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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, we continue our year-long series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks, in which we're welcoming every member of the New York City Council touching every neighborhood of the city in this year in which a majority of the council is new because of term limits and it's majority-female for the first time ever.

Today, it's a special edition of 51 in 52 because we've arrived at District 28, where the council member is City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. Her own district covers Jamaica, Richmond Hill, Rochdale Village, and South Ozone Park. She was first elected in 2017 and now in her second term got elected speaker. Speaker Adams, great to have you back. In the context of our series welcoming all of you on the council, welcome back to WNYC.

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Brian, it is so great to be back with you this morning. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, my questions and yours for the city council speaker, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet your question @BrianLehrer. Speaker Adams, let's talk big picture a little first, and then we'll get to your district like we do with all the members. This first-ever majority-female council, are you seeing that makeup reflected in policy in any ways that you can name?

Speaker Adams: Oh, yes, definitely. Well, first of all, I always say I'm so, so proud to lead this historic first women-majority council. In our first six months, we've accomplished a lot through our budget and our legislation, and we definitely remain focused on delivering for all New Yorkers. We're going to continue to work together as a legislative body to meet the needs of our communities. This council has enacted such meaningful and impactful legislation like the recently passed New York City Abortion Rights Act and the package of fire safety legislation we passed in May in response to the Twin Parks fire in the Bronx.

This is going to make such a difference for all New Yorkers. We've also focused on delivering investments through the budget that strengthen our communities and make our city safer, healthier, and definitely more equitable. You mentioned, we are a historically diverse and first women-majority council. We bring a unique perspective and lens to city government that help inform how we address the issues facing our communities and all of New York really.

Brian Lehrer: Certain pieces of legislation that you can attribute to that?

Speaker Adams: Yes. Well, as I say, the really big picture, the New York City Abortion Rights Act that we passed in the face of what we're going through with the Supreme Court and their decision restricting women's reproductive health. Also, the Twin Parks fire in the Bronx. We actually enacted a brand new task force headed by Council Member Feliz to tackle that. We've passed some tremendous legislation to protect our residents as well.

Brian Lehrer: What's the most satisfying part of being a speaker so far and what's the hardest part?

Speaker Adams: The most satisfying part definitely is, and I've got to make this personal, it's going through my own district that I call "The Great 28" and seeing the differences that we've made in our district and strengthening our infrastructure. Southeast Queens has had tremendous infrastructure issues for years. We've suffered through flooding. We've suffered through Hurricane Ida and other things. It's been difficult when it comes to our infrastructure.

We recently completed a $14 billion infrastructure work last week and that's very gratifying. Just to see some of the things that the council puts forth by way of our oversight and realizing some of the deficits that the underserved communities like mine have gone through for a very, very long time, knowing that you can make a difference in those changes. Paving streets, bringing millions of dollars into our schools to upgrade their systems, PA systems, bathrooms, media, technology. That's really the most satisfying thing.

Brian Lehrer: The hardest?

Speaker Adams: Well, the hardest has been realizing how underserved communities really are. This is the first council that has actually operated in the middle of a global pandemic. We're actually governing through things that no other body before us has governed through, and that's trying to figure out the tremendous amount of deficit that the underserved have been living through in our city.

How do we rectify that? How do we rectify housing affordability? How do we rectify record numbers of homelessness? How do we rectify our food insecurity and our seniors, especially with food insecurity issues? These are the types of things that are most difficult for myself and for my colleagues as well, being able to serve in a tremendous capacity to our underserved communities where the light is definitely turned on because of the pandemic. We've got a lot of work to do.

Brian Lehrer: There were some members of city council, I don't have to tell you, who voted against the budget agreement for the fiscal year that started this month because they say funding didn't shift enough in this supposedly very progressive council, either away from law enforcement or just more toward all those other community services. Some of which you just listed. Housing and other things. It wasn't enough of a change. It was basically a similar blueprint in the past and those progressive members wanted to see more change. What do you say to that today?

