 Good morning everyone, and it is a beautiful morning. It was like 20 degrees cooler just about two hours ago So thank you son I'm Mira Zoshe. I have the honor of serving as Mayor Adams deputy mayor of operations and the privilege of overseeing our City's finest agencies. I'm not biased Several of them are with us this morning the Department of Sanitation the Department of Environmental Protection the Department of Transportation and The Department of Parks and Recreation. I want to thank each and every one of their commissioners as well as their staff for their Combined effort and focus on our mutual goals that got us to today But when it comes to judging cleanliness in our city none of these agency names or their specific Jurisdiction means anything to New Yorkers nor should they However decades of disparate decisions mean that the responsibility for our city's cleanliness is segmented and inefficient So I soar as a bound and that's not acceptable as our mayor Consistently reiterates we cannot work in silos and so today we are proud to announce unprecedented and smart agency Coordination combined with elbow grease and funding and that's how the Adams administration as one city will get stuff clean And now our mayor Eric Adams Thank you deputy mayor and really excited about the energy of bad commissioner tish Has brought to this initiative of Get stuff clean We hear it all the time and it's really the hallmark of our administration is going to be about How do we coordinate government to agencies the entire concept of operating in silos? being duplication of services no real alignment and we're going to continue to Dismantle the walls that prevent us from getting stuff done because we have too many Just territorial Interactions and fractions, and it's just not acceptable to use taxpayers pay as dollars in this way and from a day one Day one of this administration we have lived under constant theme of getting stuff Done and we're going to keep saying it every day because New Yorkers should expect that and part of this Getting stuff done is the cross Sections of bringing agencies together and operate in unisons and to delay today. We're delivering on what the deputy mayor of Mira Josie has indicated a getting stuff clean Our city needs to be clean. I hear it over and over again Overflowing waste baskets lack of pickup even as ball president you will walk to the corner In here in this community in borough Park and Sunset Park where residents Were actually walking to the trash bins Placing the trash in the bins, but they were overflowing. They were spilling over We were we were not having the right coordination and pickup times and so residents were doing their job We were not doing our job. And so when you have residents look around and say Why can't we get something done and clean in our city the American big cities? We're going forward. We're responding to that We are going to get it done America's biggest biggest city is going to be America's cleanest city We're investing more than 14 million dollars this fiscal year alone to Participate in a largest cleanup effort in Decades and we're working across agencies as I say over and over again to figure out how we can Deliver a cleaner city for New York is the Department of Sanitation Department of Parks Department of DOT Department of Health and Mental Hygiene DEP here we're talking about trash and garbage and Rarely do you see all the agencies that are involved are standing side by side We're wearing one jersey and that's team clean New York We are going to have our agency Collaborated or they have collaborated to identify a thousand areas in need of intensive cleanup Including right here in Brooklyn the residents of this community have been talking about this for a long time Trash on the sidewalk Equipment being discarded just no real conservative or proactive response to the trash to the trash The start of Monday, we're going directly into these areas to get them clean and keep them clean This is not a one and done This is a continuation of a project that is going to ensure our city and areas in our city are clean and the real tragedy Many of these areas that are dealing with the lack of cleanliness. They're city owned properties City owned properties. So we have to leave from the front. We're also hiring an additional 200 sanitation workers who help get the job done and this is something that Commissioner Tish has pushed for and I was very clear Are you telling me I'm going to have a cleaner city and she said yes And so we will have a cleaner city in addition to the high visibility effort We're start restoring funding to maintain maintain cleaning at hundreds of locations city-wide Including the ends of DOT bridges in along highways and off ramps our highways and our ramps particularly leading from our airports They are the welcoming mats for our city and it's a poor reflection when you get a Off-a-flight coming from abroad and you see a dirty highway entry and exit ramps We can do better and we will do better. We're going to create new evening shifts for hot-spot cleaning and Rat mitigation. It is no secret anywhere in the city or country that I hate rats And we want to get rid of rats. That is that is what we need to do We're going to kill rats and do a