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Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on Inside City Hall

April 16, 2019

Errol Louis: We’re back on Inside City Hall. As we told you before the break, the number of confirmed measles cases is growing as the City looks to contain the outbreak. Today that included closing a Williamsburg-based childcare center that would not provide immunization records to the city. Mayor de Blasio joins me now to talk about that and more in our weekly interview. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Good to see you.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good evening, Errol.

Louis: The United Talmudical Academy is the name of the group. They didn’t provide access to medical records. It’s a pretty – it’s a pretty firm step that the city took. Would we expect to see more like that?

Mayor: Well I hope not, but if we have to, we will. We gave this warning last Tuesday, very clearly, and said we’re going to shut down schools, preschools – this happens to be a preschool facility, kids I think five and under.  If they can’t provide the records we don’t know if kids are safe and if we have to shut them down, we will. This school was told that if they couldn’t provide the records by today, they would be shut down for tomorrow. They will be, we’ll have our inspectors there to make sure that school is not in session. This is about protecting kids and it’s also about protecting some adults, including pregnant women, folks who are going through medical treatment like chemotherapy, some senior with compromised health conditions, measles is very, very serious.

Now, I hasten to add that I think the vast majority of leaders and organizations and institutions in Williamsburg, in the Orthodox Jewish community, have been very helpful, very supportive, got out, spread the word, and we’re seeing a lot of positive activity. People are taking it seriously. There is a small, I think very – angry if you will – loud, anti-vaxxer group that keeps trying to convince parents not to have their kids vaccinated. I think the vast majority of voices in Williamsburg are making very clear to parents that they should get vaccinated. I think the clear message that we’ve sent, that our Health Department will issue violations to those who haven’t gotten vaccinated and that could be up to $1,000 per violation. I think all these pieces are going to come together and really turn the tide here. But we’re not out of the woods yet.

Louis: As we saw in our report, there is some fairly stiff language in your executive order saying that people shall be vaccinated which sort of implies at some point it could happen to them perhaps even against their will. Do you expect it to reach that point?

Mayor: No – I – we made clear on Tuesday, you know I had a whole press conference on this and made very clear that we don’t forcibly vaccinate. We make clear that this is instruction, just like – look, you need a driver’s license to drive, and I could go down the list many other things that we consider basic health and safety standards in our society. We’re saying here, look we got a measles outbreak, we haven’t seen anything like this in quite a while, it is really creating a public health danger, we’re not taking it lightly. Conform with the order, if you live in Williamsburg, which is the only place where we have this order in effect, and if you don’t, you’re going to be fined and on a very serious level, a $1,000.

Louis: What do you think when you see Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and perhaps others to follow, high-profile names associating themselves with the anti-vaccine movement?

Mayor: We’ve seen, you know, some celebrities and we’ve seen some activists, but I like to listen to doctors when it comes to healthcare and, you know, our City Health Commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, has devoted her whole life to public health, she’s a pediatrician. Our Deputy Mayor, Dr. Herminia Palacio, and so many other doctors, including a number of doctors in the Orthodox Jewish community are all sending the same message, you know, this is a matter of basic health and safety. Get your kid vaccinated. It’s the standard all over this country.

The anti-vaxxer movement grew in recent years but it’s not based on science and this is the danger we now see. You know, I’ve been reminding people measles can be fatal. It can lead to, even for someone who survives, lasting brain damage. This is serious stuff. So the good news I think the vast majority of people are taking it seriously, and look, it’s – it’s admonishment and it’s information, but it’s also – so that’s carrot, but it’s also a stick. We will implement that $1,000 fine on people who don’t pay head and obviously any institution that doesn’t take this seriously and follow through. If we have to shut them down, we’ll shut them down.

Louis: Yes, well that certainly does send a message. Let me change subjects and ask you about what’s going on in public housing? The gadget which I apparently –

Mayor: XRF.

Louis: The XRF that you wouldn’t even let our reporter hold, right the person has to be trained –

Mayor: It’s top secret technology.

Louis: The x-ray seems like something we’ve all seen at the dentist for our whole lives. But if it’s being put to good use, all well and good. It seems like such an aggressive schedule – 5,000 to 7,000 per month sounds like something NYCHA can rarely pull off. And whether a contractor, or NYCHA, or anybody wants to try and get into that number of households over and over again seems kind of tough.

Mayor: Well, Errol, a lot of things are changing at NYCHA and I think if you were cynical about the past I would say I fully understand but we have some new leadership that’s very aggressive. That’s Kathryn Garcia and Vito Mustaciuolo. We’re using technology that is amazingly effective and efficient and we saw a demonstration today. It literally only takes a few minutes to get these readings and you keep going around the apartment until you get enough of them. But they’re – it’s a very impressive process. And this technology allows you to see the total history of that apartment in terms of the paint that’s been used remembering that paint – lead paint was banned in 1960 in New York City, 1978 nationwide.

