New mayor Eric Adams seeks to sell his vision and team to West Harlem residents

Upper West Side NY

21 January, 2022

3:25 PM

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Columbia Daily Spectator BY KATHERINE NESSEL AND AILI HOU • JANUARY 21, 2022, 12:32 AM As soon as the ball dropped on New Year's Eve, Eric Adams became the 110th mayor of New York City. On a stage surrounded by friends and family, shortly after midnight, Adams swore the oath of office in Times Square, foregoing tradition and officially becoming the second Black mayor of the city after the late David Dinkins. "It's not about showmanship, it's about showing up," Adams said later that day during his first address as mayor, in which he also announced that the theme of his first 100 days would be to "get stuff done." Adams' administration appeared to begin with a bang as he demonstrated his eagerness to begin working with city residents. In his first 10 days as mayor, Adams made at least 47 public appearances, including visiting Morningside Heights' own Cathedral of St. John the Divine and attending a vigil for the victims of a Bronx apartment fire. Yet, as Adams nears the end of the first month of his term, West Harlem residents and community leaders remain divided over his policies and potential impact as mayor. Some community members have been impressed by Adams' demonstrated commitment to diversity and representation. Before taking office, Adams appointed over 700 people to work on 20 different transitionary committees, ranging from Education to Public Safety & Justice. Harlem residents were represented on the team, with local leaders like Tony Hillery, CEO of sustainable food organization Harlem Grown, chairing committees. In addition to a vast transition team, Adams has appointed an all-women team to serve as his deputy mayors, as well as the first female police commissioner of the New York Police Department, Keechant Sewell. "The talent is here; the talent is around him. And so with that, I am encouraged," Curtis Archer, president of the Harlem Community Development Corporation, said. However, Adams has also faced sharp criticism over several of his appointments. He appointed his younger brother Bernard Adams, a retired NYPD sergeant, as a deputy police commissioner, causing accusations of nepotism. His choice for the next deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks, was also a controversial pick––Banks is a former NYPD police chief who previously stepped down in 2014 while under federal investigation for bribery. While running for his party's nomination in the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary, Adams distinguished himself from many of his opponents with his stance on crime and public safety. In contrast to more progressive members of his party, Adams openly opposed efforts to "defund the police." Instead, he looks toward measures to reform the system. For example, Adams seeks to reestablish the plainclothes anti-crime unit that previously worked to reduce guns on streets until it was disbanded under de Blasio. However, some Harlem residents worry that reinstating the anti-crime unit could antagonize communities of color, whose members were previously disproportionately targeted. "There's definitely going to be some angst in communities of color," Archer said. "Remember, the young people in those communities were targeted." Others feel that Adams' background as a former police captain and the support of the NYPD stand in the way of just governance as he has used his policing background to justify his policies. When 29 city council members wrote to urge the mayor to not reinstate solitary confinement on Rikers Island, Adams said that only once they had worn "a bulletproof vest for 22 years … [would they] have the right to question me on safety and public safety matters." "His background makes me a little bit nervous," Melissa Koszer, a Bronx resident who works in West Harlem, said. "I don't know how comfortable I am with a former high-up police officer being our mayor. But maybe it could create relationships where there weren't relationships before." Others are hopeful about the new support for rezoning efforts to increase affordable housing in an increasingly gentrified area of the city under the Adams administration. Adams has chosen Daniel Garodnick, current president and CEO of the Riverside Park Conservancy and previous City Council member, to lead the Department of City Planning. "He comes from a background where he was a strong tenant and consumer advocate," David Robinson, member of the Morningside Heights Community Coalition Executive Board and retired legal services lawyer, said. "So it's very different from the last couple of City Planning heads. … We're hopeful that he will be more responsive to community needs." Morningside Heights' zoning has remained virtually unaltered since 1961, yet the neighborhood saw skyrocketing rent during the de Blasio administration, leading the MHCC to propose rezoning that would mandate more affordable housing. The MHCC's proposals haven't come to fruition, but momentum has been mounting for rezoning with its Morningside Heights Planning Study. Buildings like 100 Claremont Avenue, located on Union Theological Seminary's campus, have acquired air rights—the right to space above a building—from surrounding shorter buildings and are constructing a 42-story tower with no affordable units. Robinson hopes that if the rezoning proposed by the MHCC is approved by Garodnick the construction of other luxury buildings can be prevented. "I think any new housing construction should require some affordable housing," Robinson said. The seemingly harmonious relationship between New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Adams comes in stark contrast to the previous governor and mayor, whose relationship was dubbed one of the "ugliest political feuds" in the country. Former Governor Cuomo and former Mayor de Blasio rarely coordinated on policies, frequently clashing on coronavirus response measures and mass transit policies in particular. In contrast, Hochul and Adams seem to be key political allies committed to helping one another. Hochul appeared at Adams' election night victory party, where the two vowed to "not fight each other anymore." More recently, when unveiling her budget on Tuesday, Hochul departed from her predecessor by granting Adams oversight of city schools for all four years of his first term, instead of the one-year extensions that Cuomo begrudgingly gave de Blasio. "It's always an encouraging sign when the city and state are talking to each other and [don't] look at each other as competition," Archer said. Whether Adams will rise above his predecessor's perpetual low popularity remains to be seen. De Blasio only enjoyed majority approval for brief periods of time in a majority- Democratic city that elected him twice with the 40-50 point margins that Adams also received. However, after entering office, de Blasio had poor relations with the media and often lashed out at negative coverage, calling news outlets "pitiful" and "disgraceful" throughout his tenure. Adams has already garnered attention for his demeanor and off-the-cuff comments made in his many public appearances, like when he talked about addressing the rise in omicron cases. "When a mayor has swagger, the city has swagger," he said. "We've allowed people to beat us down so much that all we did was wallow in COVID." His controversial embrace of the NYPD and what some see as insensitive remarks on city-wide hardships, like a recent storm, have already led individuals to dismiss his tenure. "I think he's tried really hard in his first couple of weeks to make everybody hate him a lot more quickly than we hated de Blasio," Koszer said, suggesting that swagger may not be enough to excite all residents about the Adams era as of now. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.