Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Takes Major Step Toward Citywide Trash Containerization, Announces Six New Districts
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
Good morning, Crown Heights. It is a pleasure to be in Brooklyn talking about something that every New Yorker cares about, which is trash. And I am very glad to be here with leaders in our administration, including our Sanitation Commissioner Gregory Anderson. We are also here with our incredible Deputy Mayor for Operations, Julia Kerson. And we are here with our Council member of this district, Chi Ossé. And we are also here with the Council member of another district that is leading the sanitation work across the entire city, chair of [the] Sanitation Committee Justin Sanchez. And we also want to give an acknowledgement to Council member Crystal Hudson's office, as well as members of DSNY that are here with us, and Dave Colon's outfit for the day. Now, before we get into today's announcement, I do want us to take a moment to just consider the trash bag. It tears, it leaks, and any rat will tell you that it's easy to chew through. It has an impressive ability to self-multiply, filling our sidewalks. It both strains and stains DSNY workers who move each bag by hand across the five boroughs. Now for years, New Yorkers have wondered, if the trash bag could be contained, could our city not be transformed? And for a brief moment, it felt as if it could be. There was the promise of empire bin containerization in 2024. And yet, like so much that New Yorkers have come to expect from our politics, that promise was empty. Legislation was passed in support, but there was no date set for when this would be completed. There were no funds ever allocated beyond the first community district to make it real. There were no plans that were actually laid out. It was a suggestion, not a requirement. And today, I am proud to join here with leaders in our administration and our partners in the Council to announce that we are changing that in this very moment. This past Sunday, we announced that black bags are in their twilight. The era of empire bins is now dawning. We will deliver at least one fully containerized community district in every single borough by the end of next year. And we will achieve citywide containerization by the end of 2031. Now this is an issue for each and every New Yorker, no matter your politics. Frankly, the only disappointed constituency will be rats. Today, I am announcing that these first six districts, which we've selected for rollout by the end of 2027, first up, they include right here in Brooklyn, Community District 8. That includes Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, and Weeksville. We are speaking about 25,000 homes that will be served by 1,096 empire bins and 13 automatic side loader trucks, the first trucks of their kind in North America. We will also roll out in Bronx Community Districts 2 and 5, Queens Community District 2, Staten Island Community District 1 and Manhattan Community District 2. And now to say that same information in English: Hunts Point, Longwood, University Heights, Mount Hope, Morris Heights and Fordham Heights in the Bronx; Sunnyside, Hunters Point and Woodside in Queens; Stapleton, Randall Manor, Westerleigh, West Brighton, Clifton and Shore Acres in Staten Island; West Village, SoHo, Little Italy, Greenwich Village and Nolita in Manhattan. Now, once full citywide containerization is achieved, sidewalks across our city will be clean. Flowers will bloom. But one thing will never change, which is that as New Yorkers, we will continue to talk trash, we just won't see that much of it. Now, initiatives like this are what we mean when we talk about the importance of pothole politics, the importance of delivering universal childcare hand in hand with the kind of containerization that will transform New Yorkers' quality of life across the five boroughs. Because in our administration, we believe there is no problem too big, no task too small, because we want to make daily life better for New Yorkers, no matter what borough they live in, and no matter how much trash they talk. Thank you very much. I am now proud and pleased to be able to hand it over to our new DSNY commissioner, Gregory Anderson.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceHey now, hey now, this is what dreams are made of.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think these are quite nice. But I think what you’re sharing is the classic New York need for us to always improve on what it is that we are delivering, so we’ll keep that in mind. I think just to your first question, this is, it’s not just about, as my colleagues have said, bringing our city in line with cities across the world. It’s also about actually tackling the rat population in a way that has been proven to have a tangible effect. I’d just like to invite our commissioner up to share some of what we’ve seen in Morning Side Heights, which is the one district that we have seen containerization thus far.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, I think on the first piece, we — when we started having meetings about this as an administration, one of the driving questions was, what is the fastest that we can deliver this across the city? Because what we've seen is a conversation around containerization over many years that has yielded a single community district. So, these six that we have all put up, these will all be completed by the end of next year. We're going to see, already by the end of this year, an additional community district, and then 2031, every single one of the 59 districts across New York City. And we set these goals not only to meet them, but also to serve as an example of what it is we're looking at as an actual timeline. Too often, legislation and directives are given without a date that New Yorkers can hold an administration accountable to. I'm just going to pass it over, commissioner, on the second question that you posed.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYes, absolutely. So, I'll let the sanitation commissioner add a little bit more to the process for high-density. But I think just to lay it out, we have about — and, [Commissioner Anderson], you can correct me if I'm wrong here — 70 percent of trash in New York City is containerized at this point. This is addressing the remaining 30 percent. These are the larger-scale residential buildings that right now are putting their trash out in bags. And growing up in New York City, we've become accustomed to this. But I think, frankly, there's too much in our politics that we exceptionalize, saying that this is just how it is in New York City. It doesn't have to be this way. We look at cities across the world, this is not how they live. And this isn't how we have to live either. And to your first point, we are adding about $15 million in the city's expense budget for next year. We're adding about $35.5 million in capital funding over the course of both this fiscal year and next fiscal year. Now, we are facing, as you brought up, a generational fiscal crisis. We are facing right now a $5.4 billion fiscal deficit. We are encouraged by the nature of conversations that we're having with Albany. We've already seen that yield a new revenue proposal of a pied-� -terre tax that would tax the wealthiest of the wealthy across this city. And as I think you can see, everyone who's clapping here doesn't own a second home worth more than $5 million while they reside somewhere else outside of this city. And we know that as we tackle that, we also are doing so while ensuring we're fulfilling our commitment to New Yorkers that we are never going to compromise essential services. Trash is one of the things that New Yorkers wake up in the morning and expect City government to be able to respond to. You've heard from our council members the deep appreciation that New Yorkers have for the hardworking men and women of DSNY. We want their jobs to also be a little bit easier. They don't need to be picking up every single trash bag. They can also be dealing with modern technology for a modern city. And, commissioner, I'll pass it over to you on the question about high-intensity residencies.