So, you’re not talking about having to go back even farther than that but you know in recent decades you can see if there was any lead paint. Every time we find out that an apartment has never had lead paint – something we’ve not done as a city before. You know there’s never been this kind of effort. It is costing us $88 million to do it – it’s a big price tag. But when we finally know – chose a number, you know, 30,000, 40,000 apartments do not have lead, never had lead, lead is off the table. You no longer have to keep doing all those inspections. You’re saving a huge amount of time and energy that now gets applied to the ones where there is [inaudible] –

Louis: But it could work the other way too, right? There might be ten times more lead contaminated apartments than you expected.

Mayor: Look, we will not know until we get there but since the universe has been right now that 135,000 apartments has been treated like they all have lead we certainly have reason to believe a number of them don’t. We’re going to find out scientifically. But the problem now is there was never a careful survey to know. So all the same time and energy year after year went back on the same places that could have been used to focus on the problem. I really want to emphasize, this report that Kathryn Garcia led the way on – this is a plan to eradicate lead poisoning from New York City. It’s down 90 percent since 2005 which is something New Yorkers should be very proud of. But that last ten percent – we’re going to get this done and the goal here is that literally not a single child gets lead paint exposure in this city. It’s within our grasp. It’s a Vision-Zero-type approach.

But this technology is going to now allow us to take a huge number of apartments out of the universe and focus our attention otherwise. And I have to say we’ve seen some things from NYCHA in the last year we never saw before. You saw on the heat situation – the previous year a typical heating outage was 24 hours or more. This year I think it was 11 hours. You had many fewer outages this last winter than the previous, much better use of bringing in outside, portable boilers, technicians, experts. Something is starting to change at NYCHA with new leadership and with a lot of focus and I think they’re going to show us something.

Louis: Was this lead initiative done in consultation with or with the approval of the federal monitor, Lynne Patton the regional administration, and others?

Mayor: The real issue has been – with the federal monitor now in place, the Southern District of the Justice Department and HUD headquarters in Washington – we’re in constant contact with all three now. And this idea was actually announced before the agreement. It’s being implemented now under the agreement. There’s a lot of consensus that this is the right thing to do. But whenever we’re doing new things, adding new approaches, we’re giving everyone a heads up, and we’re showing them what we’re doing. And I think there is an atmosphere of a lot of collegiality now about how to go about these kinds of things.

Everyone wants to know once and for all where the lead is. And one of the things I said today is you know when we find an apartment that no longer has lead and we’re 100 percent sure, we’re going to put a decal or a sticker or something up there so people start to see some progress. They start to know with confidence and for the family living there what a great – peace of mind. We can show NYCHA residents that something can actually chance. I think they deserve it and it’s our job to show them.

Louis: Benefits just beyond the lead testing. We’ve got more to talk about. We’re going to take a short break then we’ll be right back with Mayor de Blasio. Stay with us.

[...]

Louis: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. I am joined once again by Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mr. Mayor, last year you announced to great fanfare that the administration was going to put $500 million into senior housing. The activists that you were standing with on the steps of City Hall that day say that you mislead them and that the $500 million is not in the preliminary budget. The City Council apparently thought it was going to be there, the activists thought it was going to be there. What happened?

Mayor: It’s a $500 million initiative when you add in all the components and the investment that comes in as part of it and it’s 1,000 more units of affordable senior housing and, you know, look I’m sure there was some miscommunication from everything I can tell now. But, now effort at all to do anything but say we were making a serious commitment to senior affordable housing along the same lines that the group was interested in. So, this is one where we feel we were clear about what we were trying to achieve, that it was consistent with what they want to do, and what the Council wanted to do, and that’s all I can tell you. I try to be consistent about it.

Louis: If – part of the math that if it’s not going to be a direct capital appropriation of $500 million, it involves tax credits, it involves other players getting involved who may or may not show up at the table right?

Mayor: Well you’ve seen recently the history of affordable housing in this city. We’re at the highest level of affordable housing production we’ve been in our entire history. I mean, last year it was 34,000 units got financed. I don’t have any doubt that these plans are going to be realized and these deals are going to go through, so I would just respectfully disagree. We put this on the table fully expecting it all to be utilized and all to be realized, and we want to get it done – 1,000 units of senior affordable housing is a big deal.

Louis: So, there’s no scenario where, as you’re preparing the executive budget, I know it’s coming out soon, that it might change from the current level to a higher level?

Mayor: Again, we followed through on the thing that we believed we were all talking about we tried that consistently and our plan is just follow through on what we put in play last year. We’re going to be looking always at our affordable housing plan in general, beyond this specific organization and the specific dialogue from last year. When Vicki Been got named as our new Deputy Mayor, she made very clear her focus is going to be to do more to get our affordable housing program to reach lower-income New Yorkers, and certainly to focus even more on seniors, because this is one of the biggest growing parts of our community and we need more senior affordable housing. So with her leadership, you will see additions and changes to our plan over time, those all haven’t been determined yet but I consider this past issue to have been addressed.

Louis: Okay let me ask you about the construction deaths we’ve seen. I understand the administration is planning a sweep of 5,000 or so construction sites. Is that enough? Even a $25,000 fine – if you’re talking about some of these buildings where there are tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, and people have all kinds of insurance and bonding and can write off catastrophes as a cost of doing business – is this going to move the needle?

