 good morning everyone we are so excited to be here today in Korea town with partners in government elected leaders small business advocates and small business owners to announce bold steps we are taking to give our city small businesses a fighting chance to not just withstand the impacts of the pandemic but to really drive our economic recovery now on day four of our administration we made a promise to our city small businesses and today we are following through we are announcing an action plan to reduce and eliminate penalties for more than our that for the more than 200,000 small businesses that call our city home this is a plan that makes sure that the system is working with small businesses and not against them this is the type of plan that our small businesses have needed for far too long this is a plan that is made possible because we have a mayor who has been crystal clear that government must be a partner and not an obstacle to small businesses he's made it crystal clear that we needed to move swiftly and smartly to get it done and so please join me in welcoming our mayor Eric Adams thank you deputy mayor Maria Torres Springer and your entire team and I did not come to this realization of the need to do this on my own I came to it because of the people who are behind me I've sat in their restaurants everyone know I'm a nightlife mayor so I test the product and I go in to the restaurants I go to their businesses and I heard over and over again the chambers you know the nightlife leaders I heard over and over again how we were just in the way the lack of clarity the lack of understanding and oftentimes they just basically said tell us what we have to do don't let one person tell us to do one thing to someone else comes in the next day and tell us to do something else we were just traumatizing these small businesses and I just heard how much they were going through and if you dig into the crevices about small businesses know what you're going to find you're going to find local employees if you hurt a restaurant you're hurting a cook a dishwasher a waiter a busboy or girl if you're slowing down a construction site you're hurting a laborer you're hurting a carpenter an engineer and this is what we were doing there was a disconnect between the city agencies and the actual people who are hiring in our city and deputy mayor Maria Torres Springer came in with an amazing team here our commissioners that are lined up together we're so aligned with this but the best part about it was when the agencies came to the deputy mayor with the first line of what they wanted to change she said that's not good enough you have to go back you have to get deep dig deeper and come up with a better product and so I thank you deputy mayor for fully understanding the spirit of what we are doing so we're gonna we're going to get stuff done for small businesses and we're releasing the results of a massive multi-agency review of the way our city works with small businesses we're unveiling reforms that will save small businesses approximately 8.9 million and fines and fees annually for too long we stifled the entrepreneurial spirit in New York City no one wanted to do business here no one wanted to go through the bureaucracy no one wanted to be just humiliated a day by day someone from the city walks into your business you should not have a jitter you should be there with the understanding that they're here to keep my doors open they're my they are partners but that's not what people were feeling they were feeling just the opposite they were feeling that oh my god what are they going to do to take another dollar out of me taxation through citation that is not how we're going to run this city when you look at it in January we spring into action and sign executive order number two small business forward and we have been keeping a close watch on producing a qualitative product for our review in mandated this executive order mandated a multi-agency review of existing rules and regulations with the goal of reducing fines schedules and allowing for cure periods or warnings for the first violation so we're not coming in right away and giving you a fine for those non-emergency life-threatening items we're telling you this is wrong fix it we give you a period of time to fix it or if it's the first time you made the violation we're going to allow you to correct the problem and not come down heavy-handed on you because the goal is to keep your doors open a thanks to this executive order number two we actively solicited feedback we went out and we asked businesses what give us your feedback how do we make it better how do we ensure New York is a safe and you ensure that you're able to keep your businesses operating we did an online survey we did a round of communication with businesses but we also spoke one on one with some of these businesses here these are small business owners how many of you are small business owners raise your hand these are small business owners and the impact on the black black and brown community was unbelievable what they were doing up in Washington Heights was decimated Washington Heights Flatbush Avenue of Brooklyn a South Jamaica Queens it was just clearly almost targeted enforcement on these communities and so we listened to their feedback and produced a report that we are rolling out today and this is only four months later I know people like to believe that I was mayor for four years but I've only been mayor for five months now you know five months you know and so after only five months this team with our commissioner Kim and his team returned with the review that we are looking for this will reduce fines for over a hundred and eighteen violation and affect our small that affect our small businesses including retail