exactly. We are not asking, we know it's real money. This is a real number that we are trying to obtain right here. This isn't like monopoly money. This is real money. We would not be asking for money if we did not think we were entitled for it. I showed you the newsletter that shows you the amazing programs and kids at my school, and we know we are entitled to this funding. We have been doing work. We have given petitions to Vickie Paladino with signatures from teachers, parents, family members of current and incoming Bayside high school students, showing their support for this money because we know we're entitled to it.

We have done all the paperwork. We've done the research, and I've handed you the papers so you can take a look, and we really appreciate your support. We really appreciate you listening to me right here because the students of New York City are the future of New York City. Everybody in this room has played a part in getting the city to this point today, and I'm sure many people here are involved in the future, but it's the students of the city that really are making that future, and my school needs this funding. We have all of these programs, which we've been working really hard to fund, but we've needed help from the PTA to get our school play running this past year.

Otherwise, we would not have had it, and there are so many talented students that really were looking forward to it. This is what we use the money for. We don't throw it away. We don't use it for something that isn't going to benefit the students. That's the thing about Bayside High School, which I'm sure you, as a past student, know. Bayside cares about its students, and it does everything it can to give them the best education they can. I want the most out of my education, so do my friends and my peers, and that's why we're here advocating, because we know we deserve this money.

Mayor Adams: Give it up for mayor of 3035.

Question: I just want to mention two things. Dan Weisberg, the first deputy superintendent, made some comments at that meeting with Ms. Raspberry's staff, and he said that there's this requirement that they have to have a 70 percent completion rate to get portfolio funding. However, there are schools in the city right now and for the last several years that are getting portfolio funding with less of a completion rate than Bayside High School has. So, yes, we may have only 43 percent right now, but there are schools with lower than that that are getting.

There are actually even schools in the city with a 0 percent completion rate that are getting portfolio funding, and we're talking about tens of millions of dollars a year. So when the DOE keeps coming up with new excuses why we're not eligible, and we see what the reality is when we review the figures, I think it's obvious that there's some sort of something going on, and someone's got their thumb on the scale tipping it against our school, and we really urge you as the mayor of the city who's looking to educate all the kids in the school and have a fair environment for these children to eliminate this unfair thing, to fund the school properly, and that's what that information in that letter is about, and something needs to be done about this.

Mayor Adams: First of all, thank both of you, and you have my commitment. All right, who's here from the DOE? Can we look into that? Because it shouldn't be, if the rule is for one school, it has to be the same for all schools. It can't be inconsistent. 

[Crosstalk]. 

Mayor Adams: We're going to look into it, okay? And we're going to get an answer. Get that information, and let's give them an answer, because God forbid if I run into her on the street and I don't answer this.

Commissioner Kreizman: Deputy Chancellor Rux here will follow up.

Mayor Adams: Okay, please grab the information. 

Commissioner Kreizman: Table four.

Mayor Adams: How are you, sir?

Question: Hey, good evening.

Mayor Adams: Good to see you.

Question: I'm doing good. My name is [inaudible] John. I live right across the street. And before I ask a question, I want to say thank you for everything you do, because sometimes we don't thank people enough. So I want to thank you for what you do.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Very kind.

Question: And the question is basically a consensus question among the people in the table regarding the unregistered two-wheelers. I know that your administration is doing great jobs in basically eliminating it, but one thing I don't know if you are doing it is going after the source. If you stop the source, you can stop other things. So the stores are the people who sell it. There are stores that are selling it. There is online. It's being sold. One of the reasons the table asked me to ask the question is I am an ex-DMV employee. People come to me for registration.

I have seen people coming with two-wheeler things, and we ask for a title, and they give me a piece of paper with some numbers on it with an amount on it. And a lot of people get scammed like that. So what can we do to go after the source, to cut off the source of illegal motorcycles or two-wheelers that are coming in and that can be registered in the city, especially the made-in-China ones and all those things?

And one more question I want to add is one of the reasons why people go for two-wheelers is the reason that our vehicle insurance, four-wheel insurance, is really high. So that is one of the reasons why people in the low-income category go and try to have an affordable transportation medium, which is a two-wheeler. So what can we do about getting an awareness of having the right type of two-wheelers available that can be ridden in the New York City roads?

Mayor Adams: Randy, we did- Randy and D.M. Raspberry- what was the legislation Albany was moving on the registration? We did something- was there something pushing the City Council on registration? I recall something. Do you recall?

First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro: Yes, mayor. We proposed legislation in the City Council to be able to regulate the two-wheelers, to require them to register, the drivers to register, the commercial companies for which so many of them are delivering goods to keep logs and registries and ultimately be held accountable for the actions of their drivers. 

The City Council has never moved the legislation. So what we did, because you're right, it's time, in this budget that just passed on Monday, we put in funding for DOT to have a division to regulate these e-bikes and other two-wheelers and to do this at the commercial delivery company level, have their drivers have to be registered, wear identification so there can be enforcement.

We are going to do it ourselves and we are going to crack down on these e-bikes. And by the way, we lowered the speed limit, again by regulation, thanks to DOT and this mayor, to only 15 miles an hour. 15 miles an hour, taking it down. Some of those go a lot faster. We are going to do it ourselves. We're not waiting for the City Council. We've been waiting long enough. 

These things are a menace and they cause a lot of injuries. People have to be respectful to pedestrians and their neighbors, and drive properly. These commercial companies that want the deliveries put the pressure on these drivers. We're going to hold them accountable and make sure that the food and other products they're having delivered is delivered safely and protect you and your kids and your neighborhoods. We're going to do it, Mayor Adams, ourselves, since the City Council wouldn't do it.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. And Kaz, let's talk about the number. How many did we- Deputy Mayor Daughtry, public safety, how many did we remove off our streets?

Deputy Mayor Kaz Daughtry, Public Safety: So far, since the start of your administration, and John, I don't know if you want to chime in. The start of your administration, since you took over, there've been over 100,000 ATVs, dirt bikes, and scooters that have been taken off of the streets of New York City. Let me say that number one more time. Over 100,000. Everybody in this room knows how I feel in regards to those two-wheeled dirt bikes, scooters, and ATVs. We have been aggressively going after them, and we're going to remove them, and we are going to crush every last one of them that we take if they don't have the proper registration and the documentation to get it back.

We're not playing this game anymore. I remember getting the mayor and Chief Chell, he had a very rough conversation with us in regards to this. When you read the reports and you see how these scooters and these dirt bikes are zipping in and out of pedestrian traffic. 

I watched a video where a 65-year-old lady was hit by one of these things, and it split the side of her face. And you know what? The person that hit her had no insurance. So this is why we're aggressively going after them, and we're going to take any illegal scooters, dirt bikes, ATVs off of the streets of New York City.

Mayor Adams: You know, sir, we have yet to do one town hall, one older adult town hall, one community meeting that this doesn't come up. And that is why these guys got an earful from me that we have to be more aggressive on it. But you hit on something that I think is important. You have to have your car inspected, registered before you can drive it off the lot. We need to go to the source, and we're going to need Albany to tell all these folks who are selling them, you need to make sure before you turn them over to someone that they have insurance and registration.

