 Okay. We're ready to get started. Good evening. My name is Fred Kreisen. I'm the commissioner of the mayor's community affairs unit. We're excited to be here in Sunset Park High School. I want to thank the principal, Victoria Antonini, for opening the doors for us this evening. Thank you. The talk with Eric Community Conversation Town Hall series strives to connect New Yorkers in their community so we're proud to be here in Sunset Park. We want to hear from all of you. The first hour, from 6 to 7 p.m., we had roundtable conversations with members of the mayor's office taking diligent notes on your issues being discussed at every table. You have intake cards of every single table to ensure that if your question isn't asked tonight, we're going to have an agency tracked by the mayor's office getting back to each one of you that has a question that wasn't answered here tonight. From 7 o'clock from now until we go through each table, we're going to go around asking questions to the dais. But before we do that, we want to open up and give the congressman Dan Goldman an opportunity to speak. Thank you very much, Fred. It's great to see such a great turnout. I want to thank the mayor for putting this together, and we have an incredible turnout of representatives from just about every city agency who can try to address all of your problems. But this is a real opportunity for all of us in government to listen to you to make sure we understand what your needs are, what your concerns are, so that we can react. And if there's one thing you know from this administration that I've had the pleasure of working with now for seven months is that when we get intake and we want to get stuff done, that's what the mayor will do. So I'm very pleased that everybody is here and look forward to your questions. Thank you. I just want to take the opportunity to introduce who's here on the dais. Of course, the mayor of the city of New York. We have Deputy Mayor Anna Almanzar, who's here. Deputy Mayor Mira Joshi. We have Deputy Commissioner Mark Stewart from MNYPD, DOE Chancellor David Banks, DOT Commissioner Donis Rodriguez, Parks Commissioner Sue Donahue, DEP Commissioner Jared Agarala, DOB Commissioner Jimmy Otto. We have SBS Commissioner Kevin Kim, DCWP Commissioner Vildevera Mayuga. We have Commissioner of Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, Daniel Castro. We have Department of Aging Commissioner Lorraine Cortez Vasquez, Department of Probation Commissioner Juanita Holmes, DCP Chairman Dan Gorodnik, EDC President, CEO Andrew Kimball. We have Deputy Chief Baro Chief James Migliliano. We have H&H CEO of Coney Island Hospital, Svetlana Lipsianka. Mayor's Office of Community Mental Health Executive Director Eva Wang, Department of Health Mental Hygiene Deputy Commissioner Dr. Leslie Hayes. Mayor's Office of Climate Environmental Justice Acting Executive Director Vicky Cirillo. New York City Emergency Management Deputy Commissioner David Schmidt, CCHR Deputy Commissioner Kajori Shoudry and Gender-Based Violence First Deputy Commissioner Salonis Sethi. Mayor's Office of People Disability Commissioner Christina Curry. We have Office of Sports and Wellness Director Jasmine Ray, DYCD Deputy Commissioner Mike Bobbet, Mayor's of Criminal Justice Executive Director Deanna Logan, ACS Deputy Commissioner Joseph Carriere, HPD Deputy Commissioner, First Deputy Commissioner Ahmed Tagani, NYCHA Senior Vice President Brian Honan, HRA Administrator Lisa Fitzpatrick, DHS Deputy Commissioner, sorry, Iris Rodriguez, Department of Finance Advocate Robin Lee, Fire Deputy Chief, Borough Chief, Chief Dean Coaster, CEC Chair and Executive Director Sarah Said. And of course we have also Patrol Borough Brooklyn South, Charles McEvoy, Borough Chief and Captain Kristen Suarez, Commander of the 7-2 Precinct. And also we're also joined by Jeremy Laufer in the back, District Manager of CB7. And I'll hand it over to the Mayor. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And you know, we're looking forward to a healthy conversation. And as in any town halls, so I just want to prepare all of you, there's going to be those that don't believe you have the right to speak in an orderly fashion. So let me let them know now, they should really just exercise their right right now, so we can get on with our business. But if you disrupt, you're going to bounce. And you're going to have to leave here because we're here to get business done. We're not here. You protest outside. In here, we engage in conversation. And what has become, what has become clear to me, and it may not be clear to everyone, but it's clear to me, we have reached a point in this country where people feel I got to prove you wrong. So I'm right. Instead of saying, let me seek to understand so I could be understood. That is how we have to move. We wonder why we see so much gang violence in our streets. Our children are watching the adults and how the adults are acting. We wonder why we can't sit on the same blocks and our neighbors increase in anti-semitism, increase in LGBTQ plus hate, increase in Black Milans, increase, increase, increase. People watch how we respond. That is not going to happen at my town halls. Won't happen. You want to voice your concern? We're all ears. We don't have to agree, but we don't become disagreeable. I believe we can work out all these complex problems we have. Trust me. People think that being the mayor of the city of New York is just, you wake up and just print money and all of a sudden everything is fine. No. These are some tough challenges, folks. And the only way we're going to get through 91,000 asylum seekers, cuts in federal dollars, money not here that we had before, educating our children, dealing with the overproliferation of guns, affordability of housing, all of these issues, we got to get through them together. Let's be clear on this. I am a mayor that has gone through a lot and I'm here to help people who are going through a lot. And I'm up every day in our subway systems, walking out streets. We had a group of asylum seekers on Saturday night, 12 a.m. at night who was sleeping outside. You know what I did? I went out to visit them and spoke with them and communicated with them and say, we need to help each other. How many hospitals have I been in with family members who lost a loved one to victims of violence, standing in the emergency rooms, speaking to the family members, watching them cry? How many times have we been there when people could not pay their rent, came up with those dollars for them? We're doing a good job. Say what you want, but this is an amazing team that have been serving the people of the city of New York in a respectable way. And I know everybody has a lot of naysayers. My son said to me many years ago, your haters would be your waiters when you sit down at the table of success. Just stay focused. Brought down gun violence, brought down homicides, brought down to seven major crimes, first administration to have a Dominican as a deputy mayor, first administration to have an Indian American as a deputy mayor, first administration to have an African American woman to be a police commissioner and the first Puerto Rican in the history of this city to be a police commissioner, first administration to have a Korean American to do small business services, first administration to have a Spanish speaking citizen being charged with the Department of Correction, first administration to have a woman in charge of Intel division, first administration to make sure our children have dyslexia screening. So 30% of them don't end on on Rikers Island. I have been on Rikers Island speaking with inmates and correction officers more than any mayor in the history of the city to resolve the issues on Rikers Island. 99% of the jobs we lost during the pandemic, we got back. We have money for nature during the land trust never was done before. We got it back, brought down childcare payments in the city of New York from over $1,000 to just a few hundred for low income New Yorkers invested in fair fairs so low income New Yorkers can get a discount on the subway system invested in fair futures. Those who are forced to care children now go to college. We pay for it and give them a stipend so they can move on with their careers. We have done so many firsts. So many firsts. We know we're doing it right. We don't need people to tell us we're doing it right. This is a commitment to the migrant asylum seekers. No money came in on a federal level to assist us with the use taxpayers dollars to do so. So we're focused with discipline, no distraction, and we're gonna grind. So if you want to talk and share your thoughts and ideas, this is the day to do it. You want to disrupt, but you got to do it outside. You can't do it in here. I'm not gonna let it allow it to happen. Let's go do our first table city doing to invest in Sunset Park so that our CBOs in the community can support our migrant families in education, health, safety and housing. We she's not here tonight because she's not feeling well. My first deputy mayor did something amazing when we came in office. She used to be in charge of the United Way. We learned that many of our CBOs were taken too long to get paid. We had billions of dollars in backlog within the first few months in office. We cleared up billions of dollars in backlog to go to our local local CBOs. Then we inherited, as I just mentioned, our migrant asylum seeker crisis 91,000 people. We're getting on average anywhere from 2000 to 2500 a week, 10 5000 every two weeks, 10 1000 a month that we have to find housing for clothing, wash their clothing, feed them. All of their children were incorporated into our educational system. Chancellor Banks did an amazing job to make sure no child was not educated. Then we partnered with our local community based organizations that were providing those basic services. At the same time, we just had a round table last week with many of them. We were able to partner with law firms to start the process of getting them filed so they can have their status. Here's the problem that the congressman has been trying to help us do. What is more anti-American than coming to this country and being told you can't work? We are telling the people who arrived here they can't work. That is anti-American. No other ethnic group that has come to this country was told you cannot work. What we need is the federal government to give them the right to work. And that's what they said to me when I spent the night in the shelter with many of them. They said we don't want your free food, we don't want your free clothing, we don't want you to do anything free for us. We want to work. So we need to be pushing the federal government to give them the authorization to work and the federal government should be giving us a $4.3 billion that we're spending at a taxpayer's dollars. And the local community based organizations have been in alignment with us and dealing with this crisis that we're facing every single day. Well good evening. Housing was the major topic at our table so the question is how can we modify the enforcements of local law 18 as it pertains to owner-occupied homes and how are you supporting increased funding for community land trust? Congress woman Velazquez was the first one that really engaged in this conversation around community land trust. I think it's an amazing concept. We need to see how to move it forward. We were successful first administration that spent money and put NYCHA as part of those of you who are from NYCHA. Previously NYCHA was not part of the housing plan with the first administration that included NYCHA as part of the housing plan. We put over $23 billion into our housing plan, largest amount in history in doing so, but here's the problem. Many people when they look at housing they look at the role of the mayor. We tried to get Albany to extend what's called 421a, some form of tax benefits to incentivize building, nothing was done. We tried to get them to lift the FAR to building communities where historically they didn't do affordable housing, they have good transportation, good