 Good afternoon and thank you for being here. It is an exciting day because we are about to do something that no one has had the political will or political capital to pull off over the past 50 years. Most mayors never attempted it. Those that did failed. For more I'd like to welcome up the Get Stuff Done Mayor Eric Adams. Thank you. Thank you so much Commissioner and you're right. It's unbelievable when you think about in 1968 when there was the trash the garbage strike we converted to plastic bags because of the overwhelming number of trash that was on our street because of the strike and we converted to the plastic bag without doing a hold on hold on Nolan's a little late so I want to make sure we allow him to come in. Good to see you Nolan. The trash the conversion we never did an assessment. We never looked at it. We allowed it to continue and this team is now doing a re examination as we address the issue of rodents. Rodent is a real issue of the Department of Health and mental hygiene. They have the primary obligation but every New Yorker in every agency must also contribute in fixing the problem. And that's what Commissioner Tish has been able to accomplish with this amazing team of women leadership in City Hall. My chief advisor, Ingress Lewis-Marn, I want to thank you for the role you played of bringing together all the parties involved. Mira Joshi, our Deputy Mayor and our our leader in the Department of Sanitation, DSNY Commissioner Tish. You know what many people don't realize when you talk about this administration and its vision, you need to see who's actually carving out this vision and getting stuff done. I'm the recipient of breaking down these barriers. But these women from my five Deputy Mayors and the commissioners that are leading these agencies, this is a clear woman agenda that is focusing on things that have been ignored for far too long. And they're real visionaries. And so just as a footnote, so when men pop up and state that we're asking them to carve out their agenda, I don't know where they're getting that from. These women are carving out the agenda of this city and we don't need folks to tell us how to get this done. And this is a primary example of it. Mayors previously that happened to have all been men did not get this problem resolved. We did it and we got it resolved and it's going to contribute to our overall battle of dealing with the road and issue in this city of fighting crime, fighting inequality, fighting rats, something that we are focused on as we continue to make this city a livable city. Everyone that knows me, they know one thing. I hate rats. You know, when we started killing them in borough hall, you know, some of the same folks are criticizing us now called me a murderer because I was killing rats. Well, you know what? We're gonna kill rats. Rats have no place in this city and we're gonna use every method that's needed to do so. So they're not harming families in our quality of life. Today we're announcing a once in a generation change that would have a real impact on the cleanliness cleanliness of our city. We are drastically reducing the amount of time that garbage will remain on our curb. We're shifting the time where people can sit sit set out black bags and trash from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. It made no sense that these garbage bags have remained on the street for such a long period of time. They have become open season for rodents going into these bags, creating a real health problem in our city. That's four hours fewer than previously. You can set out your garbage at 6 p.m. If you use a container with a secure lid and we're gonna continue to look at how to use containers more, how to really take garbage off our streets. It's such an antiquated method when you look at what other countries are doing like Buenos Aires and others are realizing we have to put garbage in containers and not leave them out on the street the way we're doing now. This would reduce the amount of time the trash is on the street before collection, keeping our streets cleaner for a longer period of time and discouraging rodents from running their own version of what we like to say open restaurants. No more tripping over black bags during the rush hour. No more watching these bags litter our sidewalks earlier in the day. And it just doesn't make sense the way we have been doing it since 1969. Previous administrations have tried this, have not been able to bring all the parties to the table. But as I stated, our chief advisor when I asked her to get in this with our deputy mayor and our commissioner, she did so. She brought the unions to the table. She brought all the entities together and we were able to get this done. So hats off to you ingrid as well as deputy mayor, Josie Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch and all those union partners that came to the table and say, let's find a resolution. We got it done. We will continue to get it done. And we're not going to allow this plague of rats to destroy the quality of life in our city. And so I really want to take my hat off to the entire team and how they executed this serious hurdle that has impacted the quality of life in the city and far more to do. We know again, I use my rivers analogy. There are many rivers that are feeding the sea of rodents in the city. And today we're damning one of them. Commissioner. Thank you, Mayor Adams. To get this done. We had a lot of stakeholders at the table. None of them shrinking violets. There was a lot going on at that table. Fortunately for our city, it was in chief advisor ingrid Lewis Martin's office. And she ran those meetings with the grace, wisdom and yes, sometimes muscle needed to deliver on the mayor's promise to clean up