The killing of 30-year-old Jordan Neely on the subway earlier this week, however, put the mayor in a difficult position as progressive lawmakers led a growing chorus of outrage and launched a renewed attack on Adams’ approach to public safety.
The stakes are high. Subway crime was a driving force behind a groundswell of support for GOP candidates last year, which lifted a Republican gubernatorial candidate to within six points of winning the general election and helped the right flip several Congressional seats to take over the House. New York Republicans continue hammering Democrats on crime ahead of the upcoming congressional races that include several competitive seats. How New Yorkers ultimately view Neely’s killing and the government’s response could also alter the city’s strategy toward mental health and public safety.
On Monday, Neely was acting erratically aboard an F train when he was placed into a chokehold by a 24-year-old passenger and later died. On Wednesday, the city’s medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. Several reports have noted Neely, who did impersonations of Michael Jackson in years’ past, struggled with mental health issues.
Adams has said that the incident demonstrates why his policies have been needed all along.
“This is what highlights what I’ve been saying throughout my administration,” Adams said Thursday during an unrelated press conference, echoing comments he made the night before on national television. “People who are dealing with mental health illness should get the help they need and not live on the train. And I’m going to continue to push on that.”
Prominent progressives, however, have laced into the mayor’s response to the incident and re-upped long standing criticisms of Adams’ approach to mental health and safety.
“This is the inevitable outcome of the dangerous rhetoric of stigmatizing mental health issues, stigmatizing poverty and the continued bloated investment in the carceral system at the expense of funding access to housing, food and health,” Tiffany Cabán, a progressive New York City Council member, said in an interview.
So far, the mayor appears outnumbered by a growing cadre of elected officials who have weighed in. While Adams has characterized the incident as tragic, he has also said he will wait until Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg completes his investigation before making any assessment — a view that is not shared even by those politically aligned with the mayor.
“Racism that continues to permeate throughout our society allows for a level of dehumanization that denies Black people from being recognized as victims when subjected to acts of violence,” New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said in a statement, later adding that “the initial response by our legal system to this killing is disturbing and puts on display for the world the double standards that Black people and other people of color continue to face.”
And Maurice Mitchell, head of the national Working Families Party, noted Adams’ policies were in full effect Monday but did not stop Neely from dying.
“Even with hundreds of police in our subways, they failed to prevent this—or even apprehend the killer,” he said in a statement.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“We are at a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs moment: food, shelter, clothing,” Adams said at a press briefing, invoking the famed psychologist’s theory of basic human requirements. “Everyone that’s saying: spend, spend, spend. We would love to, [but] we must ensure the continuation of the economic stability of the city.”
Adams outlined more than $10 billion in new costs born by his young administration over the last year-and-a-half. Some, like billions of dollars to settle labor contracts with the city’s unionized workforce, were more predictable. Others, like the $4.3 billion in expected spending on social services for asylum seekers, took the administration by surprise.
“If I had $4.3 billion, I’m able to do some great things for the city,” the mayor said. “In spite of that, this team managed a very difficult moment in New York City’s history.”
With that in mind, the mayor has proposed several rounds of budget cuts, most recently in April, that have trimmed a total of $4.7 billion over the current fiscal year and the next.
“We had to make tough choices in this budget. We had to negotiate competing needs and we realized that not everyone would be happy,” Adams said, arguing that services have not been compromised in his vacancy reduction and programs to eliminate the gap.
Adams has been unapologetic for instituting his savings plans, which he argues have not impacted services — in fact, much of the cuts have been borne of chance like less-than-anticipated spending and debt refinancing. However, in the hours before the budget was unveiled Adams announced he would be cancelling the latest rounds of cuts at public libraries, which were included in the April savings plan.
The about-face from the mayor, after a pressure campaign from the book lenders and members of the City Council, appears to be a recognition that slashing library hours would have potentially caused damage to an ideological spectrum of voters much wider than the left-leaning wing of the party that had made the library cuts a particular concern.
In addition, libraries found themselves in a unique position to push back: While they receive most of their funding from the administration, they are not city agencies. That distinction provides more leeway to mount the type of opposition — which included a letter-writing campaign and a threat of weekend closures — that would be far less likely from a commissioner working directly for the mayor.
