 I have the privilege of being the CEO at Maimonides, and on behalf of Maimonides, Douglas Jablon, Alizaz, the Maimonides Department of Volunteer and Student Services, we welcome all of you today. Maimonides has been doing this summer youth program for 25 years. We have over 4,000 graduates from this program. We are the largest employer in Brooklyn, the largest healthcare provider, and we have great commitment to this program because what we see in it and the mayor is driving forward is that we have nothing more treasured than our youth, our future leadership, and this is a path into productive working life, into the economy, into citizenship, and in this case into healthcare, which is a giving profession, a caring profession. And as we will hear, the mayor has made an extraordinary commitment recognizing the value of this program. So we're excited to have him and others here today. And before I hand it over, I just want to say that we do nothing alone. And as an example, some of our partners that have been essential in this are the Department of Youth and Community Development and some of the providers, the Center for Family Life, the Chinatown Manpower Project, the Chinese American Planning Council for Brooklyn and Manhattan, the Council of Jewish Organizations of Flatbush, and many others. And so with that, I want to welcome Mayor Adams. I want to welcome Commissioner Howard. I want to welcome Speaker Adams. And I want to hand it over to Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright. Thank you. Thank you so much, Kenneth. Thank you so much for your steadfast commitment to young people. Memodities is an example for all businesses. As you said, you're the largest employer in this community. And you are, have been doing this for 25 years. And so we want to really grow and expand all of our private sector employers to follow your lead that you've set. So thank you. Today is a celebratory day. Congratulations to all these young people. The mayor will be here shortly, so we're going to move around the speaking a little bit so we can make sure that we have the appropriate people speaking at the right time. I want to just say that when I joined this administration in January, the mayor was very clear. He wanted to invest in our young people. The commitment to go upstream was the biggest commitment he wanted this administration to make. And as we were looking at the summer, we wanted to make sure coming out of COVID-19 that we had the most and best and biggest opportunities for young people. So a promise was made to increase historically summer youth employment, and that promise has been kept. And we are starting this week to show what that plan put in place. So 100,000 young people all across the city, the biggest in history, and some additional opportunities and improvements to the program. So thank you for all of the hard work that everyone put into this to make this happen. At this point, I would like to introduce our mayor, Eric Adams, and our leader in this effort. Thank you. Thank you. And the irony of the moment is that when I leave here, I'm going to back to Rikers Island to speak with a group of young people who did not have these opportunities. And that is why it's so profound that we take our administration upstream, because the goal is not to wait for young people falling in the river of despair and then spend countless number of dollars and hours and missed opportunities, but to go upstream and provide them the services that they deserve. And so I want to thank Kenneth Gibbs and the entire hospital staff here, even as Bob President, I remember the role you played during COVID-19, your entire team, and how responsive you were. You were to the community. But also I want to thank a real visionary on our team, Deputy Mayor Wright, for how she took a program and made it something new and something different. It's more than just going to get a paycheck. How does that experience transform you? So I really want to thank you, Deputy Mayor, for your vision on making sure this summer youth employment program was something that our young people could ensure that they could have a productive future. But before we get into the program, I want to just talk about the good news of COVID. As we head to hospital, the COVID data is showing that this administration, with a steady hand, has navigated us through the turbulent times of COVID-19. A formidable opponent, COVID-19 is a formidable opponent. And if you don't have the right partnerships, like we've developed with Speaker Adams, we like to say the Adams and Adams law firm, you know, making these right decisions is difficult to navigate this ship through these turbulent waters. And as of last week, hotel demands, they were at 747,000. New York has recovered 94% of the 2019 pre-pandemic demands. We are on course. New York City had the highest hotel occupancy among the top 25 markets. So we're leading the way. The Statue of Liberty, which is another indicator of visitorships, has recovered 80% of its pre-pandemic levels. So people are coming to New York to see the lady in the harbor and enjoy what the city has to offer. Times Square Weekly and Weakened Average Foot Traffic exceeded 2019 averages. And they have a high watermark since 2019 of 445,000 people in Times Square on Saturday. New York City and Company raised its forecast