rat mitigation program in the city We're going to deepen our commitment to deal Department of Health and and and mental hygiene rat mitigation intensive initiative by adding 600 K this fiscal year and a million In the next and expanding new camera enforcement There are a small number of New Yorkers who continue to do illegal dumping And we're going to zero in on them and we're going to go after them And we're going to use this camera enforcement to carry it out This initiative is going to deliver results and New York is will be proud to see a cleaner streets We're going to hire more people more jobs and fewer rodents. That's the combination We're looking for and all of the above will continue to be part of improving our quality of life to have a prosperous city That is clean where we can welcome people back and we can raise healthy children and families This is an important initiative that we are taking seriously in every level of agencies that are responding To the issues that we're facing around cleanliness in this city. So again, I want to thank the entire team My commissioners who are behind me And the roles that they play in the coordination from ensuring we deal with rat mitigation cleaning our parks Our transportation facilities removing garbage off the streets This is the team work that is going to make new york city the cleanest city in america. Thank you, deputy mayor Thank you. I want to acknowledge Some members of and this is important partnerships of local bids mark caserta Of the brooklyn chamber of commerce and lauren collins of the flatbush avenue bid and the church avenue bid. Thank you I also I omitted the one agency that's not in the deputy mayor for operations portfolio department of health So thank you commissioner vasan for joining us today I want to take a quick step back because today's announcement builds on important work The adams administration has been doing since day one Though not always popular but always effective. We brought back Alternate side of the street parking We added more bike lane cleaning equipment to our fleet and we increased litter basket collection Popular but previously lacking standards. We launched the open restaurant task force to ensure that eyesore sheds Are removed from our roadways. We launched the nation's largest curbside organics program in october Pulling millions of pounds of our most rodent friendly refuse out of the regular trash stream And we're instituting the same at every public school creating a new and growing Generation of militant trash diverters Most recently we announced new set out times that will drastically reduce the amount of black the amount of time black bags Send sit on our city streets And today through the investment in hard work and working as one city We're able to bring life back to our forgotten public spaces We'll increase the litter bass collection litter basket collection around parks and our popular bridges We're adding an afternoon cleanup shift to over 60 parks focusing on 100 of the most used areas within each Including bathrooms. We're increasing the clearing of street sewers to prevent street corner garbage pile ups And stopping trash from traveling to our wastewater treatment plants and our harbors We're supplementing on and off ramp cleaning so they're not off ramps for trash We're investing in additional concentrated extermination in rat hot spots And we're adding additional cleaning to many of our smaller city oasis green places Pedestrian plazas scattered throughout the city whose benches are vital Social meeting points for many these outdoor living rooms deserve regular and reliable cleaning And as we come out of covet and our city springs back into action We need to ensure that every strip and corner of our city is clean vibrant and inviting for humans not rats And remember we can't do it alone New yorkers need to do their part too be the leader put trash in its place and tell a friend And I know someone who will echo that sentiment very strongly our dsn y commissioner jesse tish Thank you deputy mayor. Good morning everyone Almost 1 000 years ago medieval londoners routinely dumped their trash outside the walls of their growing city They came up with the term that we still use today to describe these places for which the city claimed no responsibility No man's land fast forward to the 1980s when new york city unwittingly created no man's lands of its very own Through an interagency agreement that was designed to create jurisdictional clarity for cleaning purposes But that ended up being used for decades to obfuscate responsibility A way for an agency to look at a dirty part of our neighborhood and say that's not my job That's not my problem Places like where we are standing right now became a modern day version of a no man's land This administration cannot and will not stand for that When I came on this job seven months ago Mayor adams and I discussed the filthy conditions that we saw most often Areas next to street steps greenways under and along overpasses Areas that residents and tourists see every single day Where an impartial observer could reasonably assume that no one gave a dam Well, this administration gives a dam Working with our sister agencies We identified over a thousand locations city-wide