That is how you stop this, because God forbid someone is struck, as D.M. Daughtry stated, and the person doesn't have any insurance. You're stuck with the bill. And oftentimes they just flee the scene. And a lot of these illegal scooters and dirt bikes have been used in robberies, snatch and grabs. There have been illegal activity. We have had pattern after pattern. So we're with you. 

We're 100 percent, and we're going to do what we can do, as the first deputy mayor stated, on our level. But if we can get Albany to ensure that you have to have registration and insurance before you take it out of the place, that will go a long way. 

Question: Just a follow-up question on that. I know that there are things that Albany has to do, City Council cannot do, or city cannot do. But I believe these businesses are registered. Most of them are in New York City. I don't know if there is an agency within the city that regulates all the businesses to see if it is legal to sell, like you said about cannabis or something, that if you're not allowed to sell, you cannot sell those. That's why you're catching them. So if these stores are out in the open and these are bikes that are not legal to sell, and we allow them to sell, more and more people will buy this thing. So where can we catch them from the source?

Mayor Adams: Good question. Commissioner Gross, I want to hear your thoughts. That's a very good question. I don't know if we can. But let's hear-

Deputy Mayor Daughtry: To answer your question, the answer is yes. And everybody knows how I feel about these machines. And I have directed the fire department to send their fire prevention officers into these places that are selling these illegal scooters and do an inspection on them. And if they have those Lithuanian batteries or if something is done that is not proper, they're going to get hit with thousands of dollars of fines because we're not playing these games anymore. 

Because you want to know why? They're dangerous, number one. And number two, because they're storing the batteries improperly inside of the business. That can cause a fire and set other businesses on the same row on fire as well. So we're aggressively going after them legally, legally everybody. We're legally going after them. And if they are in violation, I promise you they will receive a summon.

Mayor Adams: Let's look at it. But I want to explore. We can remove them because of the lithium-ion batteries. But can we take other actions?

Commissioner Dynishal Gross, Department of Small Business Services: I'm the commissioner of the Department of Small Business Services. SBS is a non-regulatory agency. Our goal is to be sure that when it comes to business operations in the city, we lead with business education. So if you have concerns that business owners are doing the wrong thing, they're selling improper products, you can share that information with us through our hotline, 888-SBS-4NYC. We will send our compliance advisors out to be sure those business owners are aware of what the city's rules are and they can voluntarily work to adapt their practices.

But if you want to make a complaint about a business that you believe is not receptive and you want inspection, that's our Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. You can reach them through 311, and they have a force of inspectors that go out to inspect small businesses to be sure that they're in compliance with the city's rules about products, weights and measures, and other types of consumer issues.

Mayor Adams: So right now, and I'm coming to you Commissioner Rodriguez. Right now, if they're selling illegal batteries, we can take them. Let's say they sell their legal batteries. Are scooters legal just on the face of them, just on the space?

Deputy Mayor Daughtry: Like first Deputy Mayor Mastro said, they're working with Albany. For you to go into a store, you don't have to have insurance. Before you buy a car, you can just go in and go buy the scooter. You can't change that. That has to come via Albany. If they have anything improper, whether it be a battery or if they're storing the battery in certain locations inside of the store where they're selling these scooters at, the Fire Department can issue a summons and remove that because that's a safety threat. We're also seeing how we can partner with the buildings department.

I spoke to Commissioner Oddo about this, on how we can have the buildings go in there and also work with the Fire Prevention team together to go in and make a small task force. I know what you're saying. We hear this all the time, that while you guys keep taking the scooters, why don't you go after the source of the problem, which are the stores selling the scooters. 

We're trying to correlate a task force with the NYPD, Fire Prevention, Department of Buildings, and the small business team. That's something that is on my agenda to do. We're looking to try to get that as soon as possible.

Question: Mr. Mayor, I just want to add one thing to you, just so you know. I just want to add one thing for this gentleman. They have to be UL-certified batteries. If you're selling anything other than a UL, that's illegal to sell. All you have to do is call 311, notify the Fire Department. We send fire marshals to those establishments. 

We will lock up the individuals selling anything other than UL-certified batteries. Not only that, the establishment can get closed and they can be heavily fined. We take this very, very seriously. Our main cause is to make sure we reduce the number of deaths due to lithium-ion batteries. UL batteries have to be on the books.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Commissioner Ydanis Rodríguez, Department of Transportation: I'm Ydanis Rodríguez, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation. Today we announce that in these six months, we have accomplished the lowest numbers of traffic deaths for the last 115 years in the city. It is this mayor who says traffic violence must be part of the constants of the NYPD. When the NYPD goes every week and checks all the data with the deputy mayor of Public Safety, they also look at any type of crashes and traffic violence, a new thing.

Look, I think that one of the best recruitment that I can see that the mayor has made among all of us is also bringing back the first Deputy Mayor, Randy Mastro, who also served as the first Deputy Mayor under Giuliani. After being private, he decided to be back. Let's give the first Deputy Mayor a big round of applause for taking that responsibility to be back, overseeing everything at City Hall, but especially pushing us, including all of us at DOT, to work to reduce from 18 to 50 miles per hour.

When the mayor said, "Hey, Randy, you guys work at DOT, work within those rules, bring down to 15 miles per hour those who are using e-bikes," he got into the call with Citi Bike and Lyft. They said, "Yes, we're going to be doing too." The mayor says one thing, everyone has to be accountable to keep everyone safe. Drivers must do their part to keep cyclists and pedestrians safe, but also cyclists. 

In this case, those who are using e-bikes, scooters or mopeds, they should know that when anyone is on the sidewalk, sometimes in the street, we feel that there's going to be someone in that e-bike going so fast that it can hurt a person.

That's why the mayor put together like $6 million for the DOT to create a new department in our agency that oversees everything related to making everyone accountable when it comes to how people use bikes, especially e-bike. With the scooter, there's a new process right now because of the mayor working with Tiffany at the state level where anyone that is selling a scooter- in the past, everyone at one cent discount, you could see selling a scooter and mopeds in the sidewalk.

Now, anyone who is in the business to sell a scooter, they have to be sure that they have a registration, that they know who is buying those scooters. I think that the city is moving under this measure, recognizing, yes, why do we have so many e-bikes? Well, because there's an industry. DoorDash, Uber, and others make hundreds of millions of dollars. 

We, the consumers, are placing those orders to get our food to our apartments, to our houses. Sometimes those essential workers, the labor workers, only have five minutes from the moment when they pick up the food to bring it to us. Everyone has a role to play.

I feel that the mayor, first deputy mayor, they're working hard to be sure that not only NYPD, with  Commissioner Tisch, and the deputy mayor, they are outside there giving tickets to those e-bike riders who are reckless too. DOT does the educational part. 

