＂Playing With Fire＂ - Mayor Eric Adams WARNS NYC Permits Crisis Could Spark DISASTER
Episode Stats
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187.59105
Summary
In this episode, we sit down with California Governor Gavin Newsom to talk about his vision for the future of the state and how he wants to fix the infrastructure in his state. We discuss the need for infrastructure improvements, the need to fix our roads and bridges, and how to get construction companies to work on projects.
Transcript
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permits. When, when you look at real estate, okay. And you go to roads and one thing, when you're
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driving around New York, there's a lot of unfinished projects that are kind of sitting
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around. And when you look at why, like right now, California, it's a worse time to be Newsom,
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you know, no matter how much he tries to spin it, what he's going through in his state with all the
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stuff that's going on with the Palisades, what happened Malibu, you know, out of all the homes
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that went through it. I think only six have been rebuilt and only 14% have permits to start
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rebuilding. So think about the permit issue that's taking place in California. You got it as well.
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When you look at New York city, and I wonder how much of it is you can do something about,
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or it's got to be a governor, like a bigger position than you. The number of highways,
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over 60% of the highways were built after 1970 in New York city. They're built, they're built past
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their expected lifespan. Most of these. So when they build it, they're like, this is good to be for
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40 years, 50 years, but you guys are kind of playing with fire right now, right? The department
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of transportation says over 200 city bridges are structurally deficient as of 2024. Okay.
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The Brooklyn queen expressway being one of them, you know, some of these other ones. Then I said,
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I'm curious, the average highway compared to other cities in New York city, it's 60 to 80 years.
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The average age LA is 40 to 60 years. Houston is 30 to 50 years. Chicago is 50 to seven years. You have
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the oldest. And when you look at these numbers, like the oldest of the oldest, then when you go to the
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cost, okay, slowest and the most expensive construction timelines in the world, it takes two to four
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years compared to some other places, you know, six to 12 months, 12 to 18 months to build a mile
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bridge in your area. The average subway extension in New York city, not bridge subway extension, two
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and a half billion to three and a half billion per mile compared to Paris. It's only a half a million
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per mile. Seoul is 300 million per mile, 120 per mile in Madrid. You're five to seven times more than
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Paris. So people are sitting there saying, Hey man, we cannot have our city. That's D city,
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the headquarters, financial capital. But then where do you get the money from? How do you fund
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this? Who do you work with? How do you get construction companies to work? How do you put
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the incentive for people to say, I want to clean up the roads? And it takes such a long time to go
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through this. How do you manage all of this stuff when it comes down to updating your roads? Because
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all it takes is one bad accident with a bridge, one bad accident with that. And then that's a big
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story. Everyone's talking about a doubt, without a doubt. And as you mentioned, the BQE, these are
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problems that were canned, that was kicked down the road for years. I had and invited Secretary Duffy,
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Secretary of Transportation to come and walk with me and see the BQE in the erosion because those type of
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large projects, we need help and sign off also from the federal government. And so when you look at some
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of the roads that you mentioned in the bridges, some is under city, state and federal. And we need a
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combination of those things. And when I ran for office, I stated that it takes too long and with
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too much bureaucracy to get things done. And remember, remember, while I was brought up on a diamond, I was
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saying to the FDNY, go goddamn inspect the building. If you're going to pass it or fail, and that's up to
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them. But at least go in and do the inspection. I was hearing on the campaign trail from building owners who was
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telling me, Eric, to get a fire inspection, it takes years. And it was my mindset that we have to speed up
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the bureaucracy. Because if I have a building owner developing a skyscraper, and they have to wait to
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get an inspection, and they have a 200-man crew that they're paying for every day, it just hurts
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business. And here's why. The whole concept of government is a flawed concept in the manner in
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which, if you don't incentivize the action, if I have a person who opened a hotel, is paying $35,000 a
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month in rent, yet they can't have someone come in and turn on their gas and turn on their electricity,
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or come and give them a CFO for an inspection. And no one is incentivizing. If government is saying,
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I'm getting my salary if I open you or not, that's wrong. I started judging our agencies based on
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the end product. How many restaurants did we open? How many citations did you issue? How many
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building permits did we approve? We have to incentivize government and judge based on the
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end product. How much control do you have to accelerate permit, the speed of permitting? Is
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that influence on you? At what level is somebody able to accelerate the speed of people getting
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permits? That's a great question. Part of the problem is, is the permanency of government.