access to food, good hospital, good schools. We said let's start building there in those areas that traditionally didn't do affordable housing, nothing was done. All the things we asked from Albany and stated can you help us build because we have a supply problem. We don't have enough units of housing, the session ended without anything done on housing that should have never happened. We believe that we need Albany to look at what we have to do around housing and allow us to build more housing. Dan, who is the chair of DCP, has been put in place a progressive, aggressive plan because we need more housing. Dan why don't you touch on some of the things that you're doing. Okay. Thank you Mayor. I think it is really important point about the failures of Albany to act this year for us to have the opportunity to create more housing in New York because the lack of supply is directly impacting all of our lives from the price of rent to the radical imbalance in power between landlords and tenants in New York City. If you don't have an option to move and to explore another place to live, you're stuck and you're stuck with what a landlord is handing you. It impacts the pressures of displacement and gentrification and homelessness and the number of New Yorkers who are rent burdened today. You know it's 50 percent of New Yorkers pay more than a third of their income on rent and it is impacting everybody's lives. Now the Mayor asked me the question about what is our plan locally. Now we in New York City are not powerless here. Albany can help a lot but we in this administration are not going to sit by and wait. We are going to propose our own housing plan which will be ambitious. It will allow for us to create a small amount of housing across a wide area New York City. It is a city-wide proposal which will add affordable units. It will add units of all types in all corners and this is something that we hope to be able to introduce to the City Council next year. We look forward to sharing all those details with you. Hi good evening. Thank you Mayor Adams. Deanna Logan Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice. Thanks to Mayor Adams. Local Law 18. The Office of Special Enforcement has been working very diligently to set up registration so you can go to the website for the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, Office of Special Enforcement to register your legal unit for the ability to engage in for those in the room. Everybody's like what's local law 18? I realize I should take a step back, right? Local Law 18 deals with short-term rentals and what our administration recognize very quickly is that there are a number of individuals that use the income from short-term rentals and borders to supplement and make their mortgage payments and Mayor Adams has been working with us and our Chief of Staff to look at what we do as an administration with the Department of Buildings in order to ensure that people understand how they register their legal units and how they can go forward with that income. It also deals with those landlords that have been operating outside the law to ensure that the apartment stock and the housing stock that the Mayor has absolutely dedicated city resources to making sure is available is given back to New Yorkers for rental. So what Mr. Mayor we also have HPD would like to add some good evening. As it pertains to local law 18 right now the law is restricting us for only renting one room in our homes. The question is how can we talk about modifying the law to allow us to rent our homes to make a living? By going to your local City Council person and expressing them remember I don't make the law I sign or veto laws go to your local City Council person and express get all those who support what you're saying and go to your local City Council person and tell them this is what we like in that modification so that those who are trying to keep a roof over their head small property owners like I am how do you keep the roof over your head and during those difficult times that is something you need to express to your local City Council person so they can introduce modify or look at that law to see how it's more user friendly for those small property owners like yourself. Thank you I appreciate that and I spoke to them and they told us to come to you so it would be great if we can talk to someone in your office offline so we can go over the details of that. Who's the City Council person over here? Avila's. Who? Shea Ose's office said that. That's in best style so what we should do let's get Shea Ose and you your whoever table there that ask that question I'll join you in a zoom with Shea and have him tell you officially exactly what his position is. Okay thank you. So my team will get kicked. Who's the contact for your team just so I can write it down. The contact from your team? On your table you have Alina. Somebody's gonna come over to you see you. Good evening Mr. Mayor what step is the City taken to expand access for people with disability language access for immigrant community improve quality of life such as no smoking in the park as well as crackdown illegal street vendor in Sunset Park. Thank you. But we have amazing uh I thought I saw it here. Who do I have from uh Mayor's Office of Disability? Not you. Not you too. Okay we have down on the end okay go ahead commissioner and you smell cigarette smoke I smell weed that's all I smell all over the place. Go ahead commissioner. Good evening so I apologize I didn't understand the full question when you talked about people with disabilities you asked about language all kind of surfaces well as you can see I have two interpreters in front of me I don't hear I'm deaf so I'm sorry yeah that's kind of loud okay so when you ask I can't hear but I can feel that you asked about languages so under law if a person is deaf we provide effect what's called effective communication but if you're asking about other languages they have to let us know first what the language is so that we can accommodate that person under effective communication. If you come to us and you don't say what the language is that could be the issue you talked about quality of life what else are you you're looking for what specifically for housing about working so sir thank you we were already informed about your situation when it comes to housing and that's also from CCHR what we're here to do is to provide access for the city to make sure it is accessible but you have to let us know first what you're looking for language is broad when you talk about language or if you're talking about cultural access and if you notice I was signing just in case if there's someone here that's deaf it needs to see what I'm talking about but again you have to let us know what language you need for housing you contact us or CCHR they're available also so bottom line is you contact MOPD and that's either by email or by phone to let us know what the issue is so that we can work with you we don't promise we're going to get everything done it takes time but we can work with you also there's the referral of a non-profit CBO independent living centers there's one in each borough and they're on the ground ground routes the people that you talk to that are advocates that we work with also in case we cannot assist as a city agency then we have the local grassroots agencies to assist as well did that answer your question we're going to before you before you go into that we'll go to your other parts also but going to what we're doing around hiring and how we are focusing on hiring and employment we're focusing on people living with disabilities on hiring we are we have an ambitious goal far too often we have not been user friendly on those who are living with disabilities and not being hired in city jobs we want to start with us first and we are really focusing on zeroing in on employment because the best way to deal with housing the best way to deal with all the things that you should have as a person living with disabilities is respect them enough and employ them enough and we need to start with city city government and we're excited about doing that vendors i'm so glad you said that because you need to speak with your local council person because i don't believe in the illegal vending and we have been sitting down with mackervoy are you here chief mackervoy we're going to talk about some of the things sunset park is inundated Harlem is inundated uh so many areas are inundated with illegal vending and oftentimes when we go in to clean it up we get to push back from your local council people so folks got to raise their voices and say what they want in their community we're going to do our job we're going to go in with the department of sanitation we're going to go in uh with all those the agencies and do what's right we try to warn people firsthand where you can't bend how you're allowed to bend how to go about the process before we go in uh councilwoman ung out in queens walked with me on main street she said i need all this cleaned up eric and we went in we cleaned it up and it did not come back and so if there's an area that you believe your of the vending is out of control we want to address that because it should not go after legal businesses should not hurt businesses and we don't want to be over punitive but we have to make sure it's done appropriately uh uh chief you want to talk about some of the stuff you're doing yes mr mayor and uh with regard to the question as far as you know the legal vending if i can get into that for i'm sorry the um quality of life is smoking in the park that's a quality a lot of offense we handle all that we address that the men and women of brooklyn south um address that and it's we all want a quality life like smoking in a park public consumption of alcohol public urination any of that stuff we address in so far as the knowledge of sunset park the legal vending i'm going to turn it over to captain suarez who has intimate knowledge who's been doing an exceptional job at working with that good evening everyone i'm christen suarez the commanding officer of the 72nd precent um just a touch base on what um chief was saying and the mayor was saying in regards to our quality of life issues i started back here on uh january 30th quality of life issues with something that have been a huge topic of mind with all the officers i think a lot of people know me here um smoking the drinking in the park we've been trying from day one to make sunset park a safe place for the community my offices have been out there my supervisors have been out there i go out there myself to ensure we do the best in regards to vending a lot of complaints come in i work with the council members and people in the community in regards and we've all worked together we've done a few operations to address these issues because i know the businesses have to make money and we don't want anyone being hurt um if there's any certain locations certain areas that you could be brought to my attention my community fair offices will definitely take that information down at the end and be willing to address it and work with the agencies accordingly to handle this thank you yeah so you need to we want feedback from you go to the precinct council meetings when is your precinct council meetings we have it every two second tuesday of the month starting back up in september yeah so attend your precinct council meetings speak with the commanding officers share the things that you're seeing as deal with the quality of life of a big quality of life person parks deserve to children and families not two people doing illegal things and it has gotten out of control for far too long this was the any and everything gold city we don't operate that way that's not how this administration is going to operate thank you next statement hi good evening mayor my name is carolyn ferguson and i work at red red hook initiative i am the um environmental justice manager for red hook so um red hook is burdened with um the residents of nitro you know they're burdened with mold scores let us paint their under construction