stores restaurants barbershop nail salons construction industry this is about not only reducing the burden of small businesses but giving them the hand that they need in this cross agency change of doing business this is a paradigm shift that we are accomplishing here to change the mindset of small businesses I don't want to know how many fines you issued for non life threatening items I want to know how many businesses you help open how many businesses you were able to assist so they can keep their doors open to hire new yorkers now we're going to continue to protect the health and safety of new yorkers but we could do it without being heavy-handed to these small business so this city and our regulatory agency we believe in help the small businesses and we're going to infuse that energy into what we do every day it's about paving the way for the equitable treatment of small businesses that we talk about over and over again and it's moving our city from the culture of no to the culture of yes you can't start out all the time no no no let's start out with yes how do we get to yes if there's an idea that's coming from a small business and we've none of that we have never done it before let's figure out how to give it to the culture of yes listen we're going to always follow the law but I'm going to make sure the policies are done don't tell me about policies that were done in the past I'm the policy decider and my policies is about getting more money into my small businesses so they can hire more and pay into our tax base so that we can get our teachers our firefighters our police officers that is how you generate a society and so this is going to be a city with a culture of yet of yes early this month I signed an executive order established in the city first ever small business advisory commission of they will partner and continue to work with cutting the red tape reducing fines and help keep our restaurants and entrepreneurs in compliance and in business historically we only focus on how do I keep you in compliance we want to keep you in compliance and we want to keep you in business those are the things we focus focusing on deputy mayor Maria Torres Springer also put out an important blueprint for economic recovery when we are launching a small business portal to help our businesses in the city and assembling an interagency task force to streamline business process and dramatically speed up getting the doors open the lights on getting your gas on getting you operating in a real way we're happy to have a commissioner of the Department of Buildings Eric Ulrich who clearly understands that it's about getting them done common sense common sense it's not about only dollars and cents it's about common sense it is by far the most important thing we can do in the city now you said this before that hey we've heard this before we've heard mayors come in and say they're going to streamline and make business easier we've all heard it before we got it but no one has been more successful in the effort than what we're going to do we have convened more agencies than ever we deliver more reforms than ever and we are going to save more dollars for small businesses than ever this is a city that is going to work we're going to expand and uplift our small businesses i'm excited about this moment i cannot say thank you enough to all of these my chambers my business leaders my civic groups my organizations who have all come together for the last a few years have communicated with me Eric we need help so we can keep the doors open this is only the beginning this is going to be a business friendly city where we encourage people to do business in new york we want small businesses to operate and thrive and grow and grow in new york city so again thank this important entire team for making this happen thank you mayor adams now i'd like to invite someone who's been tireless in his work of small businesses across the five boroughs really pounding the pavement every day and i also know his mother sonia is here watching he's doing such a great job sonia you should be proud of him our small business commissioner kevin kim thank you thank you deputy mayor torres springer and thank you mayor adams for highlighting every day the critical role small businesses play in recovering our city from the pandemic the last week might have been national small business week today's announcement makes it clear once again that under mayor adams every week is new york city small business week i also want to thank mayor adams for hosting this press conference right here in korea town nearly 50 years ago a young couple my parents immigrated to this country from south korea with two young children in tow and happened to open a small business a few blocks from here korea town in the 70s and 80s was not a vibrant commercial corridor it is today and the success of korea town is really representative of so many new york city neighborhoods that have been transformed into destination commercial corridors thanks to the hard work of countless immigrants from around the world pursuing their american dream right here in new york city i want to thank all our sister agencies we asked a lot of your time and effort uh dr vasan jessica eric we asked a lot of you and you gave so much back and so thank you for your collaboration i especially want to acknowledge the extraordinary leadership of my co-chairs on this task deputy mayor maria torris springer ceo chief efficiency officer melanie laraca as well as the dedication and the countless hours of sleepless nights that adam foreman jenny sobelman and my first deputy commissioner jackie mallin put into achieve these significant gains for new york city businesses so can we give them a round of applause please before i get into