Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears on WCBS-TV's 'The Point With Marcia Kramer'

June 30, 2024

Marcia Kramer: Mayor Adams said he would land the plane and he did. An 11th hour budget deal that is good news for many people. Mr. Mayor, your original budget was sort of doom and gloom. You had the migrant crisis. Now all of a sudden everything is happiness and light. What changed?

Mayor Eric Adams: First, how did we get here? What many people don't realize, early in the administration, when I first got elected, we immediately reached out to all of our agencies and said you have to find efficiencies. Little did we know that we were going to need those extra dollars due to when we had an over $7 billion gap.

We had a lot of programs that were sunsetting because they were being held up with temporary stimulus dollars, with union contracts to settle, which we were able to accomplish. Then out of nowhere, 200,000 migrants and asylum seekers, over $4 billion. Our early preparation allowed us to look at tax receipts better than we thought and we were able to really land the plane.

Kramer: See, this budget is about a billion dollars more than your original proposal. Is that all just increased tax receipts?

Mayor Adams: No, it's a combination of things. We always have to be fiscally conservative. Others can say just spend, but we can't get it wrong. As my budget director, he's constantly watching and managing the tax receipts so we can get it right. Because we can't go back later after we pass the budget and then talk about devastating these entities that were looking for the money.

Kramer: What do you think was the most meaningful change in this budget, the things you were able to restore?

Mayor Adams: A combination of things. Number one, when you look at our cultural institutions, we were able to put $58 million in our cultures, reaching out to them and they were constantly calling me. I said, listen, have faith. Listen, I love my museums. I love my culture. Let us do this. Then when you look at the $53 million that we put back in libraries. Seven days a week. Exactly. I said it often, even when I was on the show, I said, Marcia, I got to let us figure this out.

As any parent knows, when you are managing your household, you have to make sure that you're making the smart decision. Then the $100 million we're putting back into the school system. When you do an analysis, we have taken the hit that, Okay, you guys are hurting the school system. There hasn't been a mayor that has put more money over $500 million. All our pre-K, all of these programs were sunsetting. Now we have put permanent dollars and not temporary dollars.

Kramer: What happens if more people apply for pre-K and pre-K than the money allows? What's going to happen?

Mayor Adams: You have to expand. I made it clear every child that wanted a seat will have access to a seat. We're constantly shifting. This is the problem we were having. It was really challenging to communicate this to people. The previous administration had a large number of seats, but there were no children in the seats. Taxpayers were paying for seats without bodies in the seats.

We're realigning the program. We're identifying exactly where the need actually is. Trust me, it takes a lot of guts and courage to say we have to do this right, because you take a lot of income and criticism. When New Yorkers look at, here you have a mayor and an administration that said we're not wasting taxpayers' dollars. We're not just going to do things because it sounds good to do it. We have to get quality for the product that taxpayers are paying for.

Kramer: If more people show up and they say they want pre-K and pre-K, are you going to add more money to the budget so that they can have seats?

Mayor Adams: The budget is going to be locked in, but we're adding new seats. We're adding new money already. We're aligning the seats where the needs are and really hats off to the City Council who have been a real partner in doing this.

Kramer: I wanted to also ask you about changes to the Fair Fares program, because I know that this is going to allow more people to apply and get a break on taking subways.

Mayor Adams: Yes. Millions of dollars we are putting into the Fair Fares. We think it's important that people, if you're able to bring down the cost of your transportation, that MetroCard cost goes a long way.

The City Council, again, Speaker Adams, hats off to her. This is one of the things that were important to her, was important to me as a former transit cop. No one wants to arrest someone for hopping a turnstile. We need to give them the assistance they deserve.

Kramer: Do you think this is going to reduce fare evasion?

Mayor Adams: Hopefully so. What's interesting, Marcia, I was on 125th Street and Lexington Avenue doing an operation there with the transit police personnel. It was amazing how many people walked through the gate and had money to pay, but just believe they shouldn't pay. That's unfair to New Yorkers who are paying.

Everyone should pay their fare unless you have extenuating circumstances. You can go to the token booth to speak to the individual there. There were a lot of New Yorkers who got accustomed, although they had the money, they said, let other New Yorkers pay for it. We said no to that. If you have money to pay, you will pay.

Kramer: I've been on [the] subway and there are a lot of people who have trouble making the fare. This is actually going to help them. I would imagine it may reduce fare evasion.

