 Haven, located on Community Board 9 in Queens. This is the 25th community conversation that we've hosted in New York City. That doesn't include the senior town halls and the youth town halls. Wood Haven is known for its diversity and community spirit, its strong sense of community as we see with the Wood Haven Bid and the Wood Haven Residence Block Association. Forest Park is the beautiful jewel of the community. There's a rich history here in Wood Haven. Nears Tavern was founded in 1829 and is one of the oldest bars in the United States. The owner of Nears, Lois and Gordon, is here with us today. Thank you. So I just wanted to thank everyone for coming out here today for addressing the issues that matter the most to you in the community. With first hour we spend here with community conversations. We don't want people coming wasting their time with a few people getting to ask a question of people feeling neglected. So we have this roundtable conversations with members of the mayor's office and NYPD at each table for one hour where your issues are jotted down and shared with a policymaker so your time is not wasted by coming out here today as well as note cards in front of you. If you fill out those note cards and your question is not asked we'll make sure to get back to you in a timely manner because it's important that we address your issues. And then right now we have the mayor of the city in New York and city agency commissioners along the dais to be able to best address the issues. So I'll be very brief. I just want to go through the dais of the folk and the people we have from the administration. Of course to my left we have the mayor of the city of New York Merrick Adams. I'm just going to ask everyone to hold all the applause and we'll go through the whole dais. We have the deputy mayor of health and human services and Williams Isom. We have the deputy mayor of strategic initiatives Anna Almanzar. We have the first deputy mayor's chief of staff Yume Katsaya. We have the deputy mayor of operation chief public realm Yating Liu. We have the NYPD deputy commissioner Mark Stewart. We have the department of education first deputy channel slur Dan Weisberg. Mayor's office of immigrant affairs commissioner manual Castro. Human rights commissioner Annabelle Palmer. Department of social services commissioner Molly Park. Health and health and hospitals corporation president CEO Dr. Mitchell Katz. Department of health general council Lisa Landau. Mayor's office of community mental health executive director Eva Wong. ACS first deputy commissioner Winette Sonder. DYCD deputy commissioner Denise Williams. And gender-based violence acting deputy commissioner Tessa Arazaqueta. Mayor's office of criminal justice first deputy commissioner Dirt Carolina Chavez. Department of finance director of outreach Kira Mahoney. Department of city planning executive director either Sue Chen. We have the mayor's office of people disabilities commissioner Christina Curry. To my right we have our esteemed assembly member Jennifer Rajkumar and esteemed council member Joanne Ariola. We have small business service commissioner Kevin Kim. We have DOT commissioner Edanus Rodriguez. We have chief of the department Jeffrey Magery and DP commissioner Rita Agarrawa. DOB commissioner Jimmy Otto. Parks commissioner Sue Donahue. Difter commissioner Lorraine Cortez Vasquez. Department of consumer worker protection commissioner Vilda Vera-Muga. Department of probation commissioner Juanita Holmes. Chief of staff and deputy commissioner of sanitation Ryan Marola. The mayor's office of asylum seeker operations director Molly Schaefer. We have HPD first deputy commissioner Ahmed Tagani. Mayor's office of climate environmental justice executive director Elijah Hutchinson. EDC senior vice president Leonard Greco. NYCHA vice president of operations Caesar Gonzalez. New York City emergency management assistant commissioner Ira Tennavam. Fire department chief George Healy. And of course from the police department besides being joined at every table by community affairs and commanding officers of Queens patrol borough south. We have the commanding officer chief Williams. We have from the leadership besides chief Magery we have chief of patrol John Shell. Deputy commissioner of operations Kaz Daughtry. Deputy commissioner of public information Tariq Shepard. And we have the commanding officer of the 102nd precinct the home precinct for what Haven deputy inspector Jeremy Kivlin. And we have NYPD chief of community affairs Richard Taylor. As well as sanitation we have borough chief Ignacio Zaro and Queens nine garage superintendent Tommy in Zirlo and borough commissioner Ira Gluckman from DOB. At this time the run of show will have Jennifer Rajkumar our assembly member Joanne Ariola our council member and then the mayor speak. Good evening Wood Haven. They call me the Democrat from Wood Haven. I am your state assembly woman Jennifer Rajkumar and I am so proud to be the first representative in an entire generation that lives in Wood Haven and that is from Wood Haven. But I have to tell you when I first ran for this office people told me Jennifer you're a nice girl but you have no shot. But we won by the largest margin of any challenger in this entire state and we got more people from Wood Haven to the polls than ever before energizing our neighborhood. And tonight we're making history once again because we have the first ever mayoral town hall here right here in Wood Haven. So this is definitely history so Wood Haven Historical Society take note. So anything is possible from here in Wood Haven. When my parents first held into this country my mom having been born in a mud hut in India my parents coming here with $300 in a suitcase settling in South Queens they raised me with the belief that anything is possible and that is why you see me at PS 60 the Wood Haven School PS 97 Rosa Park School speaking at every fifth grade graduation because I want all of the kids of Wood Haven to know that anything is possible from here in Wood Haven if they put their mind to it and that is my 100% commitment to live here in Wood Haven is to know the beauty of Wood Haven and since the whole world was watching tonight I want people to know Wood Haven is one of the top five neighborhoods in this entire city. Everyone in this room knows the beauty of a winter day on Jamaica Avenue. Everyone here knows the experience of being at Neers Tavern the oldest bar in New York City. We know what it's like to buy Valentine's gift at Schmitz Candy the historic store. These are our experiences being in Wood Haven. I am blessed to live on Park Lane South overlooking the beautiful Forest Park. Every morning I wake up to the sound of birds and I thank God that you gave me this opportunity to serve you every day as your elected leader. Now as residents of Wood Haven we face common challenges together. When I knocked on all of your doors the number one concern that came up and the number one concern that came up tonight was public safety. We want to feel safe and that is why I was proud to host the largest ever public safety town hall in Wood Haven history right here in the Wood Haven Manor. I want to thank all the top NYPD brass who came and made sure that we could talk directly to them. In the name of public safety I am working to shut down all the illegal smoke shops proliferating across our neighborhood and that is why I was proud to introduce and author the Smokeout Act which will allow New York City to shutter all these illegal smoke shops very quickly. We had an illegal smoke shop pop up right near the Elizabeth Blackwell School. These shops are hotbeds of crime and we will not allow them to continue and I'm very hopeful that in Albany we're gonna see the smokeout passed very very soon. Next e-bikes. I'm working on the problem of e-bike safety because last year we had a record number of deaths due to e-bikes injuries and lithium ion battery fires that caused deaths. That is why I've introduced two bills in Albany that will regulate e-bikes by requiring them to have license plates insurance and inspection so we can finally take care of these public safety issues. I want to thank Mayor Eric Adams because we share a similar vision for New York City. One where everybody is safe. One where everybody can reach their full potential. A vision where woodhaven matters and where every corner of this city matters and we share a common method which is working 24-7 for the people of this city. So Mayor Adams thank you for bringing all of your top deputies here to my hometown of woodhaven. Thank you for bringing your A team here to the people and most of all thank you people of woodhaven for everything you do for my heart every single day. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you everyone for coming out tonight. It really is wonderful to see such a large crowd and it's really great that you now get to see each and every person that we deal with when we come to your meetings and you come to us to address your issues. Now as a Republican when I won this seat I only represented a portion of woodhaven and then after the lines were redrawn I was proud to take on all of wood haven because woodhaven deserved one representative in the city council. Yes and as a Republican running for this seat there weren't very many people who believed in me but this lovely lady in red right here she believed in me. The people in this room believed in me and voted for me and I won with 68% of the vote. As the assembly member said public safety was one of the platforms that we ran on with public safety quality of life and education. They remain the top three today. That's why I'm so happy to see people like Iggy Azaro from sanitation and Ryan Morola from from sanitation and we have people from DEP here and where's where's Jackie Sue you have wonderful representation here in Queens. These are the people we work with every day each and every one of the borough commissioners each and every one of their directors. They're so responsive you should be very proud. I had a conversation with Rick earlier with Jimmy we just we are people who know how to work across the aisle. We're people who understand that it's not about your party it's about the issues that affecting the community. That's what matters but leadership comes from the top and that's why I thank Mayor Adams because no matter what he sits with us from the common sense caucus we're nine in the common sense caucus and yet with all that's going on in the city you make time you make time to listen to us to see what what's necessary what we're hearing we're the ears on the ground. Also I love working with Fred Kreisman from Community Affairs Unit. Now I don't want to date myself but I was I had the great pleasure of working with Fred when I was at community assistance unit which what it was used to be called and it is a wonderful arm of the mayor's office because once we pick up the phone for the CA to CAU we know that it's going to reach the ears of the administration. There has never been a more available administration than the Adams administration. We're able to get in touch with each commissioner and have a relationship. Every borough commissioner, every single member of the department, the