last month of the number of tourists. We're now protected to receive 56 million compared to only 33 million in 2021. We're moving in the right direction. They set a record for tourism in 2019. We set a record for tourism and we're going to get close to that this year. And that's in addition to the 85,000 new jobs that have been created since January 1st. So I just think that as we talk about some of youth employment, we want to also talk about the employment of the city. Our city is recovering. We made the right decisions and we will continue to do so. We're not out of the woods yet dealing with COVID. That's why we need the partnerships here at the hospitals and how we continue to evolve our way of getting testing and vaccines and medicine to those who are in need. But switching back to why we're here today, we're talking about some of youth employment. And if we want our young people to strive for a better city or better life, we have to create better opportunities. And that's the goal of this administration. And what I'm hearing from parents that COVID has had a devastating impact on our young people. Many of them are sitting isolated at home. Many of them miss critical years of communicating and interacting with each other. We thought it was a hard impact on adults. But just imagine missing your prom, missing your football practice or your team sports, not being able to interact with your friends and family, but just basically isolated, playing video games or being restricted to moving outside. We have to acknowledge that and we must do everything possible to make up for lost time. They're forgotten how to communicate and engage in a very real way. And some of youth employment is going to allow us to move this into another level. And what our young people need now is a future that they can see. Future that they can believe in and not the pessimism that COVID-19 brought to our city and our country. And it's a future which they belong and where they can make a difference in a real way. This year's New York City Summer Youth Employment Program is providing New York City's youth an opportunity to learn and make a difference in the world in a historical way. As Deputy Mayor Wright acknowledged, over 100,000 summer youth employment jobs are something that many of the advocates have been pushing for for so many years and we got it done. We accomplished that. From July 5th to the 19th, they are interning at places like this amazing hospital, NYPD, the highest number of summer youth employment in the NYPD since the history of this program. You're talking about building relationship between public safety and young people. This is what we're doing. They're going to be at the parks and other areas as well. In the private sector, they're learning from places like Google and other technology companies on how to be prepared for the business of the future. But the best part about it, and I'm sure many of our summer youth were saying, they're getting paid. They're going to make some money, some mullahs, some cash, some dineros. Whatever language you say, they're happy to get it. And as we know from past experiences, those who go into careers with summer youth employment, they continue to move in those careers. Of my understanding, we have a young lady who has went through this hospital and now thinking about going to medical school, being exposed, feels like healthcare and nursing, which have been so important, especially during COVID as we deal with the nursing shortage that we are experiencing. And I want to really give a real shout out to the New York State Nurses Association and 1199, they're providing such a service for these young people and a service for our city every day. They're partners in ensuring our healthcare moving in the right direction. The experiences of SYEP is only one half of the equation, where, yes, we're providing paid jobs for young people for careers and moving to an upstream solution. But we're doing something else. We secured $216 million in baseline funding, baseline funding. So this means every year these children are not going to have to wonder that they are going to be employed during the summer months, but it's going to be a continuation of this funding throughout the years. But we're doing something else in this initiative. We're going after those children that are in higher needs, children who are having careers or lives like I had as a child. We set aside 13,000 slots for youth living in NYCHA, highest level in history. An additional spot for foster care, many of our foster care children are slipping through the cracks, so we're going after them to make sure they don't. Those children who are living in insecure houses, students with disabilities, students in DOE transfer schools, and all receiving public assistance. This makes a total of 20,000 slots for young New Yorkers who need these opportunities the most, up from 13,000. Additional 7,000 slots we're targeting for young people who need this exposure, this experience, and this financial support as well. But there's more to it as well. Not only are we going to pay our children, our young people to $15 an hour, but we're also, which I really want to thank Deputy Mayor Wright for doing, we are going to make sure that our children learn about financial literacy, how to build credit, how to budget, what's the