the numbers i also want to recognize the small business owners standing here today including angela yee and tony owners of coffee uplifts people we have con de galti business owner of unique and levy chickpea snack which is vegan mayor susana osario osario business owner of mama sushi jeff garcia business of owner of wahiza pizza and mona more coffee and wine george gayego and lorenz sketer owners of contento jeff lindor founder of gentlemen's factory and a member of our black entrepreneur nyc cabinet kenneth allen founder of azuras partners who's also a member of our bnyc cabinet zade nagi who also happens to be uh part of the yemenese american merchants association i want to thank all of you for taking time on a sunday morning i think uh we know you sacrifice a lot every day and to be here as well i also want to acknowledge the representatives from the chambers of commerce the bids the merchant associations industry partners community leaders like charles yoon from the korean american association of greater new york since we're in korea town in addition to the small business owners standing here today as part of the process we received direct feedback from almost 1000 small business owners to hear about firsthand the impact of the penalties and employment enforcement practices that new york city had and we conducted listening sessions and connected with chambers of commerce bids merchants associations and industry partners our working group reviewed 232 violations to see how we could reduce the regulatory burden on small business owners and today as mayor adams has mentioned we are announcing that as a result city agencies will reform 118 violations saving new york city small business owners approximately 8.9 million dollars per year of those 118 reforms the city will move to repeal 30 provisions and reduce civil penalties associated with 49 other violations and we're instituting first time warnings cure periods or expanding the timeline for cure periods for 39 other provisions this is truly a historic overhaul the most successful effort to cut red tape for small businesses by a mayoral administration in the history of new york it's an investment in the entrepreneurial spirit of the city and our efforts are just the first step to fundamentally change the relationship that the city has with small businesses as mayor adams emphasized small businesses need to know this administration has your back small business services has your back and we are here for you the interagency working group that collaborated on this will now shift its focus to lay the groundwork to improve and create a robust one-stop business portal which will allow businesses to set save even more time and money and we will continue to build on this progress in partnership with small business leaders through the recently announced small business advisory commissioner commission and it's all part of the bigger picture to reimagine the processes for permitting licensing violations and payment to ensure new york city is truly the most small business friendly city in the nation finally i'm just proud to be here with the broad coalition of small business owners industry partners elected officials to deliver on mayor adams vision for an equitable economic recovery thank you thank you commissioner kim before i introduce our next speaker i do really want to acknowledge commissioners vasan tish and alrich from our major regulatory agencies the mayor knew from the very beginning that as much as kevin and i love small businesses that if it was just the two of us in a conference room we weren't going to get anything done that it really needed the leadership and support of the entire government and really understanding that we don't have to make a choice between public health and safety and small businesses that we can and that we must do both and so thank you for being here for the work of your team and your brilliance and courage and creativity we're going to need more of that in the weeks and months to come and so now i'd like to introduce a real partner the city council and all of these efforts i don't think there's anyone who's a bigger champion for small businesses and it's just been such a pleasure to work with her over the years and i know so much more we will do together in the months and years to come please join me in welcoming council member and chair of the small business committee julie menon thank you thank you so much deputy mayor this is a phenomenal day so i'm a former small business owner and i can tell you firsthand how important this moment is i previously served as commissioner of consumer affairs where we launched a small business relief package which lowered fines in half on small businesses and allowed small businesses to cure the violation what the mayor and deputy mayor are announcing today is so important because it's extending it to the sanitation department the buildings department the health department these are some of the agencies that quite frankly caused the biggest fines for small businesses so oftentimes literally we were seeing before if a word and a sign was incorrect small businesses were being sucked with thousands of dollars in fines that's simply unacceptable so i really want to thank the mayor and the deputy mayor for this today as well as commissioner kim uh this is incredibly important in the city council last month i introduced a bill a one-stop shop bill that would consolidate all city agency permits into one website one app and i really want to thank my partner in government majority leader keith powers uh who's doing so much to support small businesses were in his district and he's been a key and critical partner so in closing i just want to say this is a great day it's incredibly important for small businesses