We have seen across the five boroughs, across our community, New Yorkers are speaking loud and clear. Mr. Mayor addressed this issue, and he's been taking the necessary steps. The next step is going to be the Office of Sustainability Delivery that is coming inside DOT. Mayor, I know that Juanita also has something to add.

Commissioner Juanita Holmes, Department of Probation: Hi. What I wanted to make mention of, because he was making mention about the individual- well, hi, I'm Commissioner Holmes of Department of Probation, formerly NYPD, so I know a little bit about this. I wanted to make mention to you about the actual sellers, right? Because first and foremost, if the vehicles are not registered insurance, especially ATVs and these dirt bikes, you're supposed to have them on a trailer to remove them from the location.

These are like off-street vehicles. you shouldn't be able to remove it from that shop unless you show proof to the owner that it's being put or hinged to a trailer. That's the only way of moving them, even gassing them up. It's illegal to go into the gas station if it's not registered, even to gas them up if they're not attached on the back of a particular trailer. That's something that can be addressed as well.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, thank you. I didn't know all of you were experts on this.

Commissioner Kreizman: Table number five.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Question: Good evening, Mayor Adams. How are you doing? You're looking good today.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Question: My name is Thomas [inaudible]. I'm a local resident here in Bayside. We all talked about having a question, and we all came up with a question. Part of the question that I have reverts back to the young woman over there who talked about the safety in the subway for the children. This is on the topic of mental health. Are there any specific programs or money or allocations that you've increased in this budget that you just passed to deal with the mental health issues of people that are out on the street, people who are criminals out there, and even the illegal aliens who are here with mental problems?

That is a big issue because that is part of what the crime issue here in the city, and a lot of people are scared. A lot of people definitely don't even want to take the subway. That's getting back to where she said the students are scared of going to school in the morning and at night, especially during the wintertime. We would like to know about the mental health programs that we should be funding or at least getting more police, NYPD, or Community Affairs people out there dealing with this problem and giving homeless services more money for it.

Mayor Adams: Dr. Katz is going to- Dr. Katz is going to answer the question. We attempted this, administration, Deputy Mayor Raspberry and her team, Intergovernmental Affairs. We attempted to have Albany give us the power of involuntary removal. When a person is dealing with severe mental health issues and he can't take care of himself, he's in danger to himself and in danger to others. We feel that the government has the responsibility to step in and give them the care.

When I first became mayor in 2022, I went in the street to visit people who were living in encampments, living in our subway system, and when I went inside I saw stale food, schizophrenic behavior, bipolar, drug paraphernalia, human waste, people that didn't realize they needed care. Our team went in and we were committed to say it's inhumane to allow people to live on the streets this way. We got a lot of pushback. We put in place two programs. We put in place our SCOUT program. What was the other program that we did in the subway system, Molly?

Commissioner Molly Wasow Park, Department of Social Services: PATH.

Mayor Adams: PATH program. Two programs. We went in the subway system partnering with mental health professionals and police officers and nurses to go in and engage. We took 8,000 people off the system. It's the revolving door process. Oftentimes they come in, they come in for one day, they get medication, and then they leave. We're saying we need to hold people long enough to do a proper analysis and hand them off to some of the community-based organizations and not this revolving door system.

They modified some of the law, they didn't give us all the authority that we wanted to get, but we're tackling this problem head on. In addition to talking about the criminal behavior that you were talking about, 51 percent of the inmates at Rikers Island have mental health issues. 18 percent to 20 percent have severe mental health issues. 

What I'm asking everyone to do, we are now closing Rikers Island to build four more jails, one jail in each borough, and the current population at Rikers Island is now 7,400 people. The four jails that they're building hold only around 4,600 people.

It cost us $8 billion when we first decided this. It now costs $16 billion. What we should be doing is investing in a state-of-the-art mental health facility so people can get proactive care that they deserve instead of criminalizing it and renovate, in my opinion, Rikers Island to be a state-of-the-art facility where you can do job training so we won't have a revolving door. It's just common sense, and we're hitting this head-on. I want to turn it over to Dr. Katz, or Molly, if you want to add, because you have done some great work around this.

Dr. Mitchell Katz, CEO and President, NYC Health and Hospitals: First, Mr. Mayor, I wanted everybody to know that from your first week in office, you were with us in the subway system pointing out that you were not going to allow people to walk by a clearly mentally ill person and just leave them there as if that was doing them some favor. 

During your administration, you've expanded the number of hospital beds at Health + Hospitals so that we can hospitalize people for longer periods of time because we think that's what it takes to get better. We don't think that you can take someone who is psychotic on the street and in three days make them better.

People need prolonged medication, the milieu of a safe place, doctors and nurses, therapy, art therapy, and that's how you bring people to better health. By allowing us to keep people longer by having more beds, you've helped. Then the last one I want to just mention is Bridge to Home, which is going to open in September, which is going to be specifically for seriously mentally ill people leaving the hospital who are currently homeless.

Because after all that good work in the hospital, of course, if somebody is then on the street, they're going to relapse. They're going to lose their medicines. They're not going to make their follow-up appointments. We want a clear path so that we interrupt that revolving door. Molly's department, as well, has done great stuff.

Park: Thank you. I'm Molly Wasow Park. I'm the commissioner for the Department of Social Services. As the mayor noted earlier, New York City is very different from some other cities. 97% percent of the people experiencing homelessness in New York City are sheltered, but that 3 percent is something that we worry about and think about all the time, and this administration has put real resources towards it.

So we have 24/7 outreach, both the subways and on the streets. This administration in particular has more than tripled the number of nurses that go out with those outreach workers so that we are able to make the clinical assessments so that we can determine if somebody really does need hospitalization, that we can connect them with H+H hospitals.

Something else that I think is really important that this administration has done, in the State of the City, the mayor announced that we would be increasing the number of low-barrier beds. These are sites that are specifically oriented to people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness. They tend to be a little bit smaller and less dense than a traditional shelter, and they have really successful track records getting people inside, staying inside, and then connecting to permanent housing. 

In this administration, we have connected more than 3,500 people who were living on the streets and subways, not just to shelter but to permanent housing. That, at the end of the day, is the solution here, and we're going to keep working at that.

Executive Deputy Commissioner Dr. Jean Wright, Mental Hygiene: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Dr. Jean Wright, the EDC for Mental Hygiene for the Health Department, and it's important that, and, mayor, you know I say this all the time, it's important that we don't conflate mental illness with criminal activity. So there's a very small percentage that you all have already addressed. The vast majority of individuals with mental health challenges or mental illness need treatment, as the mayor has said, and this mayor has put more money into supporting individuals, New Yorkers with mental health challenges, than any other administration.

So in terms of immediate what you can do, 988 is something that anyone can call. From the time of just needing to talk to somebody all the way to someone that may be dealing with suicidal ideation, the mobile crisis teams that we have that are available that can come 24/7 to help individuals in that way. Also looking at the provider networks that we have that support individuals in the community.

