Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Announces Lift of Travel Ban; NYC Public Schools to Open for In-Person Instruction Tuesday
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
Since last night, New York City has been in near-blizzard conditions. So far, the storm has dropped 16 to 19 inches on most parts of our city, with parts of eastern Staten Island reporting over 24 inches of snow. It has also brought extreme winds, with gusts reaching up to 60 miles per hour. Judging from current forecasts, the worst has passed. Conditions have begun to moderate, but there is still more to come. Snow is projected to linger through the afternoon, with another 1.5 to 2.5 inches expected by 8 p.m. Wind gusts are expected to remain as high as 40 miles per hour into the evening. New York remains in a state of emergency. The travel ban has ended today at noon, but a hazardous travel advisory remains in place through midnight tonight. I continue to encourage all non-emergency traffic—cars, trucks, scooters, and e-bikes—to remain off the roads. We are plowing streets and doing everything we can to keep our roadways clear so that emergency vehicles can get through. Every vehicle that stays off the road makes that work that little bit easier. These are dangerous conditions. Not only is snow continuing to fall, accumulated snowfall and refreezing have made it hazardous to travel. If you can, remain indoors. If you must leave your home, please rely on public transit. I am grateful for our tireless agency teams who have been working non-stop to prepare our city for this blizzard and to keep New York running. This has been a full-force winter weather response operation, with 2,600 [Department of Sanitation] workers deployed on every 12-hour shift and over 2,300 plows, including 700 salt spreaders, mobilized citywide. In addition, DSNY has employed 575 emergency snow shovelers across our city last night, with more than 800 shovelers on the morning shift today. Despite the act of blizzard, they were able to clear over 1,600 crosswalks, 419 fire hydrants, and almost 900 bus stops overnight, and that does not include what they have cleared since this morning. Amidst this, DSNY has been hard at work to expand their supervision capacity for the snow shoveler program, and as of today, they can now deploy 1,800 New Yorkers per shift. Due to the historic nature of this blizzard, we've increased pay to $30 per hour. You can walk into any DSNY garage until 8 p.m. this evening and then starting again at 9 a.m. tomorrow. All you need to bring is two forms of ID to ensure you get paid. In addition to DSNY, the DOT has also cleared over 1,300 sheltered bus stops so far. All of this is managed through DSNY's BladeRunner 2.0 System, which monitors plowing and salting in real time. You too can track their live progress via our plow tracker at nyc.gov/PlowNYC. As of 12:30 p.m., DSNY has distributed over 50 million pounds of salt and plowed over 99.5 percent of city streets at least once. As heavy snow continues to fall, every single street in every single borough will be plowed as many times as necessary to make it safe for emergency travel. As I mentioned earlier, parts of Staten Island are being hit hardest by this winter storm. In addition to existing efforts, DSNY is deploying 65 further pieces of equipment to Staten Island, and the NYPD Tow Truck Task Force is now operating especially heavily in the borough to free stuck vehicles, which include MTA buses. Our teams will continue to salt again and again throughout the day. This work has been a testament to the whole of government coming together to tackle a shared challenge. The NYPD Highway Patrol will continue escorting DSNY to facilitate the salting and plowing of our streets, and the Downed Trees Task Force has been coordinating across the five boroughs. Again, I'm imploring New Yorkers to stay off the roads. The fewer passenger and commercial vehicles need to be assisted, the quicker we can respond to plows and emergency vehicles. And if you can cook at home, please do so instead of ordering food to be delivered, given the conditions. I hope our students enjoy their snow day today and stay warm and safe throughout, but I do have some tough news to share. School will be in-person tomorrow. You can still pelt me with snowballs when you see me. Alternate side parking will be suspended through the week. NYC Ferry remains suspended for the rest of today, while the Staten Island Ferry is running half-hour service through the day. A decision will be made on tomorrow's service for both the Staten Island and NYC Ferries later today. All public libraries across the city remain closed today. An update on reopening tomorrow will be made and shared later this afternoon. City buildings will be back open to the public tomorrow for in-person city services. Code Blue remains in effect, and an Enhanced Code Blue has been extended through Wednesday morning. Throughout this storm, our outreach workers have continually canvassed all five boroughs, helping homeless New Yorkers find shelter. Last night, outreach workers made 79 placements. I want to be very clear, if you need warmth and shelter, it is available to you. This morning, our Department of Social Services accelerated the opening of another 100 low-barrier stabilization beds in Upper Manhattan, building on the additional capacity we added during the historic cold snap a few weeks ago. Across our city, we have had 22 warming buses, 11 Health + Hospitals warming spaces and 13 school warming centers open. Our Health + Hospitals mobile warming units have been redeployed to provide clinical assistance, warm food, and clothing. By this afternoon, we will have 15 mobile warming units citywide. Our