Behind The Scenes at City Hall (+ Transcript)
INTRODUCTION:
Bradley Tusk: All right. Welcome back to Firewall. I'm your host, Bradley Tusk. Today is a Tuesday episode, but unlike our usual Tuesday episode of me and Hugo, we have three incredible guests. Today, three and a half, because Jamie's here, too. And I actually even wrote a preamble, which I never do, but that's how seriously I want to take today's episode. So: Cities like New York don't run themselves. The water comes through the tap. The light turns from green to red. The trash gets picked up from the curb because specific people make that happen. When we think about city government, we think of the mayor, as we should. That's who we put in charge. But in reality, over 300,000 people work for the City of New York. The vast, vast majority of those employees, including many of the top people at City Hall itself, are not political. They're not partisan. They're just trying to get things done. When they do their jobs well, our lives are better. When they don't, collectively, we suffer. With New York City Mayor Eric Adams under indictment, the value of those specific people is greater than ever. Absent new charges and developments, Adams is unlikely to resign before the end of his term. Governor Hochul is unlikely to remove him from office, which means the City Hall we see now is likely what we'll see for the next 15 months.
What does that look like in a time of crisis? Who are the people who actually do the hard work of running New York day in, day out? What can they do in this climate? My view? Quite a lot. I'm privileged to be joined by three exceptionally talented public servants, three people who are helping lead our city forward in the face of adversity. Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi. Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom. We're going to talk about what their jobs are like right now, their vision, their beliefs, their work serving the people of the city. My good friend Jamie Rubin, who also serves as the chair of the New York City Housing Authority, is co-hosting this conversation with me. We are thrilled that it's happening.
Thank you so much for joining us. It’s really exciting that it's happening. And just to be clear to both listeners and to everyone else, this is not a political podcast this time. This is not about the merits of the indictment. This is not about the next election. Listeners know I've hosted tons of those already. This is about how the city moves forward in an extraordinary time. So let's start off with an overall kind of climate question, which is: It's been a crazy few weeks and few months, if not a few years - so how do you each feel? Meera, do you want to kick it off?
HOW DOES EACH DEPUTY MAYOR FEEL DURING THIS MOMENT?
DM Meera Joshi: Sure. We work in a place of constant change. That's part of the challenge of our job. I'd say the last few weeks have been ‘change on steroids.’ So what happens to me personally is, I find that I get quiet, I get more determined, I get more focused. Because we're trained to manage through change. And so this is an extreme moment where all those skills are called on. Then it's also how do I project that to a team that I work with? Because none of this happens in silos. So part of that is what's happened all along. I have a team that I've built a lot of trust and credibility with. So when I speak to them now in a moment of uncertainty, there is faith. My determination and focus also has to be their determination and focus. And one of the silver linings when you're faced with adversity is finding that commonality and that strength in the group that is working together for common purpose. And so that's really been our every waking moment in these last couple of weeks.
Bradley Tusk: Okay. Anne, how about you?
DM Anne Williams-Isom: I like the way that you said that. We've kind of been in a lot of challenges from the moment that we came here. Right? We came in this moment of COVID. You know, we went through Monkeypox, ladies. We went through the migrant humanitarian crisis, which we're still in right now. And so what I have found out about myself or what I've known is that I think when I have a proximity to crisis or something that needs me, I also get very focused and ready to do it. And this is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And just this morning, someone told me if I was doing a letter to my younger self, what would I say? I grew up in a household where there was domestic violence. And I do think that when you are in challenging situations, when you grow up, you learn how to kind of calm yourself down and to focus on what you need to do. And maybe that is survival, but you certainly get some tools to be able to deal with crisis. So I'm feeling very focused and very calm in this moment.
Bradley Tusk: Good. That's what we need. Maria?
DM Maria Torres-Springer: I think on one hand we're of course, human, the three of us. Right? And so we understand that it's a time of real volatility and there's pain and loss and all of that, and what we've been going through. However, the taxpayers of the city don't pay our salary to sit in our feelings. We took an oath when we were appointed by this mayor and among us, the three of us, we have nearly 60 years of service to this city in previous administrations. And so we know that we have to be faithful, not just to the oath that we took when we were appointed to these roles, but really the reason why we were called to public service in the first place many decades ago. And that's to make sure that New Yorkers get the best quality service, the best programs, and public servants who wake up in the morning despite how they're feeling, despite the high winds and the rough waves that we're experiencing right now, that we are working for them. And so in this moment of great volatility, just like my colleagues, I'm actually feeling a sense of calm, a calm that comes with the realization that if there was ever a time to be 100 percent focused on New Yorkers and serving New Yorkers, despite all that is hard, it is right now.
WHAT EACH DEPUTY MAYOR OVERSEES:
Bradley Tusk [00:06:10]: Got it. So most people aren't that familiar with the structure of how city government itself works. So, I would like each of you to describe how you see your job, what agencies report to you, and what happened under your watch that real people kind of feel affects their life on a day to day basis. So why don't we go in reverse order summary, Maria, you want to start this one?
DM Maria Torres-Springer: Sure. So in my role as Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce, there are about 15 agencies and organizations that report to me. They are the housing agencies. And these are agencies that not just finance affordable housing in this city, but that also maintain the housing maintenance code. And so if you're having a problem with your landlord, if there's a problem with the quality of your housing, you call 311. And the good people at the Housing Preservation and Development Agency are the ones who respond. Also in the housing portfolio, and I get to work very closely with Chair Jamie Rubin, is NYCHA. And so, you know, the one in 14 New Yorkers who live in NYCHA deserve not just improvement in their day to day quality of life, but they deserve a rapid advancement of the transformation plans that we have because the $80 billion capital repair need at NYCHA is not going to magically show up tomorrow. And so those plans moving forward really impact the day to day lives of NYCHA residents across the five boroughs. Also in the portfolio are agencies like Small Business Services that deliver services to the amazing entrepreneurs across the city, the Economic Development Corporation that wakes up in the morning, all 600 of them really working to keep our economy strong. And the fact that we've regained 1 million jobs since the start of the administration is a good sign. But there's more work to do. Agencies that connect New Yorkers to those jobs in the economy. And importantly, and this is a lot of the work led by the Department of City Planning, agencies that think about what is needed in this moment to confront the raging housing crisis in the city. So the moonshot goal of 500,000 new homes over the course of the next decade, a really important initiative called City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. That's within my portfolio. That is taking up, I would say, most of my brain space and energy. And that's appropriate because now is the time to make sure that we are doing everything that we can to bend the curve on this housing crisis that has left too many tenants and New Yorkers vulnerable in the last several decades.