NYPD, DSNY, it doesn't matter. Everyone wants to do their job and we didn't have that for the prior eight years but that's what was brought through this administration. Yes I know the tagline is getting stuff done right but in order to get stuff done we have to have people who want to do the job and each and every person from NYPD and any other city agency that's sitting here wants to do their job and does it well. Thank you very very much. We've had a lot go on and I want to give my condolences to the NYPD because they've been through a lot over the last number of days and yet here they are still showing up, still being strong and we want you to know that we support the NYPD wholeheartedly and we know that we have your support. So again I want to say thank you. I want to say thank you to my incredible staff, Phyllis and Cirillo, my chief of staff for partnering to put all this together. It doesn't happen with just one person and we're only as good as the people that work for us and anyone at this table will tell you that. So to the COs from my commands and the 104, the 102, the 106 and the 100th, I say thank you to everything that you're doing to make sure that we stay safe. God bless everyone and I'm looking forward to a wonderful interaction again. Thank you Mayor Adams. So if we could if we could just take a moment of silence for Jonathan to lose that young man. It's really horrific and just looking at the video and its entire team impacted us all as well as his family, his wife and his baby. You know we lost one of our one of our heroes. So we could just take a moment of silence. Thank you very much. Just want to give two fun facts before we open up. One, I was on the last J train that stopped before they tore down the L going to 167th Street. I remember riding it and they said this is the last stop. We tearing it down all the way up to I think something Boulevard they tore down. Number two, I hung out in this place so much back in the day when it was called Cordon Bleu. This was my spot. You know, we had so many dinner dances, so many events. You know, I can tell you the recipe of that chicken like it was yesterday. You know, spent a lot of time here and this has been a mainstay for so many years, so many meetings, so many gatherings, so many weddings. But what's interesting and I think Councilwoman Ariella and Assemblywoman Rajkumar stated not too many mayors can say that. Not too many mayors can talk about the days of riding the J train, of being in Woodhaven. Not too many mayors can talk about going to PS 140, ISA, Bayside High School. Not too many mayors can talk about what we went through. Those of us who lived in these bedrock communities and we came with a hope and energy and aspiration that the next generation would do just a little better. That's what I bring to City Hall. Think about it for a moment. January 1st, 2022. What were we doing? COVID took and engulfed this entire city. Tourism, no one wanted to come to our city. No jobs were coming. Crime was trending. 40% increase in crime. No one wanted to be on our subway system. Our children were not being educated at the qualitative level that we expected. We abandoned NYCHA for the most part. Our police officers were having water poured on their heads as they walked down the block. That was the city we were in. Motorcycles up and down the block. Scooters everywhere. Two years and three months later. Let's look at the numbers. More jobs we reached at one point. Private sector and public sector in the city's history. Crime is down. Shootings are down. Homicides are down. And double digits. Five of our seven major categories are down. Our children are outpacing the state and reading and writing. Dyslexia screening in our schools so we can prevent criminal behavior and not wait for it to happen. 30 to 40% of those who are at Rikers Island are dyslexic. Bond rate is international finance industries that analyze cities and how well they are running. Raise our bond rating because of what we're doing. 62 million tourists back in the city. Four over 4.1 million people ride out subway system every day. You are seeing a recovery beyond anyone's belief. They said it was going to take us four to five years. We did it in two years and three months. Not only cycling us out of COVID, but how about 180,000 migrants and asylum seekers that was dropped in our city. 1.5 the size of Albany in our city. Without any help from the federal government. They wanted to reimburse us $13 a night for hotel rooms. You can't get a knob on a hotel door for $13 a night. And we did it. Now one child of family sleeps on the street in the city. Go Google other cities, folks. See what's happening in other cities. And what is happening here, even with all the challenges that we are facing. The city has recovered and will continue to recover. There's more to do, but we're doing it. We have three major problems that I have to keep saying over and over again. We have a recidivist problem. The two individuals who were in that car were arrested repeatedly. One of them was just arrested in April from a gun charge. And he was back in the street. We're seeing this over and over and over again. Number two, we have a mental health problem. An extreme mental health. Those who cannot take care of themselves, and we have been pushing over and over again to get them the care they deserve, particularly involuntary removal that would allow us to get them the help and the wraparound services they deserve. We're asking Albany to assist us to make sure that we can get it done. Number three, we have random acts of violence that is playing on your psyche. And people are given the impression that the city of New York is out of control. We are not. We're resilient. We are families. And you can be beat down over and over again with a lie and you will believe it. And people say, Eric, well, that's how people feel. Don't keep saying that the city is not out of control because people are going to say you're not in touch. I'm not going to deny the reality just because people wanted me to be popular on what the right thing to say. This city is functioning better than any city in America. This is the safest big city in America based on all analysis of cities. The numbers are clear. And we have the finest police department on the globe. Finest police department on the globe. All of my colleagues across the globe reach out and ask me, how are you guys doing it? When you leave here tonight, I want you to go and Google other big cities and see what's happening here. We made a commitment. All encampments will be off the streets of the city of New York. We carried it out. We made a commitment to go after the mopeds and the motorcycles that were illegally moving around the city. We've taken 1000 off the streets. We made a commitment to go after the paper plates that were being used in robberies. Made a commitment to close the legal smoke shop, smoke shops. And that's why we're asking Albany, give us the power to do the job. If I had the power to do the job, I would close down every smoke shop illegally in the city within 30 days. I need the power. Let us run our city. We know how. And we proven that. That J train? I know it well because I was a transit cop. And I wrote it from eight at night to four a.m. in the morning. It was called APs at the time. We had two hours mandatory overtime. So we went from eight at night to six a.m. in the morning during the 80s, 84, 85. I was joined by a now commissioner, deputy commissioner, Mark Stewart, who retired as a detective. Assistant commissioner, Lamona lamb. All of these blue collar people are part of this administration, folks. And this is a blue collar community. And you got a blue collar mayor that's ready to answer your blue cloud question. And we get that all the time. So we want to turn it. We got it. They got it. They got it. We don't need anybody. Hold on, officer. They got it. They got it. Listen, tell me something. Can y'all read my hat? That's right. Stay focused. No distractions and grind or stay focused. No distractions and grind. All that. All that is to pull us off focus. You we have to stay focused. My goal is to move this city forward. So all of that yelling and screaming. I tell people all the time when you've been yelled and screamed as a child and being bullied as a child so much because you dyslexic. When people yell at me now, I say, that's all you got. You better come better than that. So let's open up the floor to some questions and get some feedback from this great community in woodhaven. Table number one. Good evening. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. My question is about the sanitation regulation. I've lived in woodhaven since 1968, and I have never seen a rat. Why are single family homeowners being put through so many hoops to put out their trash after APM and only in covered bins, not plastic bags? Working families on our block can't retrieve their trash pails because they're out advertising that no one is home and invitation to burglars. Can regulations be revised for specific neighborhoods or structures such as religious holidays, winter hours, and senior citizen considerations? Thank you. Thank you. And I know she's biting at the bits to get up and talk about it. Where's my She's not here. So first, let me state this. I hate rats. The number one thing that rats love is plastic bags. We will never get rid of rats in this city if we continue to have black plastic bags on the street. That's the all you can eat buffet for rats. And those of us who remember, we were never a city of plastic bags. It was during the sanitation strikes of the sixties that we all of a sudden started to permit ourselves to use to use them. So what we are saying, like every other modern city on the globe, we're saying, let's containerize our garbage. Let's put our garbage in containers is cleaner is neater. It doesn't allow rats to get inside that we change the hours because we found that when we had earlier hours, the garbage remained on the street in plastic bags for a long period of time. And that led to the road in problem. We have where's my where's my rats are? Is my red sauce here? My red sauce did a complete analysis. And we were able to see we had a reduction in rat mitigate mitigation zone, a reduction in rat complaints throughout citywide. We knew we had to take the garbage off our streets. And right now, as anything change, any change is challenging and difficult. But trust me, when you start to see your streets lined with bins and not bags, you're gonna all of a sudden say, you know what, maybe I don't dislike Eric, maybe he had the right call to do so. We got to get our garbage off the off the streets. This was a smart thing that Commissioner Tisch has done. And in a long run, we're going to have a cleaner, better city because we're going to have a clean city. And I'm pushing to make sure the city is the cleanest city in America. Question number two. Table number two. Right over here. How are you? Good to see you. Grad grad grad the mind. Okay. My name's Ed. And I'm a lifelong resident of Woodhaven. And I love it here. I love this community. It's got beautiful homes, beautiful history. We've got great representation and great residents. I look around this room and I know