OnPoint overdose prevention centers were also open all of last night and will remain open today and overnight tonight as well. I continue to ask New Yorkers to check in on those who may be struggling. If you see someone in need of warmth or shelter, please call 311 immediately so outreach workers can assist. In a Code Blue, these 311 calls will be rerouted to 911. You can also call 311 directly from our LinkNYC kiosks or use them to find the locations of warming centers across the city. We are aware that there were power outages across the city, including over 11,000 New Yorkers in the Rockaways who were without power this morning. NYCEM dispatched field personnel to check conditions and make repairs. Power has already been restored to more than 8,000 of those New Yorkers. As a contingency, NYCEM has opened warming centers at Far Rockaway High School, Beach Channel High School, and P.S. 43. For New Yorkers dealing with heat or hot water issues, call your landlord immediately. If you do not hear back promptly, please call 311. HPD staff is working overtime and is on call to help. NYCHA has deployed additional staff this weekend, including technical teams to respond to elevator, heat, and any other repair issues that may arise. If you are a NYCHA resident dealing with a non-emergency issue, please call 718-707-7771 or submit a work ticket through the MyNYCHA application. Lyft began clearing operations at Citi Bike stations this morning and have cleared 20 stations as of 11:30 a.m. With additional vendors starting at different points throughout the day, we expect their progress to rapidly accelerate as the afternoon continues. And operational agencies have been working to clear fire hydrants, crosswalks and bus stops around their property as well. While DSNY continues to prioritize snow response, there will be delays in collection. There will be no collection of any material today, February 23rd, or tomorrow, February 24th. We will provide an updated plan on trash collection by end of day tomorrow on what collection will look like for the rest of the week. When we share that plan, we will be prioritizing trash and compost. Recycling will continue to be delayed into the following week. Please hold your recycling and wait to put it out until next week, as you would after certain holidays. Our mandate for property owners to clear four-foot-wide paths across all sidewalks remains in effect. We issued more than 4,000 violations after the last storm. We do not want to issue as many citations again. So please, if you are a property owner, do your part, clear the snow, and help make our city passable for our neighbors, especially those with disabilities. For those shoveling, take it slow. This snow is exceptionally wet and heavy. Your health comes first. Please protect your back and your heart by working slowly, and [to] make sure that you're taking frequent breaks. Older adults should stay indoors and should avoid shoveling. The coastal flood warning for low-lying coastal parts of our city ended at 5 a.m. this morning. There are no current warnings issued for our coast flood zones. For those in flood zones or basement apartments, Notify NYC has a special category to alert you in the event that flooding happens. You can sign up at nyc.gov/notify. I urge all New Yorkers to sign up for Notify NYC by texting NOTIFYNYC to 692-692 to receive immediate updates on forecasts and conditions. You can also visit nyc.gov/BeReady for more information. I know that this is a city full of people who do not like to sit still, and yet as the snow continues to fall and conditions remain dangerous, I am asking you to do just that. Turn on that crackling fireplace YouTube video, call that relative whose WhatsApp you haven't responded to, make an enormous pot of soup and bring some to your neighbors upstairs. And above all, stay warm, stay inside, stay prepared, and stay safe. Thank you very much, and now we'll hear from our NYCEM Commissioner Christina Farrell.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source I can tell you that, for right now, my focus is on this blizzard and this storm. However, following the conclusion of it, it is always an opportunity to reflect on longer-standing city policy. On the first part of your question, we have seen that the worst of the impacts of this blizzard have — especially relating to our ability to manage vehicular traffic — have passed. However, these continue to be hazardous, which is why we still have a hazardous travel advisory in place. Now, we also know that this storm has hit different parts of the city in different ways. We're looking at average totals in most neighborhoods of 16 to 19 inches, and then we're looking at parts of eastern Staten Island, and we see 24 inches. So, in terms of a citywide approach, it is still one where we have the travel advisory. The ban has come to an end. However, we are also looking to redeploy our resources to make sure that every neighborhood can recover as quickly.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source So, I will start on your second question and then go into your first. So, as of now, we are not aware of any deaths related to this blizzard on our city's streets or in public areas. And overnight, as you had mentioned, DHS made close to 80 placements. These were placements that [were] done as a result of their outreach across all five boroughs, and they were placements into low-barrier shelters as well as warming centers. These are in addition to the 85 or so placements that were made the night before that I had referred to in yesterday's press conference. In terms of your first question, we can get back to you on the question of violations.