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Op-Ed – Another Year of ‘Getting Stuff Done’ for New Yorkers
By: Mayor Eric Adams
I am proud to be a New Yorker, and as your mayor, I am even prouder to announce that our city is getting safer, stronger, and more affordable every day. But you don’t have to take my word for it: just look at the numbers. We just released the annual Mayor’s Management Report — our city’s report card. It details just how much progress we have made over the last fiscal year. We’ve driven down crime, removed tens of thousands of illegal guns and mopeds from our streets, built record amounts of affordable housing and new school buildings, and, most importantly, helped put billions of dollars back into the pockets of working-class New Yorkers.
Our economy has never been more robust, and our rising job numbers and falling crime rates signal a new era of safety and economic opportunity for all New Yorkers.
Overall crime rates have fallen over the last fiscal year, driven by another year of double-digit decreases in murders and shootings. Our police officers are working harder than ever to keep New Yorkers safe, with more felony crime arrests, more quality-of-life summonses, and more transit enforcement. Last fiscal year, we also earned the authority to shut down illegal smoke shops and immediately started “Operation Padlock to Protect.” Since then, we’ve shut down more than 1,000 illegal cannabis shops.
And we know that public safety is more than just what our police officers are doing. We are determined to keep people safe as they walk, run, and bike our streets. That’s why we installed 27 percent more protected bike lanes and 94 percent more speed reducers. And it’s why we have seized more than 20,000 illegal mopeds and scooters — four times as many as last fiscal year. We are seeing positive results already, with fewer traffic fatalities for pedestrians and traditional bicyclists over the last year.
We are keeping our city safer and cleaner, too. We doubled the rate of lead abatement at NYCHA properties. We cleared catch basins 24 percent faster to protect New Yorkers from flooding.
At the same time, we are creating jobs and prosperity across the five boroughs and expanding services to make our city more affordable. Unemployment is down by 8 percent from the previous year, reaching a rate of just 4.8 percent, with an approximate 30 percent decrease in Black and Latino unemployment.
Our city is also helping put money back in your pockets, with 25 percent more families signed up for subsidized child care, 19 percent more young people who live in NYCHA housing getting connected with jobs, and 20 percent more New Yorkers without insurance enrolled to receive low-cost or no-cost health services through NYC Care.
We are also building more affordable and supportive housing than ever before. In fact, we more than doubled the number of affordable units we built and preserved for seniors. And we helped more New Yorkers in shelters get into permanent housing.
This is a small sampling of the good work we’ve delivered for New Yorkers over the last fiscal year. Looking over this report, we can see the last three years of hard work paying off and delivering results. We know there is a lot of work left to do, and we are committed to shining a light on every aspect of city government, so we can do an even better job delivering for New Yorkers in the future. Our city is moving in the right direction — and I am proud to lead the team of city workers who are helping us get there. Thanks to this administration, New York City isn’t just coming back, and we’re not just back — we’re better than ever.