they also have a cruise terminal that brings people in and out through there so my question is is what can your office do in the next 30 days to improve the indoor air quality for the residents of red hook and to help mitigate some of the air pollution that they're currently plagued with because during the canadian wildfires red hooks particulate matter was over 300 that's the particulate matter 2.5 it was over 300 and days that is not over 300 it's in the 100 so what could your office do in the next 30 days to improve the indoor quality for the residents and the outdoor quality thank you thank you rick rick can you help get out of the moment that you had a question get rid of my was was it what is the quality now by the way today's not so bad um thank you mr mayor and and i'll also ask uh vicki serrulo to uh to follow with with some of the things that we're doing in blend yc um um first of all say we know very well that red hook like a number of environmental justice neighborhoods around the city suffers disproportionately from bad air quality the canadian wildfires of course were an external phenomenon they were that that would that affected the whole city in fact i'm surprised to hear that red hook was only at 300 parts of the city were 500 uh that day and there are two things i think to think about one is what we need to do about indoor air quality over the long term what we need to do about uh reacting when issues like those wildfires show up and then there's really the third thing which is continuing what we've been doing to reduce local sources of air pollution right which is what another thing that that we know that red hook hunts point in the Bronx a couple of other neighborhoods disproportionately disproportionately touch on and actually i'll let me ask vicki to speak to the long-term things but i'll put this in context among the things we need to do to address climate change is start thinking in an integrated way about indoor conditions um we as an administration have made the commitment that just as we have minimum temperature requirements so landlords have to maintain residential spaces at a minimum temperature that means they have to provide heat during the winter we've said we are going to start working towards a maximum indoor temperature because at some point given our rising temperatures we are going to need to basically have universal air conditioning that will be one of the things that over time gets us to improved indoor air quality and we think we have to do that as part of an overall greening initiative and some of you may know about local on 97 which will require a lot of buildings to do improvements that might include heat pumps that can provide that kind of air conditioning on the short term the sad reality is there's not a lot that we can do over the next 30 days right we can provide masks and the mayor marshaled us all the day that that that wildfire came we were all at the emergency management center and my agency and several others participated with the police department and getting masks more more widely distributed we have a set of cooling centers where people can go when there are heatwaves like we are expecting later today and i know i was talking with the commissioner of emergency management earlier but there's not a lot that we can do to change the local air prop profile over the next 30 days however under deputy mayor joe she's leadership the mayor's office of climate environmental justice is certainly working on a couple of initiatives dealing particularly with the challenges that you've got of a concentration here in sunset park and redhook of distribution centers and other things that are reducing your local air quality and i don't know where is vicki oh there you go can you talk to that yeah man and so but i want to drill specifically with your question in the next 30 days it's the next 30 days so we can't change the air quality in the next 30 days but we can give you some clear tips on what you should do you know to empower you because we're going to be dealing with this air quality stuff for a long time and there's no specific things that nitra or we're going to be able to do to deal with the air quality but there's some things i'm sorry and use it with use the mic because there's mold spores indoor right and then they have the lead dust paint indoors right and they may be told well open your windows to get ventilation but they also have construction happening right outside the window so that's what i meant like if there's a way that we could at least get air purifiers for these residents because if they have to keep the windows closed at least they indoor air can get some circulation there's children in these developments right there's seniors and the other thing is that a lot of times black and brown children are diagnosed with bad and poor behavior and a lot of times it's not that they have bad or poor behavior it's something going on with the brain because of the lead dust paint and there's also studies that show that particular matter contributes to dementia it contributes to diabetes it contributes to depression so if i and the children don't have a playground because they're under construction if they're for us to be indoors then i mean like can we give them air purifiers to keep the circulation of the air let me find out we have we have we have we have nitra here is there is there anything is there anything that that is available because you know i want to manage people whatever whatever i say we're going to do we're going to do what we can't do i'm gonna be honest about it so is there anything in nitra that based on what was just stated particularly with the construction so you weren't even talking about just what happened with the with the smoke from Canada she took my we're doing construction is there something that we can do so a number of things number one i will commit to setting up a meeting with red oak initiative because you guys always solution oriented with our head of healthy homes and also ahead of the sandy recovery team to talk about specific areas that need to be targeted and we will work on that together but number i also want you to know some of the things that we're doing so for the longest time nature used to deny that we had molded all we just said it was mildew we repeat it over and would come back in 30 days we now have a team that is dedicated to mold with experts to make sure that we get to the root cause right because if you don't get to what's behind the wall it's just going to come back so the folks who i'm going to you know have part of these conversations that will work with rh ag those will be the subject matter experts and also the folks who are ahead of that construction if we need to do that in you know our rhi and night street we'll be happy to do that but you know together i know that we can work on this you show us apartments that need to be attacked we will we will do our best you know but a lot of this too we have to talk about and i've had conversations with the head of your organization in ultimately a lot of this too is also a plumbing issue that we're going to have to work together too and you know and i see miss blondelle from red hook west who knows this as well but this is something that working together i think we can make some progress on what i'm sorry what's that okay so we have that we also have so much construction and resiliency it's not just nature we have a hundred million dollars around the waterfront another hundred million in the parks department i think one of the biggest issues is having contractors follow their specifications if it says you have to wet down the area of the soil pile wet it down that's not happening on a regular basis it happens more in red hook because we're organized but there has to be across neighborhoods and so we want to be a model for the rest of the city on how we do take care of these and i like that and you know what's interesting when i was board president we put a lot of capital dollars in to electrify that system and you're saying that now the cruise so thank you mayor yes we have something called shore power shore power was built for the queen mary so it worked with them but because the ship is in water and water moves there are some details that edc needs to address in regards to the plug-in it doesn't work then if a smaller ship comes in and we're trying to or a different size ship then you're plugging shore power in but the passengers can't get off of the offboarding so it's those type of issues that we're stuck with such a good innovation but not able to use it and finally bring our trees back they cut down and we lost over a thousand trees in red hook five hundred right on the campus we really need our trees it is an urban heat island i am so thankful to god that we didn't get the weather that was happening in the rest of the country because people will die in new york with those type of temperatures so so um andrew the because i thought i put a lot of money in that project when i was board president you did um so andrew kimball from edc two answers to the questions from that table uh one is you're absolutely correct one of the things that changed candidly over the course of the period of kovid while the cruise business internationally was shut down was a new generation of massively larger ships that were built so that msc ship is one of them we are now in design to upsize the shore power system that the mayor put in when he was borough president we know that cannot happen fast enough but we were on it and we hope that that will make a substantial difference in terms of the emission there the other thing i just wanted to note red hook is burdened with uh too many last mile distribution facilities we are working very closely with our colleagues at dot and other agencies to develop a citywide movement of goods by water on barge to get those trucks off the street yeah because because it was it was red hook residents that came to me as bar president and we put in some serious capital dollars to to electrify that whole process so i'm glad that you stayed there soon trees we know that trees absolutely are so important and the way that we plant the way that the parks department prioritizes tree planting is by hvi heat vulnerability index neighborhoods that's where we go to plant so we know that red hook is really important for our greening initiatives and we are very focused on planting here absolutely look at you look at you on the road we want to move to the next table and we want to ask everyone to be brief for their questions so we want to make sure to get everything able and we're with you we got you that's what Sue was just saying let me get to this next table because y'all in a roll over here you want to give them a chance to ask a question yes my name is tanya and before i ask my specific question i just want to state that i'm a homeowner we have a lot of DOE representatives and there's another community member so i tried to formulate my question that's about the community and not just local law 18 but so how do you make sure that you're supporting the residents of the city based on our needs as we identify them right so for example after school programming or local law 18 for small homeowners or community members who are having issues with abandoned parks and things like that how do you how do you support the residents based on our needs as we identify them before focusing on other needs i'm not i'm not getting your question so i didn't want to be i didn't want to do too much micromanaging but you know so we're residents of the city and we feel as though we're not being supported as much as let's say the migrants are being supported finding housing for the migrants making school space away for the migrants right not you know so things like that you know um you know we hear that often we hear that often and i'll never forget uh i don't know if zach is here zach isco we have a deputy commissioner yeah i'll never forget when we when the first rounds of migrants came to the city people were saying that you built a tent for them on randals