Bradley Tusk: So let me just follow up real fast, which is, City of Yes is, like you said, an incredibly ambitious program that requires approval from the City Council for some elements of it. How are your thoughts around how to pass that change in the environment we're now in?
DM Maria Torres-Springer: The job hasn't changed because while many might have their political analysis of what the challenges of today mean for that proposal, what has not changed is the analysis of housing insecurity in this city. Right? A 1.4 percent rental vacancy rate. It's a vacancy rate that's functionally zero for the most affordable apartments. And we have tens of thousands of New Yorkers who slept in shelters last night and most of them are women and children. And so our job has not changed. It is now with the City Council. We have about 50 days to get over the finish line. But our colleagues at the City Council and frankly, every elected leader, I'm sure, if not the number one issue, it's the number two issue that constituents mention to them. It's affordability. And so we're going to, as I like to put it, and I tell my team this all the time, "We have to walk a straight line despite all that is hard and challenging. Walk a straight line to get done what New Yorkers deserve."
Jamie Rubin: The thing that's incredible about the work that's gotten done is that you passed the City Planning Commission a week ago in this environment. And if it's successful in getting through the Council in some form or fashion, which, you know, there will be changes, I assume, it's going to be the first really significant zoning change in the state that I can think of. It's been tried before, but not successfully. Which means, given this it’s New York State, New York City, it's going to be a signal for the rest of the country. I think the way California has been in the past, it's a remarkable achievement.
Bradley Tusk: In fact, let me double down on that a little bit, because what I found in my time in New York City government and politics is: It's not just the rest of the country, it's the rest of the world. So, for example, I worked for Mike when we did the smoking ban. You know, ultimately, it helped that he put a lot of his own money into it too. But I think something like 170 different, major cities and countries adopted it. You know, the mayor [at the time] obviously remembers a little dust up with Uber in 2015. Part of the reason that I had an unlimited budget for that fight and was so rough on your boss was, I knew that every mayor in the world was watching it and it totally impacted the course of our regulatory climate for the next couple of years. So yeah, I think City of Yes has the ability to really be replicated nationally and even in many parts globally. So I really hope you guys can get this thing through.
DM Maria Torres-Springer: And I think, Bradley, the last thing I'll say on this is, it shows what's at stake, that we can't spend much time wringing our hands or wondering about the future. The need to get City of Yes done is so clear in my mind. And there's a growing every day coalition of individuals and organizations who in some ways they say, you know, this is not about any one mayor or administration, that this is about coming out of the pandemic, coming out of all of our struggles. What does it mean for this city to not just crawl out of our struggles, but to take a great leap forward? That's what I think the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity represents. And so we're going to stay focused with partners at the City Council and others to make sure that it gets done.
Bradley Tusk: So, Anne - structure of your agencies, but then also translate like Maria just did - people’s real lives.
DM Anne Williams-Isom: Sure. So I would say as the deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, my three main focuses are to really promote child and family well-being, to really promote public health and safety, and then to reduce poverty and housing instability. So I oversee all of the Department of Health. And when people would think about immunizations that they get, when they think about going into a restaurant and making sure that health inspectors have looked at that restaurant and it's healthy, when they think about all of the things that obviously that we as we're coming out of the pandemic, we've just had such a great commissioner in Commissioner Vasan in terms of his focus on mental health and all of those things. And we'll talk about Healthy NYC as we move forward. We oversee the nine public hospitals, which everybody again, they're such great hospitals. Dr. Mitch Katz is a superstar. By the way, I have the best commissioners. I'm sorry ladies.
DM Maria Torres-Springer: I don't know about that!
DM Anne Williams-Isom: I really do. I'm sorry to say. It makes my job pretty easy. But all that we do in terms of the nine public hospitals here. Chief Medical Examiner, with the opioid crisis, if you didn't have COVID, the opioid crisis would be our biggest public health agenda right now. And so his numbers and the amount of autopsies he's doing has been skyrocketing still. So managing all of that. We have the Administration for Children's Services. We often talk about child welfare, but they're preventive services there. So when people are looking for their voucher for child care, when you're looking for a program where you can have your family and get the support that you need as a parent, that's how that affects real New Yorkers. The Mayor's Office of Gender Based Violence. Maria talked about the amount of people that are in the homeless shelter. We know that the majority are women who are victims of domestic violence. So having that office, having all our family justice centers has been so important in how that affects real New Yorkers lives. The Department of Aging so that as we are coming out of the pandemic and older adults are getting more focused on going to their centers and making sure that they have food, all of those things touch so many real New Yorkers. So a bunch of different other things. But I would say that everything in my portfolio really touches us every day in terms of people staying safe, people having the prevention that they need, the supports that they need in order to really thrive.
Bradley Tusk: Yeah. Two quick follow ups on that, if that's okay. First is, so COVID has sort of become this fact of life that we all kind of live with, but I don't want to have to think about that all day, every day. How much do you have to think about COVID all day?