Mayor Adams: That's our goal. Our goal is really working class people because the city must be affordable to them. That's why you're seeing over two billion dollars we're putting into affordable housing.
When you do an analysis of our administration from dropping the cost of child care from $55 a week to less than $5 a week, high-speed broadband to our NYCHA residents, invested in foster care children, you see this whole package of saying, how do we make this city more affordable within our powers like the earned income tax credit? There's a whole list of things that we're doing.

Kramer: In the beginning of your fiscal dance this past year, the cost of migrants was a big concern. You announced a whole bunch of cuts that you thought you were going to have to do, now you don't have to do. What changed? Why are you still getting this influx of thousands of people every week? How are you able to afford to do all these great things when before it was going to be doom and gloom and we're going to cut everything?

Mayor Adams: We're not out of the woods, and I want to be clear on that. Here's what happened. While Jacques Jiha was managing the dollars, I also had Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom to say, how do we bring down the population?

If we would have sat on our hands, we would have had 200,000 people in our system where we would have to pay for it. I said, no, we need just as I'm asking my agencies to do efficiencies, we need to come up with initiatives will drop down that population. That's what we did. 30 days, 60 days.

People say, oh, this is terrible. It was not. The majority of people found their way. That's how it is in America. That's how it is in New York. We did it in a humane way. You don't see people sleeping along our streets, our highways. We have been successful in dropping our population. We're still getting over 4,000 a month. That's a real number.

Kramer: Is that still going to be a budget problem?

Mayor Adams: Yes. It's a huge problem. The federal government should pay for this. Most importantly, Marsha, we should allow people to work. What is more dignified than having a job? They want to. Those migrants and asylum seekers are saying to me, "Mayor, we want to work. We want to be part of the city and give back to the city and not have to sit here and depend on the city."

Kramer: So a tangential problem for you is the lifeguard problem and the problems of having to possibly close waves of closures for several city pools and beaches. Tell me about that. Are you able to hire more lifeguards? Is there more money to hire more lifeguards?

Mayor Adams: We definitely have the money to hire lifeguards. We were successful over the offseason to renegotiate with the unions, which was really difficult in holding our lifeguard population by some of the stringent rules.

We were able to settle a good contract, give an incentive, retaining incentive to do so. We opened 50 pools, the Astoria pool over 100 years. It has been there. We were able to open it in one year. We were able to renovate it and open the pool. That's what's exciting. As I took a lot of criticism for our migrants from West Africa, South America, Central America, they can become lifeguards if we give them the ability to work. I will continue to lean into that.

Kramer: Are we looking at rolling closures over the course of the summer because you don't have enough lifeguards?

Mayor Adams: No, the numbers, I believe is up to a little over 500. We were better than we were last year on the lifeguards shortage issue. We need people to come and be a part of lifeguards. Young people, this is a good way to start employment and we want to encourage them to become lifeguards.

Kramer: So let's talk about the elephant in the room.

Mayor Adams: What's that?

Kramer: The Democratic debate for president.

Mayor Adams: The elephant is for the Republicans, right?

Kramer: No. You know what the elephant is. There's a lot of talk today after the debate about the need or the possible need to replace Joe Biden as a candidate. Do you think that that's something that the Democrats should do? Do you think that it's possible to do it?

Mayor Adams: Listen, those decisions are made by people that are over my food chain of all presidential candidates, particularly President Biden. He has a team of people that will look at all of this and analyze. I think he started out slow. He started to pick up as he went on.

There's another debate coming up. I don't know if a lot of people remember. I don't know if you remember the first debate that President Obama did, the first debate that others have done. You normally have an opportunity to come back around and really speak your vision to New Yorkers and to Americans.

Kramer: You don't think this is a federal wound?

Mayor Adams: During the campaign you get wounds, and that's part of campaigning. I had a couple of wounds on the campaign trail, and you feel them, and the question becomes your ability to recover. That's what it's about.

Kramer: So can he recover?

Mayor Adams: Listen, his experts would [know] that. I don't want to do anything that's going to interfere with their strategy and plan. I know that the president has been good for our city in many areas. We disagree on how the migrant crisis was handled, but when it came down to funding public safety, revitalizing our economy has been a W and I'm hoping that his team put the plan together for the recovery.

Kramer: Thank you so much for being here. We're going to have to leave it right there for now, but we'll be back with our panel to tackle what turned out to be a week of political upheaval at home and across the nation.

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