Mayor: First, I mean this is about human beings lives right? This is about construction workers who are, you know, working hard trying to feed their family and we have to make sure that they’re safe. With the City Council we passed some really important new standards and new initiatives to keep construction workers safe in the last couple of years. We’ve had some tragedies in the last few weeks, and they’re eye-opening. So, we’re going to – the blitz that you’ve talked about is 5,000 sites. It’s the ones that are the biggest and most sensitive around the city, and the fines I think should be recognized as only one piece of the equation. It – look, there are situations where there is criminal negligence. If we find any evidence of criminal negligence by the developers, or the landlords, or the contractors, you know, we’re going to refer that for prosecution. There are situations where you might find many different types of violations that could add up to a lot more, because remember it’s per violation and in many cases per day. There’s lot of ways that those fines can really increase rapidly. We’re – also we’re ready to shut down any site that we think is unsafe and keep it shut down. That means companies lose a lot of money.

Louis: And anecdotally, Mr. Echevarria I think was the gentleman who lost his life, he was on a non-union site. Anecdotally, my sense is that union sites, because they have, in most cases a designated, at least one if not more, designated worker, just to make sure all of the safety protocols are being followed. They tended to be safer, of course those buildings tend to cost more right?  I mean this some of the tension.

Mayor: Look, I do believe that union construction is safer by its nature – more training, even though we have done a lot to increase the amount of training in the recent legislation. Just as a general rule, the union dynamic comes with more training, more supervision, more focus on safety. And I urge all folks who can, you know go that way. But the fact is we needed to create protocols that you know, protected folks regardless of whether they are on a union or non-union site. And I do think the additional training that’s been mandated will help a lot but it has to be matched by very strong enforcement and look, again I think with the constant presence, the willingness to shut down a site if something is wrong, the fines which can become very heavy overtime. But again right on up to criminal charges indeed. We have got to show the bad actors in the construction industry that there will be real consequences. That’s not the majority but there’s enough of them out there that we have to show them there will be real consequences.

Louis: Okay, a couple of viewer questions, these were sent by social media. In a recent tweet by President Trump, he doubled down on sending undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities like New York. What are your plans to prepare New York City and New Yorkers?

Mayor: It’s illegal. It’s just plain illegal. We will meet him in court and we will beat him court. You know, I remember vividly the day early in the Trump administration when he said he was going to cut off our security funding because we did not ask documentation status because we would not cooperate with everything ICE was doing. We said we would go to court and stop him, we did. So this is just patently illegal, we’ll stop it.

Louis: Okay, another viewer – I’ve heard that residents, who have cars and make less than $60,000 and live within the congestion pricing zone, will get tax credits. Wouldn’t it be easier to simply exempt them?

Mayor: I’m not an expert on every nuance of the legislation but I think the broad way to look at the congestion pricing plan which I supported energetically along with the Governor is that now a lot of the details have to be worked out, there’s going to be a working group. Obviously the MTA board is going to be deeply involved, the City, the State – can’t even take affect for basically a year and a half. I mean there’s just the physical reality, can’t be put in place, logistics can’t be put in place until the end of 2020 anyway. So we have a lot of time to figure it out. But I am sensitive to the fact that folks who live in that zone, we have to accommodate them in whatever way is appropriate while keeping the integrity of the whole notion of congestion pricing. We are going to have to strike that balance. But there is plenty of time to work that out.

Louis: Okay, the question of charter schools. I guess it’s not solid but there’s been some reporting that suggests, I guess people have heard from you the something that suggests that you might want to kill the Vanguard service which enables among other things, charter schools to market to households and let people know what kind of choices are available for their children’s schooling. Those schools say that it’s a critical way to engage with parents. Are you planning to do away with or restrict Vanguard?

Mayor: We are looking at that issue, so that’s the policy from the previous administration. We are looking at it. There’s been a lot of complaints from parent leaders saying that they think that has created some unfair competition. And we are looking at that clearly, the Chancellor’s certainly looking at that. We do not have a final decision but it’s a real issue.

Louis: Any kind of school charter, voucher, you know whatever it might be, even just to launch a new project within a school, you got to have a way to reach the parents right?

Mayor: I think in today’s day and age there’s plenty of ways to reach parents and I think the charter networks have proven to be very adept at getting their word out. A lot of them have a lot of resources to do it with. I don’t honestly think they would struggle to get their word out. This is a question of what we think is fair and what we think is good policy rather than just keeping something going from the past, we are going to reevaluate it.

Louis: Okay, you’ll be hearing from some folks on that and many other issues I imagine.

Mayor: Every day Errol.

Louis: All the time.

Mayor: Every day.

Louis: It’s lonely at the top, right. Very good to see you thanks –

Mayor: Maybe it’s busy at the top.

Louis: Busy at the top, there you go. It’s busy at the top. And we will busy with you again next week, thanks a whole lot.

Mayor: Thank you.

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