Speaker Adams: Well, it's really, really interesting to me because the New York City budget, it's not an à la carte thing, Brian. It is tremendous and it impacts over eight million New Yorkers. When we take a look at the entire New York City budget, we have to take a look at everything that is included in the budget. We have to take a look at every district. Like I just said, our district is being underserved. We passed a $101 billion budget. That's historical.

We reached underserved communities, underserved nonprofits by the way of taking care of our children, child care, health, just a myriad of supports for our entire New York City expanding programs for young people, nearly $500 million. We did a tremendous amount. Sanitation, $22 million in addition for sanitation services. Again, I say that our budget for New York City is extremely expensive. It is not à la carte. We can't pick and choose what aspects of the budget we want to work with or what we don't. We work with an entire inclusive budget for New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Wait. Talk a little more about that because I think people would tend to believe-- and even I'm surprised to hear you put it that way. People would tend to believe that the budget is more à la carte, that there are lines in the budget for specific agencies and for specific things, and that you do debate the budget line-by-line. Things get put in or things get taken out line-by-line before you vote on the whole budget. Is that wrong?

Speaker Adams: No, Brian, that's not wrong at all. No, what I mean is as far as agreeing on the budget itself and picking one item or two items to agree or disagree on as far as accepting the budget itself, that's what I'm referring to. I'm not referring at all to the line-by-line. You're absolutely right about that. I'm just talking about coming to an agreement on an entire budget, which our majority of our council did.

Brian Lehrer: Well, you heard me give out the phone number and you cited education funding as a point of pride. Something that happens sometimes on a talk show is if there's one particular thing in the news that's causing a lot of passion in a lot of people even if you put out a general call to call about anything, the lines are going to get jammed with people thinking about that one thing. That's what's happened basically right now on our caller board.

I think 9 of the 10 lines that we have are about the cuts to the education budget, and I'm going to take a call on that for you. I'm not going to spend the whole segment on it, but I think you know how much passion there is out there about the way the budget turned out with respect to some of the public schools. We're going to talk to Tazine in Brooklyn to represent. Tazine, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Tazine: Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity. I just want to say that I think I can speak for many of the New York City residents when I say that we felt real pride in seeing a city council that looked and represented us in the first time ever. Now, we feel just that amount of devastation when we see that that city council has shook hands on a budget that will cripple the learning environment of so many already disenfranchised scholars and their families.

I just want to know why the city council is considering-- and I hear that there are some negotiations happening in reimbursing some of that money, but why the city council is considering anything below reimbursing fully when there's a precedence of holding schools not at risk or not at fault during the pandemic in the past two years. The city council is considering anything less than fully reimbursing those budget cuts, or even considering anything below the number that the city comptroller have proposed to return to all of those schools.

I just want to say, and with a personal anecdote, one of my schools is losing up to $2 million. A percentage of that money returned means almost nothing to that school. My principal does everything from providing supplies, providing food, providing events for parents who are multilingual that could have never been seeing themselves in that school prior. How can I speak to my parents or how can that principal fully support the parents if they're only receiving a portion of that money back?

Brian Lehrer: Tazine, thank you so much. Speaker Adams, talk to Tazine and all the other parents and teachers who are listening intently.

Speaker Adams: Yes, most definitely, Tazine. I thank you very much for your question. I definitely feel your passion. I feel your pain as well. I just want to let you know. I was actually the education chair of my community board and I fought against school closures under Bloomberg. I'm a former education-- in education myself. I minored in early childhood education. I actually taught to the CDA credential, to our Child Development Associate colleagues. This is a very, very important issue and a very personal issue for me.

Our schools are a top priority. We all care about our students in schools and we know that the pandemic has impacted them. Our focus is on resolving the problem to make sure that our students have the resources they need, right? It's important to note that there is a difference between the city budget and the Department of Education's distribution of school budgets. I also want to say that there are a lot of numbers floating around out there, and the council is still trying to drill down on what that number is.