“The Brooklyn, New York, and Queens Public Libraries are grateful to Mayor Adams, a longtime champion of libraries, for sparing us from the latest round of funding cuts announced in April,” Brooklyn Public Library President Linda Johnson, Queens Public Library President Dennis Walcott, and New York Public Library President Anthony Marx said in a joint statement. “This is an important step towards restoring library funding. Libraries make New York City stronger, and we look forward to working with Mayor Adams and the City Council to ensure we are able to continue providing the services our patrons rely on.”
The mayor’s summary of the city’s economic status seemed to exist in spit screen. While he focused most intently on the cost of asylum seekers and settling labor contracts, he also touted city jobs nearing their pre-pandemic levels and the recovery of tourism.
And some of the worst-case scenarios did not come to pass.
The mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, for example, revised its revenue projections upward after collections began coming in better than originally anticipated. In total, revenue figures rose by $2.1 billion this fiscal year and $2.3 billion in the upcoming year compared to the mayor’s last proposal in January. Those figures put the city much closer to those supplied by the Council’s budget team, which were the rosiest of all the fiscal monitors.
“The Executive Budget recognizing that the Council’s projection of an additional $5.2 billion in the budget was far from ‘overly optimistic’ but rather quite accurate,” Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Council Member Justin Brannan, chair of the finance committee, said in a joint statement.
Because of the slightly better returns, the mayor and Budget Director Jacques Jiha also reduced the savings requirements for other agencies including the FDNY, and the departments of sanitation, social services, parks and youth and community development.
Those restorations, however, were not enough to appease lawmakers, who pointed out that city agencies have already undergone several rounds of savings initiatives.
“The Executive Budget still leaves our libraries facing significant service cuts, agencies that deliver essential services harmed, and programs that deliver solutions to the city’s most pressing challenges without the investments needed,” Speaker Adams and Brannan said in their statement. “Ultimately, New York City needs a responsible budget that effectively and efficiently prepares us for success by meeting the needs of New Yorkers and protecting against future risks.”
While the administration recognized $1 billion in asylum-seeker money expected from the state budget — which will be spent over multiple fiscal years — other hits from Albany were not accounted for as the state budget process drags on. Legislative leaders, for example, are mulling a deal that would require the city to pay $150 million to the MTA for the next two state fiscal years.
“Unfortunately, without an adopted State budget from Albany, the City is operating in the dark when it comes to the impacts of proposed assistance and potential cost shifts, and today’s Executive Budget reflects that uncertainty,” City Comptroller Brad Lander said in a statement.
And despite the better-than-expected revenues and asylum-seeker cash from Albany, other risks to the city’s fiscal health loom in the offing.
Even under current economic forecasts, the city’s outyear budget gaps could reach $10 billion by fiscal year 2027, according to State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. Future savings programs that may be needed to close those shortfalls may eventually cut into service delivery.
“The city faces challenges in the future as outyear budget gaps have grown and projected savings from the PEG will not be enough to offset these new costs,” DiNapoli said in a statement. “This suggests it will become even more difficult for the city to find savings without affecting services over time.”
And the city’s bean counters will soon come to the precipice of several fiscal cliffs — essentially ongoing programs that have been funded with one-time injections of cash — and have offset much of their savings with new spending, according to the Citizens Budget Commission, a budget oversight organization that has urged the mayor to better prepare for turbulent economic climes.
“The executive budget lays bare the stark and potentially dark fiscal reality facing New York City. With budget gaps widening despite billions of dollars of additional revenues, the city should immediately start to prioritize essential programs, increase its operational efficiency, speed up critical hiring, and shrink lower impact programs,” the commission’s president, Andrew Rein, said in a statement. “Absent these actions, the likely alternative is to substantially cut services in the next year or two.”
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The historic indictment of the former president by the Manhattan district attorney brought hundreds of protesters last week to the Manhattan criminal courthouse.
Meanwhile Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, a darling of progressive Democrats for his criminal justice reform policies, has drawn the ire of House Republicans, who say the top prosecutor should focus on violent offenders instead of Trump’s alleged involvement in a hush money scheme. They plan to hold a so-called “field hearing” in New York City next week on violent crime.
Adams criticized House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for his hearing’s singular focus on New York City when “crime in congressional Republican areas per capita is through the roof.” He faulted southern states for the “proliferation of guns” flowing to major cities.