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, what I'll say is that I'm interested in what New Yorkers have to say about our policies, and 93% approve of the pied-� -terre tax. This is a tax that will raise half a billion dollars every year, and it will raise money to fund essential city services like free child care, cleaner streets, and safer neighborhoods. The president and I both want this city to succeed. This is how you do it. And in terms of the person here who's spoken most recently to the president, I would point everyone to Timmy Facciola of the Judge Street Journal.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI've made it clear to the president and to the public that I am deeply supportive of taxing the rich, and taxing non-residents' secondary homes worth more than $5 million falls right within that. How was your conversation with the president?
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI have made a few endorsements thus far, and those are all ones that I'm very, very excited about. When I have anything else to share, I'll be sure to do so publicly. But I'm looking forward to going back up to Albany this evening for SOMOS and to attend a number of receptions, including Comptroller DiNapoli's.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo those are exactly the details that our teams have been hard at work at, and the reason that we have even spoken about this publicly is not just a belief in the kind of tax but also in the administration of the tax. Our administration is confident in the tax's ability to raise half a billion dollars on an annual basis and to do so by collecting these increased taxes on properties worth more than $5 million. The additional details of that we will be sure to share with you as they happen.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI do think it is possible. I think there are times when technical concerns are spoken of, but I think they also mask political disagreements.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, I'll leave the president to answer why he writes his posts the way that he does and who he directs them to. What I will tell you is, you know, I think we saw in the Judge Street Journal's reporting the president's description of his opposition to this as a policy. And I'll be honest with you, it's not a surprise given the fact that the president and I have many deep policy differences. And I am not shy about airing them both publicly and privately. I've spoken to the president about my deep disagreement with him about ICE. I believe that ICE is a cruel and inhumane agency that does nothing to serve in the interest of public safety. Even the previous time that I met with the president at the Oval Office, I was there to speak to him about the prospect of the city working with the federal administration to deliver the most amount of housing delivered in a single housing project since the early 1970s. 12,000 homes, 30,000 jobs. In the process of having that conversation, I brought up that just that morning, a Columbia University student had been detained by ICE. And I gave the president a list of five individuals who had been detained in or around Columbia University. And I asked that those charges be dropped. 30 minutes after the meeting, he called me to say he'd made the decision to drop the charges when it came to that Columbia University student. These differences of opinion, they will continue. They are sincere. And also, the thing that we have in common is that we are both New Yorkers. When I speak to the president, I always bring it back to the city and what I think will help the city.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI've always said that I am committed in leading our administration to confront the cost-of-living crisis wherever we find it. And we've also seen that landlords of affordable housing units have seen their insurance costs skyrocket. And so, for me, if you're a landlord, if you're a tenant, so long as you're a New Yorker and you're facing a cost-of-living crisis, it's the administration's responsibility to have an answer to that. We're very excited by this proposal because we think it could not only save the city more than half a billion dollars, but it could also make it easier to steward affordable housing across the five boroughs.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceNo. I think it's critically important that we advance a vision that makes it easier for working people to live in New York City, and that we also do so while tackling this generational fiscal crisis. And I'm encouraged by the conversations we've been having with the governor and legislative leaders, and we've already seen the progress of that. And that is all working backwards from the fiscal responsibility we have to balance New York City's budget.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThat $1.7 was something that we outlined many months ago as part of our preliminary budget on February 17, and it was part of our commitment to finding inefficiencies, fraud, waste, wherever we could in our city budget, and eliminating that as we deliver the most efficient city budget possible. And that is how we reduced the deficit to a point where we are now, $5.4 billion. Then those conversations continue with the governor. That $5.4 is obviously then reduced through the implementation of a pied-� -terre tax, through the additional kinds of savings that we're talking about.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI will always be myself wherever I go, and I'm someone who believes in the importance of taxing the wealthiest to ensure that everyone in this city can actually afford to live here. And I will also be celebrating the pied-� -terre tax because I think that this proposal that we've worked on with the governor is one that speaks exactly to that need and does so while funding the kind of essential city services that New Yorkers cannot go without. ###
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Takes Major Step Toward Citywide Trash Containerization, Announces Six New Districts.