Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears Live on News12 and Takes Questions From New Yorkers

November 19, 2024

Amanda Bossard: Hello everyone, and thanks for being back with us here on News 12, where local matters. I'm Amanda Bossard, and this is Ask the Mayor. It is a pleasure to be back here with you for the next half hour as we give you a unique opportunity to ask Mayor Eric Adams your questions right here on the air. The number to dial is 718-861-6800. It will be on the bottom of your screen throughout the program for reference. And with that, we are very happy to welcome back tonight New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Mr. Mayor, great to be with you once again here on News12.

Mayor Eric Adams: Always great to be with as local as news gets.

Bossard: Local matters here on 12 always. As we wait for those calls to come in, I'll kick off the conversation by asking you about this drought warning that we're in right now. The first time in more than two decades New York City is under such a warning. You're asking New Yorkers to conserve water. Is there any point where that could become a mandate instead of just an ask?

Mayor Adams: Yes, who would have thought that here in our city we'll be talking about brush fires and talking about the lack of water? We have been really fortunate by having our reservoirs and they basically have maintained the flow of water here.

We're hoping we won't have to declare an emergency because that's going to come with a great deal of restrictions. We are asking New Yorkers to just take some basic steps and tips, you know, not running the water while brushing your teeth or shaving or not having a shower run for a long period of time and just simple things we can do. And it matters. It goes a long way. We need rain. And so whomever can do a rain dance, this is an opportunity to do so.

Bossard: I think all eyes are on Thursday and hoping we get some rain that the meteorologists are forecasting.

You touched on those brush fires and a historic outbreak of them so far in just the last couple months, more than 300 in just the three weeks that we've had so far in November. This weekend, a brush fire task force was announced. How will that work to address these fires?

Mayor Adams: And also, I want to talk about what you stated that we need about eight inches of rain. But what's important is not only do we need the rain, but where the rain must go. We don't need it just downstate. We need it at the reservoir.

And what commissioner has done, FDNY Commissioner Tucker has done, he understands the seriousness of this moment. When we were at Prospect Park and other areas, we talked about it and said we need a team that's going to focus on these brush fires and that's what he put together. We have a fire I think is still burning tonight. And we want to make sure that we're able to deal with these fires as they come.

The ground is dry, leaves are everywhere. And as I looked along the roads while driving, you see that much of our forestry is really extremely dry and we must have a real proactive approach to this.

Bossard: Yeah. I do want to switch gears right now and talk about congestion pricing, which is back with a new price to $9 to drive into Midtown, down from the original $15 that was approved. Now it's set to kick in in January. Do you think the governor made the right move bringing it back and at that price point?

Mayor Adams: The governor has just been a real partner for the city on so many important issues, particularly around public safety and making sure we can continue to move our schools forward. She has made the right calls and we should be clear on that. And this was a tough decision. She wanted to go back and hear from city residents and she did and $15 was far too much and she decided to bring it down to $9 starting in January.

And we're talking about $100 million also being allocated out to our environmentally impacted communities. We were happy to be able to negotiate that into this process, but we have to deal with congestion. It's not only bad for our air, congestion is also bad for our finances. Many of our big businesses talk about how challenging it is to move in Manhattan. We're losing money and losing clientele at the same time.

Bossard: Right. Mr. Mayor, I believe we have our first caller on the line this evening. Terry has dialed in from Throggs Neck. Terry, thanks so much for calling. What's your question for the mayor?

Question: First, you're doing a wonderful job. Second, I just want to know how we could stop people from smoking pot in front of schools, picking up their children and also every other car that drives by me is smoking a joint. So how do we stop this?

Mayor Adams: Terry, when we went back to the debate when I was running for office, I talked about just sending the wrong signal around cannabis and smoking pot. Then you're right. Driving under the influence is no [different than] driving under the influence of alcohol. It actually interferes with your ability to- just coordination.

Number one, people should not be smoking in front of our schools. And I think the lawmakers must go back in Albany and look at some of the restrictions about where you can smoke cannabis to make sure that we should not have to smell it everywhere we go. Our children should not have to smell it. We've seen a lot of use in our schools, which I feel really to be problematic. Many of our children are high all the time from different forms of drugs and cannabis is one of them.

Now, we're doing our jobs and closing down the illegal shops. We've inspected over 3,700 of them. We ensure to make sure that we sealed over 1,200 stores and seized over $82 million of illegal products that was going to be on our streets, as well as what we're dealing with vaping items. All of these things are just wrong for our children. And I think you're dead on. We have to do a better job. And that's why we sued the vaping company as well to try to address this issue.

Bossard: Mr. Mayor, on the topic of our kids and schools, many of the violent crimes that we've been covering across the Bronx and Brooklyn recently have involved teens, a lot of them happening in the minutes after dismissal, just steps away from school grounds.

