Midway by means of our first time period, it’s time to look again on and rejoice all we have now completed collectively.
4 years after COVID-19 pressured our metropolis to a standstill, New York is again. With crime down, jobs up, a historic growth in tourism, and an financial system firing on all cylinders, we’re having one in every of our greatest years ever.
Even for a metropolis as resilient as New York, recovering from the pandemic was no easy activity. However with strategic considering and supportive packages, we created the precise circumstances for the financial system to flourish and for New Yorkers to succeed.
Over the previous two years, we not solely recovered all the private-sector jobs misplaced through the pandemic however set the all-time document for the very best variety of whole jobs in our metropolis’s historical past. Now we have raised wages for working folks — together with our municipal employees, supply employees, for-hire drivers, and non-profit employees. Now we have negotiated contracts with 95 % of the unionized metropolis workforce, together with one hundred pc of town’s uniformed workforce, to offer our public servants the pay and advantages they deserve. And we’re not stopping there — we’re bringing jobs on to the folks with our “Jobs NYC” initiative, connecting New Yorkers with well-paying job alternatives in each the private and non-private sectors at hiring halls throughout the 5 boroughs.
Along with the sturdy financial development we’re seeing, we’re serving to extra New Yorkers join with inexpensive housing. Because of our companions in Albany, the state finances this 12 months delivers EVERY single piece of the housing agenda we have now been combating for, giving us the instruments to construct the inexpensive housing New Yorkers want and deserve. These new packages and incentives will get us nearer to our moonshot aim of constructing 500,000new items of housing within the subsequent 10 years.
Now we have additionally launched main legacy tasks, together with town’s largest all-affordable housing venture in Willets Level, Queens. This venture will rework a complete neighborhood by constructing 2,500 items of housing and town’s first-ever soccer stadium, so 25,000 followers can go loopy when the New York Metropolis Soccer Membership brings dwelling one other trophy.
And simply final week, I used to be proud to announce one other dramatic new addition to our metropolis’s skyline— a brand new 62-story workplace tower in Midtown. This constructing, alone, will home 6,000 employees, and it is going to be the New York Metropolis headquarters of one in every of our main monetary companies, Citadel and Citadel Securities.
There’s way more to return in Midtown Manhattan, together with our “Broadway Imaginative and prescient” plan to create new public areas and make streets safer between Madison and Herald Squares, in addition to a $10 billion enlargement of the Midtown Bus Terminal.
We’re additionally re-imagining our metropolis’s most well-known retail mecca for the primary time in over century, with plans to create a pedestrian-focused boulevard that can welcome extra New Yorkers and guests to Fifth Avenue. This plan will create extra inexperienced area for our metropolis and burnish the glamour of the midtown district because the world’s final purchasing vacation spot.
These are huge, visionary public tasks that can outline our metropolis for generations to return. We’re investing in our metropolis, our future, and each hardworking New Yorker who loves this city.
We achieved all this by specializing in the basics, particularly in terms of defending public security. This 12 months, crime is down throughout the 5 boroughs, with month after month decreases. Prior to now 12 months, homicides and shootings have plummeted by double digits — that’s after they dropped by double digits final 12 months and after they dropped by double digits in 2022.
Transit crime was down 15 % in February, and almost 24 % in March — bringing transit crime down by means of the tip of the primary quarter of this 12 months.
However it’s not simply concerning the numbers. It is usually about ensuring that New Yorkers really feel secure in our metropolis and are assured that we’re transferring in the precise course. That’s the reason our administration intends to speculate much more in upstream options, creating circumstances that enhance outcomes for all New Yorkers — particularly our younger folks.
We’re investing in our Truthful Futures program to assist children in foster care, which has boosted school enrollment by 50 % since we took workplace, and the ACS School Alternative program that makes certain they will afford school after they get there.
Now we have additionally expanded our dyslexia screening packages in order that EVERY baby is screened for dyslexia, and that these youngsters get the assist they should learn and succeed.
We’re pleased with all we have now completed in our first two years, however we all know there may be a lot extra to do going ahead. We’re going to proceed to make the most secure huge metropolis in America even safer, broaden financial alternative for all, and enhance high quality of life throughout the 5 boroughs. With two years of success to information us, we intend to maintain our success story going far into the longer term.