that have never received the money And the priority that they deserve for cleaning To be clear, this isn't a pandemic problem. It isn't even a 21st century problem It's been a crisis in the making for 40 years and the adams administration is tackling it head on Think about junction boulevard under the lye The area next to the brockner expressway the ocean parkway median Or along the allen street mall on the lower east side and the front street waterfront in satin island They are in every borough and every neighborhood Even this spot right here where you've got a curb line next to a park an area under a staircase and Rites of way all within view Under the old protocols you would need parks D o t and d s and y to each clean their small slices of the block Oh, and if you wanted the catch basins cleaned you'd need d e p2 Instead we are now working as one city Cutting the bureaucratic nonsense that has kept these places too dirty for too long And mayor adams is investing in d s and y and other agencies Giving us funding to finally do away with that's not my problem Beginning this coming monday, we will have hundreds of sanitation workers in a new targeted neighborhood task force Dedicated to cleaning these areas The unprecedented 7.1 million dollar investment in creating the tnt Will ensure that these corners of the city are cleaned on a regular schedule for the very first time And that's not all There's also 4.9 million dollars for d s and y to supplement service of litter baskets on bridges and along the perimeters of parks Building on work. We've already started in july. This administration secured the highest level of funding for litter basket service ever And since then complaints for overflowing litter baskets to 311 are down 55 The biggest year over year decrease in recorded history Now we are expanding that reliable effective service to more areas Another highly effective strategy that we're doubling Actually quintupling down on is using cameras to enforce against illegal dumping More than 200 new cameras are coming to neighborhoods across all five boroughs Illegal dumping is a theft of public space And dumpers among the stupidest criminals in the city Will continue to face $4,000 fines and vehicle impounds as part of a 1.4 million dollar expansion Of our highly successful and highly popular enforcement strategy And finally we are also announcing 1.1 million dollars for d s and y to supplement dot cleaning of highway on and off ramps Which like bridges and parks park edges are often one of the first places seen by visitors to our city They must be cleaned thoroughly and regularly But this d s and y function was defunded at the start of the kovat 19 pandemic It is now being fully restored We know what works Now we're announcing more funding and a major overhaul of cleanliness protocols And new yorkers will see a difference in those places that every new yorker knows But no one has known what to do about until now We are proud to make these historic investments because every patch of new york city is worth cleaning We're doing something that no administration has done before We are making the no man's land no more. Thank you New yorkers are already noticing an improvement in cleanliness in the city because we've Restored all of the basics right the curb lines look so much cleaner if you pay attention to them Now that we have the street sweeping out back in full effect The overflowing litter baskets you'd walk by on every corner those complaints are down to pre-pandemic levels, so we've come back to More normal baseline and what we're doing now is we're not solving pandemic problems We are solving decades old Problems this notion of the no man's land I said in my remarks there are no man's lands in every single neighborhood in the city You can see it on the map and when we hit those areas They they look much cleaner. I mean you can see the before and after photos photos here. So we are Um definitely encouraged by this and definitely confident that this will make a dent on the cleanliness of our city Yeah, okay Okay, uh because you know there's two things that uh the commissioner stated and that was part of our cleanup of encampments Uh, I mean the noticeable difference from removing encampments off our streets It was just a complete noticeable difference in the area But also the commissioner stated something that I think is very important And that is that is citizen participation I was on the train. I think one day last week and his woman came up to me Um, I rate, you know, look at this garbage on the floor You know, why is this garbage on the floor? And what I did was I walked over to it and I picked it up I picked it up I mean we step over garbage. We sit next to garbage. We see garbage on our streets And instead of saying why don't one of these agencies do something? These are our blocks. These are our neighborhoods. So we need Um cleanup Participation from neighbors. We need to get garbage bags that we will help get we all must be engaging cleaning our city This is not The agency's issue. This is all about issues. And so if i'm willing to do it I'm sure that everyone is willing to do it, but no one has really asked in a real way. Hey, let's all clean our city How are you coordinating all the agencies