DM Anne Williams-Isom: So what I think about is, "Are we prepared for whatever is going to be next?" So that's the one thing. Dr. Vasan and the team and I used to spend a lot of time looking at numbers, looking at what's going on. We don't necessarily do that, but we're like, "Are we prepared for whatever comes next?" I think the aftermath of the mental health crisis that has occurred in terms especially with our young people, I spend a lot of time thinking about that and what can we do more as we go through that. I was just thinking about this moment of time that we're in right now. When we talk about challenges, I think it affects us all because we're all kind of still on the edge with anxiety. Right? And so uncertainty, wherever it is, just affects -
Bradley Tusk: So I'll have a cold and then I debate, "Well, do I need a COVID test or not, is it just a sore throat? Well, if it's positive, does that screw up my whole schedule." I think we all live like that all the time now.
DM Anne Williams-Isom: Right. Or how are our kids? Are our little ones okay? Who's going off to college? What's going on in the world? How do we talk to them about that?
Bradley Tusk: My daughter is a freshman in college. She's been there for six weeks and got COVID in week two, and she's fine.
DM Anne Williams-Isom: Exactly. Yes, that's how I would answer that question.
Bradley Tusk: So Meera - structure of agencies and kind of how it translates to real people.
DM Meera Joshi: I think what you led with was pretty much it. I run the operations of the city. It's the city's skeleton. It's its major organs. When everything is working well, you're not thinking about it. So, you know, if our bodies are working well, we're just moving around. We're having a wonderful day. If your foot starts to hurt, your arm starts to hurt, then all of a sudden you're trying to figure out what went wrong and how do I fix it. That's how I think about the portfolio, because it's our infrastructure services and the basic infrastructure of the city. The agencies are the Department of Buildings. They regulate over a million buildings to make sure that there's safe construction and safe maintenance.TLC [The Taxi and Limousine Commission], which is our for-hire vehicles, about 100,000. Department of Transportation, 7,000 miles of roadway, 800 bridges. The Department of Sanitation, 26 million pounds of trash picked up every day. DEP [The Department of Environmental Protection], a billion gallons coming out of your faucet and another billion that you flush. And making sure both work is essential. The Department of Design and Construction and the School Construction Authority. These are the City’s two municipal construction agencies,they build all of our schools, our libraries, all of our municipal buildings and a lot of our resiliency work. And the Mayor's Office for Climate. Also the Department of Parks and Recreation, that's everybody's backyard, 30,000 acres of green space, 14 miles of beaches, hundreds of monuments.
Bradley Tusk: Over 2,000 facilities. I used to be at the Parks Department.
DM Meera Joshi: Yeah. So, I mean, it really is. In New York City, we live in small spaces. Everything I've described is an extension of our homes. Yes. And it's got to be frictionless to succeed.
Bradley Tusk: And binary, right? I remember when I got to Parks, I was Henry Stern’s spokesman when I was 21. And it kind of hit me pretty quickly (other than that, Henry was insane as the three of you probably remember…Great but insane). And, you know, all eight and a half million New Yorkers use a park at some point over the course of a year. And if the parks are clean and safe and fun, their lives are better. And if they're dirty and dangerous, their lives are worse. And the job is that binary. And I would say for all three of you, in a lot of ways — and this is why I think city government is just so much more important and fun than the other forms…I've worked at all other levels of government — is because everything is binary every day. If you do your jobs well, eight and a half million people have better lives, and if you don't, or your commissioners don't, we'll have worse lives.
DM Meera Joshi: I think of it like a stage. If we build this stage well, people who live here and come here can fulfill their dreams. So our job is to make sure that the stage is working and available. Right?
Bradley Tusk: Yes, exactly right. Can I ask you a pet peeve question?
DM Meera Joshi: Gosh. I knew it.
Bradley Tusk: This is DOT [The Department of Transportation].
DM Meera Joshi: I knew it.
Bradley Tusk: Yeah. I have a 15 year old son, and he and all of his friends rent electric Citi Bikes and drive all over the city. And despite the fact that I keep buying every new helmet that looks cool on the market, I doubt he's ever wearing it. And he's lying to me about it as are all of his friends. Is there a way to stop Citi Bike from making this available to kids?
DM Meera Joshi: So first of all, I have a son too, he's 27 now, but he did ride recklessly and promised — well, he didn't even promise — that he was going to wear a helmet.
Bradley Tusk: Mine just lies.
DM Meera Joshi: So I don't know which is better, right? But still, listen, e-bikes are, whether they're Citi Bike or they are delivery e-bikes, we have seen a sad and tremendous increase in the number of crashes. Both single crashes, because people don't know how fast they're operating. With vehicles, with parked cars. We negotiated with Citi Bike to reduce the speed, the maximum speed that they have. The truth is and you know, from days at Uber, customer demand. The market wants e-bikes. They don't want the traditional bikes. You go to Madrid, that's all that's on the street is e-bikes because they have hills and nobody wants to be sweaty, so they want the e-bike. So the market demand is for the e-bike. The challenge ahead, not just for e-bikes, but for all bikes, is getting control of what I call now “commercial corridors” or bike lanes. They're the most lucrative bike lanes in the nation, and we have very little rules of the road, although the same technically apply. And the work ahead, and this is work we're doing with the City Council, work which may make you bristle, is about licensing the big users of those commercial corridors so that we have some safety requirements.
Bradley Tusk: Actually last on last week's podcast and I did a Substack on this. I just literally entitled it Street Rant and all of the things like, people riding bicycles on the sidewalks or biking the wrong way down the bike lanes are all these things. This is now taking us down a tangent, but I have a thesis that the illegal weed shop proliferation and the scaffolding proliferation led to a change of social norms in New York City that kind of created an environment of anything goes. And all of a sudden a lot of basic courtesies just went out the window. And they're courtesies that we all rely upon to be safe, right? And so I think the bikes are sort of, to me, the most tangible one. A lot of also just people's behavior on their phones, which, you know, again, as a parent, it's maddening. So yeah, I think you have flipped me. So if you want me to go testify to council-
DM Meera Joshi: Yes. They're transmitting that legislation soon.
Bradley Tusk: I will. I will do it. Yeah.
