 And women who did the amazing clean up, this is what you see in front of you is the before. And this is direct evidence of what the precision cleaning crew can do. And with the historic investment, part of which goes to increasing precision cleaning, you're going to see more of this before and after throughout the city. But the before gives you the graphic and disproportionate effect of what illegal dumping does to our neighborhoods and our communities. And the after tells us what we all deserve, which is clean streets, clean communities. And with the investment that's happening with this year's budget, DSNY's strongest will get the job done. Because it is time to clean up the city. In a city where there's so many opinions, we're united on one thing. We are a mess and we need to clean up now. So thank you, thank you for the contribution of the men and women who work for sanitation. They now are going to have the resources that they need. But I do want to just point out one thing, they can't do it alone. We all make trash, so we all have the power to keep it off of our streets. That means feed the can, sweep your street, and property owners for you. That means the sidewalk in front of your property as well as 18 inches out into the street. That also is your responsibility to keep clean. And continuously and on a daily basis, shame others into doing the same. So that together with the resources, our strong DSNY forces and city partners in everyday men and women doing their part to take litter off the street. Our city will be a cleaner and stronger one in the days and weeks to come. So with that, I'd like to turn it over to our Mayor, Mayor Adams, who gets stuff done and his top priority is keeping our streets clean and safe. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Deputy Mayor. And I'm happy to be joined here with both Commissioner Tish and my good friend, Councilman Salamanca with my future Mayor. This one's going to be elected pretty soon. We're talking about before and after, but there's also another before and after that the city is going to eventually realize. Before my administration and after my administration. We're not only going to deal with those, look at when someone illegally dumps and clean it up because that's a waste of our time to keep cleaning up a mess that people intentionally create. We're going after the dumpers also. We're going to make sure with a few little plans we have up our sleeves. We're going to identify those habitual dumpers. Trust me, it's a small number of people who believe that they can dump like this and get away with it. And we're going to target them and make it no longer a profitable experience to dump anywhere in our city. Councilman Salamanca identified these locations. He was willing to put the resources in as a local council member and we zeroed in on it. If we uplift Councilman Salamanca's district, we're going to see that uplifting our entire city. Because many of the ills that we are facing, the denial, the neglect, the not listening to the local electors on the ground. It is really personified here in the South Bronx. And that's why I'm spending so much time here in the South Bronx because I know that it is the answer to how we could really allow it to cascade throughout our entire city of the improvements that we deserve and we are looking for. And this is just a great day for neighborhoods. The deputy mayor said it right, no matter where we go. People are talking about trash. Trash on our streets, trash on our roadways. Just look at the difference of that cleanup from the photo near the George Washington Bridge. I didn't take this photo on my way to Jersey, by the way, I live in Brooklyn. So but when you look at just the difference of our greenery, dirty streets just really impact everything we do. And so we heard the complaints loud and clear, and we are responding to the complaints on the ground. Because a clean city is a city that we are really concerned about. Too long, these areas have been ignored, we are not going to do that today. We're putting those conditions in the bins. These trash bins are going to be put in place in our city and we're going to ensure the actually emptying of the trash bins. We're making investments in cleanliness in the city that has never before been carried out. When you look at the adopted budget, we're putting our money exactly where the concerns are. 22 million in funding for litter basket service, with baskets like these to be empty, 50,000 times more than pre-administration. 