So we definitely want to take care of individuals that have serious mental illness. As the mayor stated, it's a smaller percentage that are incarcerated. The vast majority are in the community who are going to more likely be the victims of crime than actually the perpetrators of crime. That's something to remember as well, that our neighbors, our family members, individuals that we care about and love about also have mental illness. 

I don't want to conflate that individual and those individuals are all doing criminal activities. So we have support, this mayor supported them with dollars. Deputy mayor for HSS has given us support, and we will continue serving New Yorkers that have serious mental illness and making sure that we understand the difference between that and individuals that are out here committing crimes. Thank you so much.

Commissioner Kreizman: Deputy Mayor Daughtry.

Deputy Mayor Daughtry: Really quick, Mr. Mayor. Here's something that the media won't tell you. Mayor Adams has launched the PATH program, which consists of teams of mental health professionals along with public safety professionals who have engaged with over 11,000 New Yorkers that are in need of mental health, and also connected them with 3,000 people who are connected with services.

Hold on, I got another number for you. More than 8,400 New Yorkers have been connected to shelters since the launch of this program. Since the launch of the program, 8,400 New Yorkers have been connected to shelters. But nobody will talk about that. 

Let's talk about the hub real quick in the Bronx. They'll put pictures up of people using drugs and laying on the bench, but they won't show you the 15 mental health workers that are around other sites next to them trying to give them help, trying to offer them services. You will never see that. You will only see the bad stuff.

Mayor Adams: It's a real challenge. When I go into the subway system with our PATH team and our police officers, and I walk through, because I want to see what it's like when you try to engage someone that really doesn't know they need the care. They may be off their medication. They may be dealing with family trauma. And you can't just forcefully tell them, you have to get off the streets. 

You have to build trust. It takes a long time. And you get them inside, as Dr. Katz stated, you get them inside, and after three days they may have dealt with the medication that they needed to deal with. If they're not handed off to real care, they're right back out there again, doing it again.

Question: In the new budget, has that been addressed?

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Question: You seem to know a lot about it, and your commissioners all know a lot about it. That issue should be addressed in the budget.

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Question: With the extra money and whatever money needs to be done to improve these programs, to improve, because people are still scared on the street and on the subway. Like the woman just said. You know what I mean? That's why, if that's to address a quality of life issue for New Yorkers going forward, especially going into this election, that's what we're concerned about. What's going to be done to actually prevent and keep that crime rate going down that you say it's going down? Well, keep it going down and bring back our quality of life here in New York.

Mayor Adams: You know, there are three things that have overshadowed the success of this administration. One, recidivism. We have a revolving door criminal justice system that started with bail reform and some of these other reforms. The small number of people who commit crimes come back out and do them over and over and over again. When you look at shoplifting, for example, you had, I think it was 575 people who were arrested 7,500 times, 138 people who assaulted transit employees were arrested over 1,600 times. So there's this repeated offender. That's number one.

Number two, random acts of violence. You're walking down the block, someone punches you in the face, someone strikes you for no reason at all. That's very impactful. It takes away your sense of safety. These random acts of violence are hurting us.

Number three, dealing with those who are dealing with severe mental health issues that won't either come in for services or we can't keep them as long as we want or we can't do the involuntary removal. Because when a young lady gets on the subway system, she may be seeing the same person every day. You get the feeling after you hear someone was pushed to the subway tracks, now you walk in the system, and you hear someone loud or disorderly, you tend to believe that, “oh my God, I don't feel safe.” Because safety is both actual and it's perceived. You have to feel safe as well as being safe.

So I'm not going to tell someone I said I'm not feeling safe that, no, you are safe. No, I want to acknowledge the fact that you don't feel safe. I must do everything possible to make you feel safe to match the numbers of bringing down crime. So you're dead on. We agree with you 100 percent. And that's why it was stated we put more money than any other administration around this issue because it's a real issue that New Yorkers feel.

Commissioner Kreizman: And Chief Chell?

Chief John Chell, Chief of Department, Police Department: I'm just going to give you one staggering stat about repeat offenders and what we're up against and what we've done so far in bringing crime down. We deem in New York City a recidivist, a repeat offender, someone who commits the same crime, not twice, three times in one year. 

So the same crime, we don't give you two chances, we give you three chances in our stats. When you look at robbery, someone robbing you on the street; when you look at burglary, someone breaking into your house; when you look at someone stealing your car, and when you look at grand larceny, different types, ripping your chain off or taking your property.

When you compare the first six months of 2025 to 2019, pre-bail, that number is up 66 percent. 66 percent. When you look at shoplifting, so a person locked up with shoplifting in 2025 in the first six months, three times. Compare it to 2019, pre-criminal justice reform, it's up 98 percent. Staggering. Yet, we're down a couple thousand cops and we're getting it done. Can you imagine where we'd be doing this type of work in 2019? We wouldn't be having this conversation.

But to your point, we got more cops at the subways, we got more cops riding on the trains and platforms where 74 percent of crime occurs, we have the PATH program, our cops are with clinicians, getting 8,000 people help that they need, our homeless encampments on the street under the Eric Adams administration, we've cleaned up almost 15,000 homeless encampments throughout this city, with clinicians, getting people help, not just throwing them on the street so they don't come back here. But we don't do that, we try to help.

So as a collective, we are doing very well, we got a lot more work to do, like the mayor said a couple times now, we need you to feel good, feel safe as the numbers show you are safe. So this is a Herculean effort, we're getting it done, but we're not going to stop, we won't relent.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, thank you. 

Question: Hi, Mayor.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: My name is Howard, I'm from Flushing. I’m just like you say, you're from the working family and support the working family, but right now I have this issue about ACS funding. ACS is like a children's care, after, I mean, May 25, the ACS will start issuing new vouchers to the family, but I just want to know how the policy is right now, because so many families need that voucher. Every month maybe we have 4,000 to 7,000 families, where we lose the voucher. We don't have alternatives.

Mayor Adams: Who knows about this?

Fred Kreizman: Deputy Commissioner.

Mayor Adams: Deputy Almanzar.

Deputy Mayor Ana Almanzar, Strategic Initiatives: I got it. Hi Howard, it's nice to meet you, thank you for your question. From the beginning of this administration, before I joined, the mayor had a commitment to increase our child care and early education system. We had the largest in the country, 150,000 children throughout the city, receiving care from a New York City Public Schools program, from a local non-profit provider, from a family-based child care center.

Yes, that question that you posed about the state failing to fulfill its promise, that they told us to increase this program. When I joined the administration, we were leaving money on the table for the CCDBG program, and our mandate was make sure that you spend every single penny, make sure that you increase the eligibility for the family, that you get them to be able to apply and be registered for the program. Now the state said, wait, wait, wait, not that fast. They have walked away from the mandate, the program that they created, and now it's mandated the city, without any further funding, to bridge the gap.

The mayor had secured $229 million in order for us to continue providing that service to New Yorkers. That is a responsibility to the state, since they created that program. However, for other parts of the early childhood education system, the mayor secured $55 million for early childhood preschool special ed, to make sure that our children that had been on a waiting list are now reduced, and don't have to wait six months to a year for a seat on special ed. He had also increased the number of seats that we have available for our 3-K program.

