On State of the City day, revisiting some of Eric Adams’ promises from 2024

On Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams will deliver his 2025 State of the City address – his fourth time completing the rite. Often adorned with adorably rousing performances by children’s choirs and dance troupes, pumping up the mayor with glossy highlight reels, these addresses are as much about setting a thematic vision and overarching goals for an administration as they are about laying out new policy proposals – if not more so. That may be particularly true in a reelection year, as Adams faces deep uncertainty about a second term. 

“It really doubles as a major campaign event,” said Democratic political consultant Trip Yang. “Setting his agenda, his vision, what he’s thinking on policy, where his priorities are.” But while a standard part of the address, the new policy proposals aren’t necessarily what stick – in the collective memory or in practice. 

Yang recalled former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s State of the City address immediately after President Donald Trump’s first election. “He made a very compelling argument that New York would push back and be different from the federal government,” Yang said. “That's what I remember eight years later. What were the policy things that I remember from de Blasio in those (years)? I don’t know.”

The same might be said about new initiatives featured in Adams’ address just one year ago. In Adams’ State of the City address last January, one of his top-billed new initiatives was the creation of a new city Department of Sustainable Delivery. The department would regulate the fast-changing ecosystem of trucks, e-bikes and other vehicles making food and package deliveries across the city amid an e-commerce boom. But a year later, the city doesn’t have much to show for it. While Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi at one point estimated that they would submit legislation to create the department to the City Council by this past fall, that’s yet to happen.

“Before the mayor announced the creation of the Department of Sustainable Delivery to address new commercial micromobility devices on city streets, we engaged communities, advocates, and the City Council to find the best ways to address these issues,” a City Hall spokesperson said in a statement. “Since then, we have continued to gather feedback and input from delivery workers and companies, advocacy groups, and business improvement districts seeing the most commercial micromobility activity.” The spokesperson said they’re also working with the council to draft other legislation tackling worker and pedestrian safety. Some advocates are still looking for a regulatory framework to keep pedestrians and cyclists safe, professionalize delivery work and create more accountability for delivery companies. “The Department of Sustainable Delivery could be an incredible step forward on all of these issues, but a year after its announcement, there’s still no concrete plan. Like all regulatory legislation, the devil is in the details,” Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Ben Furnas said in a statement.

Adams also committed to an overhaul of internal discipline at the New York City Police Department, promising to cut in half the time it takes to resolve cases. In a monumentally rocky year for the NYPD, it’s unclear what kind of progress has been made on that overhaul. In the meantime, ex-Police Commissioner Eddie Caban reduced discipline guidelines for offenses by cops. A City Hall spokesperson did not provide comment on the overhaul announced by Adams last year.

Last year wasn’t without policy victories for Adams, including on issues he mentioned in his State of the City address – the City of Yes for housing plan, trash containerization, and state legislation to help shut down smoke shops.

As for new initiatives announced in last year’s address, Adams has publicized some markers of progress. Earlier this week, the Adams administration announced that it had surpassed its commitment to advance 24 affordable housing projects on public land in 2024, doing so on 26 such projects. That doesn’t mean 26 affordable housing projects are newly up and running, however. Actions that count as “advancing work” run the gamut from soliciting resident engagement on a new development to closing financing for renovations.

In March, the administration also named members of a new Tenant Protection Cabinet that Adams announced in his 2024 address. The cabinet has met quarterly since then, City Hall said, and among other actions, has helped to coordinate legal action on behalf of tenants, putting together a new unit focused on violations of the city’s Human Rights Law, and preparing the release of a Tenants’ Bill of Rights early this year. In the spring, the city also reopened the waitlist for Section 8 housing vouchers for the first time in 15 years.

Work on other initiatives including building and restoring a handful of skate parks is underway, City Hall says, as is a renovation of Kimlau Plaza in Chinatown, where a design contract has been awarded. 

Adams isn’t the only mayor who has used these addresses to shoot for the stars and ended up landing on earth. De Blasio fell short of his own share of commitments – a push for a billionaires’ tax in Albany failed to gain traction, and 2021 isn’t remembered as the “year of 5G” as he promised in that year’s address.

But rather than serving as a strict policy checklist, Thursday’s State of the City now gives Adams a chance to set an agenda – and set some of his own terms – for his next year in office.

“It’s really designed, in my opinion, to level set expectations and to kind of put forward the agenda of the administration,” political consultant Lupe Todd-Medina said of State of the City addresses. “You don’t necessarily have to have it all figured out at the beginning, but you do want overarching goals, overarching plans, so that by mid-term, you’re able to come back and show the deliverables.”