50,000 times more. You've all noticed it, baskets overrunning, overrun, we realize it, people spill over. So we're telling the public, do your job, put it in a bin. They go to the bin, they put it in, but the bin is overflowing. So we have to be consistent with our message and that's why we are putting the money in to have these bins emptied more often. In this case, more means less. Less on our streets, less on our curbs, less in our community. So overflowing the smelly trash on the sidewalk would help us eradicate or alleviate this problem to the point of eradication. We're also funding $7.5 million and I love this precision cleaning initiative to erase illegal dumping. Precision policing, precision cleanliness, precision dumping. We have to use taxpayers' dollars more, and precision attacking the problem is utilizing the tax dollars better. And $4.5 million for cleaning of vacant lots, allowing a return to pre-pandemic staffing levels at the Department of Sanitation, a lot cleaning unit. These lots, for the most part, are in underserved communities. We're zeroing in, we are going to allow the light cleaning unit to go in and do the cleanup that's necessary. And so this funding will stop the vacant lots across the city that are largely located in traditional low income communities. They become dumping grounds, and we want to just use our precision approach to look at these lots. So we know clean streets are vital to the vibrant neighborhoods and to the city's economic recovery. They go hand in hand. People don't want a dirty city, don't want a dirty place to live. We want it to make it easier, safer, and healthier for our entire city. So we put our money behind the strongest through our budget. Commissioner Tish has been clear of she wants to do it in a precise and precision way to make sure that we can reach the goals that we want. Some is here, we want our streets to be as clean as the New Yorkers who walk on the streets. And I'm really excited about this announcement. This is not a sexy project, but it is a clear project that impacts the quality of life of New Yorkers. Y'all well done. I want to thank the strongest who are here for the job that they're doing. I'm continuously encouraged by their commitment and dedication. Sometimes we don't see you guys, but I'll tell you something. We'll miss you if you're not there. So we thank you for the job well done. Commissioner. Next, we're going to hear from Commissioner Jesse Tish, one of the most excited people in the entire city about trash. Thank you, Mayor Adams and Deputy Mayor Joshi. As most of you know, historically, the sanitation department has had three core functions, curbside collection, snow removal, and cleaning. But at the beginning of the pandemic, the budget for one of those functions, cleaning, was completely decimated through cuts. And anyone who looked outside could see the difference immediately. The numbers don't lie. February of 2020, before the cuts, there were 58 311 complaints city-wide for overflowing litter baskets. By July of that year, only one month after the budget cuts, that number, ballooned to 790 complaints about overflowing litter baskets in a single month. I am a data-driven person, and the numbers tell a shocking story. But they also show that our cleaning strategies work when we have the resources at our disposal to deploy them. And now we will, effective July 1st. In the adopted budget, Mayor Adams and the city-wide council made an unprecedented investment in restoring the cleanliness of our streets. They have given us the resources that we need to clean up our city, the way our neighbors deserve, to the tune of $40.6 million. Over the past few weeks, we have been busy developing operational plans to put this funding to its best and highest. And certainly, it's most important that we have the resources that we provide to its best and highest, and certainly its most equitable use. And I will describe those plans briefly now. First is Litter Basket Service. As the mayor said, $22 million will go to providing the highest amount of litter basket service ever run in the city of New York. That is 50,000 more basket collections on an average week, which will translate to significantly fewer overflowing litter baskets and meaningfully less trash on the streets. To be clear, every litter basket city-wide will be serviced more frequently with the largest increases in commercial corridors in all five boroughs. After July 1st, if you see an overflowing litter basket, it will be much more likely to be caused by basket misuse, i.e., someone improperly putting residential or commercial trash in the basket rather than lack of service. Second is our Precision Cleaning. As the mayor also mentioned, $7.5 million will go to more than tripling our precision cleaning efforts, adding guaranteed daily special cleaning service to the neighborhoods with the greatest need. As part of this initiative, all 13 of the lowest-scoring districts on the Cleanliness Scorecard will get a daily litter patrol team. And we will still have room to deploy an additional 16 teams a day to address street conditions in neighborhoods in all five boroughs as required. Third is Lack Cleaning. $4.9 million will go to Lack Cleaning, where it will be used to clean eyesore properties across the city, especially those impacted by the scourge of illegal dumping. Two messages about illegal dumping. First, to our communities. We got you. We will come clean it up. And with this budget, we will clean it up better and faster than ever before. Next to the illegal dumpers out there. Just last week, I was testing out a new camera we had deployed, and easily found a commercial dumper leaving his waist in a lot in Brooklyn. Our Sanitation Enforcement Division tracked him down, and now he's got a $4,000 summons to deal with. If you dump on our communities, we will come after you, just like we came after him. Not because we want to. We certainly don't. But