Last Friday, January 6, NYC Mayor Eric Adams
reviewed his first year as Mayor with NYC Ethnic/Community
Media journalists, taking questions about a variety of local topics including:
Also discussed was the issue of Roosevelt Island governance which had been raised with Mayor Adams at his “closed press” August meeting with Roosevelt Island residents.
During the January 6 meeting with community journalists, I asked Mayor Adams:
You visited Roosevelt Island in August with Assembly Member Seawright.
There were a variety of local issues that were discussed including
governance for Roosevelt Island and quality of life issues and you had said
that you would send the questions, the list to members of your team. I don’t
think we’ve heard anything back yet and I’m just following up to see if you
could check on that?
Mayor Adams replied:
I saw Assemblywoman Seawright the other day and I’m going to find out from
the team exactly where are we with that, the exact initiative. I think that
the governance issue should be solved and we definitely need to resolve
it.I thought they were great initiatives that were put forward by those who
were there and so once we have a full understanding and the scope of it,
we’ve been a little busy with a whole lot going on, but once we’re able to
really dig into it so we can make the right decision…
Responding to my follow up question about community meetings being closed to the press, Mayor Adams added:
I’m always respectful of the wishes of the residents and people who invite
me. You know the press follow me all the time. They even follow me to that
restaurant to see if I have fish.I’m always followed by the Press. I don’t have a problem with the press
being around me but I’m respectful some people don’t want their names in the
paper. They’re not elected to office, they don’t want their quotes in the
paper, they don’t want their pictures in the paper so sometimes people say
to us we would rather not open this to the press and I respect that.I have to be under scrutiny, Miss Jones should not have to be under scrutiny
and I respect that but rarely do we say close press. We are more Open Press.
We believe in transparency as much as possible.
I replied to the Mayor:
I think it’s beneficial to the community to know when you attend the community
meeting what happened through an independent press.
Mayor Adams responded:
I agree 100 per cent.
Watch video of the entire Q&A between Mayor Adams and the NYC Ethnic/Community press. It is a very interesting discussion.
Here’s the list of Roosevelt Island issues that were presented to the Mayor last August
