GET STUFF DONE MAYOR

Long hours for Adams

The stuff the Get Stuff Done mayor actually got done last year.

By Annie McDonough

ONE YEAR INTO the job, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has made clear that he is unlike his predecessor in many ways. That includes how he views the scope of his to-do list.

“When people try to say, ‘OK, Eric, you know, what is your one or two things?’ I’m saying, ‘To fix this mess!’” Adams told the New York Post in June, referring to questions about what his legacy-defining accomplishment would be. Unlike former Mayor Bill de Blasio, Adams has not so subtly suggested that New York’s current mayor won’t be hanging his hat on a singular achievement like universal prekindergarten.

After all, Adams is the self-proclaimed “Get Stuff Done” mayor, and the list of stuff that needs to get done is long. While Adams laid out his priorities during the mayoral campaign, his early days in office left some political observers – and everyday New Yorkers – thinking that he didn’t have much to show for them. Adams’ first year has also required managing unexpected crises, like tens of thousands of migrants coming to the city from the southern border.

In his first year, Adams has unveiled high-level blueprints to tackle expansive issues – the Blueprint to End Gun Violence, A Blueprint for New York City’s Economic Recovery and A Blueprint for Housing and Homelessness, just to name a few.

While some of those broad initiatives will take longer than one year to implement, there are some concrete actions that the administration can point to when asked what they’ve been working on in the first year. That includes action that has been met with vocal criticism, like deploying a reimagined version of the NYPD’s anti-crime units, and action that has produced mixed results, such as homeless encampment sweeps. It also includes initiatives that launched to more widespread praise, like boroughwide composting pickups in Queens.

With every ambitious blueprint released and “GSD” joke cracked over the past 12 months, Adams has been begging New Yorkers to ask one question of him: What exactly has our “Get Stuff Done” mayor gotten done? City & State solicited feedback from several experts in different subject areas – as well as from the mayor’s office – to take a stab at answering that question. Here are 10 items that the Adams administration worked on in its first year.

INTRODUCED REVAMPED ANTI-GUN UNITS

If Adams had a primary focus in his first year in City Hall, it was public safety. He

Eric Adams keeps a busy schedule. But what did he get done last year?

made it clear in his law and order focused mayoral campaign that he planned to bring back the controversial and previously disbanded plainclothes NYPD anti-crime units. But the administration has attempted to distinguish the renamed Neighborhood Safety Teams from the old units since they launched in March. Named as a key part of the mayor’s Blueprint to End Gun Violence, the Neighborhood Safety Teams operate in 32 precincts and four additional police service areas around public housing complexes. The officers receive “enhanced training” and are not supposed to dress as civilians, as previous incarnations of the anti-crime units did, but wear clothing indicating they are police. City Hall attributed the removal of nearly 6,900 illegal guns from the street and 4,441 gun arrests as of

mid-December to the work of the Neighborhood Safety Teams and other NYPD teams. In 2021, the NYPD made roughly 6,200 gun seizures and 4,497 gun arrests. Murders and shootings were down last year from 2021, but other major felonies including rape, robberies and assault were up.

EXPANDED POLICE PRESENCE IN THE SUBWAY

The early months of Adams’ first year were marked by a string of violent crimes in subway stations, including a mass shooting inside a subway car in April that left dozens injured. Just a few days into the job, Adams appeared with Gov. Kathy Hochul to announce a surge in cops in order to conduct “hundreds” more inspections daily on platforms and on the trains. According to a recent report by the City Council Committee on Public Safety, major felonies in the subway system were up in 2022 over 2021. But compawred to before the COVID-19 pandemic, overall crime in the system was down through October compared to 2019. And despite having more officers on patrol, arrests in the subway in 2022 were also down over 2019.

Adams and Hochul have continued to collaborate on public safety in the subways, with the two appearing together in October to announce another police surge and the state helping to fund 1,200 additional overtime shifts every day and deploying MTA police to commuter hubs like Grand Central Terminal, freeing up more NYPD officers to patrol subway stations.

DIRECTED HOMELESS SWEEPS

The administration’s Subway Safety Plan, announced in February, targeted homeless people on the subways and attempted to reach individuals with mental illness. In addition to increasing police patrols, the city deployed new outreach teams that aimed to connect people to shelter and other resources like mental health services. So far, results have been mixed. The Daily News reported that more than two-thirds of people who were connected to shelter through August in those subway sweeps stayed less than a week. Still, Adams has characterized the one-third who stayed longer as a sign of progress.

Among those experiencing symptoms of mental illness, police removed 1,300 people from the subways, many against their will. As Gotham Gazette reported, city agencies wouldn’t provide information about how many have entered treatment or are back riding the trains.

But the homeless initiative that got more attention last year was the administration’s sweeps of homeless encampments on city streets – a move that business groups have praised but which elicited fierce pushback from advocates and people experiencing homelessness who didn’t want to go to shelters. As of late November, Gothamist

reported, about 5% of the 2,098 people who were forced to move in sweeps between March and October agreed to enter the shelter system. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, the number of people sleeping in the city’s main shelter system hit a record high in October.