We are trying to come to a resolution to this. It's really important to note that school budgets are normally dictated by DOE policy as passed by the PEP, the Panel for Educational Policy. The policy decision by the DOE to return to its normal practice of allocating school budget was what the city budget conversation was focused on. This discretionary policy decision by DOE was when the council completely disagreed with the administration on during negotiations.

The administration refused to resolve the policy difference within the budget negotiation. We sought to continue fighting on our own terms outside of the budget because our contention was that the funding at DOE existed within the city budget to support our schools. Now, there was information that the DOE communicated about the impact of their reverting back to its normal school budget policy that was not entirely accurate.

That means that claiming this would just be primarily vacancies being eliminated, but we now know, it's led to schools losing key staff and entire programs. The DOE's actions to cut more from school budgets beyond what it indicated as savings within the city budget resulting from changing back to this policy demonstrates that it was policy on school budgets all along that was driving this, not the city budget, the city budget, by the way, that we actually enhanced $700 million within this budget.

That's why the council has been so strongly advocating for changing this policy decision to allocate the funds to schools and to make policy changes moving forward in how it allocates school budgets. Its current policy is problematic. It's ginormously problematic. Again, New Yorkers just want results. Our teachers want results. Our parents want results. The council's focus has been on resolving the problem, which is why we've continued to push on this issue. We're continuing in conversations around it for us. It's not about opening up the city budget, but it's about resolving the policy issue. That's why the budget is impacted. That's why the budget is not serving our students well.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to read one tweet from a listener before we move on from this topic, but many tweets are coming in. There are many other callers on the line, I should say.

Speaker Adams: I'm sure.

Brian Lehrer: Looking forward, this listener says this strongly worded that you continue to be what they call a turncoat against the very community that she said she was standing for. Based on this, it says, "$250 million is a lowball. Restore the cuts no less than $469 million." Talk about the numbers.

Speaker Adams: Oh yes, here we go with the numbers again. We can talk about the numbers until we're blue in the face. The initial number that was under negotiation was $215 million. That is the number that was delivered to the council initially within negotiation. We had a problem with that. As I continue to say, we are still peeling back the onion on the DOE's numbers, on all of the numbers that are floating around out there to get to a real number, but what I would like to say is we continue to fight as we speak for a resolution on how to fix this gap.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a call from Christian in Richmond Hill. You're on WNYC. Hi, Christian.

Christian: Hi, Brian. Hi, Speaker Adams. I'm now in South Richmond Hill, the heart of The Great 28, to talk to you. A couple of things. I love my neighborhood, but some things that I don't is the parking and we're in a green desert as you know. My question to you is, what do you think of that plan? There's two plans, the QueensWay or the QueensLink, to convert the abandoned Rockaway line into a park that will connect us to Forest Park.

Crossing Woodhaven is super dangerous as you know. There's many accidents. I want to ask you about that, and also just about parking. As you know, parking has gotten worse since COVID. Any thoughts about permit parking? I also want to say that I've reached out to your office many times when you're an accountable person. I never got any order back. I'm really happy to be on with you now.

I congratulate you on your ascension, but we really need some help out in South Richmond Hill. Last thing I'll say is I'm actually waiting to get my monkeypox vaccine right now in Jackson Heights. I can't believe I'm excited about getting the monkeypox vaccine, but that's what it's come to. People that I know are like, "We need vaccines out here." This has become a crisis. That's not talked about enough and we need help with that as well.

Brian Lehrer: That's a lot, Christian. Thank you. Speaker Adams?

Speaker Adams: Christian, thank you for the questions. Thank you for your concerns. I'll start with the vaccine first. I'm so glad that you're waiting for your vaccine. I salute you for that. It has been so difficult getting this vaccine and getting the amount of vaccine that New Yorkers actually need for monkeypox. We actually had a town hall on this, this week where we had Dr. Vasan giving his expertise on the vaccine.

Brian Lehrer: The health commissioner?

Speaker Adams: Yes, the health commissioner, New York City health commissioner. He sees the issue. We see the issue in the council. We're doing everything that we can to continue to push to get more vaccine into New York City. New York City has the highest level of monkeypox in the entire country. You're absolutely right, Christian. We've got to do something about it. We are continuing to push to get more vaccine in.