island and i went over to randals island to visit some of the homeless shelters there they said you built a tent for them you're treating them better than i than you're treating the people who was in the homeless shelter for a long time i said i'll tell you what you guys can go live in the tent you can leave where you are you go live in the tent they said well you know what eric we that's not really what we're saying so whoever is saying we're treating the migrants better than everyday new yorkers i need them to show me where and how you should all go visit the herks seeing people living on cops getting the basics the basics there's nothing a migrant is receiving that an everyday long-term new yorker can't get and more migrants can't get the housing they don't get feps vouchers they don't get all the other things that other the everyday new yorkers are getting and so that rumor that started that hey y'all treating the migrants better no we are treating the migrants the way every ethnic group that came to this country should have been treated other other cities aren't other cities people are sleeping in the streets we are doing what was done for every group that came to america coming past that statue of liberty there's not one thing that we're doing for migrants that we're not doing for long-term new yorkers now if you ask something that we're doing that you know of please give it a mic because i want to hear about it because i'm not aware and it doesn't exist better i didn't say better i said addressing these concerns before i'm sorry i didn't say they're being treated better what i said was what are you doing to support our concerns before focusing on them right because and i don't want to turn this into just a lot we don't want to turn this into a local or 18th thing because that was my issue but my bigger issue is that as a community member right we've we've been here where we are the community members who built these communities and if we feel that we're not being supported and we see resources are being diverted elsewhere i didn't say better the same before how do we how are we being supported so if we say aside from local law 18 because you addressed that but i've been hearing about after school programs since my children were in elementary middle school and now they're in high school and college are parks that aren't being developed in certain neighborhoods or homelessness because people are being shifted from one neighborhood to another that's over so it's not better it's before okay so i'm glad we were able to resolve that one part of it now here's the other part of it we are spending four point three billion dollars of tax payments dollars and i want you to go to your local council person and said have you told the federal government give us this money go to your local senator go to your local assembly person where are they why am i the only one that's saying tax payers dollars should not be wasted and not be used if you take away the voice from your congressman who has been fighting hard is held for us where are the local electives saying we should be getting federal instead of new york city spending four point three billion dollars so the mayor has been saying this for the longest so that that that four point three billion dollars is going to come from somewhere so yes chancellor banks were successful and getting for the first time in history a hundred thousand children getting some of you jobs he was successful for the first time in history getting a hundred and ten thousand young people and i was summarizing program we are successful in what we're doing in the parks we have invested more in parks than any other administration but that four point three billion dollars is going to come from somewhere so we should be asking all the local electives how many of you went to washington to advocate to get the national government to pay this four point three million dollars i can't be the only one talking about it the congressman can't be the only one talking about it every local elected in the city should be saying new york city residents should not be spending four point three billion dollars of taxpayers dollars or something that's a national problem and they're not doing that they're not doing that you know what they're doing know what they're doing sister they're saying to me how come you're not giving every micron a cell phone you should ask them all you should do a road call say have you been to washington have you called the national government you should do a road call with all of your elected officials you know somebody's from best side you got oh say you should ask them all have you advocated for taxpayers dollars to be spent in the city on taxpayers and not allowing the federal government to ignore the dollars that we are spending this is this is insulting to our city what they're doing to us by making us pick up the tab of a national problem this is wrong and we have to all raise our voice and be outraged by this and our local electors need to be outraged by it hello mr. mayor i have a question very important to me yes i'm a third generation of sons also i'm disabled and i'm very worried because i've been on housing connect for 10 years to try to get affordable housing nothing i've also been on 16 years waiting this for section 8 nothing and i'm very scared that i'm going to wind up in the street and i have no other resource i don't have no family unfortunately my parents passed away my brother passed away and it's like i feel like i have no help out there and this is how i'm feeling and i feel like the governor and everybody promise affordable housing when you go under affordable housing website you have to make a hundred thousand two hundred and fifty thousand dollars i mean that's crazy that's like i don't i'm on disability i have i'm on a fixed income i pay my taxes my parents pay their taxes unfortunately they died before they even were they able to get social security what's going to happen what can i do what can you do to help me with all that with section 8 that i have i'm waiting 16 years for it and i see people getting a one two three i don't understand how i'm paying 70 percent of my income to my rent that i live on 50th street in sunset park my council member of sunset park does absolutely nothing to help me get into any program any section 8 that's around here any anything 16 years then also 16 years i'm on it somebody finally called me but they said in the process of it they're going to give me four months to find an apartment how am i going to find an apartment in four months like can you do something about that can you extend it a little bit can you something gotta be done to help me somebody like me that i've been a resident i've been here for 55 years and i'm unfortunately on a fixed income what can you do to help me help and people like me well okay first first we really need to understand this a lot of people talk about the housing shortage we don't have enough units for the enough people that are requesting housing the only way we can solve our housing problem is to build more housing of all different income levels low income middle income levels because every day every day people you have that teacher an accountant with four children they're struggling you have that uh mcdonnell's worker he and his wife they're struggling everyone is struggling that's why we were successful and getting the increase in wage for our deliver easters we fought for it dcwp who's here to commission and we fought for it we got it we know people need to be paid a wage that allows them to live in the city so in order for us to have the housing crisis fixed we have to build more to do it now here are impediments to it number one every time we try to rezone an area to build higher your local electorate say we don't want it here and some of your community residents some of the same community residents that say hey we need more affordable housing we more more affordable housing yes but just not on my block you know everybody talks to talk let's walk to walk when when when when when when when when dad oh come on sister i heard you you got to give me my shot when when dad wants to rezone we get ready to do a major rezoning right now you need to be present and see when your local electors are talking about they don't want to build and rezone so we can build that is the only way we're going to get out of this and then you need to ask your local elected from albany what bill did you pass to where the federal government issued 70 000 vouchers nationwide 7800 here in new york city uh under this administration put additional money people did everything they could to make sure that now we're on track to put those people in homes but it revealed even more so that we are behind the ball on the number of vouchers we need that's why in the federal legislative push we have made clear that we have the capacity to put more people in homes if given the capacity to issue part of our federal push we've been able to modernize our lending ability that's actually one of the rare wins we had in albany it's the same win that's going to allow us to do more on clt's and be able to extend the term of our housing so it's affordable for longer so we're going to be able to match that with vouchers if we can get the support from the federal government to issue more vouchers so we have spending cap we just don't have voucher cap and then the other thing i just want to flag is after this meeting if i could connect with you beyond talking to your council members office we also have housing ambassadors 60 across the city that have separate tools maybe tools that the council member doesn't have that we can try to explore if there are other options to get you into supportive housing or housing in michelama using michelama connect there are other avenues i just want to make sure that you're connecting with all of them and also well there is one thing that you said the question you said that you were waiting for 16 years for section eight now why why would that happen so the section eight list and brian can talk to it more has actually been closed for since 2009 it was only reopened momentarily because of the covid additional vouchers but the city has not seen an additional cap we're right now working on a plan to issue out more vouchers with the money that we have pursuing to the federal government giving us the permission so mr mayor you've made this a priority in your federal agenda we're talking to the congressional agenda actually the congressman has been helpful in talking to us about this so we hope to be able to put more vouchers on the street with that permission and on a specific okay sister we got to move on okay we got to move on he answered to the best of his ability table seven so first my name is melissa that about your these thank you very much for hosting sunset park um in this town hall i'll be remiss not to take this opportunity to encourage every single one of you to make your way up to our businesses and patronize them afterwards for dinner on fifth and eighth avenue along fourth two and also to remind everybody to get your mammogram i'm a breast cancer survivor two years strong thank you um thank you so what my table of advocates because you asking us to streamline a question it's hard to do it what can the city do to provide our children residents and seniors but especially those with disabilities better access to city services specifically the ones we spoke about which include bus shelters with seating accessible parks and equipment at the playgrounds for our children barrier free schools for children and staff and accessible community residential parking and an increase in accessible units through housing connect currently housing connect only offers five percent of every building dedicated to accessible units we want to see that increased for our residents you want to touch that hbt when it comes to housing connect the main goal is to get as many new yorkers into homes that they can afford the there are different preferences that we have on file there is an ongoing conversation about what