Jamie Rubin: Be careful what you wish for.
Bradley Tusk: And you know, we're going to do the broker fee bill, and we're going to pass it. Yeah. How do we get a repeal of Local Law 11?
DM Meera Joshi: We have two reforms and hopefully these bills will age soon. One of them will change Local Law 11. Not only the frequency, because now we're on a frequency every building is treated the same. Not necessary because some buildings are much more secure than others. Other cities don't have that same regiment. And also the footprint. So every campus, almost the entire campus in NYCHA, this is a big problem. You need scaffolding in NYCHA, you're darkening the entire campus. Yeah so that would be epic.
Bradley Tusk: I've talked to [Brooklyn District Attorney] Eric Gonzales and [Manhattan District Attorney] Alvin Bragg about this, and they both came back to me and said, "Yeah, our people think it creates more violence."
DM Meera Joshi: And rats and trash.. And just who wants that? It's dark. So those seem like small changes, but they could have an epic proportional impact on the way the street looks. And the other one is enforcement. We don't have real fines for people who leave scaffolding up.
Bradley Tusk: And can't we just use drones to do some of these inspections?
DM Meera Joshi: Yes, we can. We have them out there. School Construction Authority, Buildings, DEP, DOT. They're all using drones now for inspections. And it is vital because you actually get a great chronology about how the infrastructure changes over time.
MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE FACING EACH DEPUTY MAYOR NOW, AND IMPORTANT ISSUES THAT ARE NOT BEING COVERED
Bradley Tusk [00:23:09]: All right. Anne, let's start with you on this one. So what would you say are the most important issues facing you in your job right now? What are you most focused on? What's keeping you up at night? And finally, what are you excited about that the press refuses to write about that you're just like, "Hey, let's use this forum to at least talk about this."
DM Anne Williams-Isom: Probably most focused on the work that we're doing with Healthy NYC, where we see that all New Yorkers’ life expectancy has gone down. And so we really want to focus on -
Bradley Tusk: What do you attribute the decline to?
DM Anne Williams-Isom: I think there's many things, right? I think there's the pandemic and people not really taking care of themselves. I think we still have a lot of problems with chronic diseases. We see suicides are up. All of the things that I actually talked to you about before, in terms of the opioid crisis, and all of those. So we really want to pay attention to that and have strategies for each one of those things and set a goal for increasing life expectancy to 83 by 2030. And so there are things like maternal mortality for women of color in particular, and sort of increasing that by 10 percent by 2020 by 2030. So I'm really focused on what are those big goals that we should be thinking about in terms of health. I would be lying if I'm saying I'm not also focused on integrating our new New Yorkers into New York City and making sure that with all of the hoopla and all of the drama that was going on, that there's less drama and we're more focused on integration, resettlement, work authorization, and making sure that we get those 40,000 young people that are in our school system and all of the people. So when you ask me, what am I mad that people won't write about? We'll talk about the 213 sites and we'll talk about siting, and neighborhoods, and all the crime and, you know, all those kind of made up things. But we really won't talk about the 150,000 people who have already made their way on their journey and all that New York City is doing to lead this effort in terms of integrating people into community.
Bradley Tusk: Let me ask a follow up, and I suspect we'll have to edit it out, but I'll take a shot, which is: Given what you're doing, you mentioned work authorization. You know, I've been, and I've pitched this to Mayor Adams, but I didn't get anywhere with it. Why can't we create a New York City work permit? I understand that wouldn't have the force of federal law, but it would say to local employers, like, for example, for me, with this bookstore, as far as the City of New York is concerned, if you want to hire a migrant, go ahead and do it. Why can't we do that?
DM Anne Williams-Isom: I heard that you were obsessed with this issue. Someone gave me a heads up about it. I think there are a lot of different things that we could do together, but I think that we were not going to do something like that on our own. And I think the governor, the mayor decided not to do that.
Bradley Tusk: Yeah, I tried with both of them, but-
Jamie Rubin: But my understanding from from folks who work in immigrant advocacy and [in the] legal representation community is that if you're not going to do something like what Bradley just suggested, the next best or maybe the best thing to do would be to get the federal government to speed up its processing of work permits, which is disgraceful. I mean, this in more detail I'm going to get into. But my understanding is there's a million and a half work permits sitting on somebody's desk in the federal government to be processed. And it literally is just, you know, making sure that somebody is what they said they were and then process it. And that's all it requires for somebody who's here under asylum, at least, to work.
Bradley Tusk: So, Jamie, then let's -
DM Anne Williams-Isom: Wait a minute. Also, we're talking about 40 years of messed up federal immigration policy. We are not going to solve this in this moment. So the question is, what needs to happen and how can New York show that there are pathways to success here and everything doesn't have to be a problem, and this one's disgraceful? We're not going to call anybody names. We're just saying that we now have 45,000, 50,000 people who are in our DHS [Department of Homeless Services] shelter, 60,000 people who are migrants, 100,000 people that we're caring for. What's the best way to get people out of a shelter and connected to their path?
Bradley Tusk: Okay. So Anne and/or Jamie, let's say that a president gets elected in five weeks who doesn't believe in immigration at all, and those million work permits are never going to be processed. You still would say the city shouldn't think about acting unilaterally?
DM Anne Williams-Isom: I would think we're going to do what we always do, which is see where we are at the time and see what the objective is that we're trying to get to and make it work. And I think we've been doing a heck of a job. I know there's so much shade that people throw on us, but I think that there will be thousands of children and families who will say, "Wow, under this administration, this is when I started to be on the path of my American dream."
DM Maria Torres-Springer: We've already built an infrastructure for it. So those with work permits, thousands of people that the Workforce One Centers have already provided services to and those with work permits, they have connected to jobs. Jobs in a variety of industries, construction, etc. So that is, we're not just sitting on our hands waiting for stuff to happen. Where there is a path, we are leading those new New Yorkers down that road.
