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Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks Following Meeting with Officials From NY, NJ, and CT

March 20, 2015

Mayor Bill de Blasio: This is a meeting that – you won’t see enough of these kinds of meetings. And if you look at recent history, you will find that it is very rare for leaders around the region to get together. And that is something we have to change, because the conversation today indicated immediately how much common interests we have. We have colleagues from Connecticut, New Jersey, and counties around New York City joining with us to look for the areas that we need to work together, and there are many.

The meeting was sparked by the PlaNYC process, which is something we’re going through right now. And the more we talked about inside this building, the more we realize that so many of the issues we have to think about, in terms of planning the future of New York City, directly connect us to all of our neighbors and colleagues. We thought it would be important to start the conversation with them simultaneously, and look for areas of common interest. What we heard today, which I thought was very powerful, was everyone’s in sync about the same issues. First of all, a lot of common ground on the changes we need to make, particularly on our relationship with Washington DC. And there’s a tremendous concern around this table – something that expands the whole region and absolutely is bipartisan – about the need to get a new transportation bill in Washington that will actually respond to the transit needs of this region and all of our infrastructure needs. But also, what everyone’s thinking about, are the basics. There is great concern about any disruptions to our infrastructure and our mass transit system – obviously, the effects that climate change are having on us and the resiliency needs we have now, that we wouldn’t have said even 10 years ago – the disruption to all the basics that can come from a climate event. We talked about water. We talked about food. We talked our energy supply. We talked about the ability of our transportation system to withstand major climate events.

So there is a sobriety and focus for this whole group, because we’re all facing those challenges. I think what’s clear here today is there are some real areas that we can work on together, particularly in terms of resiliency, in terms of questions of climate change and what we can do to improve the environment in our areas and what impact that has on climate change. And also, the fact – a lot of focus on transportation, in particular, an area where everyone sees a direct connection to the viability of this region, economically, and our economic competitiveness in the world. That was another big theme today.

[Inaudible] this extraordinary gathering of people who make up – who represent this entire region. If this region has the kind of transit it needs going forward, we can literally compete with any other place on the globe, economically. If we don’t constantly upgrade our transit system, we will fall behind many other areas. So that’s what we’ve been talking about today. We’re really looking forward to the release of PlaNYC on Earth Day, which is April 22nd. And we’re going to take some of the ideas from this meeting and we’re going to be following up with each of the leaders and organizations – or governments, I should say – represented in this room. We’re going to be following up with each of them as we finalized our plan. But as important, we’re going to start now to find some specific projects we can work on together and build this relationship in working terms, because there is so much that binds us together as a region.

I want to give a chance for my three colleagues up here to just reflect on what we experienced today and we’re going to be doing going forward, starting with Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone.

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Thank you. And I’ll finish by saying, I failed to give credit where credit is due – the Regional Plan Association, and thank you to Chris Jones for being here. Regional Plan Association has actually been promoting this very idea of true regional planning for decades. It is, from time to time, been the center of debate. Often, this very powerful notion has fallen on deaf years. But I think this is a moment in history where regionalism makes more sense than ever before. I honestly believe because of climate challenges, because of the absence of a federal role on infrastructure, we’ve got some x-factors in this moment of history we’ve never had before – that make this notion of true regional planning more powerful than ever. RPA has kept that flame alive for a long time. So, we thank you, and really appreciate everyone’s attendance today and we’re going to be doing a lot more together. Thanks so much.

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