preferences are allowed and not allowed some of it has to do with an ongoing legal matter that we can't get too far into but i will say that beyond just a preference people with disabilities people with special needs we go beyond just the minimum so both our housing ambassadors our marketing agents who work in those buildings are all trained to recruit as diverse a population as possible i'm happy to follow up to talk more about the specifics and what the targets are but we're not just doing five percent in fact the design protocols for our building meaning every time someone takes city money to build affordable housing both in preservation projects and new construction are required to meet universal accessibility standards so that either on the initial rental or re-rental it's accessible to a variety of new yorkers so we're out there trying to regroup and have help apply people with various needs into our housing and we're building more of our units to a higher standard so whoever is in there can enjoy their home and also we have dot here as well uh and parks regards to bus shelters the agreement the question about bus shelters city city areas etc well the the premier led a good negotiation with jc the co so the way how the city work is that we build in the bus lane we do a lot of work with the boss infrastructure but when it comes to the boss charters they say franchise called jc the co so in jc the cobs a big global and entity if you go across the nation across the globe you will see jc the cobs in most for the airport so they are responsible for the maintenance for the boss churches but also they build the both the numbers of boss charters that we need thanks to a good negotiation about the premier we're able to add hundreds of more boss churches that will see happening in the near future and i think it's important to note that we work with them on the design so that they are accessible and i think somebody brought up benches which are critical for people that are waiting for the bus hopefully the time you wait for the bus is reduced as the mta improves bus speeds but also sue donnie who our commissioner from parks can talk about a lot of the work that they've done on making playgrounds accessible which is also another point for quality of life for those people with disabilities feeding in order for the people to we got on fifth avenue we got like posts so people can lean on them people would you know people who can stand up for long periods of time oh great for them they can lean but people who cannot stand that's a problem and we need more seats and we need shelters to protect them and the children that are playing in the parks our children with disabilities they need spaces to play to okay first of all first of all i like that question and we need to look as we talk about the designs and we need to speak with the commissioner of people living with disabilities as we talk about the designs we need to design them that they do have some form of seating it shouldn't be about leaning some of our seniors some of people who can't stand so let's look at that let's look at that because we we should make them more inclusive for everyone that's using them and we need to look at that so let's let's look at that but i think us we was given to sue was going the commissioner was going into what we're doing in the parks around making the parks more inclusive because we we've had a city you you're dead on you've been advocating for this for a long time and you're dead on we've had a city that that has ignored for the most part we could do a better job with people who are living with disabilities we got that we need to do a better job and have an input will allow us to do so so soon what are some of those things we're doing with the parks yes thank you mr mayor and thank you for the question absolutely it's something that we prioritize in our parks capital construction projects every single one of our capital construction projects the first thing that we do when we have capital dollars is we have a community input meeting and that community input meeting is focused on hearing listening to what are the needs of the community what are people looking for and we have made a very very substantial effort to make sure that each of our playground designs that we're being thoughtful about the play equipment itself and looking at the latest and greatest in terms of access and ability for users of all types so whether that is in our types of swings that we're using our pathways how people are accessing the playgrounds themselves we have made it a significant investment in making sure that a we're listening to the needs of the community and b that we are incorporating all types of different types of play equipment that are accessible to all because we can't we we cannot build new things without thinking about the entire community we can't so we build in new parks we have to be thinking about people uh with living with disabilities we build in bus shelters we have to be thinking about that so we have to incorporate that's the role of the commissioner we have to incorporate all these new things we're doing we must think about how does it impact what people living with disabilities so keep advocating you have done it for years keep advocating we want we want your voice to be added to it all right we got a nice young man who's here and i just want to point out we did get confirmation that the new bus shelters that will be in cb7 will have benches but we'll certainly follow up so that you have more detail on where they'll be okay you got that right um hello my name is nale um thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to do this um what can we be done to ensure that our community resources such as the soccer field at sunset park are being made available for the residents of sunset park are permitted to groups that serve the community in some way and not to a for-profit program that is taking advantage of the city's permitting rules and regulations to take over the community's limited resources for no cost and give nothing back to the community in return what's your name what's your name my name is nale connelly i'm sorry my name is nale yeah what what grade are you in going into seventh grade seven thanks for thanks for coming out tonight okay oh is that a is that a public park yeah absolutely mr mayor and i can answer that question and thank you very much for it um we know that the sunset park field is so important and such a vital recreational asset for the community it's also in high demand and very busy just in the last um uh just this last spring and summer we had over 40 different requests for use of that field and so we work really hard at the parks department to make sure our fields are accessible to all users and it is a very um we um youth access youth permits are free adult permits are only 25 dollars but we do a lot too to make sure that there's both access that it's equitable and that people know what resources are available so we have made available on our website a map that shows when when fields are available for community use what's permitted we have also worked really hard we have a special group within the parks department that does inspections that specifically is out there to carry out inspections so you talk about who's using the fields making sure that the right people are using the fields just in this last spring and summer we did over 2400 inspections of our athletic fields going out and asking people show me your permit to make sure that the right people are using the right fields so we work really hard to make sure that um they are available they are very much in high demand we want to make sure that people have access and that people who have the permits are using them so you're talking about you're talking about a specific field like you're talking about a soccer soccer field you know the field he's talking about let him ask let him ask yo let's see let's see if he can rock you're talking about a specific soccer field yeah and what it's the soccer field up at Sunset Park I think it's the soccer field the that I was on but it's so now what is it it's not available i'm gonna come through system it's not available when you feel that the youth from the community needs to use it does anyone anyone else knows you know you know okay okay hi uh we had a whole thing but we wanted to keep it short um in the gist is over the last year and a half we've seen a lot of outside of the community people permitting for the fields and these programs are for-profit and charge an exorbitant amount of money and no one in these programs is from Sunset Park and they do nothing for Sunset Park other than take out resources for their own so what we're asking is for the permit office to look into keeping the single Sunset Park field for operations that work within the community of Sunset Park like Street Soccer USA or MS you know 136 who have their games there and perhaps directing these for-profit organizations that permit the fields to some of the larger venues such as Brooklyn Bridge Park for their permit uses that's one idea also blocking out hours for just community pickup games whatnot you know for every two hours of permitted time give an hour back to the community where that field cannot be used okay all right let us let us look at this so let's talk about this too okay let's look at that thank you thank you thank you we got it we got it all right good evening um DJ uh my name is Shanice Peters I work for Center for Family Life in Sunset Park I'm sorry I'm sorry get get these information I want to follow up with that okay I work for Center for Family Life in Sunset Park we're in the heart of Sunset Park I love this community I went to this school and one of the issues we talked about at our table is that we have a lot of principals who are based in the schools in Sunset Park and as someone who is also part of after school programs in Sunset Park one of the concerns that we have is in regards to DYCD and providing more opportunities for after school in the community so my question is is DYCD going to assess and open more opportunities for free after school in these communities and when can we expect an increase in seats in our community especially with the summer rising program as much as it's served hundreds of thousands of students there are still families who were not able to get a slot who are begging for a slot so how are we going to work towards that okay so I have um we look I am a I'm a big believer in school all year round structured learning I believe that having two months off for the summer without structured learning in many of our communities is wrong thing to do that was a that was a relic of the past when we were going to you know do farming and you needed two months off our children need structured learning all year round doesn't mean that they sit in the classroom but our communities need structured learning particularly we saw the big gap after COVID the chancellor said over and over again we would love to have 500,000 seats seats the money is just not there the record number we're at now but I think what we did 110,000 chancellor 110,000 that's a record number we're hoping that we can get the state and the federal government to allocate us more money I wish we could have every child that wants that summer program structured learning full day parents got childcare that is such a win they did an amazing job we're hoping next year we can get even more seats it breaks our heart to turn people away we just did not have the money to do so now after school program we put money in the budget that I don't believe a non-profit should be paying to use school space I believe a non-profit should be able to let us pay for the the construction the cleaning the insurance the school safety officers all we want from our non-profit is to use human capital so we're putting money in the budget to do what I did as President the extended use of our school buildings to allow our community to use the school buildings more it's unbelievable from 7 to 2 p.m. we tell our children to come in at 2 p.m. we