we've got a great partnership with the city council and thank you so much thank you council member and speaking of the council member for this district i would like to invite keith power majority leader keith powers to say a few words thank you um thank you and of course always great to be here with my colleagues in the city council and the chair of the small business committee who knows firsthand what it's like to run a small business in the city i always say people don't come to new york city to see our great vacant storefronts or to see the business that used to be here they come here because we have the best nightlife we have the best shopping we have the best restaurants say we have the best small businesses and that's why people whether you live in this in this city new travel to a different neighborhood or you want to come to the city and visit from abroad or you just live in the region and you want to take a day in the city you come here for all the great small businesses and all the things that we have to offer and far too many times my dad was a restaurant owner and far too many times not only are those restaurant owners going late night to their businesses when there is an issue a leak or repair or something else that they have to attend to but then they have to face the burden of having a city inspector or city agency walk in their door shut their business down perhaps for a few hours and then and then face the possibility that just a small ever will lead to another financial burden on their business and we hear that every single day from the small businesses in our districts and throughout this city so not only is this a financial relief and sort of like a breath of fresh air for a lot of the businesses it's a sign and I want to thank the mayor for sending a sign to our small businesses here in the city once again that we are here to help you we're here to keep you in business we're not here to hurt you and I'll mention we just did introduced a bill with the mayor support last week that would also for the restaurants repeal and suspend I should say a fee that the city charges on them for their liquor licenses which we all were I think we're all surprised that we were doing that in the first place but you know they're thin I just want to I really want to say they're thinking very very deeply and hard about even the small things that you can take out of the way to send a sign to the businesses that we're here to help and to take a little bit of give them a little bit of financial relief it is a big breath of fresh air to be a council member right now with folks that are really fighting for a small business during the recovery so thank you to everyone up here for everything you're doing to help out our small businesses thank you council member now we have a very special guest that I'd like to introduce Christina Zhang who is a second-generation restaurant owner right here in korea town now her mother mrs park immigrated to this country she started out as a waitress then opened her own small business which was so successful that she not only expanded that original restaurant but opened the second one with her daughter Christina and said in law Steve so her family is really an example of how a single small business can lift up an entire family in just one generation and that is why we're so focused on expanding opportunities for small businesses to start and grow in this city please join me in welcoming Christina Zhang thank you so much deputy mayor and mayor Adams for choosing to announce this big news in korea town today my name is Christina Zhang and there's my husband Chirston Zhang we are the owners of korean barbecue restaurant new one joe and there's my mom hewapa she also runs a restaurant called dog kunji we are one of the many small business owners in k-town about 30 years ago my mom came to the u.s and started working as a waitress she worked for as long as 16 hours a day seven days a week she dreamed that one day she could run her very own restaurant in k-town 10 years later the dream came true another 10 years later she even helped us to establish one joe on the same block today we are competitors but we work together during hard times such as the pandemic ever ever since the covid hit in 2020 like other small business owners we have suffered but it was not only us all k-town small business owners struggled however it is amazing that no one in k-town closed their businesses we all have been struggling together with the challenges facing small businesses due to the pandemic today mayor Adams you came to k-town with a welcome relief for new york city small businesses and we cannot tell you how much this means to us personally we look forward to your continuing support of small businesses in return i hope that we small business owners can help lead the new york city economies back to its pre-pandemic state we the korean korean american community also would like to thank you mayor Adams for visiting k-town businesses today and for the relief we are you are bringing to so many new york city small businesses owners thank you again thank you christina and so i expect everyone here today to visit either kunjip grill or nuanjo okay all right we're gonna eat well tonight now i'd like to welcome someone who has always been a fierce advocate for our restaurants and nightlife venues and believe me he keeps us on our toes but with his partnership i know that we are going to not just implement what we're announcing today but go even further in the months and years ahead please join me in welcoming andrew rigi the ed of the new york hospitality alliance thank you i mean so many people to thank i just have to say a really funny story so i'm sitting i'm talking with the council member with randy and