DM Anne Williams-Isom: And I would say there's probably a lot of people who are in shelters who are working. And so this question is not just the working, it's where are they going to live?
Bradley Tusk: It gets back to affordable housing and City of Yes. And everything else.
DM Anne Williams-Isom: And everything else.
Bradley Tusk: Yeah, absolutely. All right. So, Meera, what you're most focused on and worried about and then what's not getting enough attention that should?
DM Meera Joshi: Anne says something often, which I'm going to use to describe this. We hold two things at the same time. So what I'm most focused on is both what's happening immediately, and I put that in sort of the ‘street order’ bucket and what do we have to think about for generations to come? And you have to think about both every day because they require different regulatory, enforcement, funding, staffing approaches. But they are both as urgent. So on the street order side, we talked about e-bikes and scaffolding. We are, in some sense…there is a great series in the New York Times, "Street Wars." It's prosperity. Ifour streets were not crowded, that would be a really, really bad thing. There are lots of places that have very orderly streets that are very boring to live in. We live in a vibrant place. We have an outburst of prosperity coming out of COVID, which has shown itself in lots of open restaurants and little regulation, scaffolding, E-bikes, trash everywhere. And just a sense of, what do we do with our streets because everybody wants to be on them? So a lot of the work we're doing is around containerizing. You know, [Department of Sanitation] Commissioner Tisch often says, “We're late to the game, but we're finally getting there.” This is an enormous step forward for street order for New York City.
Bradley Tusk: So what has to happen? So you have this vision. You have now an MVP. You have the roll out of the container. What has to happen for it to be like, “this is how we all now use the trash all the time?”
DM Meera Joshi: Rules. Rules and enforcement. And that schedule is already set out. So the residential requirements are out there. The next big bucket will be the 10 to 30, the bigger residential buildings. All of the commercial trash is under regulation to be containerized. So it's happening at a very rapid pace. And in a few days, we'll be the first city in the nation to have the largest curbside organics pickup. That's also containerized. And there's promise in that as well, because those banana peels can go to our digesters and become renewable gas, heat homes. So that's the street order.
Bradley Tusk: On the other side.
DM Meera Joshi: And on the other side is about how do we protect New York so it's here for our grandkids and their grandkids and that really is water, heat, pollution. Some of it is mandates that we've inherited and we have to implement. And a lot of it is ensuring that we think twice about our real estate. All of our real estate has to be “double duty.” It has to do two things: be something that New Yorkers can use, but also have a protection element. The best example is our water absorption, so sponge. Like some cities in China, we need to be a sponge city. We are rolling out sponge infrastructure from the very, very big to the very, very small, and each will be an alternative to our sewer system, our, you know, regular pipes. Staten Island has 94 blue belts. We've got 33 more blue belts in the pipeline. That's hundreds.
Bradley Tusk: Can you just define a blue belt?
DM Meera Joshi: Blue belts are really lakes that we redesign so that they can become holding areas when there's a big storm. If we don't have them, neighborhoods are flooded, basements are flooded, people lose their lives. But when you build the blue belt, you can not only hold more, you also create an open space for a community. So we have the ability to do that in Manhattan, in Brooklyn, in places like Jewel Street, in which some of those houses still live on septic tanks. So that is huge sponge infrastructure. And then on the smaller side, it's simple things like using absorbent asphalt instead of the asphalt that we use now. And people automatically see the difference when we repave their streets with that kind of material.
Bradley Tusk: From a macro standpoint, how, because given that you're seeing new products all the time that are sort of climate friendly and related to the city's work, if someone says to you, "we're all going to die of climate change in the next eight years or whatever AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez] said around that," do you agree or do you say, "there's so much innovation happening that I see every day, that I feel like there's more hope than we should have?"
DM Meera Joshi: I absolutely think there's more hope. And it's not just the innovation, it's that the work is underway. It's like this kind of generational infrastructure work happens over decades. The projects get started, we make them irreversible, and then they get finished. Right? And when they get finished is when you see the absolute benefit. New York City is not turning a blind eye to climate change. We have the most aggressive building [emissions] reduction laws. We're doing an aggressive green infrastructure move. Same with solar. And we're about to, hopefully in the next year, open up the largest renewable energy pipeline in the nation, the pipeline coming in through Randall's Island. So we are well prepared. We do need to keep our nose to the grindstone, make sure that the projects are irreversible. And a subject that Jamie and I talk a lot about is ensuring that consistent funding is happening for resiliency projects. But I certainly feel that as opposed to some other places in the country where, to say climate change is a dirty word, we're well entrenched in the work of fighting the fight.
Bradley Tusk: Maria, what you're most focused on and what's not getting enough attention as it should?
DM Maria Torres-Springer: I'm focused on certain things that Meera endlessly makes fun of me about. I often use the word — and it animates a lot of our work — "moonshot." And I use the word moonshot, whether it's 500,000 homes in a decade, the path to 5 million jobs in our city by the end of next year -
Bradley Tusk: How many do we have right now?
DM Maria Torres-Springer: We have about 4.17 [million] private sector jobs and about 4.7 [million] total jobs. So we can get there. But there are a number of others, but these are moonshots that are not intended to be abstract pipe dreams. They're intended to put an anchor down and say that we as a city don't have to just survive or make small plans to get to the next week. That when we say we're the greatest city in the world, it has to be because we have a vision for what a metropolis like New York City can be like, to be a model for the rest of the world. Right? And so we’re focused — of course, we've already talked about it — on what it means, and I really believe that this will be the defining task of our generation, to address our housing supply problem, which is not just, by the way, the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, but we're also advancing and we're done with one, five neighborhood plans across the boroughs. And our analysis shows that if we get these five neighborhood plans, the one in the Bronx near the Metro-North stations that just got approved. There's a few more in Long Island City, in Jamaica, on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. We tallied the numbers, Bradley. And if we get those done by the end of next year, which is we're on schedule [we will deliver nearly more than 150 thousand housing units over the next 15 years across the five boroughs].