Last year and this year, we were able to make 100 percent offers to every single family who applied to the system for 3-K. That is up like 400 percent since 2019, when we have 14,000 applicants. Last year, we had 43,000 applicants for the 3-K program who filed an application on time, plus 10,000 who applied after the deadline, and all 53,000 children received an offer for a child care seat.

It is an issue that we will still continue to advocate at the state level, to make sure that the resources that the city needs are brought back to us, specifically for our early childhood program. But the ACS and the team of the Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education keep working with New York City Public Schools, with colleagues from City Council to make sure that we're not alone in this fight, that child care is not the responsibility of the city alone. It's a state and federal responsibility, as well as ours. We're doing our part, as mandated by the mayor, to make sure that we bring those resources back. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: So let me break this down a little further for you. The state created, as the D.M. was stating, the state created a program that's dealing with these vouchers. They told us, go sign up the children. After we did, in this budget, they said, “We're no longer going to pay for it. You guys have to pay for it.” So we had to find the money in the budget based on whether they came to a certain dollar amount that they were willing to pay, and then we had to pick up the rest. We said, instead of allowing these families to go without it, we're going to put, I think it was $300 million? $300?

Commissioner Kreizman: $229.

Deputy Mayor Almanzar: $229.

Mayor Adams: $229 million to pick up what should have been their course, that they didn't pay for it. And our council, our assembly, our senate, they should have all fought for us to say this is wrong. This is your program. The federal government and the state are responsible. This should not have been dropped into our lap. We minimized the pain by putting in the money to get those vouchers that we need. 

Many people don't realize we're creatures of the state. The state controls a lot of funding. We send money to the state. We don't get a lot of our money back to the city. It was wrong for what they did. And I'm still peeved about it.

Commissioner Kreizman: Next, table seven.

Mayor Adams: My girl.

Question: Thank you, mayor and other officials [who] come to the community meeting. Our question is, as a senior citizen, although we are not the future of the city, however, we are the members of the city, the community. So the question is, what is the city doing to improve the quality of the life for older adults in terms of the funding? Because we want a better lunch, we want a larger room, and a better environment. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Do I have Department of Aging?

Executive Deputy Commissioner Ryan Murray, Department of Aging: Hey, Mr. Mayor. How are you? Good evening. Ryan Murray from the Department for the Aging. And hello. Hi to all my constituents who are over 60. Good to see you. When we were warming up earlier, there was a video playing where the mayor was talking about the older adults cabinet for older New Yorkers. So one thing I want you to know is it's not just the Department for the Aging that cares about making life better in the city. It's every one of these agencies here.

Three years ago, the mayor formed a cabinet that's led by the deputy mayor. We had a meeting just a couple days ago. Our commissioner, Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez, which is all about things from transportation. You heard about pedestrian safety. Making sure that every touch point in this city that works with older adults that you are able to and the folks who are serving you are able to respond to your needs. 

So that is making sure that folks are trained at the health and hospitals on older adult services. Establishing folks in every precinct. So Commissioner Stewart over there, under his leadership, established a liaison. Any of the liaisons here, older adult liaisons from the Police Department? If you are, feel free to go say hi. But the other things that we do, routine day to day, do you go to an older adult center?

Question: [Inaudible]. 

Murray: You do. Great. 

Speaker 25: So we would like to have better food. The larger room, the better environment. The facility.

Murray: Great. The other thing that we are doing is making sure that, you heard, not leaving money on the table. We're making sure that we're reinvesting every single dollar we get into the site. So some of that has looked like upgrading the centers. If you are, if you think your food isn't the best food, one of the things I would encourage you to do, we have moved around kiosks to centers citywide to get your real-time feedback.

We have nutritionists that are on staff who are coming out to work with your chefs or your caterers to make sure that's improved. I will be happy to come to your center. We have 300 centers citywide. I've been to half so far. I want to get to all of them. I'm happy to come to your center sometime next week, listen to you. 

We also have been bringing together older adults like yourself to sit down as a part of our advisory group to give feedback on how we can improve. So we're putting money back in the centers. I'd love to know which center you go to, and I'll come out to see you. I'll make sure my card's available.

Commissioner Kreizman: Excellent. And Julian at the table will get the information about the center. We'll give it to the deputy commissioner.

Deputy Commissioner Mark Stewart, Community Affairs, Police Department: Yes, hello. Deputy Commissioner Mark Stewart. So the mayor has tasked us to make sure that we include our older adults. Me and the mayor are almost there. We have to make sure we did this right. There is an older adult Community Affairs officer in every precinct, in every PSA 9. That means if you have any problems, any difficulties, you want to go to court, you feel intimidated by walking to a precinct, there is a Community Affairs cop in every precinct that you could go into.

Since I took over, we also started a self-defense class. My self-defense class master, Detective Castro, he's right there. He did approximately over 40 senior older adults. We also go out to precincts and we teach our older adults about scams. We did over 2,000 scams to our older adults throughout the whole city. 

Believe me, we're doing that. We're taking our older adults, taking them to the stores to show them about the ATM machines. We tell them about scams about roofing, scams about lottery. So under Mayor Adams, he made sure that we did not leave out the older adults. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: I want to go in order, and we'll come back to you, okay? Where are we?

Commissioner Kreizman: Behind you, table 8.

Mayor Adams: How are you, sir?

Question: Thank you very much. My name is Paul DiBenedetto. I'm the chair of Queens Community Board 11. I've been a community board member for 20 years. I've been the chair for three years. I was also the PTA president of your alma mater, Bayside High School. Very proud of them. I know you've been to the high school a few times recently. Thanks for coming. It's really great for the school.

I have something else to ask you, but I just want to mention about the CTE program. That was created by Mike Athey, who was the former principal. He took that school, which had a 60 percent graduation rate. That CTE program, DOE, please listen. That CTE program raised that school from 60 percent to 97 percent graduation rate. It's an amazing success. 

Tracy Martinez, the current principal, has continued that program. So that school needs to be rewarded. I know you've got some other funding for it, and that's great, and I appreciate that. They should be- if they're in, they're a CTE school no matter what anybody says. Maybe there's some rules you have to play by or some wording, but they are a CTE school more than any other school. If you put them in that folder, they're good for life. So that's why they should be in there. Thank you.

But I have a question for you. So 11 of 14 community boards voted against, in Queens, voted against the City of Yes. I'm not going to touch on it because you made your statement. I want to thank you for coming here, and you bravely stated your position, so we can appreciate that. But exactly four days after the vote for City of Yes, you convened the City Charter Commission to take away the recommendation-only, non-binding power of community boards through their all-important participation in the ULURP process. The ULURP process is the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.

