Student Offers Historical Perspective on Adams’ Mayoral Agenda

Every four years, New York City holds an election for the citywide offices. Even though this year’s election was the first time since 2013 that most positions were open due to term limits, only slightly over one million of the 5.6 million registered New York voters voted on Election Day, November 2nd. Winning 67% of the vote, the Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams is the current Brooklyn Borough President and a former state senator and police captain. His Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels, got 29% of the vote. 

What agenda can New York City residents look forward to with this win? It is worth looking back on the legacies of the previous two mayors to put the current agenda into perspective and “hold our leaders accountable,” said senior Giana Aguirre.  

Michael Bloomberg, the three-term mayor who held office from 2002 to 2013, was an avid fiscal manager, initiating the largest city tax increase in modern history. His final term left New York City with a $2 billion budget surplus. Mayor Bloomberg encouraged city agencies to be more reliable and honest, and introduced the 311 information network public service benefit to New Yorkers accustomed to unresponsive city offices. 

Bloomberg also instituted some effective public and social health measures, such as an indoor smoking ban (which critics erroneously claimed would bankrupt NYC restaurants), the creation of dedicated bike lanes, the labeling of trans-fat prepared foods, and the pedestrianization of Times Square. 

However, under Bloomberg’s watch, the city became the most economically unequal major city in the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2013. New York City saw the highest number of homeless residents since the Great Depression, with about 22,000 of them being children. 

Bloomberg also oversaw the New York Police Departmentís dramatic expansion of “stop and frisk,” a law enforcement policy in which police can interrogate anybody they wish, regardless of probable cause. Almost 90% of those targeted were Black or Latinx. 

Under Bloomberg’s watch, police surveillance on Muslims following the 9/11 attacks also increased, as did the arrests of citizens for “public displays of marijuana,” which typically consisted of police ordering young minorities to empty their pockets and arresting them if marijuana was found. Bloomberg also failed to adequately address the crisis at Rikers Island.

Current Mayor Bill de Blasio, who succeeded Bloomberg, promised to end the “tale of two cities.” He curtailed the “stop and frisk” policy, required police officers to wear body cameras and take de-escalation training, and decriminalized marijuana possession. He tried to address the affordable housing and homelessness crisis by freezing rent on rent-stabilized apartments and giving low-income tenants the right to an attorney when landlords tried to evict them. Municipal ID cards were created for undocumented immigrants. Mayor de Blasio’s most significant policies were instituting the requirement that employers offer paid sick days to employees and establishing a universal pre-kindergarten program for four-year-olds, thus providing an additional year of free public education at an important developmental age. This effort required the recruitment of 2,000 teachers and the creation of more than 3,000 new classrooms. 

However, even before the Covid-19 crisis, de Blasio failed to curtail the rise in homelessness and deaths of pedestrians and the deterioration of Rikers Island. Mayor de Blasio has also not yet dealt with the fallout from the Covid-19 crisis, such as the city’s loss of almost 500,000 jobs, its soaring murder rate (up 42% in two years), the ghost town of Midtown Manhattan, and the declined ridership on the New York City subway system.

So now let’s turn to mayor-elect Eric Adams’s ambitious agenda, which is summarized in the graphic above. What can we do as Riverdale students and faculty? We can pay our full share of taxes. We can ride the subway. We can try to be good Samaritans when the situation arises. Junior Jessica Gold said, “We can stay informed through local newspapers and media outlets” so that we can “distinguish between belief and fact.” Junior Alex Friedman said that we can “show what we want by exercising our responsibility to vote.” Now that the mayoral race is over, Friedman said, we can “work toward a productive future for this city.”