Adams 2021: Economy - A New Economy For All New Yorkers
Estimates are that, even after the COVID crisis is somewhat under control, New York City will have half-a-million fewer jobs than before the pandemic. To recover faster and stronger, and to grow an equitable economy, we must expand into new emerging industries that have the potential to provide work for New Yorkers from all backgrounds and educations. I will do that by:
- Investing significantly in green jobs, including renewable energy production and transmission, building retrofits, infrastructure improvements and a booming wind power industry.
- Growing the life sciences industry here with incentives and changes to our land use and buildings rules.
- Attract start-ups and new investment with incubators and programs linked to CUNY, offering tax breaks and cheaper space.
Invest in green infrastructure through the City’s capital program.
New Yorkers spend roughly $19 billion per year on energy and it happens through the city’s highly interdependent electricity, natural gas, and steam networks. This infrastructure is considered some of the oldest and most concentrated in the nation. By upgrading our electrical grid, transitioning our power source to wind and away from natural gas, and implementing traffic controls to reduce idling, we can improve the quality of life of New Yorkers and create thousands of new jobs, especially those in low-income communities facing environmental injustice.
These investments are not only the moral path to take, but they also make common economic sense because they will create good paying jobs for New Yorkers and businesses will be able to rely on resilient infrastructure in the face of a rapidly changing climate.
Make New York City the wind power hub of the eastern seaboard.
With waterfront assets like SBMT, the Red Hook Container Terminal, Port Richmond, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, we have an opportunity to corner the market on wind power manufacturing and other green technologies. We must create a pipeline of education training from middle school, high school, college to educate our young people in this field using the forthcoming Harbor School Middle School, the Harbor School on Governors Island and universities like Kingsborough CC.
Attract new out-of-town businesses.
The Relocation Employment Assistance Program (REAP) has successfully drawn new businesses here from outside the state by providing a tax credit per employee per year if they locate in certain areas of the city. We will expand that to bring more business to New York.
Make NYC the life sciences capital of the world.
Life sciences is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world—and these companies want to locate in cities where they will have access to leading hospitals, universities and investors like New York City. To bring them here, we will double-down on the existing life sciences initiative with incentives and zoning changes that will draw in private investment and federal dollars for research.
Start a citywide incubator to incentivize solving intractable city problems.
To help investors and potential business investors, the City will start an incubator to fund innovators focused on solving systemic citywide problems that lead to inequities. New Yorkers do not need another meal delivery service or social media sensation nearly as much as we need our brightest minds to come together and solve issues such as job placement and outer-borough transportation.
Encourage startups in industries of the future to locate here.
Real estate costs and high costs of living have made some of the most brilliant talent turn to other cities. That means we have missed out on the job opportunities and the birth of fast-growing industries. So we will incentivize startups to move to our outer boroughs, where property costs are more affordable, and we will develop fellowship programs with CUNY schools in exchange for tax credits.
Return to urban agriculture.
Centuries ago, New York made its own food and the agriculture industry was one of its largest employers. Today, we rely almost entirely on out-of-town, out-of-state, and out-of-country producers for everything from the apple we buy at the bodega to the meals served to our kids in school.
By creating a new set of building codes, business rules and tax programs for urban farmers — and supporting local producers with guaranteed City contracts — we will create jobs by building vast in-city sites that produce food for restaurants, schools and food-insecurity programs through cutting-edge techniques such as vertical farming and hydroponics, often sharing space with renewable energy plants and other sustainability infrastructure.
Reinvest in what makes NYC beautiful.
The pandemic has had an outsize impact on the arts and cultural institutions. Long-term this will also hurt tourism, which provided 400,000 jobs pre-COVID. We will reduce unemployment in this sector while returning our city to the pinnacle of arts and culture by: providing free space for artists to create using vacant storefronts to create free co-working and studio spaces; turning our open spaces into spaces for art by tasking the Department of Cultural Affairs to greenlight more open spaces to be used as stages and for art installations; commissioning artists to paint murals with environment-friendly paints and adorning blighted properties with colorful murals.
Adams 2021: Government - A More Equal City
Historical injustices have held back Black, Brown, and low-income communities in this city for generations, and COVID-19 preyed on the failed policies of the past in devastating ways. It is time to heal the physical and financial health of these long-ignored New Yorkers, creating a city where everyone can compete, succeed, and play an equal part in our future
That includes:
- Connecting the poor to desperately needed services in low-income neighborhoods.