and and who's in charge of that and I guess coming to Uh, will there be some sort of public service campaign asking people to pick up their trash This was done years ago in the city and I think it made a difference. I think parks actually had taken a look on that But is that something you're thinking about? So I'll start with the first question. Um, we are working very closely with the agency commissioners behind us as a great example The 1000 locations that we identified We identified it in partnership With the other agencies locations where There was a mandate to clean them, but that was an unfunded mandate So they brought them to our attention And um, that's how they got on the list and I want to also be clear that this list is just a starting point We fully expect to add to it as needed But though the work this is a coordinated effort among all the agency commissioners that you see behind us And as for the public service campaign, absolutely We do have money in our budget this year that was newly added for a public service campaign Around cleanliness and litter pickup. This is the first time in a long time that dsn y has Been given funding to create a public service campaign around litter and cleaning up the city Absolutely How how are you like a pain for the 200 new sanitation officers in the context of the november budget Modification and the pegs and also as part of the rat mitigation efforts. Will you be using that rat trap that you Tried out at borough hall. Julia. Julia hated that rat trap She still talks to me about it Um the of the We have to find the dollars and you know, that was part of our pegs And it's part of the continuation of better managing the city dollars And we we're going to have a series of other things we're doing that The chief of staff is looking at You know, we have a real financial crisis But a clean city is going to impact our recovery And new yorkers deserve to have a clean city And so we have to prioritize those things out on are important And this is one of the top things that new yorkers are saying we have to listen to what new yorkers are feeling And that is what we're responding to When it comes down to uh, we have a few tools and tricks That we're going to be rolling out around rats in the next couple of days. Uh, deputy mayor Mira joshi, um, is going to be doing with our other agencies We don't want to we don't want to let them know right away because the rats may be listening And we want to surprise them with some of the tricks that we're going to be doing But we're going to zero in on rodents and in the next few Weeks we're going to be rolling out some new initiatives that we're doing with testing some of them right now And we want to see the uh, the byproduct of those tests because we want to make sure That they're doing a better job in those little black boxes. Those little black boxes. They almost they almost a joke You know and a little pellets. That's candy You know, we need to really use new methods to go after Of these rodents that have just really Frightened and traumatized the city and the reason we're able to do this is because of our model of team leaders The team leader borough city hall is the mothership And to navigate through agencies You need someone out of city hall that's going to tell all the agencies you're lining up to the mission, you know, so no more Um silos, you know this project. This is the team leader And she's coordinating with deputy mayor william ison because the department of health and mental hygiene is in another portfolio But that doesn't stop the team leader to be able to coordinate all of our agencies And so borough hall we are the team leaders We call the plays the agencies execute the plays that we call but it comes out of city hall That's the function and that is why we're going to be able to move these projects forward Great to a few off topics. Thank you. Thank you all Oh How are you So I want to talk a little bit about the election, uh, You know, brooklyn democrat looks like south brooklyn There's three seats maybe four So I have two questions on this one What do you think contributed to you know democrats having a rough showing in in brooklyn? And do you think the brooklyn democratic party did enough to support Uh, uh, yes, uh, I think that Right where I need to be shot has been an amazing leader there She has a a list of victories from last year in the borough of brooklyn The public advocate is from brooklyn the attorney generals from brooklyn of hakim jeffreys who's the Head of the democratic caucus is from brooklyn You know all these folks are from brooklyn. Oh the man's from brooklyn You know, so there's a list of success and there's a list of success. She's has done from this election. Listen, it's going to come down to You can't Talk over people. You have to talk to people New yorkers were saying crime is important They were saying this that you know, I can my acronym is ice, you know, uh Inflation crime economy. This is what new yorkers were saying And so when you see six out of ten Uh asian and hispanics in new york city voting republican when last year was seven or eight out of ten We better listen to the wake-up call every day people are looking for bread and butter issues They're not in all this intellectual