Bradley Tusk: What does it take to get them done?
DM Maria Torres-Springer: What it takes is a combination of the incredible work that has already happened by public servants, just the analysis, the technical work that will be done. It will continue to be done well. And then what it takes is political courage by everyone who is involved in this process to say, "we're not watering it down. We're going to keep it on schedule and we're going to approve it because we don't have to live this way."
Bradley Tusk: Right. And the pressure to water down comes from who?
DM Maria Torres-Springer: I think the pressure to water it down comes from many different parts of our city. It's not just because of the courage of an individual councilperson. For instance, you know, NIMBYism has a bipartisan disposition in this city. And so we have to be honest about that. It doesn't mean that we wag our fingers and say, "so, everyone who doesn't agree with us is therefore not courageous." We have to confront it, answer their questions, address as many of the issues as we can, but make it clear that watering down — whether City of Yes for Housing Opportunity or neighborhood plans — is essentially a watering down of our ability as a city to confront the housing crisis. And so that is a big focus. Our work at NYCHA is a huge focus. Many administrations have been involved, but I think this is the first time that there's been, and I really believe this, a real and enduring focus on what it takes to improve the conditions at NYCHA and the challenges there will not be fixed overnight. They won't be fixed in one administration. But what's needed is the sustained attention, the resources, the political will to keep going. What people don't know, what reporters don't often write about, and instead there are too many think pieces about, "there aren't enough big ideas, not enough big projects." We are working on big projects. We're working on big projects, not just in housing, but on the economic development front. That includes a 2 million square foot entire city block called “SPARC Kips Bay” that will bring millions of square feet of both life sciences and public health and academic uses to that really critical part of Manhattan. To the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, which is 120 acres on the Brooklyn waterfront, formerly in Port Authority ownership. Many administrations have tried. I tried when I was in the Bloomberg administration together with a number of colleagues. And we're on a path, hopefully, for full city control of 120 acres so we can figure out what it means to turn 120 acres to a modern port with a lot of job intensive uses. And so sometimes I lament that that doesn't get written because I think there are extraordinary public servants who have not given up on these big projects and are moving them forward. But mostly it's because, and we talked about this earlier, you know, coming out of the pandemic, people are still antsy. More skeptical, maybe. And the trust that public servants are continuing to do hard things — we have to make sure that we keep that and build that, not just for those projects, but because the future of our city and our ability to continue to lead globally depends on it.
Bradley Tusk: Yeah. You know, I think you guys have, I'm sure, all read and heard it's the 50th anniversary of the book The Power Broker and [Robert] Moses himself is obviously a highly controversial figure. Some good, some bad. But if you could wave a magic wand and say “he was able to do this or that, that I wish the world worked that way today,” is there something where you guys were like, I would you know, any of you would want to do if you could just sort of take that kind of power?
DM Meera Joshi: I mean, I am working on the reconstruction of the cantilever, so there are some things he didn't do so well. But parks he did. Today New Yorkers go to so many recreation centers and public beaches that Moses built. He had the foresight to understand that access to open space and community is really important. I mean, it may have been in the guise of "these city people need a taste of the country." But we now have swimming pools where kids have entire childhoods. They learn how to swim. So I don't think we can discount from him the amount of time and energy that was spent in making sure that our inner-city assets include access to good open space.
WHAT EACH DEPUTY MAYOR IS TELLING THEIR TEAMS NOW IN THIS MOMENT
Bradley Tusk: [00:41:26]: Right. To change direction a little bit now and just talk about the climate that we're in, because I think a big reason why people want to listen to this episode specifically is they're worried, right? There's an indictment of the mayor. There's every day calls for him to resign. And, you know, they're not familiar with you guys in the kind of work you're doing. And part of what I wanted to do with this was to show people like, "hey, here's how the place actually works." So you each manage dozens and dozens of people who then manage tens of thousands of people. Between the three of you, we're talking six figures worth of people. What are you telling them right now? How do you keep them on mission? Are you worried about people leaving? Can you recruit new talent, so Meera, why don't we start with you?
DM Anne Williams-Isom: Can I start? The reason I want to start is because I still have goosebumps from Maria's answer just a few minutes ago. She – and who she is – and the way she talked about service and what she wants to do, and why it's important not just to her, but to the people who are working there, is the reason we do this work. And in the swirl of all that's going around, no one can take a breath and take that in, because we want to go to the next thing and we want to go to the next controversial thing. So I told my staff and I tell them this actually every day in the good days and bad days, is that we can hold more than one thing. This is a time of uncertainty. It is. And we, the three of us, say it isn't really business as usual. That's not a phrase that we use. We are in this moment and it is okay to feel anxious, or even angry, that maybe the work that you're doing is not going to get seen, or people are going to forget the good work that you're doing. And it is also very important to hold hope in this moment and to continue to focus on why you came here. People came here not because they wanted their names in the newspaper. They came here because they are called many to serve. They might not describe it that way, Bradley, but that's the way I would describe it.
Bradley Tusk: So are you finding yourself having to sort of give this speech and reassurance a lot more these days?
DM Anne Williams-Isom: So it's not a speech, right? It's the way I show up. And anybody could ask you, this is the way I talk all the time.
DM Maria Torres-Springer: This is true.
DM Anne Williams-Isom: These two. I can't. You know, whether it's because I have a law degree from Columbia. Or a doctorate in ministry, from New York Theological School, it is all who we are as people. And in this moment, we have to show our humanity first. And “servant leadership” is what I would call it, is important in this moment to connect with people. And so when I say to people it's the honor of these people that we lead with. these public servants. And it is about the commitment that we've made to New Yorkers. That is the thing that is grounding us. And that's what I remind people when they're feeling lost.
Bradley Tusk: And are you finding that a lot of people are kind of coming to you and saying, "Should I stay?" Because, look, you know, on Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney said more charges are going to come. So we just don't know what's going to happen. It may be that the mayor's here for 15 months or maybe he’s here for 15 days. Or are people kind of just going about their business and not really asking that question?