this city. Please welcome chief advisor ingrid Lewis Martin. Thank you, Commissioner Tish. Today's announcement shows just how much is possible when people work together. We were able to accomplish this new plan, which for many years had been unattainable by bringing everyone and I mean everyone to the table. We demonstrated that we can support hardworking New Yorkers and labor unions and we can build a cleaner and more welcoming city for all New Yorkers. I take this opportunity to thank 32 BJ for being stellar partners, the sanitation workers union, Rebney. Yes, Rebney. They were at the table and our council member of radio. Thank you. Their partnership was crucial and essential and vital in order for us to deliver a win for millions of New Yorkers. So on behalf of all New Yorkers, I thank all of our partners for a job well done. Hello, everyone. I'm Jesse Tish, Sanitation Commissioner. Today we are doing one of the hardest things that you can do in city government. We're changing the status quo for over 50 years. When you ask someone to picture New York City streets, one image comes to mind. It's not the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty, but piles of black trash bags robbing us of clean and usable public space. Why have we tolerated this for so long? Over the last six months, the Department of Sanitation has reoriented itself around one goal, getting our streets cleaner faster. The biggest swing that you can take at cleaning up our streets is to shut down the all night all you can eat rat buffet. I want to be clear. The rats are absolutely going to hate this announcement. Let's get into some specifics, which under the proposed rule today would take effect on April 1st. No black bags of any kind, residential or commercial on the streets before 8 a.m. 8 p.m. Excuse me. If residents want to put their trash out earlier, they can do so starting at 6 p.m. But it must be in a container with a secure lid. And large buildings of nine or more units will have the ability to opt in once a year to an early morning set out time of four to seven a.m. Right now, the situation for commercial trash is almost worse than for residential trash. The rule just says bags can go all over the sidewalks an hour before closing. Who even knows when closing time is anymore? So for commercial trash, we're keeping it simple. If you want to put your trash bags out before 8 p.m. You can continue to do so an hour before closing. But it's got to be in a container with a lid. Other cities around the world were way ahead of New York in solving these problems. Thanks to the leadership of Mayor Adams and the willingness of stakeholders to come to the table under the proposed world rule. We are not just catching up. We are surpassing them. That's because we at the Department of Sanitation are not just asking New Yorkers to change. We are changing too. We are doing way more collection on the midnight shift rather than the six a.m. shift. Approximately 25% of all of our collection now happens at midnight. And for the large buildings that opt in to the four to seven a.m. set outs, we will be designing tailored routes to get the trash off the street almost immediately. The rats hate that too. And they also hate that we have been working on the holidays that we have been using cameras to enforce against illegal dumping and that we have been seizing their food as part of the nation's largest curbside composting program. But the rats don't run the city. We do. Now I'd like to bring up Councilmember Sean Abreu who has been a terrific partner in our efforts to solve this ongoing crisis. I want to thank him so much for his advocacy and his leadership. Councilmember. We're getting stuff done, Mr. Mayor. We have achieved a monumental victory in humanity's war against rats. After nearly a year of research, negotiations and partnership with experts, labor, the Department of Sanitation and Council colleagues, we have done what former councils and administrations could never achieve. We are taking the fight to the rats. We cannot act soon enough. We have seen an exponential explosion of rats in our city. Compared to this time in 2020, rat sightings across the city have increased by 71%. 71%. But New Yorkers don't need statistics to know there's a problem. Every day, they see rats in their streets, playgrounds, subways, and even homes. This is not ratatouille. Rats are not our friends. We're taking a comprehensive approach through administrative and legislative action that will cut out the midnight rat snacks. Together, we achieve support for a scheduled shift that will reduce the amount of time trash sits on our streets. The administration's rule and our bill will keep our streets clean and starve rats of the food and trash that sustain their explosive growth. Our children will never understand why we let waste sit out for extended periods of time. Rats as well. Like the fax machine typewriter in Blackberry, our current collection schedule will be seen by future generations as comically archaic. This was not an easy feat, but city altering change never is. Additionally, in the council, we are preparing to pass legislation establishing rat mitigation zones, which we have worked together with the administration as well. Within these zones and buildings with a high concentration of rats, special procedures will prevent further proliferation of rodents. The rat action plan, a package of bills, will bring major improvements. As a result of our carefully crafted action, families will no longer have to navigate as many mountains and mazes of trash piled up outside of our apartments. New Yorkers will not have to fear as many rats hiding in late night shadows or more frequently rampaging through our subway system and sidewalks without