W-2 form, how to interact in the office space. We're going to teach them mindfulness, we're going to teach them self-care, we're going to teach them how to interact in a business environment. As we state now, 60% of the youth that participate in S-Y-E-P have enrolled in direct deposit. I didn't enroll in direct deposit until I was adult, long into receiving my paychecks. They're learning early. And then we're going to take them outside of their living environment. We're going to take them to Wall Street, take them to the UN, take them to City Hall to see how we get stuff done. We're going to expose them to this entire city instead of allowing them to believe that their block is the globe, know the globe goes beyond what their neighborhood shows them every day. We know the best learning experience happens in a traditional classroom setting, but the sterilized environment of a classroom is not the only educational experience. It goes beyond that and we want to show them the various forms and ways to interact and further explore their possibilities and what they can offer to the city. The city is diverse. As you look at the young people who are here today that's with us, it's a diverse city and we want them to experience that diversity as they evolve as young adults. Living in a city of this size with this level of diversity, we know we have to rely on each other and that's what we do. So we care about our young people. We care about our parks. We care about our public safety and public transportation. Our public schools and we care about the good energy that they're going to bring to this conversation and this experience. And our young people, as people say, are our most valuable assets, but we have not invested in those assets the way we should have throughout the years. This administration is stating we will do so. We will show our young people that we value their talents. We value their voices. We value their experiences. That the present moment is one of opportunity. We're going to seize the moment and we're going to provide the opportunity and the skills. It's far too many young people to have not had those opportunities. And those are the young people I'm going to visit today on Rikers Island. But as I start my day off with optimism of what we can do, I'm going to bring that energy across the bridge on an island that has been an island that was filled with despair for far too many young people. We can get this right, New York. And we're saying today, by investing in our young people, we got it right on this end and we're going to continue to get it right throughout the years. And so I want to thank all of our partners, particularly the speaker, who helped us carve out of this bill and the funding allocation to make sure we look towards our young people. With the unprecedented investments and young people in this budget during these difficult times, this was a budget for families and you had to have the right partner to accomplish that. So thank you very much. And we're going to get to work. Thank you so much, Mayor Adams. Next up, your partner in the law firm, Speaker Adrian Adams. Thank you so much, Deputy Mayor. Good morning, everyone. Good morning to my partner, Mayor Eric Adams. Of course, our wonderful Deputy Mayor, Sheena Wright. Commissioner Howard, for bringing us together today to celebrate historic investments in New York City's youth. I want to thank Mamadi's president and CEO, Kenneth Gibbs, and your entire team for hosting us this morning. Well, summer is here. And for our city's young people, this is a time of fun, relaxation, traveling for some, and hopefully continued learning for all. Summer is also an opportunity to gain work experience, new skills, and financial earning through a summer job that promotes career building. In the six decades that the summer youth employment program has been around, the City of New York has never, ever funded 100,000 slots until now. Thanks to the investment of over $79 million in the budget, 100,000 of New York City's young people ages 14 to 24 have the opportunity to work for a local business, a nonprofit, or governmental agency. We're here right now at Mamadi's Medical Center because this hospital is one of our largest S-Y-E-P sites in the city, with over 90 participants who will be learning, contributing, and picking up new skills this summer. We congratulate all of you. For many of our young people, this will be their first job, which is a valuable and meaningful experience that can shape their future careers. Mamadi's is a model for how our city's institutions can and should play a role in developing, preparing, and mentoring our city's youth. I think all of our S-Y-E-P providers and work sites for their participation. New York City's business and civic institutions are vital to helping foster the development of careers. We need the involvement of even more diverse employers from all sectors if we want to enhance the scale and impact of this program for our young people. The benefits of summer jobs are numerous, which is why back in February, long before budget negotiations began in earnest, Mayor Adams and I announced the expansion of S-Y-E-P to its highest level in history. We know this one of the smartest. We know this is one of the smartest and most impactful investments our city can make, not just for our students and