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You know, many people, you know, who don't want to see this productivity, those who are in government,
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they have a mindset, we'll wait you out. You know, you're here for what, four years, eight years? I've
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been here for 35 years. You know, I've been here for 35 years. So when you go in, and you put your folks
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at the top, and we have modernized many of our systems, I have a great chief technology officer,
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a lot of this stuff, you could use real good artificial intelligence technology, should not
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have to go through this long series of interactions. And that's the way I attempted to do. So in three
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and a half years, we've modernized a lot. But at the same time, remember, I had to go to those top
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issues, building the housing, making the city safe. Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is,
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can the campaign be that we're going to go through the following permits that are taking
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so long to get approved, because nine people need to sign off? And here's what we're doing
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moving forward. Moving forward, we're going to split the time for campaign, because we need
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to approve the bridges to be rebuilt. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You know, enough of the business,
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you know, buildings that are not being built, people are sitting on the sidelines. And one
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of the reasons why it's not is permitting. What can be a direct statement that you can
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Modernizing our system so we don't have all those layers. And that's what I...
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We're doing that now with Commissioner Jimmy Otto, former borough president, my chief technology
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officer, Matt Frazier. We're going in and looking at all of these systems, and we're asking the
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question, do we need all of these layers? For example, prior to, before coming mayor,
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we would do something called stop work orders, because there's a problem on a job site.
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What we've learned, there could be a problem with the carpentry, has nothing to do with
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the electricity, or dealing with the painters, or what have you. So why are we stopping the
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whole job? Let's stop the part of the job that's the issue. And now to get us to get a stop
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work order of a whole job, you have to get signed off from the hierarchy of the building
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department. My contractors said, Eric, this was a home run for us, because they were holding
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up our jobs. And that's the same thing we're looking at with building permits and other
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Yeah, I would. Rob, where is New York City in the speed of permits of all the cities in
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America? Are you guys known as one of the slowest? Would you say New York City is known?
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I would say yes, because we have so many rules and regulations that were put in place,
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that was put in place not only by the agencies, but safety rules and regulations that were put
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Is this a permits, Rob? Is this a zoning permit?
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Look at this, New York City, two to four plus years, time for approval, building restriction,
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very high zoning, reviews, landmark. You got Houston's zero to six months.
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By the way, Houston just became the number three city in America. They passed up Chicago.
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I believe they did. If not, they're there now. Austin's six to 12 months. That's where
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everybody is moving right now. You got, you know, Musk is there, a bunch of guys. Even
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LA is one or two years. Miami is yours. Chicago is 12 to 14 months. You guys are two to four
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Now, let's break that down for a moment, because, and here's the solution to it also. We have all
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of these different procedures that community groups, like the community board must sign
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off. There's a lot of latest. That's not ULIP. ULIP is the uniform land use process. So what
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did we do this year? We put an amendment on the ballot that will cut that time down to
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a year. Voters must vote on it now. We had an entire, what we call, you know, the review
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committee come in and look at how we modify the proposal to do this. Everything from zoning
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to reviews to landmark to rules. That's what's on the ballot right now that people will be
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voting on. So New York is must determine that, hey, we no longer want to go through this lengthy
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process. We knew it was a problem. And that's why we put this battle, this ballot amendment
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I think this is very big because, you know, and that's why I asked you when you said, did
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No, he came. We walked through together. He spent, he spent a couple hours with me.
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That's good. He's the right guy. So if he came in and I, and I, this is a big investment
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for the city and to show that you can collaborate with the existing administration and get a level
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of commitment from them that if you get elected, so strategically for me would be if all of a
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sudden you get a president Trump to say, Hey, I love New York city. If you guys go and
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support Mayor Adams, we're going to be involved as a federal government to help come clean up
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New York. Cause I love that place. I grew up in that place, but there's no way we're doing
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that. If mom done, if there's something like that to be said, and I know he's aggressively
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not a fan of what mom done, he was doing, but I think this would be very big to me.
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