fear. I am most proud that through extensive planning and collaboration with everyone you see before you here today, we were able to do this work in partnership with Labor and the administration. New Yorkers can rest easy knowing that we are fighting back. Thank you so much, Commissioner, Deputy Mayor, to the Mayor, and of course, the Chief Advisor Ingrid. Thank you. Any questions? Gold has become the cleanest city in America, and that's our focus, and that's what we're pushing for. Let me just have a few questions. Kay, how are you? How was your weekend? So, the containers we're talking about in this announcement, the 6pm option, those are individualized containers. So, containers that a resident would have at home and leave out, and we know that in lots of parts of the city residents use these containers already. The larger initiative around city-sponsored containerization has two parts. The first part is this clean curbs pilot that's been going on. We put our first containers in Times Square about six months ago, and we've committed to doing a container a container pilot in every borough by the end of the calendar year, and we're well on pace to do that. The second piece is really studying the larger major initiative of putting containers out in all parts of the city to fully containerize our trash. I just want to be clear that that is a really difficult thing to do. We are committed to doing it, but it is something that you absolutely must study thoroughly before you roll it out. For example, cities that have rolled out containers, as you've mentioned, they do nightly collection of trash. How big would the containers have to be for us to roll out containerization on our collection schedule? All the vehicles would have to change. We would have to hoist the containers into the truck. What about weatherization? What happens when it snows? How do people access the containers? You don't want containerization to go wrong. It's going to get done in New York City, but we have to study it. We have to have a plan, and we have to make sure that it works because the stakes are too high to get it wrong. On the announcement today, what is the capacity of DSNY? So at DSNY we have a team of enforcement agents. We have both uniform and civilian enforcement agents, and we also have just sanitation supervisors in our garages who do enforcement. Every day we have enforcement of sanitation rules going on across all five boroughs of the city, so it's something that we are prepared to enforce just as we enforce other rules today like sweeping 18 inches into the curb. We know that it's going to take time for New Yorkers to get used to this. I mean this is a really big change that affects almost all 9 million New Yorkers. We don't want to be punitive about it at first, which is why we're going to take some time before it rolls and kicks in, but we are prepared to enforce it when the time is right. Given that this is a time sensitive, given that it's a time sensitive, are there any plans to be forced into the bus and DSNY? Actually this year the enforcement, sanitation enforcement has increased dramatically over the past several years. Again, we don't like to enforce for the sake of enforcement, but most blocks wherever you look there's a sanitation rule infraction and so we are prepared to do what we have to do to enforce it. I just also want to be clear that what we've done today is propose a new rule so we're in the rulemaking process. We're going to have a public comment period and a hearing in about 30 days and we don't expect the new rule to take effect until April 1st, so people will have a lot of notice about it. I want to be clear that it's much more than a four-hour difference. So today black bags generally sit on the curb for more hours of the day than they do not. They're out from 4 p.m. until collections start historically at 6 a.m. So they're out on the curb for 14 hours a day. What we are proposing to do here by shifting the time that bags can go out on the curb to 8 p.m. combined with our additional collection that we're doing on the midnight shift is reduce that down to four hours and that is taking a really really big swing both at cleanliness of our streets and the rat issues. Yes that's the whole point of this that's why we're so excited today. Over the past several months we've been doing about 25 percent of our overall collection on the midnight shift so if we collect 24 million pounds of trash and recycling every single day 24 million pounds of trash and recycling sit on the curbs of New York City and we're collecting a quarter of that now on the midnight shift rather than on the 6 a.m. shift. So this isn't about overtime this is about two things happening we're asking New Yorkers to set out their trash later in the day and we are coming to collect more of it earlier and those two things come together shrink the amount of time dramatically that the track an average trash bag will spend on the streets and should really significantly impact New Yorkers experience of city streets. This is this is not about this is not about workforce it's just about shifting times. Maybe I wasn't clear the beauty of this is that businesses will generally be working under the same time structure that they do today. So today they're allowed to set out commercial trash one hour before closing. The new rule for businesses says you can still set out trash one hour before closing but if that time is before 8 p.m. you just need to set it out in a container but it's in a it's in a container the bags are in sitting out on the street and the rats can't get at it and I should also add that most commercial trash is picked up on the overnight shift as well. We are not changing the enforcement the fine structure for this program