- Using our leverage as a client and our spending to create a fairer economy.
- Allowing tax-paying legal immigrants to vote in municipal elections.
We will bring the City to the community to connect low-income New Yorkers to the services they desperately need.
There are plenty of City services — but too many obstacles in the way of receiving them. We must give the neediest New Yorkers greater access to services. That means bringing the City right to the doorstep of New Yorkers with a new program that provides New Yorkers with necessary services and educates them about it so they can receive those life-sustaining services. We will equip City workers with computer tablets linked to the City’s unified digital platform and send them into the areas of greatest needs. We will set up shop in open storefronts, NYCHA complexes, and even parks. These workers can then connect New Yorkers to federal services and programs that will help us receive the more the $22 billion a year that New York taxpayers send to D.C., but do not get back, according to the most recent data.
We must require the super-rich to help speed our turnaround from the pandemic.
The multi-millionaires and billionaires must pay their fair share to help all of us get through the aftermath of the pandemic, which disproportionately hurt Black and Brown New Yorkers. We can generate $1 billion to 2 billion annually by instituting a “Recovery Share” — a modest increase to the income taxes of city earners who make more than $5 million a year, sunsetting after two years. That money would go directly into initiatives that help us bounce back from the pandemic, including testing and vaccination programs, anti-hunger efforts, and financial help for those New Yorkers — mostly Black and Brown — and industries hardest hit by COVID-19.
We will use our leverage as a client to create a fairer economy.
To keep good jobs in New York and advance our goals for a fairer economy, we will reward businesses that hire local workers and benefit minority and female owners and workers — especially on City-financed projects. Specifically, businesses will be asked to commit to hiring 75% city-based workers, prioritizing M/WBE contractors, and ensuring their contractors pay a living wage and report their workers’ residency and ethnicity statistics. Employers who agree to these terms could benefit from tax breaks and special consideration for City contracts.
We will empower legal immigrants with municipal voting rights.
There are more than 3 million immigrants in New York City. The vast majority of these New Yorkers cannot vote in local elections even though many are legal tax-paying residents. By allowing lawfully permanent residents and other non-citizens authorized to work in the United States the right to vote, we will enfranchise nearly 1 million New Yorkers who deserve a say in how their city is run – and who runs it.
Adams 2021: Government - A More Effective City
City agencies each keep their own records and data, with little productive interaction. Far too many New Yorkers fall through the cracks and it is largely up to government to find ways to help them.
My plan includes using technology to make government more effective by tailoring New Yorkers’ interaction with the City down to the person.
That includes:
- Building one digital platform – MyCity — for New Yorkers to access all City services.
- Creating a Recovery Score to track our progress with analytics.
- Coordinating a real-time service delivery system under my First Deputy Mayor.
Our MyCity portal will help small business owners operate effectively.
They will be able to better manage paperwork and have direct access to permitting agencies, such as the Department of Buildings. Those who opt-in can use a chip-enabled City ID to sail through in-person interactions with agencies, instantly have access to a bank account, and even get loyalty discounts at participating local businesses. In sum, this a 311 for the digital age.
I will coordinate public and non-profit delivery of services directly overseen by my top deputy.
We cannot continue to rely so heavily on non-profits to provide critical services funded by the City. Right now, there is no central authority in City government to oversee and coordinate delivery of these services on a daily basis. That hamstrings our ability to find efficiencies and savings that will better deliver services to more New Yorkers. My administration will create a real-time reporting system for services delivery across a unified network, overseen by the First Deputy Mayor.
We will find better deals.
Far too many City contracts just keep getting renewed or extended despite poor performance. At the beginning of the new administration, all contracts over $10 million will be put under immediate review, and we will eliminate those that are ineffective, or that we can do better.
We will find value and new revenue from City properties.
New York City owns and controls billions of dollars worth of property across the five boroughs, representing huge potential value and revenue to pay for critical City services when we most need them. We will immediately do a complete inventory of all City properties and determine best use — whether they should be utilized by government agencies, used for housing or services, sold, or leased — in order to reduce costs across City government and yield income that can be put toward core services to maintain and improve quality of life.
We will maintain our infrastructure with non-profit partnerships.
At a time when we are facing massive multi-billion-dollar City deficits, New York needs to be creative about how it pays for and manages expensive pieces of its essential infrastructure. For instance, by expanding the role of franchises to handle capital projects in our parks, we will partner with conservancies who can execute work faster and cheaper than the City.
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