As far as the green space in South Richmond Hill, I couldn't agree more. The conversion for more green space, we need that for a lot of reasons. I spoke about flooding a little while ago, and the fact that Southeast Queens has been under extreme flood conditions for decades. More green space in our district is going to do nothing but help us with our climate issues, help us with the fact that we've got more concreting of front yards than we do front lawns in a lot of places in our district.

I am more than willing to have that conversation more extensively with you. Parking? I don't even know where to begin with that. We speak about it on endless occasions. It was and still is probably one of Queens' number one issues. It's the lack of parking around our districts in Queens because we are such a prevalent transportation desert within the entire borough. We are continuing to look at different avenues around that as well.

It's very, very difficult. The only thing that we can see close-up in the foreseeable future is continue to work with our transportation experts to get more means of transportation into the borough of Queens. In one district, in particular, there isn't even a subway system in that particular district in Queens. We've got to work on getting more alternative means of transportation to try to alleviate our parking problem.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think about this proposal that I've seen to start charging for parking on New York City streets, even residential areas?

Speaker Adams: I have mixed feelings about that. It's certainly something we can have further conversations about, but New York is the most expensive place to live on the planet. I'm not necessarily convinced that adding more financial burden onto our residents is the answer.

Brian Lehrer: All right, I know you got to go. Let's end with two quick things that I'm asking every member of the council in our 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks series. One is, what's the number one reason that constituents from your district have called your office for help since you took office in 2017, and has that changed over time?

Speaker Adams: Wow, I know that I speak for a lot of folks out there. It's definitely sanitation and noise. I'm going to put those two nuisances together. Sanitation has long been an issue for local residents at small businesses. Our office continues to receive an abundance of calls from constituents who've been dealing with illegal dumping and litter in our Southeast Queens neighborhoods.

It negatively impacts our quality of life. We do have a District 28 cleanup task force that's led by our district and my office. Resident leaders like Aracelia Cook, who's the president of the 149th Street Civic Association. Our residents have stepped up to take action to help us tackle the problem. Noise complaints. Goes without saying, New York City is very noisy and District 28 is right up there with it.

We experience a lot of noise complaints from constituents, met with many neighbors who can't sleep due to amplified loud music and amplified cars that sound like backfiring or gunshots. We continue to deal with that issue. I think that though looking forward, we've got legislation that will impact the noise issue. We also have, as I mentioned, put into this budget $22 million for our sanitation efforts throughout the city.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing. Everybody's being invited to bring a show-and-tell item from your district. Something that people from all over the place might be interested to hear about that they may not know about. What's your show-and-tell item?

Speaker Adams: Oh, I'm going to brag about this, Brian. District 28 is home to two Olympians. We're really proud of Dalilah Muhammad, who comes right out of Rochdale Village in my district. She is the Olympic gold medalist par excellence of track and field. Dalilah grew up in District 28. Like I said, Rochdale Village, which is the second-largest co-op community in the city of New York. She's a four-time goal medalist who's represented the United States in the Olympic Games, the world champion, and many other international competitions.

We celebrated her and her accomplishments and other Olympians from Queens just last year. We're always proud of the incredible people who come from our community and represent us. I would be remiss if I did not include Olympian Bob Beamon of South Jamaica Houses, who preceded Dalilah Muhammad in the Olympics decades before. Bob won a gold medal at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico. He was an all-American track-and-field athlete and his world record stood for 23 years for the long jump. He's in the National Track & Field Hall of Fame. We're really, really proud of our Olympians that hail from District 28 in Queens.

Brian Lehrer: Bringing Olympic athletes from Southeast Queens as her show-and-tell item, we thank New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. Speaker, thanks for coming on within our 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks series and outside of it for general speaker conversations as you do. Thank you very much for coming today.

Speaker Adams: Thank you for having me again, Brian. Thank you very much.

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