because we have to protect our neighbors and our neighborhoods. Fourth is rat mitigation. $4.8 million will go toward rat mitigation in New York City, which includes deploying new rat-proof litter baskets, as well as doing the design and engineering work to frame a unified city approach to containerization. Earlier this year, we announced a five borough pilot to test out containerization. These containers are in place in Manhattan and will soon be in Brooklyn and Staten Island and then Queens and the Bronx. And let's not forget that all of this is on top of the restoration of full street sweeping and the brand new sweeping of bike lanes, which goes into effect on July 5th. So after the July 4th holiday, whatever it says on the signs goes. I am very confident that all of this will make a real noticeable difference in every borough and every neighborhood in our city. This summer, our neighborhoods are poised to come back cleaner and our city stronger. Thank you so much to Mayor Adams, to Councilmember Salamanca and the entire City Council for such a bold investment in this essential service. Thank you, Commissioner Tish. Next we'll hear from Councilmember Salamanca, who is the catalyst behind the Eyes on the Lots, which is coupled with the sign you see behind you, is part of our multi-prong enforcement tool to get after illegal dumpers. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Good morning. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Thank you once again for coming to the South Bronx. I have to tell you, I've worked with previous mayors and I've never had a mayor come to the South Bronx and help us address issues in the time that you've been mayor. So I want to thank you really for your commitment and really paying attention to the outer boroughs. I represent two business improvement districts. Port Morris is one and the Hunts Point Community is another one. And unfortunately, one of the main concerns and issues that we have in our communities is that we have businesses who choose not to pay a private holder to come pick up their garbage and they choose to dump their garbage in our communities. We also have individuals who choose to take furniture and equipment and put it in these trailers so that they can ship them overseas. And many times when you drive through these corridors, what you see is illegal dumping. You see garbage, couches, beds, just plain garbage. And we are tired. New Yorkers are tired. And in this budget that we're in now, for fiscal year 22, I worked with sanitation and my office was able to allocate about $180,000 where we're purchasing about 15 surveillance cameras that we're focusing throughout the South Bronx, just the cashiest individuals who are illegally dumping. We want clean streets, but the community has to do their part. And so if you see something, say something. If you know that there's an area where there's immediate illegal dumping, call 311. If you can take pictures or you can get the license plate numbers, please call 311. Call my office. We want to help. We want clean streets. In Spanish, my name is Rafael Salamanca Jr. I'm very happy that the mayor and his administration are here and I want to thank the Sanitation Department who are always here helping to ensure that our streets are clean. One of the problems that I have in my community is that I have what is called Business Improvement Districts. I have one here in Port Morris and another one in Hunts Point. And many of these businesses don't want to pay, to pay private companies so that they come and look for their garbage. So what they prefer to do is to look for places like this to dump their garbage. I'm happy that in the last budget, I have put $180,000 in the budget working with the Sanitation Department to ensure that we put cameras throughout the entire district to take these people who are dumping garbage. But we as a community have to be better. If we know someone, if we know a company who is dumping garbage in a location, call 311. Call my office so that we can get them out of it. We as a community want our streets to be clean but we have to be our part. Thank you for your blessing. Open for any questions? You know, there was something I was thinking about which was a good point that the commissioner made going after those who illegally dump repeatedly. That is our focus. We want to focus on those who are repeated dumpers to make sure we send the right message. We'll put to any questions on topic. Yeah, we can get you a list of the 13 neighborhoods that scored the worst on the cleanliness scorecards. You know, the scorecards are updated quarterly and it's consistently the same neighborhoods that are the lowest scores, but we'll provide you a full list right after this. Also on topic for the commissioner, I did hear you say you'd be significantly increasing the litter basket collection. Did you also mention more baskets themselves because what we hear from people is, yeah, I'd love to dispose of my trash but there's no pen on the corner. We hear it all the time. Yep, so two things on that. The first is we are developing a brand new litter basket for New York City. These baskets, the mesh ones that you see have been around since like the 60s or the 70s, they've