Migrants are the biggest problem the city is facing. Solution: close the border.

0:00 Speaker 1 With us this morning is Governor David Pattison And Governor another week has gone by, and so many things have changed, and so many things have not changed. What say you, where do you think we are? Well?

0:15 Speaker 3 John, It is a really difficult time for the cities in this country because those who have a lot of office buildings, like New York and the New York Post wrote about this on Friday, less and less space.

0:30 Speaker 2 Is being used.

0:31 Speaker 3 It’s causing the property values to fall, It’s causing more and more people to not come to work at the rate that it would have been thought once the pandemic ended. And it’s going to be a real crisis down the road now when you add to that that there are people coming into the city, but it’s the migrant population,

0:50 and so far they’ve been restricted to New York City pretty much because the county executives in the other areas have gone to court to try to stop that, which I think, Look, whether you are no matter how you feel about the border, if people actually do get in, I don’t they should think they should be sent just

1:09 to centers that are decided somewhere in Washington and not you know, collectively by the counties of the state and the states themselves. So I think that that’s just exacerbating the situation that we talked about last week.

1:28 Speaker 1 There was reports that they were going to put them in churches, they were going to put them in private homes and pay the people in private homes one hundred dollars a night or something.

1:41 Speaker 2 I mean, at some place, it’s out of control.

1:46 Speaker 3 Yeah, and also, you know, I think there actually are some people who would let the migrants stay in their homes, but like any other situation like foster care or something like that, there has to be a little bit of a background to understand who’s actually coming there and what special needs they might have. And you know, in addition

2:06 to the fact that they’re they’re being there, Mayor Adams actually is talking about bringing some people to the mansion and having them stay there. And that’s a nice gesture symbolically, but it demonstrates that he continues to be the one person in government who is trying new ideas, bringing up possibilities.

2:29 Not all of them necessarily would work, but it demonstrates the effort that he’s putting in and he should certainly be commended for it. It’s a it’s just a very difficult situation. And of course this week with the smog alert and the the UH index almost up to five hundred, which would be the highest recorded in the world. It’s uh,

2:56 it’s a it’s a frightening time to be around this area.

3:00 Speaker 2 You’re absolutely correct.

3:02 Speaker 1 And Mayor Adams told people to stay home a few days this week, and every restaurant in the city was empty.

3:10 Speaker 3 Yeah, and that, you know, nullified profit in the restaurants and exacerbated that particular problem because if people are not coming to work, they’re not working in the office buildings, then they’re not using the facilities around the office buildings, and that causes some of them to go out of business and causes others to be struggling for survival.

3:33 Speaker 2 And we have just got to.

3:35 Speaker 3 Find some way to bring leaders from different communities together to try to hammer out some problems rather than being antagonistic to each other.

3:47 Speaker 1 Agreed. But it can’t be keep coming and coming and coming. At some place at some time, it’s out of control. Yeah.

3:57 Speaker 3 Well, we talked about that last week, and I certainly would hope that.

4:04 Speaker 2 There is a way to.

4:09 Speaker 3 Equalize the migration of people, not just in New York City. I don’t know what New York City did wrong, which meant that we were supposed to get the migrants. And the county executives, Oh, they had fun cheering on Governor Abbott when he sent the buses of migrants to Manhattan and to the surrounding burroughs. But then all of a sudden,

4:30 when someone wanted to descend it to their areas, they have some reason why they don’t want to do that. Now.

4:34 Speaker 3 I just think that’s very unhelpful at a time like that.

4:36 Speaker 1 Now, I understand that the federal courts allowed the city to keep sending them. Was there an appeal? Do you know what the current status is on.

4:47 Speaker 3 The I think the counties are appealing that decision. I think it’s a very good decision, but it’s going to take a little time to bring it to fruition.

4:57 Speaker 2 Anything else you want to tell people.

5:00 Speaker 3 Well, you know, at this particular time, you know, things can look very bleak in terms of the inflation rate that we have in this country, in terms of some of our economic centers being diminished by the lack of a workforce and also the lack of activity. But New York has always been a resilient city that’s always kind

5:27 of bounced back. It certainly looked pretty bad during the fiscal crisis in nineteen seventy five, but we bounced back from that, and it certainly looked horrible after the terrible attack on our country on September eleventh, two thousand and one, and we fought back from that.

5:42 Speaker 2 So I hope in the midst.

5:44 Speaker 3 Of all of this, even though we’re raising some difficult issues, that we still have that resilience, that desire, and that drive to bring the city back as one of the great cities, if not the greatest city in this country.

5:57 Speaker 1 I agree, Thank you, Governor Pattison, and and have a great rest of the weekend and we’ll catch up with you again real so thanks John