The hearing is the latest move by House Republicans to pressure Bragg, who is pursuing 34 felony charges accusing Trump of falsifying business records to bury damaging allegations of an extramarital affair during the height of the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
The House GOP recently subpoenaed a former Manhattan prosecutor who criticized aspects of Bragg’s investigation. Bragg sued to block it, calling the move a “campaign of harassment.”
The House Judiciary Committee’s scheduled hearing on violent crime pledges to “examine how Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s pro-crime, anti-victim policies have led to an increase in violent crime and a dangerous community for New York City residents.”
Adams said the committee hasn’t communicated with city officials to prepare for the hearing that will be held in a lower Manhattan federal building.
“This is just an extension of Donald Trump campaigning and it really makes no sense,” Adams said.
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“We face these new needs and threats at a time when the city’s tax revenue growth is slowing, and many economists fear that stress in the banking sector increases the odds of an economic recession,” Jiha wrote. “Therefore, we must act now. We have less than a month to identify the resources needed to reduce the strain on our budget, decrease out-year gaps, and avoid disruption to programs and services that keep our city clean, safe, and healthy.”
Jiha was referring to the city’s executive budget proposal, the next step in the iterative process of passing a spending plan, which is typically released in late April.
“Savings initiatives must be submitted to [the Office of Management and Budget] by April 14; they cannot include layoffs and should avoid meaningfully impacting services where possible,” Jiha wrote. “OMB will identify savings opportunities for your respective agency if the PEG targets are not met.”
While most agencies will be required to make the cuts for the upcoming fiscal year and several thereafter, the Department of Education and the City University of New York will need to meet a lower savings target of 3 percent.
The announcement comes just a day after the City Council unveiled a budget proposal of its own.
Responding to the initial blueprint unveiled by the mayor in February, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams argued Monday that the city will have more revenue than it had initially predicted — so much, in fact, that the city could afford to fund more than $1 billion worth of new priorities.
The administration does not appear to agree.
“Mayor Adams has repeatedly said that we cannot sugarcoat the reality of the fiscal and economic challenges we are facing,” mayoral spokesperson Jonah Allon said in a statement.
“While we continue to have positive conversations with our partners in Albany, we face a perfect storm of factors — including near historic levels of spending as a result of billions of dollars in costs related to asylum seekers and the need to fund labor deals that are years overdue. At the same time, we are facing a slowdown in city tax revenue growth and what is predicted by financial experts to be a weakening of the nation’s economy. Ignoring these realities would be irresponsible and would cost New Yorkers more in the end.”
The mayor most recently ordered a savings initiative in September that focused on wiping thousands of vacant positions off the city’s books. The latest move Tuesday drew praise from the Citizens Budget Commission, which has been sounding the alarm on several hidden costs in the spending plan.
“Yes, revenues may be higher than OMB projects, and the Council is right that the City has in-year reserves that can be used,” said the commission’s president, Andrew Rein, in a statement. “But still, the reported budget gaps, collective bargaining costs, city and state fiscal cliffs and under-budgeted programs dwarf estimates of higher revenues.”
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On Friday, however, Adams praised the idea, putting him in agreement with Holmes and at odds with Sewell.
“There are those who critique: Why would you bring Cardi B because she was arrested?” Adams said. “The same reason why you brought Cardi B is why people voted for me, because I was arrested. You don’t discard people.”
Holmes had also butted heads with Sewell after nixing a timed fitness requirement for recruits, according to a report in the New York Post. While Sewell first shot down the idea, Holmes later went directly to Adams and got the change approved.
On Friday, the mayor praised Holmes’ 35 years in the NYPD and said she was the right person to lead the probation department, in part because of her forgiving nature.
“This is the best fit: someone that understands that you don’t throw people away,” the mayor said. “And I think it’s reflected with what she did with Cardi B.”
Holmes’ departure is part of a broader shakeup in the department. Multiple chiefs have left this year as the NYPD settles under the new leadership of Sewell and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks, an Adams confidant who also exerts influence over the department.
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The administration plans to brief more migrants on relocation opportunities and work with national nonprofits to identify welcoming cities across the country where they might move, Adams said. Additionally, the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance will oversee a $25 million program to help resettle migrant families in municipalities elsewhere in New York.
“There are cities in the state an across the country that … want to play the role,” the mayor said. “They realize that this is a national problem.”