DM Meera Joshi: I've talked to the commissioners, the team, other people, employees at the state, federal, city level. Because it really is a question of "why are you in public service?" And what's really resonating is the sense of purpose in this time. There's always a sense of purpose. And in, you know, relatively quieter times, it is something we maybe take for granted. I think people feel it even more strongly now.
Bradley Tusk: So in a weird way. You can almost appeal to the things that brought people to this job more than ever because the need is so great for them to do their jobs well.
DM Meera Joshi: And they say "fight the fire from inside the house." Right? You want to be inside the house. That's the best place to be to make a change. There's no better place to better human existence than in an urban municipal government. And I just really believe that's where the real work gets done. That's where the real activity happens. We're very busy. We have memos, we have emails, we have complex problems. It feels like an escape room. But when we stop for a moment, as Anne said, and think about why we're here, why our teams are here, it is overwhelming the strength of solidarity in that mission. Many people have come up to me saying they're not going. We're in this together and there's a reason we're here. And that has not dissipated at all.
DM Maria Torres-Springer And we shouldn't forget the public servants, many of the 300,000. This isn't the first difficult time that they have confronted. Right? I mean, many were in public service during 9/11. Many lived through and helped the city rebuild after Hurricane Sandy. That's right. And every economic recession fallout in between. And so, including us, we have public servants who run into burning buildings, figuratively and literally. And that's what New Yorkers should know, because it's always been the case that these are the people who serve. I mean, I remember, I moved to New York a week before 9/11, and because I saw that and lived through that, I decided that I wanted to spend the rest of my career in public service because on our worst day in this city, we saw the best of New Yorkers. And that continues in public service today. Any days that are hard, any moments that are uncertain, volatile, that give people — because they're human — fear or confusion. In some ways, we're used to that. And I have to just say on the record, that the commissioners I work with are the best group of commissioners.
Bradley Tusk: We're going to have a contest later.
DM Maria Torres-Springer: What they ask me isn't whether they should stay or not. They ask me how I'm doing, how the teams are doing, what they can do to help. We still got City of Yes passed in the City Planning Commission. We still got how many hundreds of millions for the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, Meera?
DM Meera Joshi: We won two mega grants in the same day. Never happened before.
DM Maria Torres-Springer: We appointed a small business services division.
DM Anne Williams-Isom: Record number of people getting connected to housing.
DM Meera Joshi: We connected the Delaware Aqueduct!
DM Maria Torres-Springer: We could go on and on.
Bradley Tusk: And Meera, you mentioned, you know, recycling and other programs rolling out next week on sanitation.
DM Meera Joshi: Curbside organics. And the Delaware Aqueduct, I think, is an excellent example of what people need to know.
Bradley Tusk: Explain to listeners what the Delaware Aqueduct is.
DM Meera Joshi: Okay. So the Delaware Aqueduct is the reservoir and 85 miles of tunnel that bring 50 percent of our water to New York City. And we're in a luxurious position in New York City. Gravity is basically what filters our water. So, it’s coming through that tunnel, which is what makes it pure. There's more to that, but that's essentially it. Decades ago, it was determined that there was a leak. 35 million gallons a day leak out of that tunnel. Out of the billion that we get through our taps, we lose 35 million a day. And so for two decades, we've been building a two and a half mile tunnel underneath the Hudson, that will create a bypass for the section that's leaking. It's probably the world's strongest tunnel at this point. And the day has finally come. To see the smile on some of the DEP engineers and front line workers’ faces because they were there when the plans first started, and now they're going to be there when we finally connect it, is beyond joyful. This is an epic infrastructure project. In a few weeks, that bypass will be on, we will have diverted the water system, the water tunnel. So it will come through down to New York City using the bypass. We can decommission the leaking tunnel. We can save millions of gallons. But lots of things happened in those 20 years, some within individual control, some beyond control. That work kept on going.
HOW THE DEPUTY MAYORS APPROACH THEIR JOB DURING THIS UNPRECEDENTED MOMENT
Bradley Tusk [00:49:52] So in a normal situation, we'd be heading into a mayoral election. You know, once we get past this presidential in five weeks, we're sort of in the mayoral cycle. And if you're the deputy mayors, if your boss is running for reelection, that has an impact on your job and your agenda and everything else. But this is a very unprecedented and unique situation. It's anything but normal. So how are you approaching it? Do you find that you are more independent and less tethered to politics because of this, or do you feel that you have to be sort of twice as cautious? You know, and this is I assume this is something it's going to evolve because you're still this all new to all three of you. But, you know, how does it each strike you?
DM Meera Joshi: I'll say, listen, it's uncertain times. And we're all anxious. And we would not be here if we weren't all laser focused on using every opportunity to better the city. So I think as we started out, that's accelerated in these times. We don't know what the next weeks and months look like. We certainly know what's within our control and how we can progress our priority projects. Continuing to press the gas on those,maybe speed a little bit, is absolutely the North Star for all of us. We want to make sure that the things we took an oath of office to serve New York, the things that we want to get accomplished during our time here, get done.
Bradley Tusk: So what's the -
DM Anne Williams-Isom: Because what do we have 15 months left? Yes. And I think I've been thinking about is what is it that I want to get accomplished?
Bradley Tusk: Your legacy.
DM Anne Williams-Isom: Yeah, right. And so what are those issues and what have we been able to do with homelessness and what do we need to do better? What do we need to do with severe mental illness? And so I've been focused on what is that period of time and what can we get done and how do I make sure that I'm keeping the troops focused on that and delivering for New Yorkers?
HOW THE DEPUTY MAYORS WORK WITH THE CITY COUNCIL
Bradley Tusk [00:51:40]: So each of you obviously spend time negotiating with, meeting with, and dealing with City Councilmembers all of the time as part of your job as Deputy Mayor. Has that changed in the last couple of weeks? Is your strategy for dealing with the council different?