What more needs to be done to avoid these situations? I know this is a topic we've touched on repeatedly here, but it seems to continue to be a problem.

Mayor Adams: Well, I spoke with Chief Chell, Chief of Patrol, and Chief Lipetri, the crime analysis person, and we saw this uptick right after we did Raise the Age. We need to reexamine that and see what we need to do differently and just really move in the area of how people are exploiting young people to carry guns because they believe they're going to get less of a crime.

We had a young man that was caught with a gun last week, and he basically said, I'm not worried, I'll be out in the next day,without any real action that's taking place. This is a real concern. We saw this during the 70s and 80s, when young people were being charged with just basic juvenile actions when they were carrying drugs that drug dealers used to give the drugs to the young people. We're seeing some of these actions now taking place, and we need to revisit how we're going to address this. But be proactive. Not only reactive. It's not about just locking up young people, but there needs to be a greater deterrence.

Bossard: And we'll continue to follow those developments as they happen. I believe we have our second caller on the line. [Wazir] has dialed in from Parkchester. Thanks so much for calling in. And what's your question for the mayor tonight?

Question: My question is pertaining to garbage. The holidays are coming and what are we supposed to do with when we have extra trash that can't fit in the bins? Are we supposed to buy extra bins and store them for those off occasions that we need to put the stuff out? Because I called 311 about it, and they had no answer for me.

Mayor Adams: Because you know what? That's a unique question that you ask. And each time you roll out a new initiative, such as what we're doing in our real war on rats and visualization of making sure our city is not actually cleanest, but also it gives a look of being clean. That's why 70 percent of New Yorkers now, as the caller is talking about, must use bins in the city to deal with the 14 billion pounds of annual trash.

And so during the holiday season, it's what's coming around once in a while. It's not what we do every once in a while. It's what we do every day. During this season, yes, it's going to be a challenge when you have extra use of boxes, particularly if you do cardboards. Cardboards can be folded up and tied up to make space in the bins, and that's one way you could do it. So we know it's a challenge during the season, but this is the right thing to do to put our trash into bins.

Bossard: And on the topic of those new bins that are now mandated at buildings with one to nine units inside, how has that rollout been going in just about the week that that's now been official?

Mayor Adams: Well folks are ordering, you can go to bins that NYC to order. Hundreds of thousands have ordered. People are really excited.

Nothing is worse than going to put out your garbage in the plastic bag and then all of a sudden a rat comes running out of it or it gives the just the wrong look for our city. We're excited about this program.

Bossard: All right, excited to see it roll out and hopefully the impacts it will have across the city The conversation is just getting started here on Ask the Mayor on News12 tonight 718-861-6800 is the number to dial? We still have a lot more ground to cover and more questions to get answered .We'll be right back here on News12 with the mayor, right after this.

[Commercial Break.]

Bossard: Welcome back to Ask the Mayor here on News12 as we are following some breaking news this evening. Mr. Mayor, we're hearing reports that an NYPD officer has been shot. What can you share about that situation at this time?

Mayor Adams: Still preliminary at this time. I'm receiving information from officers that are on the ground and we, as soon as we get more information, we'll be able to update you, but an officer was shot. We're hearing that more information is going to come through to assist us in exactly what happened. I will be going to the hospital to see the officer and once we get more, we'll share more and if more information comes through before the show has ended, I'll give you an update.

Bossard: We appreciate that and our thoughts are with him, wishing him hopefully a speedy recovery there.

We do want to get back to some of our callers this evening. I believe we have Greg joining us from East New York. Greg, thanks so much for calling. What's your question for the mayor?

Question: Mr. Mayor, I just want to know about the young teenagers. I want to know, can they make programs after school and at night to give the kids something to do? Because in the mid-70s, they used to have after school center and the night center.

Mayor Adams: Well said. You're making me remember my days of being able to go to the after school program for basketball and other activities. That is what we built our administration around.
We have, as you know, if you're in East New York, you know the Brownsville Recreational Center. They're opening $140 million in the renovation of their center. But we also, we're doing our summer rising program during the summer months. We're doing Saturday night lights during the weekend, our summer youth employment, internship. We had a real focus on getting 30,000 interns in a period of time. We're halfway there now.

Because you're right, they need alternatives and a place to go that's extremely safe. This is what we grew up on. And these young people today need the same thing. And so I'm with you 100 percent. And DYCD, Commissioner Howard, he's really focusing on doing just that.

Bossard: Something that we always want to highlight and a good reminder that those programs do exist sometimes in people's own backyards. I do want to get to another caller. We have Nicole on the line from Brownsville. Nicole, thanks for calling. What's your question?

Question: Hi Mayor Adams, how are you? My question is, I work in New York City- I'm good, but I need some help. I work in a New York City Transit Authority. I work in a train station. And we need your help, sir. The homeless, the mentally ill, you're just not safe. It's just not safe.