families, but for all New Yorkers. Expanding S-Y-E-P for our young people contributes to public safety because the safest communities are the ones with an abundance of resources, investments, and opportunities. Summer and year-round jobs help ensure our youth, who are the future of New York City, have positive pathways to advance their career well-being and future opportunities. This investment in our youth is especially timely. The violence experienced in our city and neighborhoods across the country call for proactive measures to support our communities. Our commitment to expand S-Y-E-P as well as to increase year-round jobs for our youth is how we advance public safety in New York. I'm proud that we're taking steps to support and uplift our young people through programs like S-Y-E-P. This should continue to be our priority. By providing these historic investments for our city's youth, this budget is delivering what our communities have asked for. The Council is focused on expanding and promoting solutions to our city's many challenges, and we will partner to support all New Yorkers. I look forward to continuing to work with everyone here today to provide more opportunities for our young people, because investing in them means ensuring our city and our future is secure. We will continue to do our very best by our students to ensure their prosperity, their education, and their future, because, yes, young people, you are our future and the future of New York City. So thank you again, Mayor Adams. Thank you, Deputy Mayor Wright. Thank you for your entire administration. Thank you to my colleagues in government, Mamanides Medical Center, S-Y-E-P employers all across our great city who support the career development of our young people, and especially the 100,000 S-Y-E-P participants who we do this work for. We want your summer to be engaging, fruitful, and productive. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Speaker Adams. And while I appreciate the appreciation from the mayor and others, it really, the DYCD team is amazing. We went from 75,000 to 100,000. The administrative, the work, the innovation, the community-based organizations, incredible did an incredible, incredible job. And I'm so proud and pleased that they have an incredible new leader, Commissioner Keith Howard. I'd like to bring you to the podium. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. And I also want to thank the mayor, especially for his forward vision and creating the summer youth expansion. As everyone has indicated, we went from 75,000 to 100,000 S-Y-E-P participants and amazing accomplishment. I also want to thank the speaker and your team, and of course, Mr. Gibbs and his hospital for providing the slots that are needed to give the young people such a great experience. But I also want to take my team. I want to thank my team, my DYCD team. And if you could just stand up and just be acknowledged. Come on, don't get shy, you worked hard at this. I want to thank you for all the hard work that you've done so far. Mr. Mayor, one of the things that I also want to mention is the $11 million investment in metro cards. What is equivalent to 3,860,000 rides that we will be giving the young people this year. Very, very significant investment. So I have a special connection to the hospital because my mother-in-law was here and was treated. Unfortunately, she did pass away. But the excellent service, Mr. Gibbs, that you provided and your staff provided was exceptional to me and my family. So I really thank you. Healthcare is at the core of my belief because my mother was a nurse in the ER for 30 years. So she retired at the VA hospital in Kingsbridge in the Bronx. So I watched her as she treated and as she enjoyed what she did and the work that she did and the work that she accomplished. So I just want to say that I'm having a really good experience here because I'm feeding off the energy and the energy of the young people as well. But one of the things that I want to highlight is one of our SYEP participants. And that's Tiffany Lu. You can just step out. Mr. May, Tiffany Lu participated in 2013 assisting in the volunteer office. Today she is a third-year resident in internal medicine at this hospital. So her success, along with everyone else who will be coming through this hospital, is a key to the investment that SYEP has done for the young people. Please give Tiffany another round of applause as we call her Dr. Lu. So I'm going to give you some words of advice, young people, that my mother gave to me when I was a SYEP participant. Save your money. Practice financial discipline. Give $50 to the household to help with the bills. And more importantly, and as the mayor has stated, have fun. Learn. Have fun. Thank you. Thank you so much, Commissioner Howard. We all remember our SYEP days. And congratulations, Tiffany. And I am so happy to introduce one of the most important speakers today, a current intern and future doctor, Stacey Monteluz. Did I say that right? OK, Stacey. Good morning. I want to start by saying thank you to Mayor, right? Deputy Mayor Adams. No, that's Mayor Adams. Deputy Mayor Adams. Mr. Gibbs, Mr. Jablans, Mrs. Zad, and all got a year today. I first came to my madness as a volunteer to an internship with International High School at Prospect Heights in March, 2018. I worked in