Mayor Adams admits Dems ‘underestimated’ migrant impact, warns no federal help on way next year

Metro

By Jorge Fitz-Gibbon

Mayor Eric Adams on Sunday admitted Democrats “underestimated’’ the impact of the migrant crisis and added that he doesn’t expect the White House to suddenly step up to help the Big Apple in 2024.

Hizzoner said the lack of aid from the Biden administration means that New Yorkers should continue to brace for what he has warned will be “extremely painful” city budget cuts where “everything is on the table.

“I believe that we are not seeing that,” Adams told WPIX-TV on Sunday’s “PIX on Politics” broadcast of the city’s chances of getting President Biden to finally offer real help with the local crisis.

“Let’s be clear: What we’re gonna have to do is extremely painful” as a result, Hizzoner said.

“We’re going to have to see how do we deliver services to our agencies without the resources we normally have. We’re gonna have to become even smarter and better at delivering a product with less resources.

“Everything’s on the table,” Adams added in terms of cuts. “But we want to minimize the impact to lower-income New Yorkers, our educational institutions, our public safety and keeping our city streets. But everything’s on the table.”

The mayor separately told CBS that while he thinks an embattled Biden can win re-election next year, “I believe that we have to have a course correct.

“We underestimated the impact of the migrant and asylum-seeker issue that’s impacting major cities in this country,” the Democrat said.

Adams said the city already has to plug a $12 billion budget hole from the migrant influx.

City Hall has tried in vain to get the Biden administration to do its part to help with the massive flood of asylum-seekers coming from the US border into the five boroughs — more than 150,000 since the spring of 2022.

While Adams cited drops in crime and a rise in city jobs during his tenure, he blamed the migrant crisis — and the feds’ lack of help — with his dismal approval ratings, which dropped to an embarrassing 28% in a Quinnipiac poll released earlier this month.

“New Yorkers are angry,” Hizzoner said. “They’re angry at just the totality of where they see this situation has brought us. You know, beginning of the year and even into the year they thought this was Eric Adams just opening our city up, not looking at the impact of what this crisis [is].

“I’m the mayor,” he said. “And so you’re gonna point towards the mayor if your trains are not on time, if your trash is not picked up, if you see cuts in services. That is my role. I have to navigate us through this.”

Adams was asked if the migrant crisis had been “a curveball” during his first term.

“Curve ball?” the mayor shot back. “That’s not even a curve ball. That’s some brush-back pitch that knocked us in the ground. But we got to get back up and knock it out of the park.”

Meanwhile, Adams said he’d like to see the controversial congestion pricing plan tweaked. Under the plan, a $15 “congestion” toll would be instituted on drivers to enter Midtown Manhattan’s business district. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority could institute it as early as next spring.

“I think more needs to be done,” the mayor said of potential changes to the plan. “Yellow cabs, buses, emergency service vehicles, people who must get to Manhattan because, let’s say, medical issues. That’s the only place they can go for their medical and cancer treatments.

“We must make sure that those who go and drive to Manhattan for luxury purposes should be treated differently from those who are doing it for necessity.”