Mayor Eric Adams.
Ed Reed/Mayoral Pictures Workplace.
Midway by means of our first time period, it’s time to look again on and have a good time all we now have 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 economic 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 pondering and supportive applications, we created the best circumstances for the economic system to flourish and for New Yorkers to succeed.
Over the previous two years, we not solely recovered the entire private-sector jobs misplaced throughout the pandemic however set the all-time file for the best variety of complete jobs in our metropolis’s historical past. We’ve raised wages for working individuals — together with our municipal employees, supply employees, for-hire drivers, and non-profit employees. We’ve negotiated contracts with 95 p.c of the unionized metropolis workforce, together with 100% of town’s uniformed workforce, to provide our public servants the pay and advantages they deserve. And we’re not stopping there — we’re bringing jobs on to the individuals 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 reasonably priced housing. Due to our companions in Albany, the state price range this yr delivers EVERY single piece of the housing agenda we now have been preventing for, giving us the instruments to construct the reasonably priced housing New Yorkers want and deserve. These new applications and incentives will get us nearer to our moonshot objective of constructing 500,000 new models of housing within the subsequent 10 years.
We’ve additionally launched main legacy initiatives, together with town’s largest all-affordable housing challenge in Willets Level, Queens. This challenge will rework a whole neighborhood by constructing 2,500 models of housing and town’s first-ever soccer stadium, so 25,000 followers can go loopy when the New York Metropolis Soccer Membership brings house 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 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 corporations, Citadel and Citadel Securities.
There’s far more to come back 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 large, visionary public initiatives that can outline our metropolis for generations to come back. 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 relating to defending public security. This yr, crime is down throughout the 5 boroughs, with month after month decreases. Prior to now yr, homicides and shootings have plummeted by double digits — that’s after they dropped by double digits final yr and after they dropped by double digits in 2022.
Transit crime was down 15 p.c in February, and practically 24 p.c in March — bringing transit crime down by means of the top of the primary quarter of this yr.
However it’s not simply concerning the numbers. Additionally it is about ensuring that New Yorkers really feel protected in our metropolis and are assured that we’re transferring in the best 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 individuals.
We’re investing in our Truthful Futures program to help children in foster care, which has boosted faculty enrollment by 50 p.c since we took workplace, and the ACS School Alternative program that makes positive they will afford faculty after they get there.
We’ve additionally expanded our dyslexia screening applications in order that EVERY little one is screened for dyslexia, and that these youngsters get the help they should learn and succeed.
We’re happy with all we now have completed in our first two years, however we all know there’s a lot extra to do going ahead. We’re going to proceed to make the most secure large metropolis in America even safer, develop 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.