Mayor Adams: No, Nicole, you know, it's funny you say that. You know, I started out my career as a transit police officer. So I know what it is to blow that steel dust out of my nostrils, as all of us that worked down there and know what it's about.

We have zeroed in on the homelessness in our subway system. It's hard to believe, but we have engaged and removed 7,600 people that was on our system. Over 800 are now in care. You know from being in the system how challenging it is to get someone that's dealing with a severe mental health issue, to have them first build trust, and second, to decide to come out of the system to move forward.
We have a program that we initiated called SCOUT and PATH. The PATH program, the goal is to have police officers and clinicians team up together and engage those who are living in our system. Our transit system is not a psychiatric facility, and it's not a place for home. I'm [laser] focused on that, but we need help from Albany. We need to do involuntary removal. I'm supportive of Assemblyman Braunstein's Supportive Interventions Act, and we need that to get that passed so that we can do the involuntary removal when they need it.

Bossard: On the topic of transit, subway surfing is something that has once again been in the headlines as of late, and a lot of those cases involving, yet again, our teenagers. I know the city has been taking efforts to mitigate that situation. Drones also being deployed in an effort to put it to a stop. Can you elaborate a little bit more on what else the city is doing to drive down those cases?

Mayor Adams: It's so important, it's a multidimensional approach, not a one-side approach. We have to do several things. We all know what it's like being young. Sometimes we do foolish things and we look back on it and we say to ourselves, I can't believe I did that, and that's what we understand.

So number one, we are talking to parents and young people, showing them the video of their children who are riding on top of the trains. Two, we have partnered with our schools so they can help us with the PSAs, to get that information out because young people speak to young people and they appreciate each other. Number three, we're doing enforcement, and that's where the drones are coming into place. We look at where we get the most 311 calls and reports of subway surfing, and we're using drones to patrol those areas so that we can zero in and get the children off the top of the train beforehand.

We've been fortunate. We have saved 114 people already to assist by using these drones. I said 311 calls, actually we get the 911 calls that assist us. So it's a multifaceted approach to deal with a modern-day problem. I don't ever recall doing subway surfing when I was growing up as a child, but this is what social media pushes, and it is having a major impact on the safety of our children, as young as eight years old.

Bossard: And to that point, Mr. Mayor, any communication with the social media companies in trying to remove that content from their platforms?

Mayor Adams: Yes, over and over again. They have the ability using AI to take that off their platforms, and they should do so.

Bossard: Alright, Mr. Mayor. Thanks so much. As we've mentioned, the conversation continues here on News12. Ask the Mayor. We'll be right back after a short break. 718-861-6800 is the number to dial. We'll be right back.

[Commercial Break.]

Bossard: Welcome back to Ask the Mayor with New York City Mayor Eric Adams here on News12. We've got into so much conversation so far tonight. But since we've last spoken to you, Mr. Mayor, we've had a whole general election and now a new president-elect. And there's been some video circulating over the Internet over the past few days of a conversation that you had with President-elect Donald Trump at MSG over the weekend. Care to share what you two talked about?

Mayor Adams: I told the team earlier on the off-topics that it was loud in there, but I remember him saying something about what a great job I'm doing in the city. You know, driving down crime, recovering our economy, making sure small businesses operate correctly.

But in all seriousness, any time I communicate with the president-elect, it's only one thing on my mind, and that's the New York state of mind. This is the greatest city on the globe, and we need a partnership. I am not going to be warring with the president. I'm going to be working with the president.

And what was interesting, when I reached out and communicated with him, many followed. The governor also reached out and communicated with him. We saw that Senator Gillibrand did the same, and even those who are part of commentaries have done the same. Our country and city, we need each other. This is not the divided state, this is United States, and I'm going to do my part of being united.

Bossard: You talked about New York. A lot of New York representation amongst his cabinet picks so far. He has also announced some plans to replace the U.S. attorney that's currently overseeing your federal trial. Any thoughts on the move and the impact it can have on your case?

Mayor Adams: I don't know the person who's coming in. I've been clear. I felt I should never have been charged in the first place. I did nothing wrong, and my team, my attorneys, are going to use every constitutional legal means to make sure that I'm receiving the justice that I deserve.

Bossard: And immigration was on the ballot this election, and an issue we've seen play out here at home. You've called on the federal administration to provide more help in the past. What do you hope you see from this incoming administration on the issue?

Mayor Adams: Listen, it cost us $6.4 billion. Washington, D.C. only gave us roughly $200 million. Unfair to New Yorkers, it's unfair to those $6.4 million services we could have provided. We need help.

Bossard: Alright. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, thanks so much for spending time with us once again here on News12 and for answering all of our viewers' questions. And thank you all for tuning in to Ask the Mayor tonight. Have a great evening.

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