a lot of people here. And I really, I really like everybody here. So not everybody, but but it breaks my heart when I see so many for sale signs. And I talk to so many people that just say they've had enough. I know you say people are less frightened. But that's not what I hear when I talk to the people in this room. I hear them nervous when they see what's going on around the city. When you say we have a recidivist problem. And that's very frightening because we see it happen time and time again. And I guess what I want to know is why should we stay? What is our what is our plan going forward to really resolve those problems that you mentioned, right there, recidivism and you said we have a mental issue with people on the streets. What is our plan to do that to make our city safer? No, no, no. And without a doubt, listen, safety is a prerequisite to prosperity. I came in and stated that that's what I was going to run on. And we saw the results of that. Number one, why should you stay? Why should you stay is because everyone in Miami, which they didn't ever left New York City. This is the greatest city on the globe. But by none, and everyone says it over and over again. And you're seeing that we're constantly making it safer and safer every day. We're not where we want to be. And we want to be clear on that. But when you look at the numbers, we have, we have 500. I think 507 correct me from wrong. Chief Shell, we have 500 and I think 75 people who committed 7500 crimes in the city. Think about that. 575 people committed shoplifting committed 57 over 7000 crimes in the city. We had 38 people who assaulted transit ruckus committed over 1100 crimes in our city. So we are doing our job. But there are other layers to the criminal justice system, our courts, our prosecutor, the law makers, everyone must be part of the public safety apparatus. So we have moved back in place of doing even that the service arrest the other day we caught a guy hopping over the turnstile, hit a nine millimeter gun in his pocket. The person who did that shooting the other day on the on the A train. He hopped a turnstile to come into the system. And so I came from the policing era, where you don't allow any crime to take place in the city that there's no such thing as, well, let's just turn our back and allow those crimes to take place. We have to go back to the basics of making sure we get those quality of life issues. Everything from the illegal mopeds that Assemblywoman Ron Schumann talked about to those who are committing these theft of service or committing the the shoplifting over and over again. What our voices must do is not run for our city from our city is to ask every layer of the criminal justice system to your job. Do your job. The police are doing their job. Everyone must do their job to make sure the city continues to be the safest big city in America. Good evening, Mayor. How are you? What haven't one thing is known is we always call this the haven in the city. You kind of elaborated a little bit on this already but how can we go about giving the power back to our offices and reduce crime and change bail reform? Yeah, they, they, they, when, when, when, when people talk about, you know, the recidivist issue, because that's, that's an important question you, you raise. There was other parts of the criminal justice reform that's very impactful. One of the huge problems is the problem around discovery. The amount of information district attorneys must turn over to defense attorney, the insignificant part of it. It is inundating DAs with the ability to prosecute these cases. And they got this additional responsibility without the resources and funding that they deserve. And so, and this is something that I really want communities like this to understand. We have a long term public safety crisis on a horizon. We're losing correction officers who are aging out. They had those large classes many years ago. Now we're losing a substantial number of them and we find almost 80% of our correction officers retire after 20 years. So we don't have no one taking a new test. We have a shortage of school safety agents. We have a shortage of police officers coming into the department. We have a shortage of probation officers coming in. We have a shortage of district attorneys because they're inundated with someone's paperwork. All the DAs are saying we can't recruit anymore. The foundation of public safety are all of these entities. And if you don't have people taking a job because they believe they're no longer being respected by having a job, you're going to have a real void and our public safety apparatus. And we have to really recognize what long term deputy mayor banks sat down with me the other day and did an analysis. And he says, Eric, we're having a real pipeline problem of law enforcement that can erode the public safety apparatus in the city. That's why we're doing these hiring halls to hire more people to come in. But what we must do is send a serious message that the laws we pass cannot get in the way of preventing the public safety that we want in the city. And that's what the city wants. We talked to the average person. I come to a meeting like this. And I think this is our 25th, 26th hiring halls, something like 17 senior adult halls. I have not went to one meeting throughout my entire political life where people said to me, we don't want more cops. But the loudest in the city, they give the impression that they want to disband, defund and do everything to take away the powers of our police officers. That is not what we're saying in the city. The numerical minority have hijacked the narrative of the city. And they're doing things that I believe has eroded the public safety in our city. We have to now raise our voices and say, this is what we want in our city and how we want our city to run. And we want to be safe. And so when you look at some of these laws that are passed, when you look at some of the actions that are being taken, it is clearly in conflict with everyday New Yorkers want in the city. But when you have such a small number of people coming out to vote, then the numerical minority are able to push through their agenda. We have to have a, if we want to change this initiative, we have to have a massive voting registration campaign and deployment of people to come out and speak with their ballot and not allow people to speak on their behalf. This stuff that's been passed and pushed through is nowhere in alignment with what you want. And this communities and communities like this, that's how we stop of many of these things from happening in real time. Thank you for hosting this event. Thank you. As you can tell, we are concerned about our safety, the safety of our neighborhoods. In this table, we are particularly worried about the safety of our children. So we would like to know, what is your plan to increase more safety agents in our schools, in our local schools? School safety agents. School safety agents. Yes, yes. You know, when I ran for office, just about every candidate that was running committed to, if they were elected, they were going to take school safety agents out of the school. And I said, that's not going to happen under my watch. Our children are going to be safe. When we had our youth town halls, one of the number one things those young people stated outside of getting support around mental health issues, they wanted to have a better relationship with the police officers, and they wanted their school safety agents. But adults who don't attend schools, they're talking about taking the school safety agents out of schools. That's not what the children want. We have a shortage of school safety agents. The chance that many people don't know was a school safety agent. And we need to recruit more to come into the system. We want to put more in the schools. Some of our schools only have, particularly the elementary, only have one school safety agent. We need more agents. And we will love for a room like this to tell folks in the community to be part of our hiring halls, to get people to be hired to come in. We want more school safety agents. I know we put a school in there. A class in? I think we have, we've had two classes in the last few months, I'll start. So we're getting momentum. The numbers are up compared to when the mayor came into office, but still not recovered to where they were at their height. So we got ways to go. So we need more. We need more. So we should look to have a hiring hall in this area to encourage people to come into these careers. I settled 94% of our union contracts because we wanted to pay our union employees, our 300,000 plus employees, a better salary to make it more attractive. But I'm with you. I'm happy every time I see a school safety agent. And there are more than security. Those school safety agents know every child. They nurture them. They care about them. They know when they have problems at home. They come and talk to them. If there's an issue, we get so much information from a school, from someone that goes to a school safety agent about an issue that happens around the school. So I'm with you. We need more. Table number five. Good evening. Welcome. How are you? Good. Thank you. Welcome Mayor Adams and your administration. Thank you for coming out tonight. And the general consensus on this table is also public safety. And our concern is with retail store robberies. What initiatives are we going to take in regards to that? We have been placed. First of all, I should have said it from the beginning. Give this team, they are an amazing team of people. We can just give them a round of applause coming out tonight. They work hard. And let me tell you something. It is hard working for me. I tell them all the time. If I were you, I would not be working for me. So the young lady, what are you going, sister? You ask a question, you're bouncing. We put in place the shoplifting task force under Deputy Mayor Banks because we started to do an analysis and we found they were so many repeated offenders. They were people who were arrested 40, 50 times for shoplifting, just going in, doing what they want, coming out and just able to do it again. Now, we also found the correlation between those who were shoplifting and those who were using drugs and those who had severe mental health illnesses. So when you start to look at those three things I talked about at the beginning, again, severe mental health illnesses to the point you can't take care of yourself, recidivism. You're seeing that repeated theme over and over again. We came together with some of the top stores and some of those small stores and we sat down and put in place several initiatives of who am I going to talk to? How are we doing shoplifting numbers after we did the initiative? We have the shoplifting numbers in the city. You got a Maggi or one of them? All right, so shoplifting is city. We're down in 2023. We have a slight increase in 2024. But to the mayor's point, we're going after those 575 people have been locked up 7,000 times. Think about a city of 8.5 million people. We're talking about 575 people. If we could deal with those people properly through a process of the stakeholders to do their jobs and take them with the street, you'll have a