If you want to do a zoning change or if you want to do the City of Yes, which is a zoning change, it's got to go through the community board first so we can all hear it, the public hears it. Then it goes to the borough president, then it goes to the City Planning Commission, then it goes to the City Council. But you appoint the head of the City Planning Commission, so that's your- City of Yes is yours.

Most importantly, this City Charter Commission that you called for also looks to take away councilmember deference on local land issues. Tell me if I'm wrong. Community boards are a city agency filled with civic members from the local community who know their neighborhoods better than anyone else. Local councilmembers are elected by that same community and, again, know their community best. Why would you want to reduce the Democratic representation that the people in this room gathered tonight have relied upon to protect our homes, business, and quality of life since the 1970s?

Mayor Adams: It's so important that the Charter Commission, I don't give them their directives. They meet, they hold hearings like the community boards when they do. They hear what comes from the body of the people and their recommendations. Then they put it to a vote. So it's not what Eric wants. It goes to a vote. Then the people of this city would vote on the Charter Commission ballot amendments. Based on the people of this city, the majority vote is not three-fourths, one-fourth. It's the majority of the people, they would make the determination, with those experts and other community residents, determined to make these changes. That's going to be solely up to the people of this city if they want them or if they don't want them.

Question: Okay, but were you involved in putting that together? And is this something that you believe in, too? Do you think that community boards should not be involved in ULURP? Do you think that councilmembers should not have local deference?

Mayor Adams: I believe in whatever the people of their community vote on. That's what I believe. I'm not going to walk into a predetermined decision. If the people of this community and other communities, they all have community boards. If they believe councilmembers should have local deference, if they believe community boards should be part of the ULURP process, they're going to vote. And whatever way that vote goes, I'm going to follow the law.

Question: Okay, I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: Where am I going?

Commissioner Kreizman: Table number nine.

Mayor Adams: Yes, how are you, ma'am?

Question: Hi, I'm good. Thank you, Mayor Adams, for coming out. My name is Jessica. I started a nonprofit for Crocheron Park, a Friends Of group. We were able to bring in a lot of private funds to support the park. The question that I have and that we were able to agree on at the table is, why was parks funding cut when climate change is a major threat through storm damage and the landscape maintenance from more rains? There's less than 1 percent of funding that goes for parks from the budget in New York City, but other major cities in the United States have 3 percent to 4 percent.

I'm also on the community board, and I know that tree maintenance is something that we have an issue with. In fact, there was a large branch that came down after free yoga in the park one night, and also just talking about PEP officers and needing more parks enforcement patrol, and the horrible incident within the last year that happened at Kissena Park. 

My fellow former board member next to me also wanted me to talk about some of the issues with New York City education and bringing more real life aspects of living into education and not having as much of a focus on other things. So I'll hand it off to her if she wants to just quickly say something.

Question: If you're willing to hear my question.

Mayor Adams: Look at that two for one.

Question: That's what we do. Listen, I sat here listening to everybody else, and thank you all, and thank you. But I'm just a little curious, because I am a teacher and a parent in New York City public schools, who makes the decision on the kind of curriculum we're being taught? Because we have a 49 percent reading on grade level rate in New York City, which is pretty problematic. 

I've been looking into the curriculum a lot more, and I'm finding things that are kind of troubling. I'd love an opportunity to sit down with some friends from your office and maybe some other teachers to discuss some of these issues that we found. We don't have to get into it now, but I have a lot of questions. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: You know, I think one of the ideal families in this city are educators and law enforcement. My significant other was a principal for over-  she's been in the school system over 30 years, and she was a principal for a significant amount of time. I was a police officer. I saw the failures of children not being educated, and she fought like [] to make sure they were educated. I think those two professions, not to say any other profession is not important, but I think those two professions are really on the front line of how we can improve our city.

You see it ahead of time, and I saw it ahead of time. We would love to sit down and speak with you with the chancellor and hear some of your ideas and hear some of the on-the-ground ideas. So we'll make sure, all right, that we get the information. We'll get your information, and I would love to hear some of your ideas.

I want to talk about parks for a moment. How many of you own a home here? So imagine when you own a home and you're on a fixed income. You're on a fixed income. All of a sudden, the roof caves in. You call your insurance company, and you tell your insurance company, my roof caved in. I'm on a fixed income. My electricity, my gas, my water. I need you to come and give me my insurance policy. They tell you no.

That's what happened to this city. Our insurance policy was the federal government. We had a $7.7 billion hole in our budget. Instead of the federal government saying this is a federal problem, they gave us the problem. They made us pay for it. 

So as a homeowner, you have to look and say, what am I going to take out? I've got to take out something. I have to either turn my lights off more. I have to stop using this. I've got to take food off the menu. Because I've got to pay for it. The law requires me to balance my budget every year.

When you have a $7 billion budget, there's only about $30 billion we can play with in our budget. The rest of it is fixed costs. It pays for our teachers, our police officers, our roadway, our hospitals. About $30 billion we can move around. Out of that $30 billion, they took $7 billion from us, folks. So it broke my heart that we couldn't do 1 percent like other municipalities. 

I'm sure if you look at those other municipalities, they didn't have a $7 billion budget. We wanted to put 1 percent and more. It broke our hearts that we had to go into some of our agencies and say we can't cut services, but we have to figure out how to deal with the failure of our insurance company called the federal government to pay for the $7 billion price tag that they put on our city. We have to figure it out. And we did some great things in Parks. Who do I have from Parks here?

Commissioner Kreizman: Borough commissioner.

Mayor Adams: You know, talk about some of the stuff that we did in Parks, the cleaning and the shifts and all the other things that we did. So we didn't ignore Parks.

Borough Commissioner Jacqueline Langsam, Parks Department: Well, first I want to acknowledge Jessica and her group. They are really terrific, and we are grateful for all of our volunteers and all of the work that they do to help us on a regular basis. We count on them both for their advocacy and for their cleaning. Mayor, we are grateful also to you for our second shift staff. 

So what that meant in Queens was there are 26 parks, and off the top of my head, I don't know how many zones, but 26 of our parks are now able to stay open later. That means bathrooms are open later, and we're able to do cleaning in hot spots, which for us that really means like barbecue areas. So we have a lot more people out there cleaning, and we are really happy to have that, and we're grateful to you.

Mayor Adams: What do we do with our PEP offices? Did we increase the budget? I know we did something with our PEP offices. I believe we put more PEP offices out there, park enforcement offices, but we also attempted to use the Department of Sanitation to help with the cleaning. 

The reason we were able to survive is because of organizations like yours. Folks stepped up. They said that, listen, we are going to do what we have to do to help the city out. Prospect Park Alliance, Central Park Conservancy, your organization. If we didn't have everyday people that said, you know what? We know the city's going through tough times. We need to step up.

Now, we want to get to the 1 percent and more, but we are facing an unbelievable challenge, and I take my hat off to Jacques Jiha, our OMB director. I don't know how he did it. When you have to find $7 billion out of your budget, no household wants to go through that, and we went through it, and we came out of it, but that wasn't the budget we wanted to do. 