A separate program through the State University of New York in Sullivan County will offer migrants the opportunity to relocate there and participate in a workforce training pilot and earn a credential or degree.
Many details, however, were not explained.
The mayor, for instance, said he did not want to reveal the names of partner cities that are planning to host more migrants for fear of souring those relationships.
“Please don’t ask me which cities because I don’t need you running to the cities and stopping them,” he told reporters at the announcement. “I know you enjoy pitting cities against cities, so we are not giving you that information.”
In January Adams criticized the governor of Colorado, a fellow Democrat, for busing migrants to New York City. A month later he admitted to coordinating one-way bus tickets to Plattsburgh, N.Y for migrants who wanted to move to Canada.
He also announced a new office to coordinate responses across city agencies and a new 24/7 intake center.
The Office of Asylum Seeker Operations will coordinate efforts across multiple agencies that are now doing the work. The city also plans to replace intake operations at the Port Authority, where asylum-seekers arrive by bus, with a new facility that will operate around the clock. He did not divulge a location for the intake center.
The blueprint describes a broad shift from emergency response to what City Hall is calling steady state operations — a recognition that the influx of migrants is unlikely to abate any time soon.
The city has spent roughly $650 million on providing services to the newcomers since the middle of last year. And on Monday, the city’s budget director expressed dim hopes the administration would be getting any federal reimbursement beyond an unspecified portion of the $800 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency grant money already earmarked for cities around the country.
“I am concerned about what is going to happen when the border is reopened,” the mayor said, seemingly referring to a recent policy from the Biden administration designed to reduced the number of crossings. “New York City is still a destination.”
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Lightfoot, who was elected in 2019, came under fire from voters and her eight challengers for her handling of crime in Chicago.
On Tuesday night, Lightfoot conceded after gaining about 17% of the vote, coming in third behind former public schools chief Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who will face off in a runoff. She was the first elected Chicago mayor to lose reelection since Jane Byrne in 1983.
When it comes to crime, mayors are “the closest to the problem” Adams said Sunday, calling public safety “a prerequisite to prosperity.”
“That is why we’re zero-focused, double-digit decrease in shooters, double-digit decrease in homicides,” Adams said. “We have witnessed this year, particularly in the month of February, all of our index crimes is low, low for the entire year.”
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Marmara, who made $224,618 last year with overtime, worked in Southeast Queens. During his three decades on the force, the Civilian Complaint Review Board substantiated three complaints against him, including one in 1996 related to use of force, according to public records.
His new office is tasked with helping city agencies “monitor and assess the delivery of services to the public and other key stakeholders to ensure that services are delivered in a professional, equitable, efficient and effective manner,” according to the executive order Adams signed Jan. 26.
It is expected to spot “deficiencies” in agencies and is empowered to conduct audits and direct commissioners on how to respond to community complaints. And it can monitor how effectively departments are correcting mistakes or poor performance related to “delivery of services,” the order reads.
The office affords Banks an expanded role beyond overseeing public safety, while taking on a politically relevant issue that Adams has deemed one of his priorities — improving government efficacy.
Until now, Banks’ job has been restricted to public safety agencies like the FDNY and Office of Emergency Management. From his office in a private building a few blocks from City Hall, he can keep an eye on the NYPD — where he served as chief of department before stepping down amid a federal corruption probe for which he was an unindicted co-conspirator. He was never charged.
Meanwhile the risk management office began operating last year but hadn’t been formally established until Adams signed the executive order in January.
As a candidate in 2021, Adams announced plans to create an office that would root out waste, fraud and abuse in city government. Run by former Deputy Comptroller Marjorie Landa, the office has six employees and a budget of $900,000, the spokesperson said.
Among the office’s tasks is auditing city agencies and troubleshooting independent audits conducted by city and state comptrollers. Adams is likely to come under increased scrutiny from City Comptroller Brad Lander as the passage of time weakens the standard tactic of blaming bad audits on the prior mayor.
Landa’s office is expected to track agency implementation of the comptrollers’ audit recommendations and report its own findings to the city’s Department of Investigation when necessary, according to the executive order.
“Making government work for everyday New Yorkers and ensuring taxpayer dollars are spent wisely are at the heart of Mayor Adams’ vision for a more equitable city,” spokesperson Jonah Allon said, noting these offices are the first of their kind. “Under the mayor’s leadership, these offices will promote smart, data-driven solutions to ensure city agencies are fulfilling their core mandates and delivering better, more efficient services to New Yorkers.”