been around a really long time and notably, they are not rat-proof. They have holes all over them. That is like a part of the fundamental part of the design. And we are developing a rat-proof litter basket and some of the funding for rat mitigation is going to go to replacing the mesh litter baskets with a new rat-proof litter basket of the future. That's the first thing. The second thing is historically, the city has had about 23,000 litter baskets citywide and that number hasn't changed, doesn't change very often because of the collection costs associated with servicing them. What I have asked my staff to do, because we get requests for new litter baskets all the time, what I have asked my staff to do is take a new fresh look at what the optimal number of litter baskets are and where they should be placed. So I am very open to adding to the number of litter baskets in the city because I have been on tours with council members and walk-through neighborhoods where you are 100% right, there should be a litter basket in a location. That doesn't mean we will agree on every location, but certainly we are open to adding litter baskets in the city. Mr. Mayor, somebody from your staff said earlier that the graffiti up there, this is the MTA's responsibility up on the trellises. Has the city talked to them about trying to kind of get cleaned up up there? I mean, you guys got this whole area. I was also wondering when the photos were taken. Yeah, two things. Number one, going back to what the commissioner said about these baskets. These little prongs here, these little holes here that they designed, these are rat steps. I watched these rats climb up these baskets, you know, so we've assisted them, you know, in this design. So we have to get a new model. Let's see. We are going to roll out a complete graffiti initiative. We want to partner with the city council. Too much graffiti. It's out of control. We saw it on the subway system during the 80s, and we took a immediate clean up approach. You know, you allow one tag, it continues to grow to another tag. And so when you look going down Atlantic Avenue, parts of the Bronx, there's just too much graffiti in our city. And we want a comprehensive approach on how to go after it. Partner with the MTA, partner with local store owners. We got it. This is unacceptable. This adds to the uncleanliness of our city. On the new little baskets, they're not designed yet, right? They're designed. And we are working now to have them manufactured. And so you will see them start to come on the streets of the city this year. And we're looking at the containers for garbage. We have to change the way we handle garbage in our city. Other countries are doing a better job. You know, plastic bags, even if there's mint smelling, plastic bags, don't stop rats. Those rats use it as perfume, you know? So we got to be more thoughtful on how we store and pick up garbage. And those are some of the things we're looking at. They're garbage out of their car windows, pushing to discourage that. No, no, you're right. Because if you look here, this is not illegal dumping. This is people driving onto the GW or coming across and just throwing their stuff out, you know? So we believe if we start doing our job, sending the right message and going back to not heavy-handed but really engaging and interacting with people about littering, you know, you're not supposed to litter. And so it's about a mindset, as you just stated, of everyday New Yorkers, this is our city. Sweep up in front of your house. Do all the small things to make sure that we are doing the right thing to match what government is doing. Yep, yep. Okay. So you guys... Yes? What is the city going to open? You know, roll out the welcome act the way the state is talking about doing for women in states where they cannot get abortions? Yes, we went to an H&H facility and, you know, to be honest, I was pleasantly surprised to see how H&H is playing a real role. People often think that it's the other clinics outside like Planned Parenthood, but H&H is doing a real good job. Certain things jumped off at me right away. Number one, we have to do a better job of broadcasting that you can come to H&H. You can come to a hospital with privacy because since it's a hospital, people don't know why you're going and you'll have the privacy that you want. Same days of care is given, someone can walk in and receive the necessary care and counseling. It was extremely impressive. And what I really enjoy seeing was the number of women who were assigned there. We're taking a real look at the certain places that it is imperative to have a person there that understands through language, through gender. And I saw there the level of comfort that other women were receiving from the women's staff there. It was overwhelmingly women and they just brought in extra care that sometimes is ignored. And I was excited about what I saw today and they've been preparing for five years on this Supreme Court ruling. For five years they've been preparing on how do we build the infrastructure so we're here for those women who come into the city for looking for services. The women here know they can have the services and those who are coming into our