We wanted to put more into seniors. We wanted to put more into building affordable housing. We wanted to put more into the parks. There was so much more we could have done with $7.2 billion, but we were responsible, and we lived up to that responsibility.

Deputy Mayor Raspberry: Mayor Adams, I believe I have an answer to your question. Please forgive me if these numbers are not exact, but I believe in this fiscal budget that we just passed on Monday, we added $32.5 million additional dollars to hire 80 more park enforcement patrol officers, along with other positions like city park workers, gardeners, and community associates.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Thank you. So we didn't ignore parks. Trust me. We didn't get to the 1 percent, but we did not ignore parks at all.

Commissioner Kreizman: Next table, 10. This is a Mandarin speaker.

Mayor Adams: Hold on. Hold on. Go ahead.

Executive Director Elijah Hutchinson, Mayor’s Office Climate and Environmental Justice: I'm Elijah Hutchinson. I lead the Climate and Environmental Justice Office, and just wanted to add on the parks and open space. Something this administration has done has also committed to covering 30 percent of New York City in tree canopy and tree coverage, which is a huge commitment and reflects aggressive planting and trees that Parks has been planting.

But we can't get there alone as a city. We can do everything that we want on our land, and we won't get to that 30 percent. So we actually have extensive community engagement we're doing right now, and we have a survey open online for the New York City Urban Forest Plan, and this is the first urban forest plan that would be established for New York City in our history. 

So it's very important that we get a lot of input. The survey is live right now online. We've kicked off a borough-based series starting with Staten Island and virtual town halls, but we're going to continue that engagement for the coming months, so please get engaged on that with us through the Urban Forest Plan online. Thanks.

Mayor Adams: And again, thank you. Thank you for what you do. 

Commissioner Kreizman: The next table is a Mandarin-speaking table.

Question: Mr. Mayor. I will be translating for her, and she will speak in Mandarin.

Question: [Speaks in Mandarin]. 

Question: Thank you for being here. I want to bring urgent attention to a growing public safety issue in Bayside. We're seeing an increased number of stolen cars, tire theft, and smashed car windows, and also burglaries in our neighborhood, and people waking up to see their missing vehicle, to see their vehicle with missing car tires and broken glasses, and this is very frustrating for the neighbors, and we want to see what your administration can do to stop this trend. Thank you for your leadership and support.

Mayor Adams: Thank you very much. Talk to me XO. 

Deputy Inspector Joseph Hayward, Police Department: Hi, miss. Where do you live? Where do you live? Which neighborhood? 

Question: Bayside. 67th Avenue between Bell Boulevard and Springfield Boulevard.

Hayward: Okay, over the last two weeks, we've seen a sudden spike in burglaries and grand larcenies in Bayside. We've given a lot of resources, mostly to Sector Adam and Sector Charlie and areas that you're talking about. We've taken one highway safety cop from each precinct in Queens North, and we've rotated them into the 111. Under Chief Chell's direction, we have the highway safety cops looking for burglars coming into our neighborhood, into Bayside, and preying on the community.

Just this week, under the 111's leadership, they made an arrest of a man driving in a [inaudible] with a burglary recidivist who had a firearm in the vehicle. Great arrest. Last night, the 109 precinct, under the direction of Inspector Coleman, they made a burglary arrest of a known burglary recidivist in the neighborhood. The same thing the chief was talking about earlier, recidivists getting out.

Also, in regards to the aging community, which we were talking about earlier, the 111 yesterday, a group went to a house and said to the elderly female, your roof looks like it needs work done, we could help you, we're doing work in the neighborhood. They went up to the roof, they damaged the roof on purpose, and then told her she owed $5,000 for the work. 

The elderly female paid the money, called her son right away, the son called 911, the 111 went over there, they got the license plate out across citywide, and there was an apprehension of six individuals in a citywide pattern of doing this to elderlies. So great work by the 111, great work by Queens North, and we're going to continue to do this under the Mayor's leadership. 

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Daughtry: I just wanted to say one thing, and this is very important before we close. A couple of weeks ago, on the border of the 109 and the 111, there were a couple of high-end cars that were stolen from an auto body shop in Queens. About 4 o'clock, 4:30 in the morning, there was a U-Haul truck that pulled up in front of one of the auto body shops. I know everybody here, and I have done it before also, where you put your keys in the box and you leave it there in the morning so the mechanics, when they come in, they can come in here and fix your vehicle. There was an alert neighbor across the street that heard some sort of a truck and commotion. The person looked out the window and saw the pickup truck, the U-Haul truck, and it was about nine or ten males that jumped out of the truck.

The reason why the cops got there so quickly, because somebody saw something and somebody said something. Those individuals took, I believe it was five high-end vehicles, and the 109 and the 111 precinct apprehended, I think, about six or seven of them, and they recovered four vehicles. You want to know why those vehicles were recovered? 

Because people like you in this neighborhood, they saw something and they said something. You see there's an uptick in car thefts in the neighborhood? Please keep an eye out for your neighbor. It should be noted that out of those, every last one of those individuals that was arrested, like Chief Chell said, they've been arrested not one, not two, not three, but more than three times, and the majority of them all have GLA, Grand Larceny Auto Recidivists.

Mayor Adams: That's the problem we're facing. We're doing our job to put them in. They must do their job to keep them in. This goes back to what Commissioner Stewart said. The scams, the scams of damaging the roof, those are the scams that Commissioner Stewart prevented people from having to go through. 

Question: Hi, Mayor.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: Good, very good. Thank you for coming this far to Bayside. I really appreciate it. Also I think you did a very difficult job in the last three and a half years. We know it's not easy, but you tried your best. My question- my name is Yanling Jiang, and I'm a board member of Little Neck Community Center. It's a new organization, but we're trying to help ourselves for the community.

I'm here really on behalf of the New York Small Landlord Association. The landlords are having a hard time in the last two or three years. You probably know the data, like 50 percent of the homeowners actually are Asian homeowners. They've been through a lot because of the ERAP from the COVID times. I also testified in the City Council for, I think, the Local Law 632, which doesn't allow the landlord to check criminal histories of the potential tenants. 

I know quite a few people already had problems, like they found out their tenants actually were wanted national-wide by Pennsylvania police and Buffalo. Also some tenants were really ill-hearted. They sent out their dog to bite their older landlord. There were also other tenants who were attacking older landlords in Bayside and Whitestone. These are facts. These are not stories I would make up. You can't make up such very ill, poor-hearted people's actions.

So I'm asking on behalf of the landlord association that if we can repeal the 632. I know it was passed already, but this is something that should be a concern to everyone in New York, not just the landlords, because you want to know your neighbors are safe, and you have nice tenants in your house, and you want your children to be safe, playing on the street, playing football, whatever. 

You want them to be out there to be safe. So this is something I think is a serious concern. Many landlords cannot even evict their tenants because it takes two or three years to get them evicted. At the same time, the landlords have to pay taxes, water bill, and electricity bills. You can't miss anything. If you do, you're going to get a summons to go to court, and it costs a lot of money for the landlords.