Philosophical that's not what every day new yorkers when i'm on that Four train talking to every day new yorkers. They're very clear on what they want And if we don't start understanding that You're going to see the hemorrhaging of other communities. And so when you look at southern brooklyn, it's a high immigrant population And their concerns are those bread and butter issues and we got to talk to them and That's what i've been saying this over and over again. I will continue to say that we got to get back and talk to those issues Mr. Mayor, there have been some critics Including the head of the working families party that have questioned whether or not You in some part should take responsibility for what happened specifically in new york when you're seeing so many members of congress In the suburbs or whatever happened in southern brooklyn You're seeing democratic scenes split to the republican side in part because of the crime issue And the question is whether or not The working families party had said that you were fear-bongering and perhaps propped up leselden As a result of talking about I'm just waiting for ross sterling to come out because that's simply the twilight zone Come on. Let's get real here if everything about this one moment if every poll shows that New yorkers were concerned about crime And their mayor is responding to their concern Who should be at fault those who ignored the concern? You know, so to say, um, you know, what eric was talking about crime Duh, new yorkers were talking about crime, you know, and I was clear when I ran for office I didn't sugarcoat it. We needed to be saved. That's why i zeroed in on guns and shooters And that's why we have a double-digit decrease in guns and shooters because in spite of those same organizations that said don't put in place my Playing close anti-gun unit. I ignored them And so the problem was we ignored the concerns of everyday new yorkers and you can't do that And they are at fault for that so governor huckle did not Grant what you wanted during the campaign, which was to call a special session of the legislature to further address bail reform Now that she won reelection, what do you expect me to see from her? What do you hope to see from her? She's she's the governor the first woman governor elected in the state of new york I'm excited about that it follows suit to Of my unprecedented, uh, elevation of women in my administration Uh, even my one of my favorite press person kate You know, so, um She albany's going to do what albany, uh, is going to do I think they need to immediately take on You know the part of those reforms that allow and repeat offenders to return to our streets And i'm excited with going to albany and sit down with the governor. She has been an awesome partner I said this over and over again And, uh, you know the victories we were able to get around other reforms discovery Another area is is it's because of her and so i'm looking forward to going back to albany with her and Navigating these challenges. We have to get it right Thank you. Uh, mr. Mayer kind of continuing on the same If you said in the msnbc interview this morning, uh, that democrats are losing this election because I think your wording was catch and release Uh, bail laws and the state What are you referring to when you're talking about that because the state legislators specifically amended the bail laws this year to make repeat offenses bail out your bail eligible and secondly To kind of follow up on court needs questions. You've exaggerated That crime in the city was the worst you've ever seen over your professional career That's just not true if you're looking at data So i'm wondering don't you think that kind of plays into the hands of the republican candidates? So let's let's break about part your pieces of number one I stated that part of the reform that deals with catch release repeat parts of the reforms When you look at the number of increases in young people for example that are participating in shooting And I didn't say bail reform young people that participate in shootings and victims of shootings That's part of the reform that was put in place when you look at what crimes we can't charge bail on The repeated offenders for grand lanceny for burglary for robbery the numbers are just through the roof These guys are coming out Arrested they're doing it again That we must close the door on and so because of kathy huckle governor huckle We were able to look at to some of those problems. We were able to close the door But there's more we have to do we have to get a right for the small number of individuals who are Repeated offenders now to talk specifically about the climate that you said I created I'm recall reading the first few pages of your paper and you talk about the same crime that the publics were talking about You know, so I wasn't the only one in the city that realized We had a problem with the system that let dangerous people out You wrote many stories about crime because you were hearing it Yes, you because you were hearing it from the public also the public I was responding. I will continue to listen to the public The public was stating clearly That there was on many communities not every but many communities The crime was a real