i'm saying this spot right down here nuanjo has been the place i've been going probably since like high school and then all of a sudden council member says oh nuanjo it's like a lot of greatness but especially right here it's incredible and there's so many great spots um had my what's the saying out with the boys we were out last night bronx ball and there was a lot of people out and it was so good to see the energy this place was uh sponsored you got people dancing eating a local restaurant and the you know did all the food and the reason i bring that up is because i really believe the adams administration understands for new york city to recover we need our restaurants we need our nightlife we need that social activity all to come back because it is great just for our souls but it's also so important because it's not just the restaurant people are joking around they had to get their fancy clothes out of the closet after two years of covid so they went and adjusted some stuff over at the dry cleaner so more economic uh stimulation right there but i think we also understand that it's not just about fun it's not just about people going out that's going to bring our small businesses back it's about regulatory reform and yeah we got reforms done last year but i think it was within the first week of the adams administration they sign this executive order say go back let's identify more fines that you know should allow for a warning or a cure period before you just issue an expensive fine to a small business owner let's create cure periods and warnings to ensure that when inspector comes in the door there isn't all this fear and this audita the inspector explains to the people working in the restaurant working in the retail shop this is a violation this is why it's a violation this is how you correct it and giving them the opportunity to fix it before just using our small businesses as an atm and the commitment from all of them to say this is not it we are going to keep going we're going to keep looking at ways to streamline the permitting and licensing process we're going to keep reducing fines and we're going to keep doing everything we can to support our local businesses like the ones that are standing up here and all around the five boroughs it's very symbolic it's very important always honored to stand with everyone thank you for all the work you do i know this is not always easy but you got to keep pushing and keep pushing because frankly that's like what your mother dud has done and you all continue to do to keep the business going so thank you thank you and we look forward to keep working with the adams administration all our friends in the council and business community and everyone else thank you thank you andrew um our finally i would love to welcome someone who has been a close advisor and supporter an advocate not just for small businesses but really for the health and vitality of entire commercial corridors because he knows that that's so critical to our economic recovery and he's joined by other colleagues representing business improvement districts and chambers of commerce across the city please welcome randy pierce the ceo of the brooklyn chamber of commerce good morning good morning thank you mayor adams deputy mayor torres springer commissioner kim chair menon and the entire adams team for having me here to say a few words i promise to keep them brief i don't know what you're doing this afternoon but if you don't have any plans come join me and oma holloway from bridge street development and tomkins avenue and bedside for the biggest baddest open streets in all of new york so that's where we're going next we can go out there and support some small businesses i want to say i know this administration is tackling some major challenges head on right now public safety homelessness for example and the issue of small business fines and violations may sound a little bit like inside baseball but for my constituency the 62 000 small businesses in brooklyn and the 200 000 small businesses across the city this has been one of the biggest issues for decades small businesses contribute almost half of all the jobs to new york city's economy and these are the types of businesses where you need to roll up a gate and serve customers every day these are the businesses that hire locally and help consumer dollars circulate within the community and the owners of these businesses reflect the diversity of new york city itself i am proud that brooklyn is home to more black-owned businesses per capita than any other county in new york state and possibly the country but the excessive fines and violations have plagued small businesses of every color for far too long last september i wrote an op-ed citing the fact that annually between 2010 and 2020 revenue from fines and violations increased at 2.6 percent outpacing inflation by a whole percentage point so this has been an issue for decades and with emergency with our emergence from covid the urgency of now is upon us i am so grateful to mayor adams and this administration in its first week on the job they announced a small business forward initiative to address fines and violations and today we see the results gsd getting stuff done that's what this looks like finally i want to say from the perspective of all the chambers of commerce from each of the boroughs my friend tom gretches here from queens this is not simply about criticizing city agencies and inspectors we know our agencies do great work and we pledge our support to all these agencies in helping them educate our businesses on any upcoming changes so that the businesses can do the right thing and avoid costly mistakes because working together we can help our businesses grow while ensuring the health safety and