drastic decline in shoplifting. We do a lot of outreach for our crime prevention units to go to these stores. We sat down with the supermarket association to go over how the cameras are placed, how they should deal with shoplifters. We have a program in the 46 precinct. As simple as this sounds, the stores are texting the detectives and calling the cops phones real time to avoid 911 sometimes. We get really busy and we got a better response to that. That's a pilot program we're pushing out throughout the city to go after the retail theft and bring that number down. We have a lot of things working and we got that number down this year. We got it down last year and more programs are coming. One of the things that people overlook, why are you bothering people who shoplifting? You have Miss Jones who is an older adult who uses the local Dwayne Reed in her neighborhood. The Dwayne Reed closed down this elder was telling me in Harlem the Dwayne Reed closed down she couldn't get her medication she had to get on the bus to travel outside her community. So when you allow the profits to be impacted by shoplifting, when you're losing jobs when they close down, several chains have closed down in our city and other cities. We see we are witnessing this taking place across the entire country but right here with zero in on it. It's a real issue. We have too many repeated offenders and as the chief stated we want to focus on those repeated offenders and have a real partnership with the district attorney and the judges and say this person keeps coming out over and over of committing the crime. Now we want to find out what is your issue man? What's your issue? If it's a drug issue we want to go to the department of mental hygiene and give them the support. If you're dealing with severe mental health we want to do that. If it's employment you need to get to the department of mental hygiene. So we don't want to just lock you up and we can put you on the right course to stop you from committing the crime in the first place. Table number six. How are you? Good to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for coming. It's important here in our neighborhood. If the changes come we'll feel even more important but okay. Got a little two part question for you. Yes. First, great question from our table is what is our plan that improves the quality of life and we're still waiting to see and we're looking forward to getting to know all our policemen, police women through the walk in the beat program. I haven't seen too many of them yet but we're willing to welcome you all to our neighborhood so we want to see you guys. So those are our three questions. Yes. I think that the Chief Magie Good evening. Chief Magie just took the bar exam. Let's hope you become a lawyer man. So we can have a lawyer we finally like. So let me make sure I get both parts of your question again and first and foremost I want to just say thank you to everybody in this room. First and foremost for the support of this department as you all know we lost a bright young officer two days ago and it was right here in this patrol bar on Queen South under the direction and the leadership of our Chief Kevin Williams. Very very hurtful this department is going to do a lot of pain right now but we're still mission conscious and we knew we had to be here to address the good people of Woodhaven in this community but just thank you for your support. So in terms of low level crime that's something we've for years have been addressing quality of life concerns shoplifting low level any kind of low level it starts with our field deployment all right. Chief Michael Petri our chief of crime control strategies you will always hear him say our number one crime fighting tool this field deployment putting out our young officers putting out our neighborhood coordination officers doing administrative all outs to put cops along the business corridors in any places we're having problems that is our number one crime fighting tool and we instruct all officers you address everything not saying you have to lock everybody up but you should address the situation let people know that hey we're aware we're taking names this better not happen again if there's you know enough reason to say all right this is something we can use discretion with if not they go in for an arrest they get a summons they get a desk appearance ticket if they have to go through the system we'll do that but that is our number one crime fighting strategy field deployment our commanders come down every week we talk about what's going on in the neighborhood whether it's a heavy crime a pattern or quality of life 311 offenses we hold them accountable we expect them to address it and coming to meetings like this hearing specific things like we I'm answering a general question but we like to hear specific things like hey we have a problem on this corner we have this we have that that's what your monthly community council meeting community council meetings are for you go to the commander and you speak about low level things you see in the neighborhood no one knows the neighborhood better than you you tell a commander what's going on community affairs the neighborhood coordination officer and we'll address it and if the problem is that bad don't wait for the community council meeting you reach out to the command right away and say hey listen we got a problem here two weeks for the community council meeting we need this addressed right now and the command should do that so as a day board coordination officers the beat officers it's still part of our philosophy it is our philosophy going into communities and getting to know people now we kind of lost our way a little bit we kind of lost our way a little bit but I assure you that we're putting a lot of energy to bring the program that is meant to be going into the communities talking to the people addressing to the people addressing the people I see chief of patrol John because I've been jumping on him about this the last two or three weeks like John they were coordination officers program because I've been to a couple of meetings and people jumped on me and I'm like John we got we have I'm not pushing it off of him I'm not pushing it off of him but he is the chief of patrol and he's in charge of the 77 precincts that we have so and and if anybody knows John he likes to camera he likes to talk so I'm going to let him have a little talk time but the neighborhood coordination officers program the neighborhood coordination philosophy is the department's philosophy our job is to get to know people to work closely with the people if you're not seeing them if you don't have a relationship with your NCO fix that and change that so we'll make sure we do that I'll let the chief patrol he can't help us I don't know what happened right there but I feel like I'm in trouble alright I'm just going to give you two two quick quiet life stats 30 seconds and the two biggest complaints we get I think we can agree throughout the city with quiet life is those ghost cars those moped and smoke shops right there's two complaints no matter where you live in the city no matter what time just two quick stats in the last two years our commitment and our mandate from from our mayor and our police commissioner our chief department is to take care of these bikes and these ghost cars very dangerous business it's hard work but in the last two plus years we're approaching a combination of moped's those ATV's those ghost cars those play coverage driving all of the wedding boulevard like it's like it's a circus out there we're approaching 56,000 removed from the city from the streets and and what's so good about this is under the May here is the man that the agencies work together get this done so that's not just us that's DOT that's the sheriff that's other agencies in the city getting our 56,000 number right now and we're going to press really hard for the summer number two smoke shops in 2022 we had about 1200 change now we're about 2500 in 2022 two we didn't have any nuisance abatements civil court litigation to close these stores right now we have about 665 pending to shut these stores down so just to mark the improvement of what we're doing and again the sheriff, Sheriff Moran has got to lead on on that and we assist the sheriff but collectively we're working together and I believe the sheriff has issued about 52 million dollars worth of civil court fines so the effort is there and we're not going to stop you know what let me just add into that real quick and I want to pass to my partner Mark but there's a lot of programs which Commissioner Stewart's going to talk about involving that involve our youth that the police department does I joined the explorer program and met this crazy cop crazy but he stood up behind to make sure I did well and stay out of trouble and you want to know what that cop is at right now right there he was my youth officer over 30 years ago so there's a lot of programs especially I love the explorer program because I'm a product of the explorer program and what you're supposed to do when you join the explorers for explorers to cadets to police officer but under Mark Stewart Commissioner Stewart he has a ton of programs that I think that the community doesn't know that they deal with kids and Mark if I spoke to you earlier a couple days ago we're going to implement the drone programs so that kids learn how to fly drones for free and we're going to pay for their FAA 107 license that they can give them through the FAA so there's a lot of things that this department is doing for our youngsters and you have to log on and follow us on our twitter log on to the community affairs page reach out to the NCOs because they have all of the stuff in their smart phones thank you and as he stated Commissioner Stewart who's the commissioner of community affairs he can speak for himself but he has transformed community affairs from the aviation training teaching our children how to be pilots there's just so much he's doing because we want to be proactive because you said something that resonated and I hope we all heard what you said our cops need to walk that beat again they need to park and say hello they need to interact that whole interaction we want to get back to that and our NCO officers if you don't know your NCO officer you know I don't want a NCO officer that is not engaging they need to be proactive engaging and we need to really have a conversation about that because people should know their NCO officer and you should go into your seniors program that you're doing but Commissioner Stewart has really transformed the community affairs why don't you go into some of the stuff you're doing good evening Detective Cruz where are you stand up does anybody know him does anybody know Detective Cruz well we got to speak later then he's a community affairs officer in the 102 you should know him before this night is over please get his cell phone number no I'm serious I'm serious because when I call over there I want to make sure that he knows you and we're talking about reaching out and be cops right when you sit here if there's a problem in your community you could walk into the precinct you don't have to wait for a city council