LAUNCHED BOROUGHWIDE COMPOSTING PICKUP IN QUEENS

While the jury is still out on just how much the rats are going to hate the new trash pickup schedule and other mitigation measures in the administration’s Get Stuff Clean agenda, the city launched a boroughwide curbside composting pickup program in Queens. The Department of Sanitation already ran an opt-in program in some parts of the city that was set to expand until Adams halted funding for that expansion in the city budget, describing the program as inefficient. Participation in the new Queens program isn’t mandatory, but weekly collection of organic waste is guaranteed and automatic for borough residents who put out their compost – a first step toward Adams’ campaign promise to introduce citywide composting.

SECURED 24/7 SPEED CAMERAS

Despite being a longtime no-brainer for street safety advocates, New York City’s speed cameras didn’t operate 24/7 until earlier this year, following a change in state law, which previously only authorized the city to operate its network of 2,000 automated speed cameras from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m on weekdays. While the authorization came from the state, some transit advocates and other observers credited Adams and the city Department of Transportation with advocating for the change. City Hall also noted that it exceeded a goal of completing safety improvements at 1,000 intersections last year, with safety upgrades at more than 1,200 intersections completed so far. As of Dec. 15, the city recorded 10 fewer pedestrian fatalities last year than in 2021, according to a City Hall spokesperson.

TOOK IN ASYLUM-SEEKERS

During his mayoral campaign, Adams probably didn’t foresee an influx of asylum-seeking refugees from the southern border – many of them bused to largely Democratic cities by border politicians like Democratic El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser and Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. But the intake and sheltering of migrants became one of Adams’ greatest challenges during his first year. The administration’s response to the crisis received criticisms from advocates and other lawmakers, including over a scramble to provide beds for new arrivals in compliance with the city’s right to shelter, for initially planning a tent city to shelter migrants in an area prone to flooding, and then for erecting a different tent city on Randall’s Island that was soon closed. While the challenge is ongo-

Adams addressed homelessness on the subways, to limited success for the people lacking housing. He also beefed up security on the subways by sending more police officers to patrol platforms and walk through subway cars. New York City's speed cameras got the goahead to be on all the time thanks to a bill approved in Albany. And the city scrambled to open enough migrant shelters and hotels to deal with the incredible influx of people.

ing and will likely grow, City Hall said that more than 31,000 asylum-seekers came to New York last year, and the city has placed many of them in emergency hotel shelters and enrolled thousands of children in Department of Education schools.

CHAMPIONED REZONINGS FOR HOUSING

Adams has promoted a YIMBY approach to creating housing as the city faces a dire need of affordable units, and while the administration’s housing and building agendas included many longer-term goals, some housing experts and other observers pointed to rezonings that included affordable housing as a win for the administration. While approval for projects like Innovation QNS and Bruckner Boulevard rested with the City Council, the Adams administration was also a vocal supporter of those and other projects, and had a seat in the negotiations. Altogether City Hall cited the approval of roughly 12,000 new homes – including roughly 7,500 income-restricted ones – through packages of zoning changes.

EXPANDED YOUTH EMPLOYMENT AND CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

The Adams administration baselined funding for the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program and Fair Futures in the city budget, with the former offering 90,000 summer jobs to young New Yorkers – up from a previous high of 75,000 – and the latter providing mentoring and tutoring to kids in the foster care system. Both programs are part of the administration’s Blueprint to End Gun Violence. The city also expanded its Summer Rising program to offer all-day academic and other programming to 110,000 kids.

UNIVERSAL DYSLEXIA SCREENING

This spring, Adams announced a fresh approach to tackling the city’s literacy problems, drawing from his own experience with undiagnosed dyslexia. The administration announced a “universal dyslexia screening program,” which will screen all public school students for dyslexia and provide some schools additional resources to address the needs of students with dyslexia. A City Hall spokesperson said that screenings have already begun, and new dyslexia programs at two schools in Harlem and the South Bronx have opened, but they did not elaborate on how widespread screenings or available resources to address dyslexia are so far.

EXPANDING INTERNET ACCESS AT NYCHA BUILDINGS

New York City is subsidizing free highspeed internet and basic cable in New York City Housing Authority buildings. Residents at more than 100 public housing buildings are already eligible to enroll, and the city aims to expand to 200 buildings by the end of 2023. If targeting high-speed internet access to public housing buildings sounds familiar, that’s because it was part of de Blasio’s Internet Master Plan, which envisioned tackling the digital divide by building new publicly owned infrastructure and enlisting a diverse range of service providers. Big Apple Connect is so far offering residents service through major cable players Altice and Charter. The Adams administration has gotten pushback from some lawmakers and service providers for pursuing Big Apple Connect while scrapping the Internet Master Plan. ■