City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams laid out her annual vision for the city Wednesday, focusing on the affordability of living in the city ahead of another budget battle with the mayor.

The speaker delivered her State of the City remarks at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, praising its cultural significance before pivoting to the rising cost of living in the five boroughs. 

“For too many New Yorkers, the housing and affordability crisis has presented an impossible dilemma: you cannot afford to live in the city, so you struggle or you leave,” she said. “The situation is dire.”

Despite her enthusiasm, key initiatives from the speaker’s previous State of the City address last year remained unfulfilled or paused. As she did last year, Adams stressed the importance of hiring at understaffed agencies across the city, but many roles are still empty.

An exodus of working and middle-class residents, she said in Wednesday’s speech, points to a failure of civic leadership — and has disproportionately impacted communities of color. 

“As a government, we are not fulfilling our duty to New Yorkers,” she said. 

Adams, who has represented neighborhoods in Southeast Queens since 2018, announced initiatives to help with the cost of housing, education and child care. She focused on rebuilding a government and city hobbled by the pandemic, and stressed strengthening libraries and the City University system.

“Our economic and job recovery has been uneven, and we must provide opportunities for people at every level to succeed,” she said.

Talking the Talk

One package of bills touted Wednesday aims to tackle deed theft, which predominantly affects working-class communities of color. The legislation will require the city to inform homeowners and people who inherit property of the fair-market value of their homes, and will also provide legal assistance to help them protect their assets. The move comes in response to an investigative series from THE CITY.

“We must build a city where all New Yorkers, especially working people who make up the backbone of our communities, can build their legacy right here in our city,” Adams said. 

The speaker also discussed the possibility of transforming the Aqueduct Racetrack in South Ozone Park, saying the 172-acres of state-owned land in Queens “represents a generational opportunity” to build more housing and amenities. The land is also next to a city-owned site near the A train, which would also be a good location for housing, she said. 

“Repurposing the land for housing and other amenities can uplift this community district — which has produced the lowest amount of housing of any in Queens,” she said. 

Adams did not mention the pending proposal from the site’s operator, Resorts World Casino, to obtain a coveted state casino license and fully develop the site. 

The speaker also alluded to the rising tension and power struggle between the Council and Mayor Eric Adams, who was in the front row at BAM but received a tepid response from the crowd. She noted that while the lead co-equal branches of government that pass laws, “laws and policies are only as good as their implementation.” 

The Council last month joined a lawsuit against the mayor’s administration for not fully implementing bills they passed to expand access to housing vouchers. Mayor Adams vetoed that package of bills, but the Council later overrode those vetoes. 

Speaker Adams on Wednesday announced the Council will also conduct performance evaluations of city agencies, saying the Mayor’s Management Report, which is required under the City Charter, doesn’t provide a full picture of how the city is doing. 

The speaker also criticized the Department of Transportation’s delay in implementing the Streets Master Plan and announced proposed legislation to require DOT to update a newly-created monthly capital projects tracker.  

The Council has also criticized the mayor’s handling of the asylum-seeker crisis, so the speaker announced a new strategy team of both veteran government officials and non-profit leaders to figure out how to better help those coming to the city. 

“We’ve got to get this right, because we are a city and a nation of immigrants,” she said. 

Walking the Walk

In her speech last year, Adams highlighted water safety and equity, with a plan to allocate money and build more pools to increase access to swimming. 

But a citywide plan to expand the parks department’s Learn to Swim program was cut in last November’s budget cuts, and was not restored this year. 

The speaker’s ambitions have been hamstrung by the city’s budget and the mayor. Her hope in last year’s speech to improve the housing-voucher program has been hampered by staffing challenges and the administration’s refusal to implement the bills.

And despite calls for more funding and programming at CUNY, it too has faced financial issues, with layoffs at multiple campuses. 

The Council and the mayor’s budget teams have been at odds over the city’s finances since last year, when the legislative branch said the city had more money than the executive claimed. 

After Mayor Adams announced in January he was undoing some of the cuts he’d ordered implemented months earlier, Speaker Adams reiterated that the previous belt-tightening was “unnecessary.” 

“The Council has said all along the money exists to avoid overly broad cuts and protect essential services relied upon by our constituents,” she said in a statement in January with Councilmember Justin Brannan, chair of the finance committee.

Andrew Rein, the president of the watchdog group Citizens Budget Commission, cautioned that financial uncertainties remain.

“If you have too long a list and don’t focus on anything, you end up doing so little for so many people you don’t actually make change,” he said.