we are only shifting the times of day that the trash can be set out $50 for the first I'm going to get back to you on the exact fine structure that's right this should be a net neutral budget rule for us. Most in many parts of the city if you take Staten Island for example residents use containers when they set out their trash so using containers is not something that is new to New York City we felt strongly that 8 p.m. might be too late a time for some New Yorkers some New Yorkers might want to go to go to sleep and 8 p.m. doesn't work for them so we felt strongly that we wanted to give an earlier option for people and that option is 6 p.m. in a container. So those litter baskets are a separate topic and actually since July 1st when the mayor and the council gave us restored our funding for some of the cleanliness items that have been cut during the pandemic we have seen a 60 percent reduction in complaints from New Yorkers about overflowing litter baskets we are running the highest level of litter basket service this city has ever seen and I'm really pleased that the data is proving out that that strategy works largely because I promised the mayor that it would. Now we don't have plans to increase above 25 percent we've been piloting 25 percent and that's something that's new over the past three months or so and something that's been working we wanted to be careful about it and careful to work with our workforce on it and also careful to make sure that it's not creating too much noise for New Yorkers so it's something we're doing slowly and carefully but we are shifting it up well I think I know that the rat issue affects all five boroughs every neighborhood in the city has problems with the rats and so I say to them this should really help with the rat issue in their neighborhood and as I mentioned before on Staten Island you see massive use of containers already so really all it's doing in Staten Island is shifting the time back two hours and I also just want to say New York City has the earliest set out time of any major domestic or international city 4 p.m. is just like beyond the pale it is so early compared to what other cities have done I mentioned in my remarks that most cities over the past decade plus have innovated in this area and New York City just never did it was attempted once it failed because it didn't have the political capital to get it done and not all the stakeholders agreed and so what's new here is we are catching up with what the rest of the world is doing and with our tailored routes for the four to seven a.m. shift we're actually surpassing them just wanted to follow up on a 32 p.m. question this containerization talked about at this negotiation I know this has been referred to as a one-set generation change we're gonna have to wait another generation to have the container oh no no for certainly not um containerization is something that we are studying right now and so we're doing a 20 week study of it it started two weeks ago so I have 18 more weeks for you to hear more from me about the results of that study but doing that study could not be more important because getting containerization wrong is a really big problem thank you commissioner so you know financial neutral um decreasing amount of time trash is outside accomplishing a task that others have tried and they were not able to accomplish uh moving towards the direction of the city being the cleanest city in america that's our goal and this is not the only trash bin to accomplish that so please don't go out and see a rat and say okay you guys failed no we have to do several things to change the mindset and the culture that comes with the dirty street dropping stuff on the ground putting stuff in the subway stations and just eating and leaving food there not putting in the bin we've done things these last few a month such as what we're doing and recycling bin uh what we're doing we're going after those who are dumping in our city setting up cameras and operations so there's a movement towards our goal of having new york city become the cleanest city in in america and uh hats off to you commissioner and your team for making this happen and we're going to continue to move towards that direction and what i'm surprised about is number one the number of cameras so that tells me all of you are scared of rats too and the number of questions you ask this is front and center in all of our minds and we are approaching it head on we are not going to sit back and accept that we have to be in a city where rodents are taking care of our city we are meeting this head on and we are going to be willing to have a moonshot mindset of doing things differently as we approach this issue of a long-standing historical issue of dealing with with rats and i spoke with my colleagues in paris of you know the same problem there rats is an issue that we're we're facing based on the habits of of of human beings and so we're going to answer some more topics so you know thank you again hats off to all of you great job job well done good job brother horrific case and my heart goes out to the family even when someone does something wrong innocent family members are swept up on both ends of it my heart goes out to the family members of the of the young man that's involved and my heart goes out to the police officers no police officer want to respond to an issue like that it is it's traumatic it's painful and so it was just a wrong outcome of to have to you know take the life of someone all the way around he was carrying a gun he was carrying a gun i heard the tape i saw the tape officers repeatedly stated drop the gun drop the gun drop the gun uh and you know when you run towards a gun and not away from it it takes a special level of courage