Like you said, most of the homeowners are 9 to 5 workers. I'm talking on behalf of the president of the association because he is working. He is working as a nurse at the hospital at this time. I would say his job is a very important job for New York City. When he leaves his children, his parents' home by themselves, and they don't speak English, something happens, his children were stalked by some people on the same street. These are all safety concerns. So I would like to see what you can do.

I know it was passed, and the City Council has a different legislation. The mayor may not be able to change that, but I know you tried very hard. I also testified about supporting your repeal of the sanctuary city. I did try to support you, but I think that one was passed or something also. Thank you very much.

Mayor Adams: So I want to speak about small property owners, small property landlords. Our wealth is in our homes. All of our wealth is in our homes, for many of us, you know, those who are working-class people. Without my home, I would not have been able to take a loan to pay my son's college tuition. So what we're doing to small property landlords in this city is just abusive. It's abusive, and it's just unfair. 

A large number of small property landowners, as you stated, are immigrants. They come here. They struggle. They put everything into buying their home. When you had people during COVID going around saying, "No rent, no rent," no mortgage company said no mortgage but said no rent. Now you want to stop small increases. You have people running around saying, "No increases, no increases," while everything is going up around you. This is going to break the back of our small property landlords. Some, I hear these horror stories of losing their homes, of not being able to keep up with the cost of repairs. It's just unfair. We try to do our best to make sure that we take that into account on how we are fair to small property owners.

We're going to roll out some stuff. First Deputy Mayor Mastro is finding ways to give more support. The Commissioner of HPD is looking at repairs and giving money for repairs because we want to help. We don't control what the City Council is doing. 

I strongly believe there should be a separation from small property owners and large. If you have a building where there are 150, 200 tenants and you're not doing a background check. If you have Joe the burglar living in your darn basement, you should be able to find out. Your children and your families, to not be able to know who's coming into your small house is wrong.

The City Council passed the bill. We need to see if they will modify the bill. They can modify the law, I should say, to look at a certain number of units in a house where you will have the right to do a background check. I have a small three-family house, and I want to know who's coming in there. I want to know your background, what you do. I should be able to make that determination in a small setting like that, that I know who's there, not only for my personal safety but if I have any more tenants. I agree with you.

I thought the bill was wrong. We have to stop treating small property owners the way we treat large property owners with thousands of units of building. They have lumped you all into one size fits all and they have demonized all landlords without even understanding that many of our small property owners, all of their wealth is tied up into that building. I agree with you.

Deputy Commissioner Kajori Chaudhuri, Commission on Human Rights: Kajori Chaudhuri here. Kajori Chaudhuri, deputy commissioner, New York City Commissioner on Human Rights. We are the agency that enforces that law. One thing I want to clarify here is that you can run a background check. It is not true that you cannot run a background check. You can run a background check. I would encourage you to check our website. 

There are resources for landlords on the website, including the Know Your Rights information that they would need to provide. We would like to set up a time to speak with you, to hear more, and to ensure that landlords know what their obligations are and rights are. As you said, you can run background checks, and so I just wanted to correct that information. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: We should go one step further. I did a forum two weeks ago with about 300 small property owners. We're willing to go to your organization and bring in landlords so we can explain all the resources. We'll bring HPD there to explain some of the resources that's available. We'll bring all of our agencies that impact our land. Department of Buildings, we'll bring them in. We had a good town hall so that we could address those issues. 

Commissioner Kreizman: Excellent. Before we go to the last table, 11, I just want to thank Megan Yuan, who is our Queens Borough director, for helping coordinate this event today.

The last table, Table 11 in the left corner.

Question: Good evening, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Adams: How are you?

Question: I'm good. Thank you. I would like to ask you about the rising concern with marijuana. With the legalization of marijuana, many smoke shops have popped all around the city. I believe one major factor is the number of smoke shops located near schools and the lack of regulation around them. As a high school student and having friends who do smoke, I've asked them how they obtain the illegal substances for them. They've told me it's surprisingly easy. 

Many smoke shops don't check for IDs properly or they'll sell to someone who clearly isn't of age. Once one person has access, it quickly spreads throughout the system. This kind of access makes it harder for schools and parents to keep students safe. It's not just about rules being broken. It's about long-term health and addiction risk being introduced way too early. I wanted to ask you, how does the city and you plan to address these issues.

Mayor Adams: Wow, isn't that impressive, hearing a young person talk about this issue? Thank you for that question.The state passed a cannabis law that was out of control. Illegal operations and cannabis shops were opening all over the city. We went back to Albany. Deputy Mayor Raspberry and her team went back to Albany and said we need help. 

We have to give the power and authority to our local municipalities to police these facilities. We were able to make modifications. Because of those modifications, we were able to close 1,400 illegal cannabis shops. If you have a shop in your area and they are either not following the rules or they're selling without checking identification or what have you, please let us know.

We'll go in, we'll do an operation and determine if that shop has to close down. If that shop closed down, would they stay down for a year? For one year, the business closes down. If there's a location, please let us know because I'm with you. Our children are high all the time, folks. If we don't deal with this cannabis issue, it's hard enough going through school than going in high on your way to school. We have to deal with this cannabis issue in a real way. 

Before I depart, let me say this, and I share this all the time, of, my 19-year-old uncle died in Vietnam. He gave his life at 19.I can remember as almost yesterday when the notification came in that we lost Uncle Joe. To me, the flag means everything. I'm just an old-fashioned patriot. I believe in this country, and I believe in the symbol of this country. 

When President Biden was in office, I respected that office because he was the president of the United States. I visited him often, spoke with him and communicated with him, and I worked with him. We brought him here to talk with our police officers around gun control and to get an appointment of the ATF office. I traveled to Washington several times to communicate.

My patriotism doesn't change based on who's the president. Right now, Donald Trump is the president. I respect that office and what it represents because if you desecrate the office, you're desecrating the flag, and you're desecrating the life of my uncle who died for this country. I'm not warring with the president. I'm working with the president. 

Where I agree with him, I'm going to support, such as when he lifted the stop work order and we were able to have a multibillion-dollar project in this city. I agreed with him. Where I disagree, I'm going to share it, that I disagree because that's what we do in this country.

You have the right to disagree, but I want you to know something. I fight for New York City, no matter who's in the presidency, Democrat or Republican. My job is to fight to deliver for the people of the City of New York. I would never be controlled by anyone in the process of doing that. 

So those who are writing these stories about control and this and that, don't buy that madness. I was facing 33 years in prison for doing my job. The president talked about it on the campaign trail. I thanked them for doing that. I don't know anyone in this room, if someone was talking about what happened to you is wrong, you wouldn't thank them for doing that.

I'm going to thank them for doing that, but if I have to question D.C., I'm going to do it. If I have to fight for this city, I'm going to do it. I am beholden to one body of people. That's the people of New York City. I love the heck out of this city. I'm going to give this city everything I got until I'm no longer serving in any capacity. I thank you for coming out tonight.