meeting if there's a problem we have to know about it so we can address it our community affairs officers you could walk right in there and just speak to them we have with Commissioner Vazquez we started an older aging for older aging adults in every precinct in the housing precinct there's a community affairs officer assigned to assist you and that's resources that's going to your apartment or going to your homes if there's a problem you don't have to go to the precinct I had a call today 10th precinct where are you I just went to a woman's home she was assaulted we send the cops out there to make sure that you're safe and that you're out of danger and Commissioner Vazquez and I we got this program done in six months so these town halls are good because they don't happen it's information that you gather and we gather and for our kids I really have a two part it's a combination how do we get the kids and how do we retain the kids sports is good under commissioner She started up a good program, it's called Blue Chips. In every precinct, they have baseball, basketball, football, and we just started a golf too for able for our kids. That's good, but not every kid plays sports. So now what do we have? I started up an aviation program. I don't wanna say I, I wanna say we, because it's the police department. We started an aviation program, it's for six weeks, two days a week. We have 15 kids who graduated. We have to put in our kids' minds that they can see to be pilots, dream to be pilots, but it has to be in their mind. Drone program, we have a soccer drone, it's a program that these kids can learn how to work drones and fix drones. We have a baby shower that the mayor loves. And no, it's good, we go to every borough. Prenatal care, we give gifts, packages. We have over 100 vendors who participate in this program in every borough. Last year, we registered over 6,000 people that we were able to help out. ESL program, our Latino in our neighborhoods, we teach them how to speak English. It's very important that we reach out and you are aware of all these programs. But the thing is, we're having a problem with marketing. It's just, especially to our younger kids. We recently found out that we weren't that cool. These young kids are not going on, said, yo, let me check out the NYPD page and see what's going on. So Commissioner Howard and I, we got together and we got an influencer, a younger kid. And he's gonna help us reach other younger kids. Cause our 19,000 is not doing it, it's to his 80,000. So we have a lot of programs in store, but you don't have to realize too, with these programs, they're good. But know what we're missing with our kids? The conversation, the conversation. I came from nature. Nothing special, went to Queens, grew up in Queens, in Lawlton, but I was born in Brooklyn. And I gotta let these kids know, it's not where you start, it's where you finish. Everybody says it takes a village. We are the village. There's no reason why kids should be out in the street at 2.30 in the morning with a gun. And now let's come back to the same question. Where are the parents? Where are the parents? Where's Big Mama? Mommies have everybody in the house, lights on, in the house. We don't have that. I think we're partying too much with our kids. So we're gonna do our best on the police department to make sure our kids are safe and that's our job. And that's why all of us are here today. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. So we're gonna really, you're inspired, you're inspired. So Chief, you're really inspired that we have to, we gotta get back to that, stand alone, walk in that beat, not just driving through, but just spending some time and really understanding the community. You're dead on, you're 100% right. And so you're gonna see a visible change. So let's really lean into that, Chiefs, to make sure we do that. How are you, sir? I'm doing well. Good evening, Mayor Adams. Good evening to everyone that's here and made this event possible. We appreciate you. And it's an honor to be at the first town hall in Woodhaven. It's definitely an honor. I'm a leader in my local church right here. It's just two blocks away, Hope Evangelistic Center. So I'm happy and proud to be here and be in the midst of you all. But on behalf of Table Seven, we had a question revolving our local park. It's the Forest Park Tennis Court and it's been closed for about 10 plus years. It's located on Park Lane South and it's been vacant and it's been locked up to the community for, like I said, 10 plus years. And this has been 10 plus years that fathers have lost the ability to take their children to that local park and teach them tennis. And it was an active tennis court previously. So the community at Table Seven passionately believes that this park can be repaired and beautified once again. So our question is, when can we expect it to be open and available to the community it once served? Great, great. Thank you, thank you. What's the name of your church again? James. Oh, what was it? The name of your church. The name of the church is Hope Evangelistic Center, yes. Okay. First of all, I have the best park commissioner on the globe. She was with us in Brooklyn and I'm just really happy that she decided to come and join us running our parks. So I'm talking to me about that soon, because that's 10 years is a long time. Yes, thank you, mayor. And thank you so much for the question. First of all, Forest Park is an amazing park. We love it. It's one that's near and dear to me and it's a beautiful park with so many amenities. New dog run we're putting there, so many things going on. I must admit I'm not exactly sure in terms of the 10, you're speaking specifically about a tennis court within Forest Park. Is that correct? Eight as a tennis court. Okay. Part of the tennis court is, yeah. Is that correct? Okay. Okay. So my borough commissioner, Jackie Langson, is here. We will absolutely follow up with you right after this meeting and figure out what the situation is with the tennis court. I know we put a lot of resources and a lot of care into Forest Park. It's a really important community amenity. We realize that. It's one that we absolutely love. We'll find out specifically about the tennis court and be back to you for sure. If I can interject? Yes, yes, yes you can. So it happens to be our number one ask for the budget this year. Okay. So what is it? What is it? Tennis court. What's the dollar amount that's needed? Cure Grace Donnelly, our budget director, what's the dollar amount? Nine million. Nine million. So what is the floors of what? Yes, it's the court. The court? It's the court, yes. Okay, okay. So let's look at that, to see, cause 10 years is too long. And so let us zero in on that. All right, we're gonna circle back, we're gonna circle back through the council women to look at that cause that's a long time, 10 years. All right. Next table, table number nine. How are you sir? Good evening mayor. Thank you for being here in Woodhaven. So our question is this, since City Hall is stating that the migrant influx is bankrupting the city, how come more and more refugees are being asked to come to New York City? Ask to come to New York City? Oh, come to New York City actually. Come to New York City. Okay, okay. Not ask, but come to New York City. Okay, okay, so they, what are the most? Oh sorry, I'm my problem. Specifically the 25,000 Haitian refugees. They, one of the, first of all, I wanna start on, cause this is a very important topic. First, no matter who we are, we have an immigrant origin. And the billions of dollars that the immigrant community puts into our city, make sure that our schools are here, our teachers, et cetera. There's a real rich culture we have when we talk about the immigrant population in our city, in our country. Migrants and asylum seekers are not undocumented. They were legally paroled in the city by the Custom Border Patrol on the southern part of our border. They were legally paroled in. And so oftentimes people conflate the two between the, what's the terminology that is used? The what? Illegal or the whole right to stay in the city, that is for those who are undocumented. These migrants in the, what? Sanctuary city. People conflate the sanctuary city conversation. The sanctuary city has nothing to do with the migrants and asylum seekers. Sanctuary city is if you are undocumented and you're here, you're not turned over to authorities. But the migrants and asylum seekers, the 180,000 are legally paroled into the country. And what happened, people say, well, Eric, why don't you stop the buses from coming into the city? I can't, that's against the law. Well, Eric, why don't you allow people to work who are here? I can't, it's against the federal law. I can't even allow the migrants and asylum seekers to volunteer and give them a stipend. The federal law prevents me from doing that also. Well, Eric, you are giving them more than you're giving every other New Yorker. That's just a lie. If you go to the Floyd Bennettville, Randall's Island, people are sleeping on cots. Their restrooms are outdoors. Their showers are outdoors. They're getting the basics that we can give to people with a level of dignity that they deserve. And so we are handcuffed as a city on what federal laws require us to do and state laws require us to do. We're handcuffed. Now, when I go to the shelters and I speak with the migrants that are there, they're very clear. We don't want anything free from you. We don't want your food. We don't want your housing. All we wanna do is work. That's all we want. And no matter who we are, if your ancestors came here and they were told they couldn't work, we will not be what we are right now. And Texas House was what a lot of people don't realize. Do you know we have thousands of Ukrainian citizens that are here? And you don't even see them. You know why you don't? They're allowed to work. They have been incorporated into our city. Like every other group has been incorporated into it. And so what they real call is federal government, if you parole people into the city, give them the authorization to work so they can contribute to the city. Like they want to and like we need to. And here's the real irony. We need workers. We need lifeguards. We need food service workers. We need backstretch workers. We need nurses. Venezuela population, many of them are professionals, accountants, reporters, nurses. So we have all these jobs that are available and we have available population to work and we are not allowed to let them work. That is what you call insanity. Thank you. Mr. Mr. Mayor, commissioner, if I can just add, Mr. Mayor? Mr. Mayor, just back here. Oh, okay. Commissioner Castro, I'm the mayor's office of immigrant affairs commissioner. Just wanted to add, the mayor has been a big champion from the beginning to allow the migrants and asylum seekers arriving here the ability to work. And that's certainly what we all hear whenever we talk with the asylum seekers, they want to work. But they also ask us, what can we do while we wait here for our work authorization? They want to learn English. So today we announced a partnership with our New York City public libraries to offer English lessons to the asylum seekers who are here