RUN THIS TOWN!
7 things Eric Adams must do the minute he’s sworn in as mayor
AS Eric Adams rides to the mayoralty on a wave of unprecedented good will and high expectations, he would do well to heed my 100 percent infallible advice. For one, he should avoid statements like this: “On Jan. 1, I will multiply the number of carriage horses in the city and give them their own dedicated lanes on the avenues.”
Ha! It’s unlikely he’d say that, but my point is: Mr. Mayor, don’t make promises you can’t keep. Bill de Blasio’s pledge to ban the horses on “Day One” blew up in his face. His failure to push through what sounded like a simple if unwise diktat haunted his mayoralty for eight years and came to stand for his overall weakness.
Instead, you should signal changes that are within your ability to implement. A mayor’s powers are narrowly circumscribed by state rules and further limited by the far-left City Council, crime-coddling district attorneys, and greedy unions.
But you do control the streets and agencies that report to you — most importantly the NYPD and FDNY and the departments of Health, Transportation, Housing and Homeless Services.
Plus, you can draw on a trio of strengths: street smarts from your 20 years in the NYPD; political skills honed during your terms in the state Senate and as Brooklyn borough president; and the bully pulpit the mayoralty provides to a person unashamed to use it.
Here, then, my modest proposals:
1. Shout from the rooftops, “Come back to the office, New Yorkers!” And delicately hint of deep City Hall disfavor with companies that needlessly drag their heels on ending remote work. Otherwise, Mr. Adams, you’ll face collapsing commercial real estate values by the close of your first term and an end to the tax-revenue gravy train that office towers provide to pay for city services.
2. Use your knees, elbows and considerable persuasive powers to make state legislators rescind bail “reform” rules that have flooded our streets with recidivist muggers, homicidal gang members and even some cop-shooters. Put incoming, cop-hating Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg on notice that he, too, will be held to account by disgusted New Yorkers.
3. Rapidly follow through on your stated intention to bring back the NYPD’s plainclothes anti-crime unit, the highly effective squad de Blasio disbanded last year — no matter how much flak you take for it. Tell your new, yet-to-be-named police commissioner to do it instantly.
4. Put subway cops on the platforms. Get tough with commanders who let officers stand and mill on mezzanines like restaurant waiters waiting for a crowd to show up. The crimes that riders fear most — shovings onto tracks and random slashings — occur on train platforms. But the transit force is absurdly deployed upstairs, as if the cops are afraid to get their hands dirty.
5. Put muscle back into the schools’ Gifted and Talented program. You rejected de Blasio’s bid to shut it down and you even say you want to expand it. Back up that pledge with a time frame and firm details before the teachers union and its lapdogs find ways to water it down. If middle-class parents don’t see resolve on your part, they’ll accelerate the exodus of kids to charter and religious schools beyond the purview of the Department of Education, which you called one of the city’s “greatest embarrassments.”
6. Tackle obscene inequities in the city’s propertytax rules. They absurdly favor higher-value singlefamily homes, co-ops and condos over rentals and less-valuable co-ops and condos. A Park Slope brownstone valued at $2.5 million might owe less tax than a $800,000 home in Canarsie, for example. This punishes mainly New Yorkers of color and discourages development of moderately priced apartments. It would take state action to make structural changes in the tax code. But you, Mayor Adams, can help simply by adjusting the formula that overassesses less-valuable properties. The city can also cap the amount raised from property taxes at 2 percent as in the rest of the state.
7. Rescind your pledge to add 300 miles of protected bike lanes across the city. Say: “I was not in my right mind when I said that — I blame my vegan diet — so there will be no more bike lanes.” Short of that, you can kill for good the Department of Transportation’s nutty plan for a commercedestroying lane on Midtown’s Fifth Avenue, which it punted until after the holidays. Second, pay more attention than lip service to business owners’ warnings that new lanes ruin stores, restaurants and make life hell for office tenants.
Thanks for listening — and may you have at least four glorious years.