On Friday Adams announced the creation of the Mayor’s Office for Child Care and Early Childhood Education, to focus on connecting families with “equitable, high-quality and affordable early education and care.” It comes as Adams is scaling back a pre-kindergarten program for 3-year-olds, which he said is not reaching the families most in need of it.
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Elected leaders are eager to draw people back to the area that has seen steep declines in foot traffic since the start of the pandemic, threatening tax revenue that funds essential city services and a hospitality industry that’s a major driver of tourism and jobs. But they must weigh any changes against the street’s function as a major transportation artery for hundreds of thousands of bus riders with connections to several subway lines.
The move comes three years after former Mayor Bill de Blasio first attempted to transform Fifth Avenue into an express busway but pulled the plan amid opposition from the high-end shops that dot the corridor, drawing outcry from public transportation advocates. Top city officials said this time is different, with real estate players coming to the table with a vested interest in revitalizing an area that has struggled to adapt to the era of hybrid work. How the city will balance competing interests is still unclear.
“The value of public space is elevated considerably after Covid,” Meera Joshi, the deputy mayor for operations, said in an interview. “It’s an investment in the community. It’s an investment in increased foot traffic for the stores, which translates into tax dollars, which translates into jobs.”
The city said it will contract with a design firm this year to put together a plan that will add pedestrian space, speed up buses and improve street safety. Other major municipalities, from San Francisco to Columbus, Ohio, have released their own proposals to reinvigorate office-heavy downtowns in part by restricting access to private vehicles.
More than half of office workers in major U.S. cities returned to their desks last week, a first since the pandemic began, according to swipe data tracked by Kastle Systems. But major New York employers don’t expect that figure to budge much higher anytime soon, according to a recent survey by the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit membership organization of more than 300 city executives.
Drawing people back will require some incentives, said Madelyn Wils, chief adviser for the Fifth Avenue Association, the business group that represents retailers in the area.
“It’s the spine of Manhattan, and when you come there, you should be experiencing something beautiful,” Wils said. “You should want to walk all the way from Central Park to Bryant Park.”
Retail spending has come roaring back in virtually every business district in the city’s outer boroughs, but remains down 9 percent in midtown Manhattan, according to “Making New York Work for Everyone,” the state and city’s post-pandemic recovery plan. Restaurant and bar spending has declined 35 percent in the area spanning 34th Street to 60th Street, with foot traffic down 23 percent.
Manhattan’s business districts generate nearly 60 percent of the citywide office and retail property tax revenues and 18 percent of overall citywide property tax revenue, making their stabilization key to pay for municipal services.
“What is clear today in the wake of the pandemic is that Midtown is the area that has suffered the most,” said Dan Doctoroff, a deputy mayor in Mike Bloomberg’s administration who led Sept. 11 recovery efforts and helped create the city’s new economic recovery plan.
“But, in order to make Midtown more vibrant, it’s not just about public places and making it more mixed-use,” he added. “You also have to address transportation issues, and you also have to grow.”
Elected leaders in other major U.S. cities also see a need to limit space for cars if they want to draw people back to downtown cores that are highly dependent on the Monday-through-Friday office culture, but many of the visions still preserve at least some space for personal vehicles.
The strategic plan for Columbus, Ohio, which still needs approval from its City Council, notes that most residents want alternative transportation to reduce car dependency. The plan includes renderings that add protected bus and bike lanes on multi-lane roads that have limited sidewalk space. San Francisco’s action plan similarly proposes strategies like “road diet” and “pedestrianized street” to bring more use to downtown corridors.
In New York, Adams will wade into a territorial dispute over how best to approach the most expensive shopping street in the world that also serves roughly 115,000 bus riders on an average weekday.
De Blasio’s plan to block most vehicle traffic on Fifth Avenue to accommodate a new busway faced steep opposition from major real estate players whom the progressive Democratic publicly shunned. Steve Roth, the CEO of Vornado, which operates 2.6 million square feet of street retail space, personally implored de Blasio to reconsider before the plan was ultimately pulled, the New York Times reported. The Fifth Avenue Association, whose chair is a Vornado executive, continues to oppose the elimination of private car access.