say get out and come back the next day we should be using these buildings as much as possible that's what we want to do do i cd you want to wish is how about it thank you mr. mayor you you spoke well incorrectly and this is the largest summer rising program ever in history so thank you for the institutional commitment that you've made we know the center for family life in sunset park and there's several our providers we continue to support as best as we can your existing programs and we will also continue to take the feedback that has been given under advisement about the price for participant so i can't declare right now at what point the next concept paper will be issue but it is something that we're looking at internally to try and support what the mayor said right now to have fair wages and fair program models for all of our work so i would thank you for your continued support and for others who may be less familiar right now at the yc is funding 15 compass after school programs to beacon programs your 14 summer rising programs we look forward to continuing to support that work in this community it's very important to us what is your nonprofit okay okay good nonprofit good nonprofit but we want more seats you know that's the bottom line and if we could somehow next year we're reaching the fiscal cliff all of that covid money is going to dry up if we can get more money coming on the federal level state level we would love to do a full year program a big believer in full year education for our children hi thank you mr. mayor for organizing this town hall i have one question it was actually a question from the whole table but oh let me introduce myself my name is ruth stanislaus i'm founding principal of ps 971 straight down on fourth avenue between 62nd and 63rd elementary school our question is what steps is the mayor's office taking to lower the cost of living that has impacted families decisions to leave the city thus resulting in public school loss of funding register loss teacher accessing and oversized classrooms because families cannot afford to live in the city listen the city has has gotten extremely expensive last year uh joc jihad from office of management and budget we sat down and we stated what can we do there are things outside of our spanner control but we said what can we do so we started looking at how do we make the city more affordable particularly for low-income new yorkers we put more money into the fair fairs to get the metro cars down families were paying over a thousand dollars for child care we were able to partner with albany and bring down the cost of child care to just a few hundred dollars we looked at earned income tax credit we were able to partner with albany and say to give more money back over 20 years there was not an increase we put more money back in working class families pockets by the earned income tax credit all of our unions we have 302 000 employees 75 percent of our unions we sell their contracts the ratification of the contracts we gave them the salaries that they deserve dc 37 our largest union got the salary they deserve we settled the contract with our police agencies got the salary they deserve all of those unions our large workers were putting money in their pockets dc wp of commissioner was able to go after our delivery workers and fight to say these big app companies you have to pay them a living wage that they can provide for themselves so when you do an analysis of what we did we were zero focus on what's within our control how do we put money back in the pockets of everyday new yorkers that's within our span of control and it's an impressive record of things that we did to put money back in the pockets of new yorkers because the city is getting to the point that it's unaffordable we know that we don't have anything we don't have any control on bringing down the price of bread we don't have any control on bringing down the price of things but we can put money back in the pockets of new yorkers and that is what this administration has done at a record level of what we have done and what we've been able to accomplish and we want to continue to do that finding ways of putting money back into the pockets of new yorkers we have a few more plans that we're going to roll out one of them is extremely substantial we can't announce it yet but you're going to see this administration do more and more to put money back in the pockets of everyday new yorkers table now you know you can you know she answered the question already you know that she already asked a question there's a thing is a small question to you you know that you know that she answered the question we're going to the next table you know how this goes hello how are you i'm okay that's good all right if you're okay i'm okay yeah so my name is aries i'm just a community member who exists in sunset park and has lived here all my life and i noticed a common thread among all of the questions that have been asked over the past 10 tables and or at least over the answers that have been given and a lot of them revolve around the fact that there is simply not enough funding for a lot of the programs that are being advocated for so i'm wondering how are you grappling with this while also knowing that the nypd budget is at 11 billion dollars which is more expensive than most countries military budget so if we have enough money for such an expansive police department budget why are that we why are so many community programs and social services underfunded okay first first first i want to be i want to be accurate in your assessment of what all the last tables were about this table question had nothing to do that i stated we have a lack of funding i stated just the opposite we put money in the pockets of people when you when we talked about the bus shelters we didn't say lack of funding we said we're going to look at how to deal with the bus shelters when we talked about the other issues there was only one place that i talked about the lack of funding and that was with dealing with our school program that we want to extend so if you're going to do an analysis of what i say be accurate in your analysis because i know what i say and i know when we have a lack of funding and when we don't have a lack of funding let me so let me be let me be clear i heard you not hear me let me be clear on this this city must be safe and we went to the new york city police department and every agency in this city and we stated you have to do a what's called a peg program to eliminate the gap you have to find more efficiencies even in the police department but there's no way i'm going to inherit a city in 2022 when no one wanted to get on the subway system because it was dangerous where no one wanted to walk the streets because we were carving highways of death with bullets killing people i must have a police department that's functioning they're going to be efficient and they're going to do their job and a large amount of the police department budget that a lot of people want to talk about it is a personnel pension that's already built in that we have their fixed course we have no control of but i made it clear when i ran for office this city is going to be safe and i'm unapologetic about having a well funded disciplined police department to make the city safe crime has decreased we're safer people are back on our subway system you're seeing when i inherited city you saw three wheel motorcycles running up and down the block you saw ghost cars you saw robberies we removed over nine thousand illegal guns off our streets and you know what i lost two officers during my first month officer morrin revera who gave their life to the city the city will be safe and we're not going to allow them to overspend they're going to stay in their budget but we're going to give them the tools they need to keep this city safe like we're doing everyone else hey what's going on mr. mayor welcome back to sunset park uh was nice to see you i your art table had a quick question similar to this table about some of the changes we've been noticing with the police here in sunset park brooklyn uh you know we've had a lot of experience here with with the police uh you know i remember when i was growing up uh you know unfortunately we had a situation where police were beating street vendors pregnant c vendors in the street fifth avenue crazy situation and so you know you mentioned the police my neighbors here have mentioned that how to have a lot of money and funding um and i have a question about a promise that you made mr. mayor to change the culture of policing i think you know you say very often you know when you were running for mayor and and many times when people ask you about this that you know what it's like to be a cop you also know what it's like to be attacked by the new york city police department when you're a young person when you're just trying to get by and you know the kind of consequences it might bring on people so what we've noticed in our park rather than to ask your question what is your question relevant to sunset park is a change in every table if every table gives a soliloquy we won't get you done i love can i finish my question it's just about the question answer the question the question is about the police in the park and that's what we noticed has been happening east or sunday we noticed a hundred cops from different agencies sanitation parks nypd all attacking people pregnant women vendors people that you said are just trying to work some of them even new people new people coming from you know to make make it work like our parents did right independently and you know when you first starting you might know you don't always have all the all the paperwork sometimes the city doesn't even want to give you the paperwork uh so you can't even if you want to do it the right way you're not allowed to so what we're happening happening here in sunset park right now is we're getting attacked captain suarez is sending a hundred cops into the neighborhood every sunday their parks their trucks are parked making the streets dangerous and they say they're keeping us safe all they're doing is they're chasing out working people people like my mom my aunt my dad they're chasing us out of the park they're saying they're protecting us no they're chasing us out all because they don't like that we we we sell in tamales we sell in food we sell in arroz con leche we sell in churros you see us on the subway we're not causing no problems but why are your police causing problems with us and you said you were going to change that where's the change where's the change that's my question where's the change let me ask your question you just heard this woman here that was sitting at another table one of your neighbors she was talking about illegal vendors did you hear when she said that no you heard her to say that right i heard one neighbor we respond to what communities ask for that's what we respond to we respond to what communities ask for so just because you have a belief in something doesn't mean everyone in the community believe that and so you're stating that police are beating people up you're stating that they're doing that that is not what i see what i fought for what i ran on justice and safety if the officer is breaking the law he's going to be held accountable and he's going to be brought up on charges and he's going to leave this department i lived up to that i lived up to my commitment of making this city safe and so you may feel that people should be able to to do whatever they want and no one is abusing that is not how i'm going to run the city with all the research mr. Graham not saying let people do whatever they want i'm saying in our park where we've had no issues for years with people selling ice cream people selling tamales we've had no issues in the park for years and now all of a sudden you're mayor and now you're sending a hundred cops into the art park on sundays no one's one maybe one neighbor's asking for for it because she doesn't like that they play music but the vast majority of people that live around center park are