Pediatric Suspecialty Office. I assisted with administrative work and developed my clerical skill by organizing patient file, conducting appointment with my telephone call, and preparing mailings. After having such a great experience, I selected my managers as my work site, one chosen for SYEP that same summer. I worked in maternity unit in the following summer. I worked in labor and delivery. I greeted patient delivery amenities and made sure all of their needs and concern were communicated accurately with care to the nursing staff. The nurses make me feel like a true part of the team and took me under the reins. Due to my madness dedication to education, I was able to be a research intern in emergency medicine. I also shadowed a physician assistant in internal medicine. My combined experience at my manager strengthened my desire to work in health care. I recently graduated from Brooklyn College with a bachelor of science in biology, while minoring in neuroscience. This summer, I will be working in general surgery and look forward to contributing to excelling patient care and once again become part of the health care team. I am also preparing to take the MCAT and hope to be a new surgeon. I will not be as inspired or prepared for my future without the combining effort of my managers, DUICD, and SYEP program. Your partnership provides students from all backgrounds their abilities not only become part of the members of the workforce, but to prepare us to try for our goal while giving us the skill to be successful. Thank you. The indicators are pointing the right way. The city at the same time appears to be entering what looks like a new wing, the infection rate at 14% yesterday. This comes after the administration removed that color coded COVID alert system. So I was wondering why was that color coded alert system removed number one and number two? Given this new wave, is there any new plans from the public health perspective to fight back against this increase in cases? Every morning, as we indicated, every morning we do our briefings and what this administration won't do, we won't remain stagnant as COVID continues to evolve. A new variant, new variants are finding their way into the city and as they come about, we continue to pivot and shift, a term I use all the time. The color coded system was not fitting the new wave and the new variant as COVID continued to shift. We're now looking at and bringing in experts from all across the globe and finding out how do we continue to prepare New Yorkers and Americans on dealing with the pivoting and shifting of COVID. Our goal is to make sure whatever we put in place is going to stem the infections, keep down our hospitalization and most importantly, keep down those who died from COVID. When we look at our numbers, we are at a good stable place. The numbers are ticking up according to our healthcare professionals this morning but we're not at the place while hospitals are being over impacted and we're not at a place where it's stopping our growth in the city. So we are continuing to monitor so we can make the right decisions. The color coded system, you think it was kind of a flawed mechanic to start with? I know you didn't really follow a lot of those recommendations because you were arguing that they were kind of... They weren't necessary. So was the color coded system just flawed? No, that's a great question. No, it wasn't a flaw. It impacted... It's almost as though you're using old weapons to fight a new war. The color coded system was fighting an old war and as COVID shifted, it became a new war. So we're not gonna hold on to something that's an old weapon merely because we had it. No, we're gonna create new weapons to fight this new war. So it was good for the old war of the variants we were fighting. It was not good for the war that we're currently fighting and I think it was brilliant on a part of our doctors and medical professionals to state we're not gonna remain stagnant when we're fighting a new war. Okay, Liu, I'm sorry, the way? I wanted to follow up with you about the class size. Class size? So Senator Liu said during a community education council meeting yesterday that... There's a lot of echo here, so you're gonna have to give me that Brooklyn voice. So I wanted to follow up with you about the class size bill. Yes. Senator Liu was speaking at a community education council meeting last night and he was saying that he has confidence that the government was signing and that it's not as urgent as we all hope though. Yeah, the team is speaking with the UFT and others. The goal is we believe in smaller class size and we need to be clear. The union contract calls for, I think, around 32 students per classroom in that area, around that dollar. We're down to 21.5 because we're hemorrhaging students in the Department of Education. And so what we're our position is let's make sure we reduce class sizes in those schools that are in need of smaller classes because they're hurting academically. And so we're still in conversation with the UFT and with our lawmakers and we believe we're gonna get to a good place and I think the governor is excited about that as well. And so we're looking to make sure we can come out with a win-win and I like Councilman, like State Senator Liu, I believe we're gonna get there. She's given us opportunity