DM Maria Torres-Springer: Well, in particular at City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, the plan was to engage as honestly, as energetically as possible. That was always the plan. And that's what we're doing. I'm meeting one-on-one with many members of the City Council, or working with the Speaker's office, and City Council Land Use, like has been the plan, right? I'm sure it's different and maybe many will describe this as “unprecedented times.” But I think we've been pivoting from the beginning. Right when we were appointed at the beginning of the administration, we each had a list of the things we thought we wanted to do. And then there was that humanitarian migrant crisis. And so we had to pivot. There have been budget challenges. We had to pivot. And now we have additional challenges. And so the job is still the job. I'm not going to sugarcoat it and say that it's gotten easier, but I would like to think that our 60 years in public service seeing many different crises and political winds shift left, right and center, that we will, as we have always done, pivot to make sure that the mission gets accomplished and that the people who have worked so hard either before us or after us…because one of the things we've been talking a lot about with each other is this public service being a relay. Right now, it seems like a sprint, a marathon, and a relay, but that, we have the batons for this period of time.
DM Anne Williams-Isom: And then we hand them off.
DM Maria Torres-Springer: So what does it mean to take the baton and cover as much distance as we can?
DM Meera Joshi: There is one aspect that we talk about a lot that we haven't raised here: This is historic. You guys have seen how City Halls work over the ages. To have three deputy mayors that get along, like each other. We don't have fiefdoms. We're sharing jurisdiction. It is a better use of taxpayer dollars to have this level of cooperation. And it's also really important for all of the young women that we lead to see us working together.
DM Anne Williams-Isom: Young women and young men.
DM Meera Joshi: And young men. See, that's why you're social services.
Bradley Tusk: Meera's just like, "I don't I don't need the young men."
ALL LAUGH
DM Meera Joshi: But it's true. The staff celebrates the fact that we are friends. It makes them have strength. .
DM Anne Williams-Isom: They watch us and they see how we're showing up all the time. And especially in this moment. We don't need to tell people, “You need to stay” We need to just stand steady and be who we are in this moment.
DM Maria Torres-Springer: And that level of collaboration shows up in the work. You know, New Yorkers may not care that we're friends and our staff like that we're friends, and that we collaborate. But that there are historic placements of those in shelter into permanent housing is because we work together. That the Brooklyn Marine terminal has hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants, it’s because our teams worked together. And I do fear that that is pretty special and unique in this administration, but that narrative, that record gets completely lost.
DM Anne Williams-Isom: I think that's right.
DM Maria Torres-Springer: And we've worked hard to do that and to build that, because we know from having been in previous administrations that a lot is left on the table when the alternative is the culture.
WHAT DOES EACH DEPUTY MAYOR WANT NEW YORKERS TO KNOW DURING THIS MOMENT
Bradley Tusk [00:55:31]: So New Yorkers are anxious and anyone listening to this particular podcast obviously is well aware of what's going on and anxious about it. And that's why they're listening. So what do you want them each to hear? And Meera, want to start here?
DM Meera Joshi: I want them to be reassured and confident. There is a lot of uncertainty, but there's also a tremendous amount and a vast majority of the working of New York where there is tremendous certainty because there are skilled commissioners, there are thousands and thousands of public servants that not only are here because they want to be here. They've, over the years, developed expertise in our actual infrastructure systems that keep them working every day. And there are more people applying for jobs every day to come and work for New York City. The city, in all of its complexity, works. The trash is picked up, the streets are paved, the catch basins are cleaned, the buildings are constructed. It keeps on moving. And that is the product of the daily work of thousands and thousands of public servants, the daily leadership of hundreds of managers who actually relish in those “escape room problems” and solve them every day. And though many people, especially at the executive level, could have a job that is less in the spotlight, could make tons more money, could come and go in whatever vehicle or whatever fashion they wanted to and not be questioned, we choose not to because this is where we find purpose and that has not changed at all. There's a level of uncertainty, but the vast majority of why people are working and how the city government works is certain and solid.
Bradley Tusk: All right, Anne?
DM Anne Williams-Isom: I think about the word confidence, I would think about that, too. I think we have more energy and focus than we've ever had. When I was at the Harlem Children's Zone, our goal was to try to end generational poverty. And it was a big goal and we focused on it. And so I still feel committed to that idea of children - giving children what they need for as long as they need it, to make sure that they have what they want. Making sure that parents in this city can thrive, that we're not just getting by. I have three young adults. I think I was talking to Jamie when we started [about young people] who are starting their lives and their careers right here in New York City. My husband and I are not going anywhere. We're going to be here. We wanted to be the city where we can raise our grandchildren and it can be affordable. And I want them to know that I wake up every morning not like, "woe is me and Lord, what's happening, the sky is falling down." I wake up every morning saying, “what more can I be doing?” And when I go to bed at night, I hope that I am exhausted from making sure that I'm doing good on behalf of New Yorkers.
Bradley Tusk: That's a great answer. Maria?
DM Maria Torres-Springer: I'd like New Yorkers to know that we get it. We understand. We know the weight of this moment, that many people are confused. They're angry. It's volatile. We get all of that. And we are going to stay on mission because that is what we do. And you started the program, Bradley, by saying that we're trying to move the city forward at a time, in an extraordinary time. That's exactly what we wake up in the morning trying to do. But talk is cheap, right? So, what I'm focused on and I know my colleagues are focused on, isn't as much what New Yorkers need to hear, but what they need to see on a day to day basis so that we are showing, and not telling them, that we are focused, that we're going to keep the city moving forward. There are hundreds of thousands of public servants whose jobs haven't changed. And so that's the oath that we made. And we're going to stay faithful to that for as long as we're in these seats.
Bradley Tusk: Great answer. Thank you so much for doing this.
DM Anne Williams-Isom: Thank you for having us.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
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