immigrants they like the vendors and so who are you listening to because our table over here we the vast majority of us who speak Spanish we can't even get your police department on the phone they won't even offer interpretation no translation they disrespectful i just heard from my neighbors over here how when they ask for a translation they're laughed at they're saying oh no you got to speak English or you're lying to us so that's how your police department is treating us or they're coming into our park our homes disrespecting us so when i come up to you and i'm saying it this year this way it's because that's how your police department treats me okay and that's how it treats our vendors and that's why and that's i appointed the first Puerto Rican police commissioner in the history of new york the history of new york to deal with those issues you should sit down with your table in another group to talk about those issues that you talk about that's his job now hurt you pass the mic okay and we also have the captain suarez and the parks commissioner here and these questions and requests came from community residents that were didn't want to have they wanted to have the community enjoying the park and let's be listen let's be clear let's be clear when you live in a city with different beliefs and thoughts and action there must be a uniformity to coexist so one person may feel i like doing something and another person may feel i don't like doing something so what you're supposed to do is say well what does the law say this way i don't allow one resident to have power over another resident so it's great to do things because we like to do them but we live in a city with different opinions different beliefs different thoughts different concepts and so if everyone can do whatever they want to do when they want to do it then we will never be able to live in a city that's why cities have laws they have laws because you have to follow them because we all have different opinions i have a different opinion than many people but when you have a law you follow that law this way no one is able to allow their opinions to be on top of someone else so yes someone may like someone selling something in the park but if there's a neighbor that says i don't like it it is my responsibility to say well let's follow the law and that is what we're going to follow in the city next table los últimos años es sentido que nuestra comunidad es once para esta olvidada necesitamos sentirnos seguro en las calles en las escuelas en las área pública tenemos mucha gente viviendo en la calle como podemos trabajar todos para sentirnos seguro y tener acceso a vivienda asequibles gracias we have a trans we have translator at the table good evening mayor um she stated my name is gloria espinal i have 10 years living in sunset park and i am the founder of the united volunteer non-for-profit organization in the last 10 years i feel as if sunset park has been forgotten uh we need to feel safe while taking the trains in schools and in all public areas we have a lot of people living on the street and i'd like to know how can we work together to feel safe and have access to affordable housing thank you thank you mucho gracias you're very welcome you know what's what's interesting is that um uh we had town halls with young people we did a series of town halls with young people of i forgot how many we did i think we did 12 13 the number one issue in all of the town halls we held was we want more police we want to feel safe by our police presence around our schools and our community when we are on the subway station number one number one item second was mental health mental health and so i agree with you 100 percent ma'am we what we are doing in this administration i call it intervention and prevention because safety is not just a police officer safety is building our pipelines that prevent crime in the first place and no one has dedicated more to doing that than this administration we have to create a safe environment by being preventive as we intercede on those who are committing crimes right now that's why we put in place a subway safety plan to have officers underground that's why i stated that people who are dealing with severe mental health issues that can't take care of themselves we need to give them the proper care that they deserve a lot of pushback but i'm not waiting for someone to commit a crime before we give them the services that they deserve that's why we believe we need to hire more school safety agents because they do a good job with our young people because they committed and they overwhelmingly are black and brown and almost predominantly women and so i'm with you you deserve to be safe with dignity and respect they go together and that's what i'm going to ensure that you receive as the mayor of this city and in charge of the police department in this city jc um dominican american born and raised in this neighborhood and i wanted to ask with the recent protests at the rgb meetings has there been any thought on restructuring the board or possibly leaving votes within the people deciding who the board members are or what policies are brought up to the board the rent you tell me to rent guidelines board yeah yes yes the the board we get several appointments on the board and i i have a strong belief in all of my boards because i have a lot of boards that you appoint people you allow them to do the work that they do you don't go in and try to influence them you have them have these real conversations and come up with the right answers to do so i would love for the you know people ask over and over again um can you have the rent guideline board guidelines board don't do any rent increases at all but i also have meetings after meetings with small property owners 13 family houses 18 family houses that came to this country with everything they had and bought a house and now the course of running that house is through the roof and many of them are on the verge of losing that house because during covid there was a substantial number of people that couldn't pay their rent if we lose those family owners if they lose their place developers are going to come in and develop that property and then the price of real estate is going to go even further through the roof so you have to find that right balance if you're going to do a rent increase you got to take in mind how much is going to impact those who are living in an apartment and also taking mind of those who have to run the apartment electricity has gone up gas has gone up construction materials has gone up we lose those small property owners we're going to really have a real problem in our city and many of our first and second immigrants in the city and in this country are small property owners that all of their access all of their capital is in their homes and i hear them all the time saying ma'am we cannot keep our homes we're losing our homes when people think of our owners of property they think those who own a hundred two hundred different apartments no if you put everything you had into that nine family house that eighteen family house that's how you pay your your rent your children tuition that's your wealth and if they lose it we're going to lose middle class in new york so we got to find that sweet balance and that that that in between point like this young lady that was over here one of these tables was talking about a renter i don't know if she's still here but she was talking about you know imagine imagine being coming to this country working jobs able to buy a nine family house all of a sudden covid hits half of your tenants can no longer pay the rent you're not getting any support you're in a verge of losing that home those are the people that come to see me in tears those are the people i need to focus on and we have to find that sweet spot of not hurting tenants but not hurting those small property owners at the same time now maybe there's a way that one could separate after a certain number of units i'm happy to listen to that but i cannot have those small property owners lose their homes owning your home is the american dream and it could turn into a nightmare very fast if it's not done correctly hello uh how are you good thank you uh mayor adams you seem excited to talk to me i am okay so the general theme um for our group was about quality of life and about accountability and then i wanted to share just like us you know a very you know specific situation that our family has gone through and it's about the use of the demic park right so it's the park literally right behind where we're seated um so we have a two-year-old son he's going to be two in november and we really can't use that park we have to go to 19th street and um 6th avenue and we just have a few blocks away or we go to bay ridge i mean it's unfortunate right um there's guys there that are drinking doing drugs it's unsanitary you know we and you know we've gone through the process right we've called 311 we've emailed the nypd we've emailed the parks department we've gone through the city council and the city council has at least been responsive you know we disagree on many things but at least they've been responsive what are my options i really don't know what else to do like i've gone through the process i don't know what else to do first of all i'm gonna go over there with you let's do it we're not going to go together and that's not acceptable you should not have to leave your community to enjoy your park that's not acceptable and we're going to come up with a real plan to make sure that you and your family could enjoy your park there's i'm not going to accept the fact you have to take your baby somewhere else because you cannot live in your park safely so the chief and i are going to sit down we're going to take a trip over there and we're going to see exactly what the problem we're going to come up with we're going to come up with a plan let's do it i mean we got pictures i mean it's there you so we're gonna we're gonna where's dj dj coming exchange information but see you are the new york i'm talking about while the loudest are saying if someone carries a gun and they get arrested and then they out the next day what a loudest is saying that oh well why are you trying to do this quality of life issue that so what is someone is drinking in the park using why are you doing this what so what if someone is injecting themselves with drugs in front of a child that's what the loudest are saying i'm ignoring the loudest you and your two year old matter to me and people can boo me they can yell at me they can say whatever they want you will raise your child in a safe healthy clean city and i don't impose people drinking or doing what they want but not in a public park because now it's not accessible to anybody we talk about accessibility i can't even use the park right right that's not acceptable that's not acceptable and that happens too often because we have been ashamed to say we deserve to live in a clean safe city when you say it people want to all of a sudden say oh you anti this you just want the police to be all over the place no i want people to follow the rules respect me as a new yorker and respect my children as children of this city and i'm not going to surrender that for anybody we're going to fix that problem in your block thank you so much for having the town hall and thank you so much for your words about a home affordability and trying to look out for the middle class of new york because we're really struggling to stay in the city it's way too expensive between the connet increasing mta increasing rents increasing um trying to afford our mortgages um increasing property taxes i mean we're all trying to just live the american dream and build wealth for our families um not even build wealth but just like survive and stay in the city that we support and love um also trying to incorporate what everyone else has been saying um uh trying to include more resources especially for this um neighborhood for summarizing more actual space so that they're not overcrowded and they can actually do the