to further talk and negotiate to make sure we can find the right level because this is hundreds of millions of dollars that we're talking about during the time when again our class sizes are decreasing. We are hemorrhaging students in the Department of Education and we want to make sure that we use our dollars correctly. The mayor on Friday history grabbed a knife to defend himself against an ex-con who's stalked into behind his counter in Hamilton Heights. Do you think it was right that Manhattan DA threw the book and even charged him with murder in what appeared to be a self-defense and also setting a bail of $250,000? The DA has a non-mandate where we cannot dictate or mandate how he determines how he's going to prosecute crimes. That is up to the district attorney and I'm not going to second guess the district attorney for his actions. With that said, my heart goes out for that hard-working honest New Yorker that was doing his job in his place of business where a person came in and went behind a counter and attacked him. And my heart goes out to that employee who was in the store doing his job. And so I am hoping that we take all of that into consideration as this hard-working New Yorker was doing his job and somewhat aggressively went behind the counter to attack him. So the DA has his job, I have my job as the mayor of the city of New York and as the mayor of the city of New York, I support hard-working innocent people that are doing their job. And I saw him as a hard-working innocent New Yorker that a person went behind the counter and attacked him. Can you talk about the monkey pops? Yes. There's been some issues with the vaccine rollout and your health missionaries having an event about that today. Can you talk about the vaccine rollout and just in general, should New Yorkers be alarmed at this uptake in monkey pops cases? We are, you know, the White House is doing a great job of giving us the vaccines that we need. I believe that the health department, the Department of Health, the mental hygiene, Dr. Fassan, in his briefing each morning, he gives us a, basically a forecast on monkey pops and we are managing this issue and we're taking it serious. We are not, you know, just ignoring it. And so we got an additional, I believe, 6,000 vaccines and we're going to make sure that next week we should be getting more and as we get them, we're filling up and making sure that we get them out the door right away. We had a number of appointments and I believe that the doctor and his team was doing a great job. There was a glitch by the third-party vendor that created the website, but we pivot and shifted and we're getting the vaccines out the door. For New Yorkers. No, I believe that to me, be prepared and not panic. I say that over and over again. We say that with COVID, we say with any other crises that we're facing, we must be prepared and not panic and we have the right professionals that are doing the job. Yes. The hurricane season is upon us. What is the city going to help with the flooding and testing that hasn't come out of the area in the last few hours from here? I, you know, what is going on today that everybody's soaking so low? It's our New York Brooklyn voice. I spoke with, we had a meeting and a briefing with the Office of Emergency Management and our goal is to, number one, look at the basement apartments, also look at how we are preparing for water drainage, but we need help from Albany also. Albany must assist us in the legalization process of basement apartments so we could assist them. That is one aspect of dealing with the flooding season, but our Office of Emergency Management, they're on top of this. The briefing was extremely impressive and in fact, I'm going to have them do a public briefing so we can see exactly our preparation of dealing with storm season that is here. And, you know, New Yorkers know the storm season of, yes he is, is different from the storm season of today. It was not high tides that impacted us. It was rain, the rain, the level of rain was at a level where our sewer system was unable to handle and we're going to make sure that we're prepared in this coming season. But Mother Nature's unpredictable and we have to pivot and shift with Mother Nature with her unpredictable aspects. Thank you. Last week you mentioned that you were going to meet with us that high in D.A. to discuss, you know, the appearance that former Mayor Rudy Giuliani had falsely reported a crime. I was just wondering, did you get a chance to meet with the D.A. and how did that talk go? No, I said I was going to reach out to him and yes, I did reach out to him. I communicated with the Staten Island District Attorney that I believe it was unfair for a New Yorker to spend 24 hours in jail for an offense that he did not commit. It was clearly from the videotape of this gentleman, Pat on the back, it's not an assault and I communicated that with the District Attorney and as I stated, the District Attorney has a non-mandate. He will make the determination of how to handle a case or proceed with the case. I was happy that the gentleman was released on his own from the court and I just believe that we should not have innocent New Yorkers spend 24 hours in a jail for a crime they did not commit. I'm not going to share the private conversation with the District Attorney. Thank you.