In 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio was swept into office after promising voters he’d put an end to “income inequality” that created a “Tale of two Cities” across the five boroughs.
As the lame duck completes the final year of what’s been a rocky two-term mayoralty, critics say he’s not only failed to deliver his central pledge but is on pace to renege on a plethora of other promises before leaving office.
“When it comes to lying, Mayor de Blasio would give Pinocchio a run for his money,” quipped Councilman Robert Holden, a Queens Democrat.
While Hizzoner has delivered on some key promises — including bringing universal pre-K to city schools, expanding paid sick-leave benefits, and reducing stop-and-frisk policing – he’s failed to make headway on much of his progressive agenda and stands to leave City Hall with few legacy projects to show for it.
He has also fallen short of convincing state legislators to approve many of his pet causes, including eliminating the admission test for New York’s most selective high schools, and revamping the city’s archaic property tax system so owners of lucrative properties pay a fairer share.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a fellow Democrat, has serious doubts de Blasio will make any headway on his agenda before leaving office, said his spokeswoman Letitia-Theodore Greene.
“While he has a year left to prove us wrong, it’s as clear as day his leadership has not met the moment time and time again – from public safety to public housing amid the pandemic,” she said.
Ten of de Blasio’s most ballyhooed but failed promises to date include:
Income Inequality
During the 2013 mayoral race, candidate de Blasio pledged to narrow the income gap between the Big Apple’s richest and poorest residents — but the canyon has grown wider.
Data compiled by the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York last year showed the lowest 20 percent of New York earners saw a 10% income boost over the past decade, from $20,000 annually to $22,000. The top 20 percent saw income surge by 22%, from $126,000 to $154,000.
Bill Neidhardt, a de Blasio spokesman, defended the mayor’s record, saying de Blasio “redistributed” well over $20 billion from the wealthy to the working class through direct money payments or indirectly through new city programs like universal pre-k, which helps working parents save costs on child care.
“We’re f—ing Robin Hood up in here,” he insisted.
Horse carriages
De Blasio in 2013 vowed that, if elected, he’d ban horse-drawn carriages citywide on his first day in office. That never happened.
De Blasio had to wait until 2018 before he could convince the City Council to undertake even the most modest industry reforms, including relocating all horse-drawn carriage pickups to inside Central Park.
Defunding the Police
The mayor promised in June not to slash the NYPD budget after “defund the police” became a rallying cry nationwide, and at massive protests in NYC, following the police-custody death of George Floyd in Minnesota.
“I do not believe it is a good idea to reduce the budget of the agency that is here to keep us safe,” he told reporters June 5.
Days later he caved to the demands of activists and progressive Council members and ultimately signed off on a new city budget that shifted nearly $1 billion from cops to social and youth services.
The move came as the Big Apple in 2020 suffered its deadliest year in nearly a decade, recording 447 killings – 41 percent more than the previous year — and more shootings than in 2018 and 2019 combined.
Brooklyn-Queens Connector
During his 2016 State of the City address, Hizzoner pitched the pie-in-the-sky streetcar plan, also known as the “BQX,” that would connect both boroughs’ waterfronts. Construction on the $2.7 billion East River trolley line from Red Hook to Astoria was slated to begin in 2019 and be completed by 2024.
The project has yet to break ground. In September, de Blasio conceded the fate of the controversial project would likely be decided by the city’s next mayor.
Parking Placard Abuse
Nearly two years ago, Hizzoner vowed to combat the growing problem of city employees misusing parking placards to glom spaces. “We’re going to phase out placards as we know them entirely by 2021,” he insisted.
In December 2020, city officials confirmed they’ve done next to nothing to combat the problem. De Blasio had pitched a plan to replace the placards with digital stickers to prevent holders from switching placards from vehicle to vehicle, but the Department of Transportation has so far issued decals to just 1,700 drivers out of the 125,000-plus placards in circulation.
The Mayor’s Office said it attributes the delays to “the unprecedented fiscal and public health crisis.”
Renewal Schools
In 2013, de Blasio pledged to fix 94 of the city’s lowest-performing schools with infusions of taxpayer money, but in 2019 he pulled the plug on the failed effort after spending $773 million.
By then, only about a quarter of the schools actually improved enough to exit the program amid plunging enrollment rates and surging costs.
Vision Zero
When Hizzoner announced the street-safety program in 2014, he said it would eliminate all traffic deaths by 2024 by boosting penalties for rogue drivers and redesigning dangerous intersections.
However, 243 people died from crashes on city streets in 2020, up from 219 the previous year and the most the city has seen since 2014, DOT records show. Although pedestrian deaths have declined since 2014, fatalities for motorcyclists and motorists have surged.
City officials blamed the spike in deaths on the COVID-19 pandemic emptying streets, leading to more speeding and reckless driving.
New York Works
Launched by de Blasio in 2017, the $1.35 billion program was supposed to create 100,000 jobs paying at least $50,000 per year by 2027.
Instead, the city has spent $300 million to generate just 3,000 of the jobs, according to 2019 testimony from James Patchett, president of the city Economic Development Corp.
The Mayor’s office said the number of new “good-paying jobs” is now up to 8,700 and that the program would be doing better if it weren’t for a national economic crisis.
Get Cool NYC
The $55 million, taxpayer-funded program announced by de Blasio last May was supposed to deliver 74,000 free air conditioners to low-income seniors – among the most susceptible to the coronavirus — by the end of July to help keep them indoors and safe during the sweltering summer months.
At the end of August, fewer than 59,000 had been installed. The remainder were delivered after September.
City officials blamed delays on P.C. Richard & Son. But the appliance chain claimed the city mismanaged the program, typically supplying wrong addresses and other bogus information while scheduling installations.
Getting the homeless off the streets
In December 2019, De Blasio announced a five-year plan to end street homelessness that included creating new housing and mental-health services for unsheltered New Yorkers.
However, Councilman Stephen Levin (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the general welfare committee, said the street homeless problem has actually “gotten a lot worse.”
During the city’s annual homelessness count last January, 3,857 homeless persons were tallied on subways and streets – a nearly 15 percent increase from de Blasio’s first year in office.
Levin added that a statewide moratorium on residential evictions is all that’s preventing the city’s shelter population from “skyrocketing well above” de Blasio’s goal of being under 57,500 population by 2022. As of Tuesday, there were 52,906 in the shelter system.
The Mayor’s Office said the city is doing everything it can to provide shelter for all New Yorkers despite receiving little help from the federal government throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, which helped spur the largest economic downturn in the city’s history.
source NYpost