because all they want to do is contribute. So while we wait for those work permits, they're going to be taking classes so they can learn English and be ready for when they get the work authorization to work and contribute back to us. Right, and there's no, every day I'm around him, I'm reinforced on the beauty of the American dream. Here you have a young man came to the city with his mother as a dreamer, walked up through the system, and now he's my commissioner, mayor, office of immigrant affairs. He's able now to ensure that everyone can pursue the American dream. He and I traveled together to Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia to see the pathway. People are going through the dairy and gap with the understanding they may not make it out. When we went down to the border and saw what happened at the border, two years ago we traveled to El Paso together and saw what was going on at the border. And we said, listen, Washington, we gotta fix this. Because this is a problem that's keep hemorrhaging. These cities, these countries are destabilized. Ecuador is dealing with a real drug problem that people are fleeing every day and the destabilization of these countries, we've never witnessed this in our hemisphere. Venezuela, we can have another six, seven million people living in Venezuela because of the destabilization that is taking place there, making their way up to New York. We just got a call early today. How many do we get in, DM? Yeah, we just got a plane came in. The Texas governor sent a plane in today and with buses. At one time, we were getting 4,000 migrants in asylum seekers a week, 8,000 every two weeks, 16,000 a month. That we, Deputy Mayor Wimms-Eisen had to manage with Molly and her team because the law said that you must make sure when they come in by a certain period of time you have to put them in housing. This is what we were up against in 22, folks. This is what we were up against. And then you look at other cities. People are sleeping in airports, hospitals, police precincts, sleeping on the street. You look at these other cities. These folks here manage this crisis and history is gonna be kind to us when it reflect on what we did in the city and what New Yorkers did in the city during this period of time. And it was hard, it was hard. But we did it every night. One, two, three a.m. in the morning, buses were showing up and we were required to do what we had to do. Trust me, it was hard. And we took a lot of crap. But when people look on this period of time, they're gonna realize this city stood up and this administration stood up. Mayor Adams, if I may add? Yes, yes. So 54 lawmakers, over 54 of us across the city are so concerned about this influx of migrants coming here that we have called upon the federal government to take action because, Principal Singh, as you know, immigration is thoroughly controlled. That's just the way it's set up. So I just wanna commend you, Mayor Adams and of course, Deputy Mayor, for all of your logistical work to house all of these new arrivals. But we are really concerned as lawmakers across the city and we're really calling upon the federal government to act and to take action to help New York City. New York City is so important to the whole state and to the whole country. So thank you for your work. Thank you. You like my hat? Yes, I do. I thought it was gonna say, make America great again. Well, it got the right saying, it got the right saying. Take a picture, take a picture of both of us. Stay focused, no distraction in ground. And red. Where are we? Right here, right here, Mr. Page. Thanks for just... I would rather change that to make Woodhaven great again. It's already great. So thank you for being here. We really appreciate you making the time to be here. I should say I'm glad you didn't say that. And thanks to all the dignitaries that's here. We really appreciate you shining light on Woodhaven. My name is Lois and Gordon, I own Historic Nearest Tavern. I too, immigrant, came here 10 years old, unable to read or write, but this city embraced me and I said, what if I could help save one of America's oldest taverns? And here we are 15 years later, but I don't wanna change the subject because I know public safety is big. I was, we were burglarized twice. We have a house about a block up that's really menacing, causing some issues. So there is public safety issues within the small business, but I wanna grab something that's a little bit more tangible and maybe actionable that we can actually do rather than kind of like circling around, circling around with rhetoric. And one thing is that when we get inspected by the health department, and I wanna thank Commissioner Kim who actually coordinated a pre-inspection, which is free for small business owners to make sure that you're ready to be inspected. And it's helpful, it's not a panacea, it's helpful. And so we, a lot of businesses do get inspected and if it's not favorable, small things such as maybe we just get a delivery and it's left out and while you're trying to put everything away and get an inspector, oftentimes that could be cited as a violation when it's like, well, I need time to put it away. And so you'll sometimes get this less than favorable grade which public perception is like, oh, I'm not gonna eat there. There's a problem when in fact there is really just this miscommunication or these little things. And but at the end of the day, we're required to put it right there for everybody to see and that decreases business and as you know, reduces tax dollars that we need to pay all of our services here, right? So my question is, it took over a year to get reinspected all that time that bad grade was there, deterring customers. How it's supposed to be done within four to five months. How can we actually get this done faster in the better way, the reinspection so we can change that grade and actually get more customers to come in because as you know, perception is reality, unfortunately. So can we figure out a way to collaborate with the business owner for the reinspection at least on time, if not maybe sooner? No, thank you. Thank you for that. And a couple of things. I wanna appeal that back for a moment. You know, you dropped your scarf. I wanna appeal that back for a moment. The grading system is one of the best things we did in the city. It allowed people to know that if a place was not using the healthy standards of ensuring that the food they were going to eat because there's a lot of trust when you sit out in a restaurant. You don't know what's going on in the kitchen. You wanna make sure that it's done correctly. And that grading system of an A, a B or a pendant, I think was created under Bloomberg. I'm not sure which mayor created it, but it was a brilliant idea and we need to make sure that we follow that. Second, when we came into office, is Maria's not here, is she? When we came into office, I gave Deputy Mayor Maria Torres Springer a clear directive because when I moved around the city as bar president and as candidate and state senator, people were telling me how challenging it was navigating to prominent buildings and how challenging it was to make sure that you can actually get your business up and operated. We went in and we removed a lot of rules off the books that should not be there. They were just there too long and we changed the culture under Commissioner Otto who's here about so many things that have been done making it difficult to do business in the city. So we need to drill into Commissioner Otto. You guys do the inspections, who does the inspections for the Health Department, Department of Health? We need to drill in, where are you? Okay, we need to drill in because months of you having that grade pendant is not acceptable for us. We need to drill into that. We need to, if you rectify the problem, we need to remove that negative grade. We need to remove anything that's pending and we shouldn't be petty. You leaving your food out while you're packing stuff away, we should not be petty and I thought we moved away from that pettiness. Now, don't say, listen, I just leave my food out packing and then you left it out for eight hours because I know that hustle too. So are we drilling down? Tell me what we're doing because I don't wanna be penalizing businesses or we need people in seats in our businesses. Yeah, thank you, thank you, Mayor. And I'm Lisa Landa, I'm the general counsel at the Department of Health. Dr. Ravassan couldn't be here this evening. As everyone knows, the Health Department is, its mission is to keep the public safe and restaurants is just a small piece but an important piece of what we do. So I'm hearing the feedback and I'm gonna bring it back to the folks at the Health Department that address restaurant issues. I know that they're an amazing team that mean to keep the public safe but it means that the dialogue continues. So I think the comments that you're raising right now are certainly hugely important and we'll bring them back and make sure that we can talk again. We wanna use, I'm gonna go to you one more. And matter of fact, we got Commissioner Kim here who's big on that and we're gonna use your restaurant as a case study. I need to find out why it took, how many months? It took a year? No, that's not, that can't happen. So we're gonna use your restaurant as a case study, all right, Commissioner? Yes, Lois, it's good to see you again. And like you said, we have one part of the program which is New York City Business Express Service Team that does the pre-inspection. So we have former inspections of our sister regulatory agencies who come into your business, walk around, point out every single violation you might get if an actual inspector came in. We do it confidentially, we do it for education purposes only, so you should really reach out to us. But, Lois, and the second part of our NYC best program that Mayor Adams and Deputy Mayor Torres Springer implemented, we have a team of small business advocates. So in your case, if you're realizing that the time is passing that should have gotten an inspection, if you contacted us, we will contact the health department for you so that you don't have to stay online, stay on hold. You gotta do what you do best, which is run your business, leave that up to us. We will contact the health department for you and get that done. Last year, we helped 3,500 unique businesses save over $20 million with these two programs. Yeah, when do we start the pre-inspection? The pre-inspection starts any time that you're ready. No, when was it implemented? Oh, that was implemented in July 2022 when we created the blueprint that you and Deputy Mayor created the plan to help small businesses lead our recovery. And so that's been exactly part of the blueprint. And since then, we've helped 3,500 businesses. So the move was what I said, we gotta stop playing this, I got your game. We gotta stop setting businesses up. When you see the city walking to your business, you should not have stress. You should feel they're here to help me keep my doors open. And so if we're saying ahead of time, we're gonna come in and tell you what you need to correct before the inspector comes because we don't want your money. We want you to continue to prosper and grow. That is what this program is. We're coming in ahead of time telling you, here's what you need to fix before the inspector come in. I don't know what else I can do, brother. You know what I'm saying? That is saying we wanna help you stay open. That's our goal, not to find you, but to keep you staying open. But we're gonna use your place as a case study to find out what happened, okay? How are you, sir? Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for coming tonight. Thank you. Let me just preface my question with the fact that a lot of what I'm gonna ask you about has already been spoken. Councilwoman Ariella had said, all of you guys that we see in front of you, you wanna do the best job possible for the city. Unfortunately, what we're seeing is that your hands are tied, the council's hands are tied by the laws. Like you said, you can't do things because of this. Don't you think it's about time that as the mayor and the city council takes control of our city? If you have to change the city charter to do it, do it. So you gotta get the governor to do it. The governor does not run New York City, you guys do. And even more so, the MTA does not run New York City. Right now, today I just heard congestion pricing. You passed unanimously by the MTA board. Who elected them? We didn't. They're gonna tax us now. As they tax us with every single utility bill I get, there's a little piece of the pie on them for the MTA also. And we have a councilwoman has put up something else now, residential parking, which we'll have to pay another fee just to park on our own streets. When are you guys gonna take control? That's what we're asking. Thank you, thank you. You sound like me. So let's peel back what you say because it's so important to peel stuff back. The state does control us. We're creatures of the state. And it hurts. But they send down rules with us and some of them are unmandated. I mean, some are not given unfunded mandated. But the way our state constitution is set up we're creatures of the state. I have to go back to the state to get mayoral accountability, although we're outpacing the entire state and reading and math. I gotta go back up there. I have to go back to get more authority to build better, to build more housing, to use our vacant office spaces to turn them into housing. It's unbelievable how much the state controls us. Like we, the state decides what our income tax is going to be. The only tax we control are the property taxes in the city, all those other taxes the state determines that. The state determines so many laws that impacts us. It's unbelievable. And so, yes, one way of changing the city aspect of it is a charter commission. And looking at a charter commission to look at parts of the city we want to change. But we're creatures of the state. That's why it's important to have folks like Assemblywoman Raj Kamal. Like the state put in place a legalization of cannabis. They said that you guys have no authority on enforcing anything. So we're fighting to get that reversed. So all of the stuff that you're seeing we're creatures of the state. And they have more control. Although we're the economic engine of the state, we put so much money in the state. It's unbelievable how much we don't have the authority. Like congestion pricing, we gotta deal with congestion in our city. But we don't have control over that. The MTA has control over that. And we don't control the MTA. The state controls the MTA. And so we have to take what we have and produce a product because you didn't elect me to define a problem. You elected me to solve the problem. And we're solving the problem every day, folks. You know, the numbers don't lie. The progress doesn't lie. And I know that you're inundated every day on social media on the worst thing that happens in a day. You have to tend to see to define that as your day. But that's not the reality. The worst action of a day is not our day. We have 4.1 million riders on our subway system every day. 4.1 million riders. Kaz, the other day was telling me he was in the subway system talking to a woman. She said, y'all must have 200, 300 felonies on the system a day. We have six felonies a day on our system. I had a 4.1 million riders, 4.1 million New Yorkers who don't want to go to work because they're angry or got in the argument they were to compose themselves and give them one into the next. We're going to get rid of those six felonies. Don't get me wrong. But understand, 4.1 million riders. Not 200 felonies a day, not 300 felonies a day, an average of six a day. But I'm with you. I felt your pissed off anger. That's the pissed off anger I had. You know that? The tape. As you stated, shot of revisions. Do a real analysis of who's representing you and have a real grass root blue collar movement. Everyone is protecting the people that harm innocent people. We need a movement of people protecting people who are the innocent people. I'm an innocent person protector. People number 11. Right here, mayor. Good evening. How are you? Hi, welcome to Woodhaven. Thank you. My name is Omaira. I am a Woodhaven resident. I am a mother, raising a child in Woodhaven. And I also work for the Woodhaven Business Improvement District. Was to get a picture of us. Safety is the big issue. Yes. All right. And in the Woodhaven Business Improvement District, we hear every day from the business owners about safety and quality of life issues. And I want to know what is being done here in Woodhaven on Jamaica Avenue. That's one. The second one, can we improve the lighting on Jamaica Avenue? It's too dark at night. And third, illegal vending on Jamaica Avenue. Three, five. I have to grab the opportunity. No, I like that. Lighting, lighting, lighting. Who am I dealing with? Come here, Donna. Donna's. Talk about lighting. I'm going to come back to you. So more than happy to look at any particular intersection that you feel that the lighting is not a well? All of Jamaica? Because of the... Sorry, let me call on my Queensborough commissioner who know what this area is. If you don't mind. Hi, good evening. Hi, Council Member. Good evening, everyone. My name is Nicole Garcia. And I'm the Queensborough commissioner for New York City DOT. We're more than happy to do a study, see if there's additional lighting. I know that the previous Council Member had funded some additional lighting improvements. So over by Woodhaven, you might have seen that there's kind of like these park style lights. They're really, really beautiful pedestrian lights. Those were actually added towards the end of the last administration. What we can do is we can certainly set up a walkthrough with the bid, see if there are areas where we can improve the lighting on DOT's time for safety. But if there's more of a distinctive treatment, a historic lighting, so on and so forth, we're happy to work with the bid to do that. So let's do this, let's do this. I'm the commissioner, the borough commissioner, and we're gonna meet up with you, and we're gonna walk during the nighttime and see what it looks like. And then commissioner, let's come up with a plan. I saw something in Albany. I did have it on my phone. I was in Albany the other day, and there was the, when I served there as a senator under the highway, it was always dark and dreary. They did something colorful along the highway that has just changed the whole atmosphere. It's well lit, it's very inviting, and maybe there's something we could do under that L. Not only the lights that are on the street, but there may be a way to light up that whole L to be more attractive, to be more inviting, because that's what they did. That little lighting that they did with different colors has just changed the whole game of that entire area. So we need to rethink how we wanna light the area, so it doesn't look dark and dreary. But let's take a walk, all right, commissioner? Let's take out a time. You know, I don't know if you heard it, but I like being late at night, so I'm gonna come out late at night. And we're gonna walk the area. Okay, now, illegal vendors. What are you gonna talk about? Who's gonna talk about? Oh, here it is. Oh, see, there you are. This is in Albany. This place used to be so dark and dreary, and they changed the colors. I'm sorry? Oh, okay. They lit it and it changed the entire area. People hate it walking there now, I mean before, but now people are willing to walk there just by changing the lightings. So lighting means a lot, thanks a lot, mom. They were, they're vending, vending, illegal vending. We did an amazing job with Sandra Ong, councilwoman Ong. Illegal vendors are on Main Street, assistant commissioner, a door tree. They went to that entire area and changed that whole area because we got rid of the illegal vending. We need a before and after picture for that. You know, DS and I, you wanna talk about? I would, sir, appreciate that, and thank you very much for raising this. Vending enforcement generally is something that the mayor takes very seriously. Our partners at DCWP and Sanitation work to transfer the Office of Street Vending Enforcement to us last spring, and we know very well there are a lot of complaints coming out of Jamaica Avenue. We visited Jamaica Avenue more than a few dozen times in the past eight or nine months, and I wanna give you some numbers that I know that I looked up before this because it tells me something that I wanna share. We conducted almost 70 inspections of vendors on Jamaica. Only about five were summons because many were legal and many were in compliance, but it doesn't mean it solves your problem. You have people, I understand that, sidewalks have to be used, they have to be passable. There it's not. We'd like to come out there tomorrow with you. We wanna see it. We wanna see what we can do on our side, and I will tell you deputy commissioner Daughtry is our best partner when it comes to working through joint issues with the NYPD to do similar vendor enforcement and vendor compliance to make sure that you've got businesses there that are getting what they need on this, and vendors also, when they're following the rules, can do so there. So I'm gonna come to you right after this while I'll be on a walkthrough with you tomorrow. Very happy to try and work through this. Yes, yes, cause you wanna get rid of them. That was two, you have one more. What's this? The what? How was that, uh-oh, Inspector? Good evening. My name is Jeremy Kivlin. I'm the deputy inspector and the commanding officer of the 102nd Pre-Saint. So I can talk about safety on Jamaica Avenue specifically, Woodhaven. The beginning of the year, my commanding officer, Chief Kevin Williams, tasked all of us commanding officers to come up with a quality of life initiative within their Pre-Saint, and then task and then combat that. I can tell you that my initiative focuses around Jamaica Avenue, specifically in the Woodhaven area. Our FTO deployment, so this is our new officers, is in Woodhaven. Particularly, Hotspots, this is 85 in Jamaica where we see the quality of life locations. We do various outreaches for homeless. We do joint operations with sanitation. Quality of life initiatives are taken out there. We also do numerous two-wheel scooter operations, which I know is a very big concern. So we're