The message, which came as New Yorkers became more concerned about crime, was simple: Eric Adams, a former police chief, was the only candidate for mayor in 2021 who could curb a sense of disorder that had seeped into the city during the pandemic . .
Voters bought the message and sent Mr. Adams to City Hall, where he immediately began ramping up police patrols while pledging to stop the “bad guys” with guns terrorizing the streets. Public safety, he often says, is a “condition of prosperity,” the foundation of his efforts to improve the city’s economy and get people back to offices and restaurants.
But running a city of eight million and a $100 billion budget is a complicated business, and Mr. Adams soon faced criticism on many fronts: favoritism in his administration, painful budget cuts in some schools, and an apparent lack of urgency in addressing New York’s problems. affordability crisis.
In the final weeks of his first year, Mr. Adams, a Democrat who has embraced the motto “Get Stuff Done,” announced two major policy initiatives: the plan to remove mentally ill homeless people from the streets and a streamlining of housing development regulations to allow the creation of up to 50,000 new homes in the next 10 years.
“So De Blasio’s upstream initiative, which is commendable, was 3-K and pre-K,” Mr. Adams said, referring to programs that now serve more than 90,000 young children a year. “I’m listing a number of upstream initiatives we’ve done in one year.”
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Mr. Adams certainly enjoyed the theatricality of the work and served as a cheerful antidote to Mr. de Blasio, who seemed to pride himself on being stern. Mr. Adams was seemingly everywhere in his first year as mayor: smiling on the red carpet at the Met Gala, waging war against ratspatrolling the subway in police attire and visiting the Rikers Island prison complex on Thanksgiving.
His schedule was often filled with ceremonial performances that felt like holdovers from his time as Brooklyn borough president, including at least 17 flag-raising events. In November, around the time his son was participating in an “American Idol”-style contest in Albania, the mayor held a flag-raising ceremony for the Balkan country in Lower Manhattan and an “Albanian Heritage Celebration” at Gracie Mansion.
Mr Adams said it was important to him to honor immigrant communities and his absence from City Hall did not mean he was out of work. He said he conducted many of his meetings via Zoom calls, a pandemic-era convenience most former mayors lacked.
“Believe me, if I go to that flag being raised on Bowling Green, I’ll have a Zoom on my way down and a Zoom on my way back,” he said.
Still, his man-about-town persona has led to scrutiny about the clubs he frequents, his occasional seafood meals despite an outspoken adherence to a vegan lifestyle, and some of the company he keeps. Critics have questioned whether Mr. Adams is sufficiently focused on policy and whether he has assembled the right team to introduce solutions.
“I’m progressive and my priorities will be very different from the mayor’s,” said Melissa Mark-Viverito, a Democratic political strategist and former city council speaker. “But I’m also concerned about the management side and whether the city is delivering the basic services that New Yorkers rely on.”
As a possible sign of a lack of a focused message beyond crime, Lorraine Grillo, the outgoing first deputy mayor, recently cited “capital process reform” — a task force initiative addressing issues such as building change orders and electronic bidding — as her proudest achievement this year.
The mayor’s office provided a 16-page list of his “year-end achievements,” which included police making slightly more gun arrests in 2022 than in 2021: 4,509, versus 4,497.
“I continued to pursue crime, especially gun violence,” said Mr. Adams. “Even the critics have to say, ‘Listen in the midst of it all, the man caused shootings, brought down murders, increased guns taken off our streets.'”
The crime problem is complicated. While the number of shootings and murders has decreased, the number of major crimes, including assaults and robberies, is up 23 percent in 2022 from December 27. There were at least 10 homicides on the subway, up from about two a year before the pandemic. And with his constant focus on crime and the state’s bail law, Mr. Adams has been accused of feeding a Republican campaign narrative that the city is a den of lawlessness.
He has sought to reduce disorder by focusing on quality of life concerns, leading to a spike in subpoenas for minor offenses even as crime remained well below the historic highs of the 1980s and 1990s. Civil rights advocates are concerned about police checks on black and Latino men, and wish Adams had done more to usher in police reform in his first year.
Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, said many of the mayor’s solutions to the crime problem were shortsighted and too reliant on law enforcement. Mr Williams sponsored a bill to end solitary confinement at the Rikers complex, which Mr Adams opposes but is expected to be backed by a veto-resistant majority of the City Council.
“It’s easy to say more law enforcement and more incarceration, but that hasn’t worked in the past,” Mr Williams said. “At best, it’s a stopgap.”
Another example of Mr. Adams’ emphasis on tackling disorder is his administration’s focus on waste. In recent months, the city has expanded public holiday waste collection, adjusted waste collection hours, and created a new position: director of rodent control.
“I think the mayor understands that the city has to look good to feel good,” Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in an interview.
Escalating violence on Rikers Island has been another major challenge, with 2022 expected to be the prison complex’s deadliest in nearly a decade. Mary Lynne Werlwas, the director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project, said the mayor’s response to the prison crisis was too slow and timid.
“They have been unwilling to make the bold changes required to bring both competence and decency to prisons,” she said of the Adams administration.
The administration has fallen behind on other important metrics. The city began developing 16,000 below-market homes in the fiscal year ending June, nearly half the average for recent years. The city also fell short of its goal of building 20 miles of bus lanes and 30 miles of protected bike lanes this year, expecting to have built less than 12 miles of bus lanes and 25 miles of protected bike lanes.
Mr. Adams said he was proud of new housing projects approved by the City Council that will provide affordable units, including Innovation Queens in Astoria and a project in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx. He said he was determined to build bus and bike lanes faster, while urging greater engagement with local communities to gain their support for such initiatives.
“In 2023 we will make up for it,” said the mayor. “We are moving forward at a steady pace.”
Asked about an area where he had experienced a learning curve, Mr. Adams mentioned technology and a delay in introducing an app, “MyCity”, that New Yorkers will be able to use to access public services such as food stamps. He said the app, which he proposed during the mayoral campaign, should be available in early 2023.
“We could speed it up now, but I really want to kick the tires,” he said.
The mayor has been unapologetic about his administration’s hiring decisions, which included bringing about a dozen of his friends and political allies into city government for high salaries. He argued that ordinary New Yorkers did not question the moves.
“I need to staff my office with people I trust, who have the capabilities to do the job, and who have the passion to go out and deliver for New Yorkers every day, all day, and that’s what I did,” he said.
At the end of the year, Mr. Adams for rocky waters. More migrants are expected. The mayor increasingly clashes with city council leaders. He has warned that further cuts may be necessary, including at public libraries.
Still, Mr. Adams struck an optimistic note by calling 2022 his “rookie season” at a recent press conference, giving himself a B-plus grade for the year and promising that “our best things are still in the pipeline.”
“2023 is going to be an Aaron Judge year for me,” Mr. Adams said, referring to the Yankees outfielder who was the American League’s most valuable player in 2022. What Mr. Adams didn’t say: Mr. Judge was the league’s rookie of the year in his first full season.
Dana Rubinstein reporting contributed.