issue the Bronx I mean what was happening in the Bronx Before we started emphasizing on the Bronx a number of shootings innocent people bystanders being shot All of us realized that we had to do a better job on crime I don't see how other elected officials officials were not listening to the public So because i'm listening to the public. I didn't create the climate I responded to the climate climate and everyone else should have done that also Quickly on a different topic. If we have time we'll come back to you, but we're going to get to Kate don't play young on that It seems to me that today we're back to regularly scheduled Mayor Eric Adams But then over the last week to 10 days of the election either Governor Huckle or the Democratic Party or Chuck Schumer or somebody Asked you could you maybe lay off the crime issue or the repeat offender issue because that's not helping the governor Did they ask you to do that? Did you consciously say let me let let me help Kathy Huckle first then we'll go back to this Well, first of all you've been covering me for a long time And you know, there's no such thing as coming to me and fighting on behalf of what I think is right I did not change my dialogue throughout the entire campaign. I was clear on what was needed even when we had The meeting at Gracie mansion. I was very clear The troubling part is while I was talking about a broken criminal justice system Everyone wanted to go back to one sentence. Well, what about bell? What about bell? It's more than bell It is in Mason on Rikers Island for years Without being in court It is the fact that you can't get court cases people are coming in visiting or seeing a judge for 30 seconds After waiting four hours it's about turning release people who have gun charges And so because everyone used the catchphrase of bell reform And I'm trying to say this system is is is is broken And no one wanted to hear that because that did not fall into the beauty of a one-word Twitter post You know, I'm trying to state that we have a criminal justice system That we need to dismantle every piece that feeds the many rivers of violence And I didn't stop saying that from the time of the last 10 days and no one came to me And said every can you please stop talking about The criminal justice problem because I will continue to talk about that until we get it right Ethan and then Dana Hi, mr. Merrick going back to a story that Was reported this morning about the southern brooklyn races a couple of candidates who run there in the past Andrew Gnardis and Justin Brannon said, you know, we didn't see the resources coming into these races from the state Democratic party or from the brooklyn democratic party. What do you think about that? Um, I don't they have to articulate that. I don't know how the party allocates resources. That's something that I don't know about Uh, so they will have to articulate that on what they meant by that. I don't have an answer to that So statistically Dana Dana Dana An issue in other parts of the country that it is here But republicans in york did better here than other parts of the country by running on years of crime Like how do you account for that disparity? well, I think that messaging is important and When you look at, you know, some of the locations You know, I don't believe It's unfortunate that democrats have a good crime story They didn't tell it If you look at the republican states, you'll see the homicide rates are extremely high Uh, when you look at their policies around not funding police, you know, uh, they allow democrats allow the republicans to pin the defund movement on them Well, that's not the position of the majority of democrats and the real redump defunders. What are republicans? They didn't want to put money back into the crime Strategies that supported police. They did not want to fight against the common sense gun laws So democrats had a good story They just didn't tell our story and for whatever reason they felt if you came out openly and say I support my law enforcement Like I do all the time they felt as though they were going to lose the fringe Of the party and I just refuse to believe that every day new yorkers Support their police They want to be safe and they want their leaders to say that and I don't think we said that enough during this election The leaders seem so dug in on on these issues. What does the governor have to do to negotiate with them? Or what does she have to do to give them something or or can she declare a state of emergency to overrule them? Well, I think that uh, governor ho cool is is extremely knowledgeable on how to navigate the complexities of orbony She was extremely helpful to us. Our people keep giving the impression We didn't walk out of orbony with some w's, but you know, I keep pointing to Childcare billions of dollars. I point to rat a night to land trust I point to what we did around Earn income tax credit of what we did was moving the needle on law enforcement So, you know, I have a lot of faith and trust in the governor and her ability to navigate the challenges of orbony And everything that comes with it and we're looking forward to This legislative cycle and bringing in place a real agenda for our city and and this entire state Okay, thank you very much