New York Metropolis Corridor.
Photograph by Ethan Stark-Miller
This month, the 4 of us walked into our new places of work at Metropolis Corridor and started the job of a lifetime: serving to Mayor Eric Adams run a very powerful metropolis on the globe.
In our new roles as deputy mayor for well being and human providers, deputy mayor for housing, financial growth, and workforce, deputy mayor for operations, and deputy mayor for public security, we’re serving to lead a few of our metropolis’s most essential businesses and the general public servants who energy them.
From the nation’s largest public housing authority to the most important municipal hospital system, from lots of of firehouses to a state-of-the-art emergency administration middle, from 2,000 sanitation vans that begin hauling trash earlier than daybreak to hundreds of shelter beds that give folks a secure place to sleep at night time, our metropolis authorities is rather like our metropolis: it doesn’t sleep.
We all know this work is not going to at all times be straightforward. We all know that New Yorkers will rely on us to maintain them secure, assist them discover an inexpensive house, help our metropolis’s small companies, and extra. However we’d not have accepted these jobs if we didn’t really feel assured that our careers throughout public service had ready us effectively for this second.
Between the 4 of us, we convey almost 100 years of expertise to Metropolis Corridor. We now have labored for town, state, and federal governments. We now have served our nation overseas within the army and at house within the largest police drive within the nation. We now have led organizations as numerous because the New York Metropolis Taxi and Limousine Fee and the New York state Workplace of Kids and Household Companies, remodeled the best way the FDNY inspects buildings, and created file quantities of inexpensive housing throughout the 5 boroughs.
However regardless of the variety of our information, what unites all of them is a dedication to enhancing the communities round us — a dedication we’re excited to convey to the Adams administration and our metropolis’s devoted public servants.
We all know that we now have huge footwear to fill. When Mayor Adams appointed lots of our predecessors, New York Metropolis was shuttered, our economic system was plummeting, and crime was skyrocketing. In simply three years, Mayor Adams and his administration turned recession into resurgence, shattering the information for probably the most jobs and small companies in metropolis historical past, and bringing crime all the way down to historic lows. The 4 deputy mayors who got here earlier than us helped convey us out of COVID and handle a world humanitarian disaster, handed probably the most pro-housing zoning reform in metropolis historical past, and launched historic efforts to maneuver thousands and thousands of trash luggage off our streets and into containers. They labored day by day to create a safer, extra inexpensive metropolis.
However in assuming our new roles, the mayor was clear: He didn’t simply need us to construct on their legacies; he wished us to find out our personal and produce new, modern concepts to Metropolis Corridor as effectively.
Every of our jobs are totally different, and so these concepts will likely be, too.
For our public security businesses, which means deploying new applied sciences to construct on historic drops in crime and hold New Yorkers secure. For our operational businesses, it means steeling us in opposition to long-term threats like local weather change and making a extra sustainable metropolis at each juncture. For our well being and human service businesses, it means persevering with to get New Yorkers on our streets and subways the assistance they deserve whereas constructing a extra equitable well being care and social providers system that strengthens low-income households. And for our housing and financial growth businesses, it means constructing extra family-friendly neighborhoods throughout all 5 boroughs the place New Yorkers have entry to a good-paying job and an inexpensive house.
We’re assuming these roles at a important time for our metropolis. There is no such thing as a denying that persons are anxious in regards to the future; many are questioning whether or not authorities at each stage from New York Metropolis to Washington, D.C. can meet the challenges of our time, from security to sustainability to affordability.
But when the work of the Adams administration and our personal careers throughout public service make something clear, it’s that authorities can nonetheless act with audacity and ambition to enhance folks’s lives.
Metropolis authorities can assist households discover inexpensive properties and good-paying jobs. Metropolis authorities can hold our streets secure and ship care to those that want it. Metropolis authorities can put a reimbursement in folks’s pockets and assist them afford hire, groceries, and well being care. As Mayor Adams usually says, we generally is a metropolis of “yes.”
As we settle into our new places of work at Metropolis Corridor and start the work of serving to lead these essential portfolios, we promise to proceed the mission that has motivated our complete careers and the work of the Adams administration day by day — to create a safer, extra inexpensive metropolis that’s the greatest place to boost a household.
Carrión is deputy mayor for housing, financial growth, and workforce
Gustave is deputy mayor for well being and human providers
Roth is deputy mayor for operations
Daughtry is deputy mayor for public security