programming properly um more resources for the elementary and middle schools for their crossing guards because fourth avenue in fifth avenue can be really dangerous for the young children um and specifically going back to what you were saying about homeowners not losing their homes um this is um about um being able for us as a one family two family home homeowners that live in our homes trying to use our whole space for our families for our friends for community members um that come adult children coming to take care of their um aging parents and come and stay with us things like that we use short term rentals for that to help us afford our homes stay and pay our mortgages pay our increasing property taxes and so we really really need your help um because the mayor's office of special enforcement their rules are kind of excluding us and keeping us from doing it and people are about to lose their homes because they can't don't have access to this thing that we've had historically for like a century you know and and first of all thank you for that you know i have i i have a a a three family house you know and my son if i didn't have that that house to pay for my son's college tuition you know i don't know whatever they're done and it is it has to be really frightening for you know homeowners right now you know you're watching everyone is don't realize what it is to like just pour everything you have in your house that's all you have you know that is that is my wealth you know and if i lose that you know you know it's very significant very significant and we need to figure out the real battle with the whole short term rentals were really those large characters that's that was a real battle and we need to find a sweet spot you know if grandma you give it a mic you give it a mic you give a mic if grandma wants to rent out her spare room because you know her spouse passed away and she needs to make income uh you know to to get through you know we need you to figure this out i don't have the answer but i know we have to figure this out can i can i say though that we've been trying to work with the osc so that they would understand that you know like you were saying we live in our whole home so um we're in the two family we have um other people i'm part of um one of the founding members of war restore homeowners autonomy and rights um because of this issue we've realized they've been pulled away from us and we didn't like a lot of us didn't even know until you know people showed up to us and started finding us and people have almost lost their homes have almost gone into foreclosure over fines that don't even make sense we use our whole homes and so if i need to hold my home so that my mother can come stay with me my sister can come stay with me and when they're not there i can use that space to rent it out and make some money so i can pay my mortgage i should be able to do that right like i'm sure that's something that you probably need to do yourself you know with your um multi-family so i mean and we're like one in two family homes which are usually private dwellings and somehow are being used and lumped in with this multiple dwelling thing and we're not illegal hotels we're not foreign investors trying to like throw 30 people in a in a house you know we're just people trying to get by so we're just need your help with the that osc to get that going and that's a powerful powerful commentary and so first of all the organization restored homeowner autonomy and you know so i think you're what you're doing now come together organize as a whole i believe we have about a couple of hundred thousand you know small property owners come together and lobby on your behalf i think a lot of stuff has been done with small property owners that all of a sudden you woke up and realized it was done but you're a powerful force you're a powerful force and the more you organize you can sit down and look at some of the things that has that that have been done in the past and say you know hold on hold a minute because you don't hear people we should always lean and help in our renters as much as possible but there's some people that believe because you're a homeowner that you are luxury and everything is fine no no it's it's a lot of drama on and on a lot of drama every time it rains it's a lot of drama i can tell you in the basement like it's not yeah we're not know it is it is i'm with you but i would love to sit down with the organization and and and let's engage in the conversation appreciate it thank you thank you for that here you go what are you doing next to me like that okay hi good evening thank you for this opportunity i'm julia jen francewa from center for family life and thank you for your kind words about our organization and happy to see the folks from dcwp who support our free tax filing service the vita tax program that's been a tremendous boon to the community and also to the mayor of moya at the commissioner of moya who's been so kind to us and helped us in so many ways and so many others um so many of our questions were already asked tonight so we had one uh that the table came up with what can we do to make sunset park streets safe all at the same time for pedestrians cyclists and drivers alike tell me about that drill into that a little bit more for me like like what folks were saying that sometimes cyclists are up on the sidewalk when you're trying to walk along the sidewalk at the same time we've had a lot of several tragic deaths on third avenue from cyclists who were hit by um by trucks and cars my own daughter who lives here in sunset park uh was hit by a car while she was riding her bike and thank god she's okay but that was scary and then drivers who are afraid of the speeding under third avenue and other crosswalks that are scary to cross so that's what it was you don't us don't us first dominican american ahead do you know you know by the way to the youngest one the one that has a family who sell tamale you know a 55 water street at some point i used to work there doing sandwiches in the cafeteria so if today may you add and give me the opportunity for me to run the most complex transportation system in the globe all of you guys the youngest one you can be next major you can be commissioner it's all about working hard and that pay off right it's right with that question like yes may you add in the premier operation yoshi they provide all the support to the ot improving safety is a top priority for may you add in and for all of us unfortunately there's a national train or many a individual in the whole nation losing their life as a result of crashes new york city is leading the one that is has improved the safety when it comes to pedestrians in our street most crashes happen when drivers make the left turn so the first thing that we are doing is we invest in millions of dollars every year one educating driver to please a slow down drive a 25 mile per hour that's one of the components of vision zero second is redesigning the street so may you add as increased 18 percent of the boy of the ot last year 400 million dollars this year in his status the city so that the ot will have the resources that we need 1.3 million dollars spent 33 billion dollars a 10-year capital plan so improving safety is a top priority so the second one and first educating through vision zero secondary designing by the ten one working together the one ipd enforcement so we need to be sure that if a driver is who is the majority i mean who is the minority most driver they respect the law most driver they drive a 25 mile per hour most driver they don't drink and drown they don't drink and drive however there's a small percentage who contribute to most of those crashes so with the support the mayor when of course with the residents such as you we working very hard to be sure one that the message is clear the street doesn't belong only to people who own cars the street belong to those who drives but the street also belong to 200 million ridership that we have in 2022 in the cycling community to 550 000 new yorkers who use it back every day so this is about sharing our street making our streets safer for everyone for drivers for cyclists and pedestrians thank you very much you know so they they the third avenue i was there when when a young person was killed on third avenue when i was president we saw what happened on ninth street of so you know we we we have witnessed these tragedies over and over again and that's what idonis is really trying to do commissioner rodriguez is trying to do we got to get it right and we it's about redesigning streets it's about changing the car culture it's about making sure that cyclists i'm glad you said that because some of our cyclists i ride my bike a lot for some of our cyclists i have become as reckless as cars as well and you know we gotta look at this whole universal scooters of this this is a different street and environment that we have to look at that people are safe sometimes we begin about their pedestrians people are actually walking the street making sure that they're safe and we got a fact that i didn't do what we're doing thank you thank you for that last table good evening mr. mayor and city officials our city had our table had a unison topic and we're talking about crime and safety what is the city doing to prevent crime and ensure the safety and quality of life of all members of the sunset park community for our elderly our children and our diverse and growing population more specifically we're talking about the graffiti around our school buildings around our homes talking about the crime and the drug activity and gang activity within our vicinity within our schools and our homes you know this this this town hall i wish they were you know we have to televised this whole town hall because people act like we don't want to be safe people act like this is a community that doesn't support this police that you don't want quality of life that you don't want people sitting around in parks doing whatever they want that's with the images that people want to believe whatever that's just you saying that nobody else wants this but over and over again we're here in table for a table by table that people are saying listen we want quality of life and so we have been zero and on that we have been removing those things called ghost cars you know what those are those are people who are driving around with paper plates and you know what we discovered when we started going after them we discovered they had guns in them they were doing a series of robberies we were going after those were stolen scooters who were doing snatch and grabs and committing crime we were going after people who would hop in the turnstile in the subway system not because they didn't have any money but because they were going on to commit a crime on a subway system we just went through a period where we just said anything and everything goes in the city and the everyday hard work in new yorker was being ignored they were being victimized they were being mistreated that's who i support and i'm with you 100% and we have a great team with commissioner caban chief of patrol patrol madry chief of patrol shell chief of department madry our first deputy commissioner we have a good team and we're going after making sure we don't have to be abusive but we're going to send the right message and we're going to get clarity this city is going to be safe this is going to continue to be the safest big city in america and we're not going to continue to see the violence that for far too many years we have witnessed uh in this in the city you deserve better and i'm going to give you better i ran on public safety i got elected on public safety and i'm going to provide that public safety to the city listen thank you for coming out tonight for being here we appreciate you son said paul my entire team this is an amazing team here all of them broken heart broken heart for you thank you was asked to smear staff to collect all the cards and all the tables we want to make sure to get to your questions so staff at all the tables collect the card