“That would have exacerbated the exodus of a lot of tenants,” Wils, of the Fifth Avenue Association, said of the busway plan. The real estate-backed nonprofit funds supplementary services that help maintain the corridor, such as street cleaning.
Adams, a more moderate Democrat, has taken a notably friendlier posture toward real estate than his predecessor, once declaring, “I am real estate.” He has received more than $150,000 in donations from people working in real estate in support of his reelection.
The Fifth Avenue Association is helping pay for the city’s new vision plan, along with three other private groups that manage different areas along the street: the Grand Central Partnership, the Bryant Park Association and the Central Park Conservancy.
Dan Biederman, president of the Bryant Park Corporation, a not-for-profit founded in 1980 to renovate and operate the nearly 10-acre park, similarly said his “bias” would be to preserve vehicle access in some capacity.
“You hate to, and I’m sure the merchants feel this way; you hate to say no private cars ever on Fifth. It would be very hard to do that,” Biederman said.
Transportation advocacy groups said they will be holding Adams to his early promise to use the planning process as an opportunity to increase bus speeds along Fifth Avenue. Adams must meet a local mandate to add 150 miles of bus lanes throughout the five boroughs by the end of 2025, a target he’s not on track to hit after his first year in office.
“Fifth Avenue is not just one of New York’s most famous luxury boutique destinations. It’s also a major bus corridor, which is to say the whole avenue isn’t just for tourists,” said Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director for the Riders Alliance. “It’s also for New Yorkers, including folks from upper Manhattan and the Bronx, who elected Adams mayor.”
Early renderings from the mayor’s office showing Fifth Avenue’s potential transformation reflect the plan circulated by the Fifth Avenue Association in 2021 as an alternative to the express busway, said E.J. Kalafarski, the transportation chair of Manhattan Community Board 5, which plays an advisory role on local land use issues. It preserves two lanes for buses and reduces the number of lanes for private vehicles from three to one. It also adds a bike lane, widens sidewalks and improves green space.
“Mayor Adams’ proposal definitely sounded immediately like it was inspired by the Fifth Avenue Association’s proposal,” he said.
The board previously voted in support of the Fifth Avenue Association’s concept.
The goal this time around is to strike a potential compromise with all the vested interests, at a time where there’s big appetite for post-pandemic infrastructure improvements.
“Transit is central to this issue,” said City Council Member Keith Powers, whose district includes a sizable portion of Fifth Avenue. “But to do something there and ignore the pedestrian side of the equation, you’re missing a big component of it.”
Joshi, the deputy mayor, said the city’s goal is to make the street “more than just a shopping district,” with entertainment and seating that encourages people to spend the day walking the corridor. She’s pledged not to be swayed by the sizable real estate influence helping steer the project.
“It has to be grounded in reason and fact,” she said. “Private partners may have opinions about those things, but we can’t avoid our duty to the larger public.”
Areas of the city that closed their streets to traffic at the height of the pandemic recorded a 19 percent increase in average sales at restaurants and bars compared to before, the city reported in a recent study of its Open Streets program. A December pilot program that made a stretch of Fifth Avenue car-free for three Sundays helped increase foot traffic and resulted in a “moderate” boost in sales, Wils said, without giving specifics.
The Adams administration plans to make early improvements to Fifth Avenue this year and release a construction plan in two years. The ultimate cost — and who pays — is still unclear.
The city, which recently committed $375 million in the budget for new parks and plazas, expects it won’t be moving forward alone.
“Part of having a vested interest means you’re vested, and that often takes dollars,” Joshi said.
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“To see what is reported, that five African American officers are involved in this, just really hurt me personally,” Adams said in response to a question from POLITICO. “It was always my belief that diversifying our departments with different ethnic groups would allow us to have the level of policing we all deserve.”
Adams spent more than two decades in the New York Police Department and was the co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, an advocacy group that speaks out against police brutality and racial profiling. The mayor has spoken openly about being arrested as a teenager and beaten by police.
“What it appears is that these officers tarnished much of the work that many of us attempted to accomplish,” Adams said.
Hochul urged New Yorkers to remain peaceful if they choose to assemble after the video is made public.
“I will ask everyone to heed the words of Tyre Nichols’ mother on behalf of her family and his 4-year-old child — if you’re going to protest, please do so peacefully in her son’s name,” Hochul said.
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