out there. We're out there doing the operations. We're talking with the businesses, the merchant trespass program, which we spoke about earlier, where we're going after recidivists who are out there shoplifting at the Woodhaven locations. We are doing a lot. And I'd be happy to talk with you after, put some other operations in effect, maybe walk the locations with you. I think that'd be really good. Yeah, I just... Yep. This guy looks like a movie star or something. You know? So I just have two points of clarification. Mr. Mayor, first, thank you, Deputy Inspector Kivlin and Chief Williams for all that you do for addressing all the issues that are happening here at Woodhaven. We did have a tremendous problem with illegal vendors along Jamaica Avenue. And, Ryan Morola, we work so closely with your office and thank Commissioner Tish and our local superintendents. We got out there and made sure that anyone who was illegal was removed. The other thing, Steve, you're talking about is a bill that's coming before the city council. It's actually two other city council members. It's Delarosa and Lynn Schulman. And what they're doing is they want to put permit parking, which was asked by their communities in Kew Gardens and in Council Member Delarosa's district because they don't want people parking to get onto the train or to the LIRR to get into the city and not have to pay the fee for congestion pricing. So that was for specific communities and it's not gonna be painted with a wide brush for old communities. It hasn't had a hearing yet, so I think it's a little bit ways off. But if Woodhaven did not want that, it certainly would not be included. Thank you. Thank you. And before we go to the next table, the last table, because table number 13 didn't want to ask a question, I just want to thank Kevin Morris, a Queensborough director and Ido Shargall and my special assistant who helped put this event together. Thank you. So I just want to really thank them for the work. And where's the owner? The owner of the place? Is the owner here? No, they're under control. Okay, we're gonna thank them for allowing us to use the place. Definitely, and table number 12, right here. Good evening, everyone. How are you? Well, thank you. My name is Raven Askew. I am one of the deputy superintendents for District 27. Thank you all for making it to table 12. Before I share the concern that came up from the table, I want to share a compliment of something that we observed in Woodhaven and across District 27 today. We have a very large district of preschools, elementary and middle schools. We have about 56 in District 27 altogether. And one of the main concerns that was shared by parents is that since COVID, they don't have as much access to schools as they traditionally had. And today we had our first ever district-wide discovery day in which we opened up all 56 sites and made them open to parents. So we're really proud of that turnout. So I just wanted to share some good news. Now, the concern we want to share in that same vein of supporting our schools, we know that school safety numbers are low. We also have a concern for the decreasing number of crossing guards in our communities. It's really impacting us as well. And many of the schools in our community, they have parks adjacent to them. And in the evenings and after school hours, the parks are being occupied by just a lot of people. And when schools go to open the next morning, it is not always left in favorable conditions to our young people who try to take advantage of them. So the question or the ask is, what specifically can be done to ensure that those parks are really closed when they're supposed to be closed so that the students are walking into a safe space in the morning? Tell me about the discovery day again. So discovery day, after the pandemic, there were a lot of restrictions for parents coming into the school for safety and not all of the schools, but many parents felt disenfranchised. So in partnership with our CEC and other parent representatives, we decided instead of having certain parents, having certain experiences, we wanted to make the district feel a little bit more intimate. So today was our district-wide discovery day. Every school opened their doors from about eight. So I think 11 some schools, most till about 11 or noon, you could go into classrooms, you engaged with your teachers, you met the principal. There was Waffle Wednesday at a school, but every school was open today. For our larger schools, it's taking place over multiple days so we could accommodate everyone. But I was excited. I visited about 10 schools today. There were teachers that were assigned to the parents to go onto the different floors. So we were concerned about safety. It was very well-attended. We're PSMS 43. We had a Waffle Wednesday today and the parents that came were engaged with the walkthrough as well. So it was really good. It was very fun. Do we do that city-wide, Dan? I think we do. The station of it. Good stuff, good stuff. Can we do that? Do we do that? We don't. This is and I have to give a lot of props to our superintendent and his staff. It's done on a district basis. Queen South High Schools, is that a very similar? Dr. Van Ness has organized. So it's done on a district basis. We're doing what we can to encourage that, but we want that to come from the community. We should duplicate, duplicate. While you're standing. Yeah, yes, sir. Schools, they get... The Walkathon and I can't... I'm sorry, Dr. Van Ness, our superintendent for Queen South High Schools. Oh, awesome. She has a very big Twitter game. Very big, so she's got all kinds of branding. What's her name? Josephine Van Ness is our Queen South High School superintendent. I would love to meet her. Find out what she seems to be creative. Thank you. Let's do that, all right? David Norma. David Norma. David Norma. David Norma. David Norma. David Norma. David Norma. David Norma. David Norma. David Norma. Yes, yes, yes. This was organized. This is the deputy for Dr. Norma. Yes. Okay, so you holding it down, because we know the deputies do the real work. You know what I'm saying? You know, don't tell Ann and Anna that. Yeah, so tell me about the schools being closed. I mean, the gates being closed. Yeah, so this is something I have to say. This is one of the first things the mayor said to me and the chancellor very early on when we came in is how do we provide more access to schools, and particularly to CBOs, to our community-based organizations. So what we're doing, you know, as our educators in the crowd know, you know, there is a permitting process, you know, to reserve the gym or reserve classrooms at a cafeteria. There is a cost associated with that. So what we have done under the mayor's leadership is found those schools within really every district where there's a particular need to provide access to the community and offered access at no cost. And so we're hopefully gonna expand that as much as we can so that our community-based organizations who need a place to have a community meeting or to bring our young people in or to have an event, whatever they need, they don't have to worry about the cost of doing that for our schools. So we're trying as much as we can to bring people back in. And then we have great programs like this during the day to have our parents come in. One other thing, if I can, sir, just point out, another way to connect to our teachers. One of the things that our parents love the most is when they can connect informally with our teachers. You can now, if you can't get there for parent-teacher conference, you can now set up an appointment to come in on a day of your convenience. Because not every parent, parents have to work. They have to work at night. Sometimes they're working during the day, can't come in for parent-teacher conference. If you can't, that's fine. Contact your school, make an appointment to come in and meet with your teachers at the time of your convenience. That's something we're very excited about. Hold on, hold on, one more thing. When I was bar president, we did this thing called Extended Use, where we found that a lot of our CBOs were having to pay for the insurance, the school safety agents, the custodians. And we said, listen, if the local community-based organizations, if they are volunteering their time, we should not be overtaxing them. And so we were able to, under the previous mayor, we were able to get, I think it was $4 million, where we picked up that tab. We wanted to do that again. We're trying to do it as much as possible, but the budgetary restraints we have really impacted that. But I strongly believe that we should not be charging community-based organizations for using school builders. That's an extension of the resources of the community. We can't say 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. You're welcome. And then at 3 a.m., 3 p.m., we want to kick our kids out. We can't do that. We have classroom, auditorium, swimming pools, gymnasium. We need to get a full use of all of that. But one of the things that she was sharing was that the locking the gates around the schools. You know, what are the rules on that? Yeah, so that varies, you know, our custodians who do an amazing job or task with making sure that the area is secure. In some cases, they are, even community members have the key to open the gate to make sure that to allow young people to come in and play. It really varies school by school, depending on the situation. But in some cases, that's true. What's that? Yeah. Yeah. So, I sued the park. Yeah, that was me, yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for the question. We are well aware of and very concerned also about use of our parks. They close at night. They should be closed at night. So we have our own individual staff who's out there who closed the parks. We also, as you've heard this evening, this is a mayor that cares a great deal about public safety. So because of that, we have a great working relationship with PD. And there are instances where PD will help us with closing parks. We also have our parks enforcement patrol. So we do have a lot of different ways that we address concerns like this. We work with breaking ground, also when there's homeless conditions. But we will absolutely, if there's specific parks where you're seeing, where there's a problem, Jackie Langston, our Queensborough commissioner is here. We want to have the names of those parks and we can look at how they're closed today and if we can improve on that. So identify for us some of the specific, if there's a specific problem. So we can look at it. So Mr. Mayor, the owner isn't here, the manager, Senkita Patosta here, but the manager, Annie Hassanis here. So we just want to thank her. Yes, yes, we want to thank you. Thank you for allowing us to be a host here. For being a host. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. Listen, thank all of you taking your time out. It means a lot that you come out and spend some time. We're not one and done. We'll be back. And my commissioner, we're gonna do some aging town halls in this area also. Travel safe, get on safe. And I just want to thank not just our mayor, but Fred Kreisman. Thank you, see you. Thank you, see you.