and i'm i'm happy that i have officers that are willing to put themselves in harm's way we just had a class graduate today a little over 600 and so again my heart goes out to the family and i'm sure the police department and agencies that are involved are going to reach out to those family members because it's it's it's traumatic to lose a loved one but you know he was carrying a gun guns are taking the lives of innocent people how's it going well they you know it's not only about who is here but who is coming here uh i was happy to see that the white house has taken the first steps about stopping the flow addressing this issue at the board i've stated this all the time that we need to address this issue at the border we need to have a proper decompression strategy that what was accomplished uh with the uh the white house announced uh i am i am going to speak with my colleagues in washington and chicago uh under no circumstance do we believe uh femur should be reimbursing anyone that was using buses or using dollars to send buses here uh so we believe we're moving in the right direction and we're going to continue to talk i'm my hats off too again i said last week to the governor uh we need the national guard they're coming out to give us assistance uh we we open one herc over the weekend i visited yesterday uh we're going to be opening at the other herc um at uh randall's island uh we're going to continue to do what we're doing and we believe that we're going to get the assistance that we need um from the state and feds i want to thank the my congressional delegation and the senator senator jillibrand and shuma for also adding their voice to this issue drop something kelly i don't know what it is you're quite walking up you know that's my emotional intelligence part of me back to migrant crisis no i know uh he attempted to reach out uh last week and there was some mix up in the schedules uh right now we have not witnessed that decrease yet uh we're hoping with the decompression strategy that we are able to stop the flow that's the big thing we have to stop the flow of buses that are coming from other municipalities and uh this is a national issue and i'm happy to see the white house has responded to that but we have not communicated with the the mayor and actually i think uh the article quoted of the city administrator of because they have a different structure where the city administrator has uh a great deal more uh power that appears uh but we're going to continue to push that we need to stop the flow so that we can deal with the issues that we have here we're we're hoping so um if they living up to their word uh we hope we will see less buses Mr. Mayor what's the first big thing to hold out as mayor with an action plan to try to help folks with a homeless and have some stir on the supply system? Do you mean burners so far this year? It's a record number as far as the records go back to the point in 1997 at least a taxing to have from a common thief who has someone who doesn't know someone else who randomly attacks someone in the subway right now afterwards oftentimes they've been previously cited by the police department for having emotional stress some other mental issue what success looks like well uh successes uh no one been uh any way uh impacted by any form that's dealing with emotional issues or violent because you you sort of um brought them both together you know uh the I think we have eight homicides this year two more than than last year uh uh you you you can't tie all of them to people with emotional issues of some of them are violent people criminals uh that we must continue to uh make sure we have the police president the proper deployment uh to do our job in law enforcers which we have you know everyone knows you know I quoted often uh the number of firearms we've removed from this from the streets uh and our action plan on the subway system my goal is to continue to enhance that because I said it over and over again we're dealing with actual crimes those eight uh homicides and we're dealing with the perception of fear that people are feeling that's the combination and I must deal with that profession perception and the actual crime we can't get away from the fact we have 3.5 million people using our subway system we we have to be honest about that and those average of six crimes a day is not given the impression that our system is out of control it says that I'm I'm I'm I'm coming back to you I'm knowing of and so my goal is to continue that deployment and to enhance that police coverage and and to make sure that we deal with the mental health crises not only on our subway system but on our streets that you can't let no no no let no the follow up good on our streets I said this over and over again this is not this is not a a unique conversation and there's no condolence or or consolation I should say if you're shot on the subway on the street you know I can't I would never stand in front of the New York City public and say well okay your loved one was not shot on the subway system you know there are too many guns on our streets we brought down homicides we brought down victims of shooters we continue to do the job our police department has done an amazing job 27 year high the thousands of guns we move off our streets but everyone must play the role judges must keep shooters in jail law makers make sure we don't make laws that allow them to return to our our streets and we have to prosecute these cases there are too many guns on our streets you know and those guns that are on our streets they're also in our subway system they're also in our schools they're everywhere we are as innocent new yorkers so yes eight times as many as you quoted because there's too many guns on our