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source It is exactly as you say in terms of the tightness we have with the schedule we're operating under. This is a schedule that is a reflection of state law that mandates 180 days of instruction. And the confluence of circumstances we were facing would create what you might call the perfect storm, between a historic blizzard — the first that we've seen in 10 years — coupled with the fact that students and teachers had been away for a break. Which both meant that there were a number of students and teachers who would potentially be stranded in trying to come back into the city for Monday schooling. But also, that unlike in the prior winter storm — where we could take the steps in advance on Friday or Thursday to ensure that we were sending students home with their devices — this was all being done in response to a previously scheduled break. All those things together brought us to the conclusion that we should apply for a waiver from the state. And we are incredibly grateful to the state commissioner of education for having granted that waiver.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source So, I will pass it over to Kevin in a moment to speak a little bit more specifically to that. But what I will tell you is I'm incredibly appreciative of the fact that we've had more than 8,000 DOE workers who have been doing the preparation work for exactly this purpose. Yesterday, today, cleaning out and making sure that our schools are ready for our students and they're also ready to serve them with a warm meal.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source Part of this is a reflection of the fact that we have to ensure that each and every New Yorker is able to navigate their own city, no matter what their mode of transit is. And that means if they're a pedestrian, if they're a cyclist, if they're riding the bus, taking the train, or if they're driving their car. And like you said, Dan, last time around, we saw around 4,000 citations being issued to property owners for the violation of this requirement. However, we know the importance of ensuring that these crosswalks, these sidewalks, are not just passable in a technical sense, but also passable with a four-foot [width] so that New Yorkers who are using wheelchairs or with a stroller, that they can actually get around. And so, I'm incredibly thankful, frankly, to the hardworking men and women of DSNY, because what they've been doing, alongside staffing up and running these 2,600-person 12-hour shifts, is also expanding their supervision capacity for the emergency snow shoveler program. Because that's a program that is focusing predominantly on crosswalks, sidewalks, [and] unsheltered bus stops. And thanks to their work, we've already been able to more than double the number of New Yorkers who are doing that, and we are looking to see that number continue to increase given their newfound capacity of 1,800 per shift.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source So, there are no cleanups that will take place over the course of the blizzard. The blizzard is a time when our focus should not be on physical infrastructure but on people and on getting them indoors. And I'm incredibly thankful, frankly, to the more than 500 outreach workers who have been traversing our city to look to connect homeless New Yorkers with their services and the support that they need. And I can tell you that the last storm was one of the first storms that our city had seen in quite some time. And we took a hard look at everything that worked and started it from the first day of this blizzard response and then took a sense of what we can enhance across the board, because we're always looking to hold ourselves to a standard of excellence. And so, that is also why we have started the work of geotagging every single bus shelter and crosswalk. That's also why we have looked to do sustained outreach of expanding the emergency snow shoveler program to supplement the city's work. And it's also why, frankly, that we made the decision to bring in additional equipment in advance of the storm, because what we're looking at — you know, the last time we thought we were going to get a blizzard was 2017, and it didn't come to materialize. The year before that we actually had one. This is of that nature. This has parts of our city in 24 inches of snow. It requires us doing everything we can to respond.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source We can get back to you on that. I can tell you that the NYPD has made a number of placements in response to the prior storm and has been a critical part of the first responders that we have.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source I think we — when we're talking about the previous storm, we're talking about a level of arctic conditions that the city had not seen for many, many years. And unlike in prior storms, after the snowfall, there wasn't an increase in temperature. Even this time around, though it is a blizzard, one of the few pieces of good news is that we will see 40-degree weather sometime in this week. The previous time, we were seeing sub-freezing weather for day after day after day. There was a period when it was colder in New York City than it was in Antarctica. And that is the chief reason that the city was facing an extended period of hazardous conditions. And this time around, we're seeing it'll be a much shorter runway. And also, we're always looking to enhance the work that we're doing to ensure that New Yorkers are getting exactly the kind of service and response they deserve. Thank you. ###
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Announces Lift of Travel Ban; NYC Public Schools to Open for In-Person Instruction Tuesday.