rights of consumers are respected once again thank you mayor adams for this big step forward for our small businesses have a good sunday open to any on topic questions how are you the visual here is kind of hard to miss i see retail space available i see space for rent behind you what in here is going to help these empty storefronts become businesses again we see all over the city a couple of things in layers number one we need to change the message out there nationally if not internationally that is too difficult too expensive too bureaucratic to do business in the city it must be part of my overall campaign of going to other states and cities and recruiting people to come here so that calls from time to time i have to leave the city i know it's hard to see me going but i have to leave from time to time to get on the ground to recruit people here number two what we're doing today those moms and pops like these beautiful families here who are thinking about starting a business but they're hearing about these horrific stories and saying no i don't think i want to do that we want them to know we want you to do that and we're going to be a partner and what you're saying what sbs is going to do of making it easy easier to start a business is going to help also part of our child care plan is looking at retail spaces how do we turn it into child care spaces how to rethink how we're using some of the spaces our goal is to turn these four lease four rent into occupied spaces we encourage on what we're going to do i was in midtown last night the place is booming uh people are back out because of what we're doing on the subway system subway ridership is back up we're getting foot traffic again all real estate expert will tell you location location location and so it's the combination of things we must do easier to open business easier to operate business getting people back out because we're making our city safe getting people back on our subway system to get back in these office spaces that's all the combination so we could change this dynamic of our retail space is not being used how are you well we're doing since he started we're still just since he started here's what here's what we here's what we did and the reason why we did what we did uh number one i spoke with uh councilman lincoln wrestler who's going to sit down with omb and um other um stakeholders uh here here's what when we looked at all of our agencies we stated can you spend the money you know what's preventing you from spending the money that we allocated what has happened historically is that we kept a large sum of money on the books of our agencies that they were not going to spend during our fiscal year and so we went in and say are you going to be able to spend the money we don't want to just have a padded book of state and we allocated x number of dollars but you're not going to spend during this fiscal year if they told us yes we can spend it in this fiscal year we could get the shovel in the ground we did not touch it when it came out to the bq bqe they were unable to spend the money during this fiscal year we are streamlining um how our agencies are spending money again it's too bureaucratic all of those agencies that are involved and doing these capital projects is taking too long if the agencies involved have been able to spend the money we will make sure that money is available to be spent but there's no reason of walking around with money in your pocket that you're not spending or you're not using that just made no sense and i really commend a jock um b person who realized that we got a streamlining the process we must make it easier but we also must make sure money allocated for this fiscal year it needs to be needs to be spent or the process needs to start Lincoln and i are going to sit down with the agencies and um b to see if we need to put the money in because they can actually spend it we want the project done but we also want to do the entire stretch it's not just about one part of the bqe we have winsbird we have sunset park it's about all of those communities must use this opportunity to rethink that stretch of roadway yes yes we're never going to do anything that is going to jeopardize the structural safety or the soundness of the bqe we're not going to do that we're uh dr fissone we get very angry with you you say we're out of the pandemic okay we're not out of the pandemic you know we are we're telling people mask up vaccine booster that's right you know you don't want him to be angry with you on that so yes commercial rents and the increase in commercial rents is an issue and we need to really make it affordable for our small mom and pops businesses but oftentimes we also think about commercial landlords we think about the large landlords but there are a lot of mom and pops that own two families and a commercial establishment so when we start making these decisions we need to factor in the little guy we can't lump in the little guy and lady into the large conglomerates so as we make these decisions we must do that these decisions with them in mind as well i'm hoping the state and some of our partners here in the business community look at how do we do this together we learn through the pandemic we need each other we need each other to come up with real ways of how do we don't hurt each other as we get back operated in our city well the devil is in the details and i need to look at exactly what we are saying because again if you just do a broad swipe you're going to take up many of those small property owners but i keep saying over and over again we have to also focus on small property owners and so the devil devil is in the details and i won't just openly say i'm a supporter bill i need to see exactly what that bill is saying okay