In Final State Of The City, De Blasio Pledges ‘Recovery For All’

NEW YORK CITY — Five million coronavirus vaccinations by June. A new, 10,000-strong city cleanup corps. Banning fossil fuel connections by 2030. Fully reopening schools in September.

In a splashy, 28-minute video, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday outlined those plans — and more — in his final State of the City address.

The speech stood as a rallying cry for New York City to fight out from the devastating coronavirus and a last chance for de Blasio to shape his legacy.

“Together, we will drive a recovery for all of us,” he said.

The address in many ways formed a mirror of de Blasio’s nearly-eight years in office: unapologetically progressive, filled with sweeping promises, often lacking in detail and chaotically released.

Indeed, the speech itself may have been its own biggest surprise. De Blasio announced the address the morning of — a last-minute revelation that began a day-long waiting game for when it would drop.

By the time it finally did at 7:05 p.m., de Blasio and a select few had teased some details. Hizzoner announced a significant NYPD reform giving communities say in selecting local police commanders and the New York Times reported plans to add bike lanes to the Brooklyn and Queensboro bridges.

Many proposals in de Blasio’s speech — from efforts to turn the city into a life sciences hub to a post-COVID student achievement plan — weren’t exactly new, but did receive a fresh gloss.

New efforts included de Blasio’s pledge to vaccinate 5 million New Yorkers against the coronavirus by June.

“We will reach high levels of immunity to create a safer city, a city ready for a comeback,” he said.

The vaccination effort will help the city bring back in-person learning to all schools by September, de Blasio said.

The city’s comeback will also be fueled by a program inspired by the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps that provided public works jobs, de Blasio said. He announced a “City Cleanup Corps” that will use federal stimulus money to hire 10,000 New Yorkers.

“We’ll wipe away graffiti, power wash sidewalks, create community murals, tend to community gardens, beautify public spaces and work with community organizations to clean their neighborhoods,” he said. “This will be a cleanup blitz during the year of 2021 to help up come back strong.”

De Blasio also emphasized new or refreshed efforts to achieve fairness in the city, especially on police reform. A new “David Dinkins Plan” will grant the Civilian Complaint Review Board — which Mayor Dinkins founded — new review powers, he said.

The NYPD’s crime statistics program will be upgraded to “CompStat 3.0” with an emphasis on efforts to engage with communities, he said.

“That trust and confidence ultimately means more cooperation between community and police, and that is the way to reduce crime and violence,” he said. “That is the ultimate expression of neighborhood policing.

“And we'll also change the value we put on community engagement by changing the training of our police officers to focus more on a real dialogue with the community.”

Another crisis stands beyond the coronavirus pandemic, de Blasio said. New York City must address climate change, he said,

The city will completely “de-carbonize” its pension funds, invest $50 billion in renewable energy by 2035, and ban fossil fuel connections in new construction by 2030, de Blasio said. He said the city this year will connect to Canadian hydropower sources and invest in new transmission lines.

“With this new asset New York City’s government will run on 100 percent renewable energy within the next four years,” he said.

More information on those plans and others can be found at recoveryforall.nyc.gov.