city. You'll be able to designate public areas such as the subway system, buses, trains, and parks as sensitive areas where the concealed carry ban will remain intact. What sort of legal challenges does the city anticipate? The governor, we've asked her to call for a special session to go back and look at the legislation and we have to do this as a partnership because if we do it incorrectly we're going to open ourselves up for another ruling. We'll open ourselves up for a pause in what we're doing. So we want to coordinate with the cities, coordinate with our city councils, our local lawmaking bodies, and have the governor lead to charge on what new definition of sensitive locations should be because we have to get it right. If we get it wrong and try to go outside our scope we can put ourselves in a bad place. This is going to increase our labor. It's going to make it more challenging for police officers, court officers, non-sensitive locations. We're looking at how we can effectively minimize the damage that the Supreme Court has handed down. To apply them to subway systems, buses, parks, trains, those sorts of areas, are they what you want them sensitive areas? Our legal team is going to make that determination because we can't just classify something as a sensitive location. It must fit within the parameters of the ruling and so our legal teams are looking at that to come up with the appropriate way to define what a sensitive location is. We can now do government to buildings and certain things we can do, but trying to do an expanded definition is going to have to fall within the legal team's understanding of the ruling. Andrew. On that same page regarding the labor you mentioned, that's going to be a product of this Supreme Court ruling and the additional rules. What kind of policing strategies do you foresee are going to be needed here to enforce something like a sensitive area? It seems like it could be very antagonistic to try and go after that kind of thing. And I said before that this was keeping me up at night, you know, because you could only imagine, nothing changes now. And probably for the next, until the, it comes back down to a local court, but when it gets in full stride, a year from now, you know, a year and a half from now, and you start to see a substantial uptick in guns and people carrying guns. It's going to be hard, you know. We have to figure this out. And I spoke with the commissioner of knowing that you can be in Times Square and, you know, hundreds, thousands of people can carry a weapon in how do you police that? How do you police it in places that are not sensitive locations? We are figuring it out. We're going to get it right, but I am not going to try to downplay how this is going to really put us in a place that we have to use methods of policing. Because historically, if someone had a gun, approaching them and determining if they carry that gun legally, because we have very little carry permits. We may have had pistol, I mean, target permits, but we had very little carry permits. And so now, you know, everybody's carrying. Everyone will have the opportunity to carry. So the commissioner and her team, we're looking at how do we change our policing strategies to this new norm in our city. Let me tell you something. The Supreme Court really made America a very dangerous place, particularly in New York City. I just don't know what they were thinking about to allow this to happen. One thing for sure, they were not thinking about New York. You know. We talked one of the last times you were in the Bronx about talking to the Parks Commissioner coming up with creative solutions. It's supposed to be hot this week. How concerned are you that there might be a heightened risk of drownings without enough lifeguard, without enough tools open, what's going to be done? Well, and we're still leaving no stone unturned. We have a couple of creative ideas we're going to put in place to deal with this national problem. You know, I want to always emphasize that this is a national problem that we're facing. And so we are the Parks Commissioner and her team. We want to roll out and make sure that we can keep our beaches safe because we don't want to lose loved ones to drowning. That is something we don't want. So it's even if it's water safety really instructing young people doing a public relation campaign on our beaches of handing out information, engaging with parents to keep a close eye on their children. We're going to have to constantly have a partnership between the city, parental, oversight, peer groups, buddy systems. We want to address this national problem locally and we listened to one of our reporters that shared with us the other day. She's busy texting, but we took some of your ideas that you shared with us about using the radios, getting EMS, you know, engage with FDNY and our lifeguards. You know, so we got to do more, but you know, this is a real shortage. Fox is going to do an analysis of exactly what pools should be open. I think we're going to do an opening of a pool. We want... our public pools, they are considered to be the French Riviera for those communities that have to stay home. So, we want to open as many as possible, but it is a challenge.