streets I support the project but I think that all of us must be consistent in our message we can't continue to acknowledge that we have a housing problem and then every project that pops up we vote against it we have a housing problem and so I'm hoping that just as we've done with others we can sit down and find a place that the councilwoman can understand that this is part of addressing the housing problem we have in the city and we're engaging in real conversations with her and we're talking to to our colleagues our colleagues are starting to see I believe that we have to address the housing problem addressing the housing problem means building more housing and that project is a good project if there are things that the councilwoman wants to talk about to get to a good and comfortable place we're hoping to do it to do in there but that project should move forward we can't continue to stop these projects as we're dealing with the housing problem we're facing that's all part of the conversations we're in you know you know member deference is something that is informally in the city council we're going to speak to the council members and sell why this is a good project and we're hoping that they will stand with us he doesn't have a security detail you know he doesn't have a security detail what matt is doing matt is looking at shot spotters matt is looking at how do we use different technology to address public safety in this city having knowledgeable police officers participating in this role is so helpful and so anytime you're with a police officer that is helping you carry out an initiative that's not a detail he does not have a detail he has police officers that are assisting him in the public safety aspect of the chief technology office shot spotters looking after guns camera usage that's what he's doing he doesn't have a police detail no police is around him all day trying to protect him you know no one is going after my chief technology officer he doesn't have a police detail i said this about chief banks um deputy mayor banks he didn't have a police detail they don't have police details we are using police officers with their knowledge to assist us in the overall scheme because that's how i run the city it's an entire team how i run the city i don't tell police officers you could only stay in one police plaza no the team is going to work together now if people want to keep standing as the police detail there's nothing i could do about it but i could just tell you he does not have a police detail i'm gonna i'm gonna and you know i like i like when you do this better than than uh failure you know that see how she protects me what people are utilizing people are utilizing people are you utilizing city employees wherever we need to utilize them that is what we're doing my orders to the city is wherever you could utilize a city employee you're going to utilize that city employee that includes fdny nypd dsny everyone is on this team together i'm sorry run up to me you said i knew you said stand now in on them okay did he say what okay okay and and we don't know we're gonna pivot and shift based on the need if these buses stop we can pivot and shift another way when i was at the herk uh last night i was amazed to find out how many people were there that we were able to take them and connect them with where they wanted to go so we were over 20 000 that have come through our system but a substantial number were able to go where they wanted to go and so it's difficult to say how long something is going to be in place because we we're going to pivot and shift based on the demand this is what we've always done you know we're gonna pivot and shift based on what we hit with we were hit with this unprecedented influx and what do we do we pivot and shift it to make sure that we address it i don't know what you're seeing what if you're seeing what's happening across the country it's not happening here and so based on the needs we're gonna shift and we're gonna pivot and we're gonna address this issue and we're going to cycle out of this issue like we like we cycled out of covid monkeypox polio and everything else this administration would pivot and shift Mr. I won't ask you about baseball you can't jinx you on a serious topic on the rikers island controller lander has said that he's calling for federal control in rikers he was very intentional in not saying that's your fault about anything you're doing but it's more about cutting through the red tape the systemic institutional issues that are in play what do you think about that that proposal of you know a federal receiver specifically to deal with some of the red tape that constrains you in the moment whoever calls for federal receivership i'm asking them to go visit federal prisons go to 30th and 3rd avenue the number of complaints that we hear i don't know why people think the response to a problem is allowing someone else to handle the problem no i want the problem i want the problem of the generational dysfunction of rikers i want it i don't want someone else to handle a problem of new york city the problems that we have i was elected to resolve them and so i want the problem of rikers island i want to fix rikers island and that's why i have a commissioner that's capable of doing it so all those who are saying that my correction officers are not capable of doing it all those who are saying you know have others come in to handle our education to handle this to handle that to handle that all i can say to them don't ever run for mayor because of your solution to solving the problems of this city is to find other people to fix them then you should never be the mayor of the city of new york mayor adams want the problems because i was elected to fix them